Get Kempelton on Firefox Add-ons.
It appears that I’m hardly capable of producing a minor update to a theme. I keep finding things to improve until I’ve remade almost every single icon. Together with the need to create lots of new icons for Firefox 3 (a few are still left), this new Kempelton version turned into another massive project which, I think, is another substantial improvement and sets a new standard for native, functional themes.
I’ll introduce some of the changes. Obviously, the unified back and forward buttons have been adapted from the default theme, something that took a lot of effort to do well. The border radius, arrow shapes and obviously, color and gradients are some of the aspects that have been through countless iterations to find the right appearance. There are also hand-tuned active and disabled state images and, a notable usability advantage over the default, a subtle drop-down hover indication.
Should you prefer to use text labels there are simple arrow-only icons for that. Yet another back/forward variation is seen in the library, glass versions to suit the Vista style.
The Home and Downloads icons are now seen from the front, for better visual balance and consistency. The New Window and New Tab icons now lack the plus signs, which seemed kind of superfluous, although I’m not quite sure about this yet.
A smoothly animated activity indicator makes use of the returning capability for alpha transparency.
Kempelton Large 3.0 and an updated SVG set will be out in the next couple of weeks, I estimate. As always, comments are welcome.
Arvid Axelsson 
The close tab icon is broken with the Tab Mix Plus extension installed. Visit http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7031 for Firefox 3 compatible Tab Mix Plus.
Hi, Arvid, thank you very much for the update. I have been waiting for a long time. ^^ And I guessed you would release them today. 😛
Take care
Henry
Hooray! I’ve been waiting for a Firefox 3.0 compatible version for months now. Thanks for making it! It looks wonderful, but with Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6.1.080416, the close buttons on the tabs are too far to the right and a little to far down. I’m guessing it would be something like:
.tab-close-button { padding-right: 6px !important;
.tab-close-button { padding-up: 3px !important;
}
That didn’t seem to make a difference, and I’m no good at CSS, I just saw that the own theme had something similar to fix compatibility with TMP.
Thanks for your hard work, it looks great. Will you also make a version without the keyhole look?
The problem (at least part of it) with Tab Mix Plus appears to be that the extension makes assumptions about the images in the theme. I’m not going to do anything about this. Extensions should include their own images.
Jim: No, but you should be able to disable it with userChrome.css.
Problem with close tab button (above) is that close.png is too large. Scale it back from 64×16 to 56×14 and it will work perfectly.
Arvid: Thank you very much for your excellent work. Kempelton 3.0 looks very nice. Can you please make the new Image sets available for download?
Best regards
Vitos
Dude, I can’t almost believe it. You timed it to the FF3 release and made it perfect. This theme just simply rocks.
thanks for your grate job!
but first thing i tried to install on my brand new Firefox3 was…
“Kempelton Large” theme
please make it work for Firefox3 if it’s possible!
Hi Arvid,
thanks for the kempelton theme, kempelton is one of my favorites.
I’m with Aps I want the Large one 😦
Great theme. I like activity indicator a lot. Just one suggestion/request: I prefer to use the ‘small’ toolbar buttons. But Kempelton’s small button images seem a bit too small to me. If they can be scaled up a little, that would be great.
WOW! man ! finally you release theme for FF3 🙂
Thank you for your great work 😀
love you ❤
My solution above works fine if Tab Mix Plus is installed and enabled. It doesn’t work if TMP is not present. I have since tweaked a portion of Tab Mix Plus which seems to allow Kempelton 3.0 to show close tabs properly, with or without Tab Mix Plus. Therefore, as Arvid has said, the problem lies within TMP.
I second the praise, a nice theme.
The only thing I noticed, using small icons seems to stretch the back and forward buttons a bit too much.
Perry, can you be a little bit more specific, which close.png i have to scale down to 56×14?
If you open chrome.jar and then look for close.png, which has a path of globalicons and scale the size to 56×14 using an editor and replace the original, Kempelton 3.0 will look all right with Tab Mix Plus. However, if you choose not to use TMP, buttons will then become misaligned. I’ve not yet found the solution to this. Seems that FF 3.0 default does use 56×14 icon for close button, but there is something different in the alignment of the close button between these themes. I’ve noticed that some other themes don’t exhibit this alignment problem.
OK, thx.
I extracted close.png from chrome.jar with 7-Zip, resized it to 56×14 with Irfanview and exchanged the old close.png with the resized one in chrome.jar (also with 7.Zip).
Now the Close-Tab-Icons on the inactive Tabs are only black.
The resized close.png looks ok. You can see it here: http://www.pic-upload.de/23.06.08/6i6g3w.jpg
OK, it was my fault, i did not set transparency option.
Now it looks quite good. Only a little line on the left side of the icon of inactive Tabs is left, which should not be visible, i think: http://www.pic-upload.de/23.06.08/x94dcz.jpg
But i think this is tolerable.
There’s also another issue with Kempelton and Tab Mix Plus. The throbber disappears instead of spinning, and the throbber on the tabs is not there.
It appears that on the latest Kempelton 3.0.3, when you select the menu (ie. File, Edit, etc) the text does not change to white but instead stay as black.
Thanks for the good work. However…
I hope you don’t use the new style of Back and Forward buttons for the new Kempelton Large. The non-symmetrical buttons I find really ugly. It is one reason that I do not use the default theme. Simple is best. (I also find the Home button ugly – a simpler, more diagrammatic representation of a house shape in a primary colour would be much prettier.)
I prefer Kempleton Large in the “small icon” setting. I get rid of the Home button, and then it is a nice, simple, uncluttered theme.
Great theme. One minor issue, just to reinforce what Mark Wagie said; the throbber is missing on the tab. Close button looks good know. Thanks.
Thanks for your hard work, it looks great.If u make it black I reckon it will become the most downloaded ever!
Nash
Dear Arvid, thanks a lot!
I really love this theme on XP! Only on Vista the yellowish grey of the background looks so unappealing. Maybe there is a possibility of changing the background colour in future to make it more matching with aero?
Greets
zupipo
Hi.. Great theme!! Thanks for your work.
Just one comment/question: I use the theme on XP and I kind of miss the horizontal line that separates the toolbars. Is it possible to incorporate this separator, for example by modifying the userchrome.css?
Thanks!
Juan
Nash: I plan to create a dark version.
zupipo: The theme uses system colors which by default on Vista is a neutral gray. I avoided the “-moz-appearance: toolbar” style because I find it awful on Vista.
Juan:
#navigator-toolbox > toolbar {
-moz-appearance: toolbar !important;
}
The code for the toolbar separator worked fine! Thanks!
i really love this theme, awesome work
I´m looking forward to a new version of kempelton large. I hope it will look like the old version which is surely the best firefox theme I´ve ever seen.
There are still some problems with 3.0.4. The text in the menu bar should invert to white when under focus (like the text in drop-down menus). However, it remains black (on my system) and not easy to read. The close-tab button on active tab should be red with white x. This is the case if Tab Mix Plus is not running but not so if it is. Default and other themes behave better with Tab Mix Plus.
The soft icons and grey/pastels are great for my eyes (photophobic), but I’m missing my large icons. I’ve become an updates obsessive checking for kempleton large for firefox 3. Is there a beta version until the fully fledged one is ready.
Like Perry & jacky said : “…there is problem with the text in the menu bar should invert to white when under focus (like the text in drop-down menus). However, it remains black (on my system) and not easy to read.”
Arvid any solution for that…???
Is very annoying…!!!
Please dont’ forget Kempelton large, also. I & my Mom Keep waiting for this.
Thanks for good themes.
I love the theme. But can you make a variation of the it where the forward button has the same shape of the backward version? Thanks
Never mind i found it by my self.
Anyone who want the text in the menu bar should invert to white when under focus in FF3, add this to userChrome.css :
/* Change color on menus */
menubar > menu[_moz-menuactive=”true”] {
color: white !important;
}
Thanks for your update for Fx 3 ! Your icons are definitly the most beautiful of all Firefox themes 🙂
Is it possible to show a default icon in a tab when no actual favicon exists, like the default theme does? I don’t like how a tab gets wider for a short duration while a page is loading and the throbber is displayed where the favicon would be if there existed one. The problem is that it affects all other tabs as well, thus causing them to move around.
I love the Kempelton Large theme, but as I am using the FF3, I can’t use it.
With Kempelton(not Large) and high resolution on desktop(1680×1050), the icons apears very small.
Please, release the Kempelton Large version as soon as possible.
Great theme! On my Mac, all my scroll bars are missing when I use this theme. Any clue what I can do to get my scroll bars back?
Thanks!
C.
Awesome theme! The only problem is that the throbber on the tab doesn’t show with TMP. I’ve been using the latest dev builds for a while now and the throbber’s gone. Will there be an update? Otherwise it’s absolutely perfect!
You`re doing a fantastic job!
The back-forward-button should be more orange, it would fit better to the rest icons. Wonderful, thx
Bender: Thank you. More orange? Considering that it’s not at all orange now, do you mean it should be orange? I don’t think that would look very good.
Craig: You’ll just have to use another theme.
It would be great if you could create a Linux version of the theme.
Very nice. Thanks!
Arvid, do you still plan to work on an updated Thunderbird version of this theme?
Yes.
Arvid, are you planning on updating Kempleton for Firefox 3.1? The release date draws nigh, and I normally start with the release candidate builds. I’ve been using Firefox since 0.9 I think, and this is my favorite theme of them all. Thanks!