Firefox Extensions: Beautifications

When it comes to looking at a white background on a computer screen, it can be like looking at a giant, low-powered light bulb.  I find dark backgrounds with light text to be much preferred as it is much easier on the eyes, and looks pretty sleek.

With that said, the theme I use for Firefox is NASA Night Launch.  The only thing NASA about it is the activity icon up in the top right, so you won't feel like a nerd for using it.  It is just a really good dark theme for firefox.

And keeping it dark is Google Redesigned.  This extension will transform your Gmail, GCal, and GReader with an excellent dark theme.  This extension is the biggest reason why I haven't switched to using Chrome.  It really is "eye candy".  Bonus: it plays nicely with the "Better ..." extensions in my previous post.  Here are some screenshots of the extension at work.

Lastly are a cluster of extensions that work together to produce an effect.  This picture is the final result.

In the picture you can see what the NASA firefox theme looks like.  You will also notice that 3 tabs are very tiny, containing just the icon.  This is done by Faviconize Tab, which lets you tell firefox to shrink certain tabs down to just the "favicon".  Second, these tabs are permanent; whenever firefox is open, my Gmail, GCal, and GReader are always open.  This is done by PermaTabs Mod, which is an experimental add-on, but has yet to give me any troubles whatsoever.  Third, my Gmail and Greader tabs contain a number in the icon, which is the number of unread items.  This is done by Better Gmail and Better GReader already covered in the previous post, but those extensions do a lot more too.  Likewise, you could also get just the number by downloading the appropriate userscript for greasemonkey.