Themes

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The 404: Main Theme Ringtone

Courtesy of Jamie Lewis, enjoy The 404 Main Theme ringtone. If you're subscribed to our podcast via RSS or iTunes, this will be pushed to you automatically. Below, you will also find a link to a iPhone-compatible version of the ringtone. Please rename the file from .mp4 to .m4r to work in iTunes. This is due to a limitation of our podcast feed.

Preview Main Theme Ringtone Download ringtone |  Download iPhone-compatible ringtone

A splash of Ireland

Unofficial Dublin is a Firefox theme that offers an exotic change from the sterile skin that comes standard. This unique theme will remind travelers of the famed Irish city and its charming streets.

The buttons and color of this free unlimited download are modeled after the pleasant blue-and-white street signs found around Dublin. Replacing Firefox's white navigation area with a gentle gray, the blue buttons really jump out and give the display a unique look and feel. While the icons of command--such as Display Your Bookmarks and Open New Window--look different, they maintain the traditional feel and should not … Read more

Mix your own Gmail theme

Google's thrown in a slight change to Gmail's Themes option. Users can now select their own colors for background, links, tabs, and text.

There's actually a lot of customization available so that the sidebar can be customized separately from the message body, for example. Custom colors are an option, too, which is carried over from Labels. However you decorate your Gmail, you'll be stuck with the multicolored Gmail logo, so theme-obsessed aesthetic ascetics are out of luck.

The feature can be accessed from the lower-right corner of the Themes page, once you've activated Themes in … Read more

Windows desktop bling

If you're glued to your computer, you should make it as inspiring as you can.

That was our goal back in September 2006 when we first put together a collection of top desktop enhancement apps.

Since then, Microsoft's spiced-up graphics have added a charm to Vista that XP out-and-out lacked, but is the blue look you, or can you still do better? We've picked out the best free and free-to-try downloads to give you a brightly colored taskbar, animated wallpaper, and dynamic cursor options for your XP or Vista box. Check out the desktop eye candy in … Read more

Not just an MP3 player

Microsoft's takes a decidedly dark turn in this black-tinted theme for Windows XP. A bright orange Start box, sharp gradients, and effective gray-on-gray accents make the theme--based on the company's Zune media player--a welcome change from the default blues and greens. We're not especially enamored of the default desktop wallpaper, which lunges away from the cool factor generated by the rest of the theme in favor of cheesiness, but that's an easy enough user customization. The theme looks especially good when coupled with the Firefox Zune theme created by an independent developer.

iGoogle gets a built-in theme creator

If you're fed up with having to choose from other people's iGoogle themes, you'll soon be able to create your own.

A new tool, which should be available to all iGoogle users in the next few hours, lets you upload photos from your desktop into an editor that lets you crop them down to fit inside iGoogle's header space. There's also a color picker to change each individual color of your iGoogle page.

All in all it looks quite similar to Blogger's theme editor. The added benefit in this case is that you're … Read more

Inside Google's Gmail: What's next?

Earlier this week, I sat down with Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson to talk about the future of the service and to find out what's been keeping the team busy behind the scenes. Here are five tidbits from our meeting you might find interesting.

1. More Themes are coming--including ones designed by you.

No new Gmail Themes have been added since the feature launch in late November, but Jackson says more of the skins are coming. "We want to keep adding Themes. People like it. We don't know exactly how we'll do that yet. The 30 Themes that we chose were hand-designed to look great in Gmail."

Jackson says the team was split on whether to open up the design process to third parties, like what's been done on Google's customizable start page, iGoogle.

"We've thought about continuing to do it the way we did, and we thought about opening it up for other people to (design them)." Most of the hesitation has centered around Gmail's design, which makes skinning tricky business. "Gmail's structure is an application that's written all in JavaScript. It's a different beast. The detail level we did on Themes--we went pretty deep."

That complexity doesn't mean that the Gmail folks are beyond letting users design their own themes. When pressed if there would one day be a design-your-own Theme tool, Jackson said the closest thing users might be getting is a tool that lets them choose the colors of each Gmail element, similar to the color picker used for Gmail's labeling system.

As to when new Themes are coming, Jackson wouldn't say. However, I got a peek at a few rejects and early mock-ups, including several iterations of plaid that would get the lumberjack or golfer in all of us a little excited.

2. No iPhone Gmail app in the works

For iPhone users who are fed up with Apple's built-in Mail application and wish that they could get a native Gmail application like the ones for Android and J2ME phones--don't hold your breath. "We could make one for mail, potentially," Jackson said, "but we'd also have to make one for Palm and BlackBerry. For each platform, it's time consuming."

Instead Jackson thinks the future of Gmail on phones centers around improved 3G coverage and new standards such as HTML 5 that will make using Gmail on your handset's browser less painful. "If we can design for the Web and give you the client-like experience that you're used to getting with Gmail on your browser, it's going to be a good experience."… Read more

New Firefox themes for a new year

Tonight you're probably going to make some hefty New Year's resolutions, which statistically you're never going to keep. Why not at least make a change you know will make a difference immediately? A Firefox theme can change the feel of your browser and all it takes is a simple download. You can't just waltz into a new year without making a few changes, right?

We've put together a nice slide show of downloadable Firefox themes so you can improve your browsing experience in the New Year.