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ubuntu-geek
March 25th, 2005, 04:00 PM
I stumbled upon this gem a few months ago when I was looking for a way to make my form widgets in firefox look half way decent.

This will work with Hoary or Warty. I took all the updates from this site (http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2004/09/22/firefox-forms-work-in-progress/) and this site (http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2004/10/15/firefox-default-widgets-part-ii/) then made a tar ball.

Screenshot from linuxart.com
http://linuxart.com/dir/stuff/screenshots/partial/firefox-widgets-default-after-2.png

Installation:
cd /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/
sudo wget http://ubuntuforums.org/download/ff-forms.tar.gz
sudo tar xvzf ff-forms.tar.gz
sudo rm ff-forms.tar.gz

You will need to re-apply this after firefox updates.

Julius
March 25th, 2005, 05:40 PM
Cool, I was looking for this. In my previous installation I had something like this, I knew I had to change some .css file to change the widgets :P

TravisNewman
March 26th, 2005, 06:38 AM
anyone have a before shot? I'm having trouble noticing what's changed.

vrunt
March 26th, 2005, 06:46 AM
anyone have a before shot? I'm having trouble noticing what's changed.

Here's an explanation:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=264523

jdong
March 26th, 2005, 11:11 PM
Are these stable? I'd love for it to be a part of Backports Firefox.

Julius
March 27th, 2005, 01:05 AM
This things are just CSS tweaks, no it doesnt matter what version you have :P I remember I had done somethng similar in warty. I'm sure it can be done in windows too

ubuntu-geek
March 27th, 2005, 05:35 AM
Are these stable? I'd love for it to be a part of Backports Firefox.
Stable enough for me.. I have never had a problem (4 months now), some widgets dont pickup the changes but most do.

notzac
April 29th, 2005, 06:38 PM
Thanks a heap for this - the ugliness of the form element widgets in Firefox was a little off-putting, seeing as everything else looks so damn good :)

One little thing though - the image used for the selected radio button is .. odd. You get the dot to denote that it's been selected, but no 'ring' surrounding it (it's hard to describe). I've created a replacement image file, which appears to have fixed it all up for me - I've managed to work out how to attach the image file to this post, so if you want to add it to the package - you're more than welcome to :)

..and yeah, it'd be great if this could be included as a part of the Firefox package in hoary-backports :D

pjack76
April 29th, 2005, 07:50 PM
Oh thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I absolutely abhor the default Firefox form widgets on Linux. My screen doesn't have a lot of contrast so it looks like the text entry boxes only have 2 sides. This is great!

Possible to include this in Breezy by default? There is actually an accessibility issue here, the default widgets make it impossible to see where one control ends and another begins if you're partially blind (or slowly going blind like me).

-Paul

Chayyiel
May 1st, 2005, 03:16 AM
Beautiful! Thanks!

popdog
May 1st, 2005, 02:26 PM
Excellent, i really hated those ugly form foxes before! Only problem i can see is that on some sites it makes text in drop down boxes almost unreadable. Apart from that big improvment thanks :)

kiddo
May 9th, 2005, 03:19 AM
Ah, this makes life more bearable ;) but am I the only one seeing that SOME (well.. 50% ?) sites don't render the forms with this trick? Half of the forms render the ugly way. Just look at gmail. Speaking of gmail, when hovering the "send" button, it shrinks, so you can "save draft" by mistake ! :D

Sam
May 9th, 2005, 07:35 AM
Ah, this makes life more bearable ;) but am I the only one seeing that SOME (well.. 50% ?) sites don't render the forms with this trick? Half of the forms render the ugly way. Just look at gmail. Speaking of gmail, when hovering the "send" button, it shrinks, so you can "save draft" by mistake ! :D
You're right. This trick doesn't work well when forms objects use css.

@notzac & pjack76: It's NOT a good idea to make this as default. For web designers it'll provide a lot more work to ensure that every form layout will be the same on any browser/theme.


By the way, to backup your old settings just make a copy of the file /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/res/platform-forms.css. When you want your old firefox forms, just replace it back.

royg1234
June 9th, 2005, 12:28 AM
Nice howto! But is there any way to undo this? Don't get me wrong, it's pretty and I like it; but some form text gets cut off, like this screenshot (http://www.geocities.com/pilstilin9/forms.png) . It's really annoying with my bank website, becuase the dates are cut off, so 2 Jan looks the same as 2X Jan.

ThankS!

ow50
June 9th, 2005, 12:47 AM
But is there any way to undo this?
At least reinstalling firefox will undo it.

royg1234
June 9th, 2005, 12:58 AM
At least reinstalling firefox will undo it.
Will this default all ther rest of my settings, bookmarks, and extensions?

ow50
June 9th, 2005, 02:43 AM
Will this default all ther rest of my settings, bookmarks, and extensions?
No.

Your settings are stored in your home folder. Apt installations will never touch your home folder. Reinstall will only overwrite files is system directories, for example the /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox, where the forms were installed.

Gothic
June 9th, 2005, 10:36 AM
Thanks a heap for this - the ugliness of the form element widgets in Firefox was a little off-putting, seeing as everything else looks so damn good :)

One little thing though - the image used for the selected radio button is .. odd. You get the dot to denote that it's been selected, but no 'ring' surrounding it (it's hard to describe). I've created a replacement image file, which appears to have fixed it all up for me - I've managed to work out how to attach the image file to this post, so if you want to add it to the package - you're more than welcome to :)

..and yeah, it'd be great if this could be included as a part of the Firefox package in hoary-backports :D
thx. i've got the same problem, thx again for your work :)

Sionide
June 9th, 2005, 11:02 AM
One little thing though - the image used for the selected radio button is .. odd. You get the dot to denote that it's been selected, but no 'ring' surrounding it (it's hard to describe). I've created a replacement image file, which appears to have fixed it all up for me - I've managed to work out how to attach the image file to this post, so if you want to add it to the package - you're more than welcome to :)

Yeah I had this trouble too.

I love check boxes, they look sooo nice :) Hooray for eye candy!

Edit: It's a lot better with that new file notzac - thanks. Note to others; stick it under /usr/lib/mozilla-firefoz/res

topcop
June 14th, 2005, 01:19 PM
hopefully firefox will have native GTK2 forms one day - this bug has been there for a while but no patches https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=232553

flamarro
June 19th, 2005, 04:07 PM
Just to say thanks also.
I was just frustrated in google for instance i couldn't see the all search box, and in some sites i couldn't even see some words that i could see in XP, now i can.

Ps: I have Ubuntu installed for about 15 days already, and i also have XP installed, but for 15 days i don't even once saw XP, and with the help of all here i manage to do all the thing i've used to do. THANKS again

niels
November 27th, 2005, 07:39 PM
Just, installed it and it look really goooood!

The only problem was, that ff-forms.tar.gz didn't exist! I spent five seconds searcing for it. I have add the radio_checked.png from this thead and uploaded it to my homepage for you to download.

Just click here to download ff-forms.tar.gz (http://nielshansen.info/files/ff-forms.tar.gz)
or type this in a terminal (you should be in the mozilla-firefox directory)
sudo wget http://nielshansen.info/files/ff-forms.tar.gz

trampolando
December 3rd, 2005, 09:09 AM
hello... I've installed Firefox 1.5 and this procedure to change the "look" of firefox buttons doesn't work... any idea?
thanks
rIKY

BitTorrentBuddha
May 25th, 2006, 05:09 AM
anyway to get this working under dapper?