It’s my first theme based on the blank theme by Kris, which is a fantastic framework to work with!

Sugar is 100% XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses some very modern techniques using CSS3 (such as: rgba shadow on the forum avatar, alpha transparency on hovering over images, rounded corners). This means that it won’t render as intended in older browsers like IE6 and IE7 – I don’t support these browsers anymore, but it degrades acceptable in IE7 (in IE8: the rounded corners aren’t working – IE doesn’t support it yet.)

Over the last few days I’ve worked hard to make the theme ready for release, and I think it’s nearly there – in a few days, it’ll be released – I just need to iron all small bugs out of it and it should be ready to go

If you’d like to check out the Sugar theme already, you’ll need to install it to your own site. You can get it from my Github (which you can find here). I already have a ZIPPED version ready for you which you can download directly from here. If you’d like to use the newest version, the bleeding edge version (in other words, the last one I published), you can get it by pressing on the Download Source button and choose ZIP.

I hope you like the theme… a little preview of the theme:

Mitsy, even though you aren’t here anymore, we’ll reach you.

I’ll miss you forever.

Kevin

Click here to download it

Kevin

I’m happy to see that Apple is open enough to allow another browser on the iPhone. A good evolution!

But this doesn’t change how I think about Apple: it’s a bossy, censoring company.

Remember those incidents with exploding iPhones/iPods? Apple tried to give the persons affected money to keep it “silent”.

Another thing is that Apple refused to repair an iMac because it stood in a room where people smoked. It “posed a treat to their employees”. Ridiculous.

And also, in Europe, companies are forced to give 2 years of warranty on an electric product. Apple will try to sell you an “extension of your warranty” after a year or they’ll refuse to repair your product. Which is again illegal.

Before you buy something from Apple, think about this. I tend to find them even worse than Microsoft. I’m glad I have a Windows PC, not a Mac.

Kevin

This time, I’m not talking about Firefox and IE, but rather about Outlook and Thunderbird.

I’ve been using Outlook for a time now, but I’m thinking seriously of going back to Thunderbird. In fact, it’s going to be the first thing I’ll do when I get at home.

Nowadays, most decent antivirus software and antispam software works together with Thunderbird, and since all of my emails are powered by GMail, there is really no reason to keep using Outlook.

First of all, it takes a long while to start up. Seriously, I got a very powerful PC, but when that shitty piece of software is booted up, I ‘ve drunk a whole cup of tea!

And secondly, after I installed Thunderbird 3.0.4 at my stage, my eyes opened. Why am I still using that piece of shitty software? The only thing nice on it is the skin.. and even that’s boring me!

But Outlook is so slow, because it has so many features. Which most people won’t ever use.
I mean, is that a good idea? To have many features that are rarely used?

That’s what I like on Firefox… no built in Torrent-client (sorry Opera, but that’s something for my µTorrent!)… Why do you need that? Same for my emails.

So next thing I’ll do is switch over to Thunderbird. I like the Office 2007 Black skin!

Kevin

In the beginning days of YouTube, when you wanted to see a video ‘fullscreen’, the video just opened in a new, bigger window instead of doing like it does now. That update was very handy, but for the users of Linux and Mac that update came MONTHS later – Windows got it a long time before us.

Another thing is the speed and resources it uses on a Linux and Mac machine: it’s very slow. Try doing some Farmville on it, you’ll throw your PC out in a few minutes. And another issue I have with Flash on Ubuntu is that it uses another standard font than it has on Windows, which renders certain movies or animations unreadable on Linux (or certain games). That really sucks.

An even worse thing is, there isn’t a native AMD64 (64 bit version) of Flash for Linux, so we have to use a back way to get it. And that’s even SLOWER!

So, to be honest, I’m glad there is something like HTML5 video, but I don’t think it’ll replace Flash completely, because Flash is a handy thing, but it’s being abused for advertising goals. That’s why my favorite Firefox add-on is FlashBlock..

I’d like a good version of Flash though which runs properly on Linux. It’s not that we don’t want it that much… We got a decent Java, we got decent browsers (the same as on Windows, mostly)… but no Flash…

Adobe, you’ve got work to do.

In a time when tabbed browsing was new and only a few browsers had it, it was an enlightenment to get a nice browser that was able to do that. I remember that I used both Slimbrowser as well as Firefox in those days, but Slimbrowser disappeared to the bin a long time ago. It’s still IE after all.

One of the things that have kept me using Firefox is the speed alone. I often have to use IE6, IE7 or IE8 at school, and that’s really slow! I got used to browse quickly on the internet, and well, it’s a bloody nightmare using those browsers. They’re slow, can’t do shit and simply suck.

But another thing keeps me to Firefox, and that’s something called browser hijacking. I used to have that all the time when I still used IE. Since I’ve turned my back to that browser, I never got that problem again. And never have I got any security issue since I use Firefox.

I’m also a person that likes to have many tabs open at a time, and I had that in me before there even was tabbed browsing: I used to wander the web with about 12 windows of IE open. A bloody nightmare, since you have to search which site is which over and over again. In Firefox, I never have that. Sometimes I have 30 tabs open, and I still know what is in each tab. You gotta love it.

And if you’re like me, and you like to customize your browser a bit, you get tired quickly of the same thing, you will love Firefox for the many customization options it has. I still remember a spyware-toolbar, called Hotbar, which allowed you to change the background of your IE. You could do that with many different programs, but well.. all of them did suck: you had to search a nice picture, and when you finally found a nice picture, you probably didn’t know how to change it again.
Firefox has a large selection of themes (a huge, actually) and it’s so easy to switch. And if you liked those hotbar-pictures, that’s now also possible in Firefox thanks to Personas (though this is a lot better than Hotbar ever was).

But one of the best reasons of all is probably the fact that Microsoft is afraid to innovate. Can you tell me one thing they’ve done without someone else doing it before them? They weren’t the first with a GUI on an OS, they weren’t the first to create an IM-client, they weren’t the first to create anything. Microsoft is great in copying things, that’s what they do. Ever heard of these: Google – Bing, Netscape – IE, Flash – Silverlight, … and many more are possible.
One of the few things I’ll never forget is a few months ago when Microsoft announced they were already working 2 months on IE9. 2 months?? You should be working on it a whole year, every day! Firefox is being developed every day, so why don’t you do that too? All other browsers are getting updates the whole year through (and not only security patches!), while IE rarely gets new features (unless it’s bound on the MSN toolbar. That was the only way to get tabbed browsing on IE6…)

Another thing I don’t get is why other OSes can look so nice without a graphically power eating interface while Microsoft has to pull a high resource eating interface out of the cupboard… I mean, Aero, it’s nice, but it’s not really worth a lot, isn’t it? It eats power, makes your PC slower and it’s just eye-candy!
Look at the new Ubuntu themes, those look fantastic, and those don’t have a transparency effect on them like Windows Vista and 7 have.

If you want something that isn’t afraid to innovate, feel free to switch to Firefox. You won’t regret it.

And I’ve taken the liberty to test it and my conclusion is: it sucks!

I’ve tested it by opening this page in both Firefox and in the preview in split screen. Firefox opened the page in a few seconds while the preview of IE9 took about 2 minutes. For my blog! I mean fully loaded, by the way.

So I repeat what I often say: stay away from IE. It’s slow, it sucks and it’s bad.

I’m sorry that it has taken so long, but I’ve had some serious problems with my Firefox (it was eating CPU, going up to 90% on a fairly powerful system, so I had to switch to Chrome for a while). These now look solved and I’m now able again to work a lot with my Firefox

For those who want a comparison, here is a picture of NightShade 1.0:

NightShade 1.0

And here is a picture of NightShade 1.1:

NightShade 1.1

The change is quite subtle, but it indeeds makes the theme even better. It even made me using the bookmarks panel, something I never did before on Firefox (or any other browser..).

Since it’s now in the sandbox waiting to get a green light (so you can update it easily from within Firefox itself), you can already download it on this page. Errors, bugs or suggestions can be posted on this site, or you can mail me as usual (use the contact form on my site).

Kevin