Daniel Brierton
17
Dec '09

How to get the blue title bar in Chromium for Mac

Category: Tutorials - Tags: , ,

I just installed the latest build of Chromium on my MacBook because I wanted to use some of the new extensions available recently, but when I ran it, it had a blue title bar, like on Windows XP and Linux. I didn’t think too much of it, backed up the Chromium profile folder, and copied over my Chrome profile, and Chromium went back to grey.

After poking around and comparing the two Preference files, I figured out what was causing Chromium to go blue, there was an extension listed in the file, which the theme entry lower down referenced.

I did this using build 34868, and I cannot guarantee this will work for others, it just happened to work for me. If you do it wrong, or it doesn’t work, and it messes up your Chromium profile, I accept no responsibility. Backup the Default folder just in case this happens.

  • Close Chromium, then go to ‘~/Library/Application Support/Chromium/Default/’
  • Backup the Extensions folder and the Preferences file. If you make a mistake in the Preferences file, it deletes all the Extensions for some reason…
  • Open up ‘Preferences’ in TextEdit (or whatever plain text editor you want to use).
  • Find where it says ‘”settings”: {‘, it should be after ‘autoupdate’ under ‘extensions’
  • Add in the following before ‘”settings”: {‘:
    “theme”: {
    “colors”: {
    “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
    },
    “id”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”,
    “pack”: “nopath”
    },

    and the following after:

    “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”: {
    “location”: 1,
    “manifest”: {
    “key”: “MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCycmVJSXAf57FMqFmmTdmQtbvhYHx7850dYFcU9zyPMGgbpqDJ4PG8zFv3vqiVIwEkxoSCK/JbVdGUyenu5H4F8/e4+18rAjCMZffYEkXLme1ZkuirdhUD9KNobP+Y8wBUpQRsOEg8vpThjQaOovEI/u2AlSh9ckwDRKphqqwMNwIDAQAB”,
    “name”: “Default”,
    “theme”: {
    “colors”: {
    “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
    },
    “images”: {
    “null”: “notused.png”
    }
    },
    “version”: “1.1″
    },
    “path”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn/1.1″,
    “state”: 1
    },

    so it’s like:

    “theme”: {
    “colors”: {
    “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
    },
    “id”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”,
    “pack”: “nopath”
    },
    “settings”: {
    “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”: {
    “location”: 1,
    “manifest”: {
    “key”: “MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCycmVJSXAf57FMqFmmTdmQtbvhYHx7850dYFcU9zyPMGgbpqDJ4PG8zFv3vqiVIwEkxoSCK/JbVdGUyenu5H4F8/e4+18rAjCMZffYEkXLme1ZkuirdhUD9KNobP+Y8wBUpQRsOEg8vpThjQaOovEI/u2AlSh9ckwDRKphqqwMNwIDAQAB”,
    “name”: “Default”,
    “theme”: {
    “colors”: {
    “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
    },
    “images”: {
    “null”: “notused.png”
    }
    },
    “version”: “1.1″
    },
    “path”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn/1.1″,
    “state”: 1
    },
  • Save and open Chromium and hopefully you’ll have a blue title bar.

A lot of work for something so simple really… I wonder is there a theme available that’ll do this for you… :P


24
May '09

Moblin v2.0 Beta Review

Category: Reviews,Thoughts - Tags: , , , , ,

The other day, I downloaded and created a LiveUSB installer for Moblin v2.0 Beta, because after seeing the preview video (below), I was just blown away by the interface, and planned on installing it onto my Aspire One. In mine, and many other’s opinions, it’s the first properly designed OS for netbooks. However, after trying out the LiveUSB, I quickly changed my mind about Moblin.

Yes, it still had the beautiful and fluid interface, but it was as buggy as hell. I always jump straight into betas when I see them, but this is by far the most buggy beta I’ve ever seen, and some things just didn’t make sense. You can add your Twitter account, and update your status from within the OS’s status tab. However that’s all it did, just allow you to update your status. It would have made sense to show your Twitter stream below it, but no. That was on the m_zone tab, basically a dashboard. There was just one problem. There was 8 boxes each containing a seemingly random (although prioritising replies) tweet, or a link to a song from your linked Last.fm account. The rest of the dashboard was nice though. Recent/most viewed web pages, and your agenda and tasks from you calendar.

So, that I could have gotten over. After all, I usually just use Twitter’s web interface. So it didn’t help that the web browser was horrible and buggy. Like, it’s a tabbed browser, but you can’t right click and open in new tab. Now that I think about it, I never tried Ctrl-Click, but that’s besides the point. The browser is built on Firefox, but rendering can often take a long time, and I couldn’t manage to download Flash Player. I also tried using the package manager and terminal to install it, but both failed, so I couldn’t test out flash in the browser.

And my last gripe (although this is most likely something they’re working on) is the built in IM. It only supports Jabber, Google Talk and some other service I can’t remember, so again I couldn’t really test this as I use Windows Live Messenger.

It may seem like I’ve been just bashing this OS based purely on a beta version, but I consider this more constructive criticism and definitely see potential. I do love the interface in general. Here’s hoping they combat the problems mentioned above, as well as any other bugs and launch a viable competitor to Ubuntu Netbook Remix and plain ol’ XP.

Here’s the preview video:


3
Sep '08

Google Chrome manages to wow, but is also lacking

Category: Reviews - Tags: , , ,

So, I’ve had time now to mess about with Google Chrome, Google’s new web browser based on WebKit, and I have to say I’m quite impressed. Google have addressed most ends of what people really want from their browser, but have also missed out on a few important features.

(more…)


2
Sep '08

Google preparing for world domination; Own web browser

Category: Randomness - Tags: , , ,

Google have unvieled that they are working on a new web browser based on WebKit. The first images appeared yesterday, when Google sent out cartoons (yes, cartoons) to promote the new browser.

The new browser, called Google Chrome, is built on WebKit, which came as a shock to many as Google have such a tight relationship with Mozilla, and have invested large amounts of money into their Firefox browser. Google have decided however, not to use an open source JavaScript engine, but instead built their own from the ground up, dubbed V8.

(more…)



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