I admit that when Firefox 8 was released, I was so busy in my personal life that I didn't even bother to check whether AvantGarde 5.2 was compatible with it. It had been compatible with Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7, so why wouldn't it be compatible now? Well how wrong I was. A big thank you to all the users who sent me screenshots of Firefox 8 not working with AvantGarde 5.2 - something must have changed so dramatically in Mozilla's source code, because now AvantGarde wasn't even useable!

But don't despair, folks, AvantGarde 5.3, with fixes that enable compatibility with Firefox 8 and above, is now available for download. If you have AvantGarde 5.2, you will soon receive a notification for an automatic update. If not... well, what are you waiting for? You're missing out! Download from Mozilla Add-ons or from the "downloads" page of this blog today!

After all, there are plenty of reasons to use AvantGarde. One of which I'm promoting heavily at the moment is speed. Every add-on you install and enable in Firefox slows the program down somewhat. It's an extra part of the program it needs to initiate every time you open up Firefox. Themes are no different - if you install a theme, you're getting sleek style but at a cost. In fact, this is one of the reasons why Mozilla introduced Personas; if you're browser's "theme" was merely one picture, that would barely slow down Firefox as a program at all. This makes sense, but you're still left with ugly grey buttons.

But AvantGarde let's you have your cake and eat it too. At just 205 kilobytes in size, AvantGarde is about 5 times smaller than most popular themes, and more than 10 times smaller than some. That's up to ten times less data your computer would need to load every time you open up Firefox. It makes a significant difference, and while I'm not saying that using AvantGarde is faster than using the default Firefox theme on its own, this does minimise the impact so that it becomes virtually unnoticeable. Even if you installed a Persona on top of AvantGarde, the impact on startup speed is minimal - a feat not possible with most other themes. Incidentally, AvantGarde 5.3 is another 13% smaller than AvantGarde 5.2 - despite the additions of new compatibility. So, have the buttons you want, and the background of your choosing. What's not to like?


Experience the difference for yourself. I know you'll love it.

AvantGarde 5.2 was released to the public 2 nights ago, and I have to say, I'm very excited. Why? Lots of reasons.

AvantGarde 5.2 is the most space-efficient and speedy theme I've ever made. By a long long way. In April, Mozilla extended the challenge to add-on developers to improve performance. I responded by cutting file-size by no less than 80%. It was not an easy task, but AvantGarde now has a more efficient coding structure. Unlike nearly every other theme, AvantGarde no longer reskins the entire user interface. There are many similarities between the default theme and AvantGarde, and I've exploited this fact. My theme package now only contains graphics and code where there are changes in the user interface - and this is one of the main ways I have reduced file size.


I've also managed to add a few new buttons. Namely, zoom in/out buttons (which were strongly requested by you, my lovely users), the sync button, and the feed button. Iconminis are still in the pipeline. However, a couple of bugs have been fixed, and AvantGarde 5.2 is now properly compatible with Mac and Linux. As it should have been all along.


I'm also excited for another reason. Remember the seven goals I made for AvantGarde back in May last year? Well it's taken me 12 months, but the results are just astounding, if I may say so myself.

1.   Make AvantGarde one of the top 10 most downloaded Firefox themes

Big tick on this one. AvantGarde 5.1 peaked at number 5 most downloaded, and AvantGarde has remained in the top ten for about a month. It remains in this vicinity. I hope that AvantGarde 5.2 will build on this success and continue to climb the charts.



This one is really based on your opinions, not mine! But I have to say, there are more ways than ever to splash colour onto your screen with an AvantGarde theme, especially with Personas.


As you probably know, AvantGarde 5.2 is compatible with Personas via a work-around detailed in the user support section of this site. You can, effectively choose from about 200,000 different flavours of AvantGarde this way. So you certainly can add a dash of you to your colourful new browser.


If you've read above, you'll know that I've emphatically responded to this challenge. When I made this goal, my theme was called AvantGarde Skylight, and it was about 1.9 megabytes in size. AvantGarde 5.2 is just 236 kilobytes. That's a reduction of more that 85%.

AvantGarde 5.2 is now merely a set of small changes and new graphics added to the default theme. So it is also consequently more add-on compatible than ever. If it works with Firefox 4+, and it works with the default theme, then it works with AvantGarde.


This one is harder to self-assess. I always want to enhance ease of use and improve user support. I try to answer all emails via the "Contact Me" form (link at the top of this site)  within 24 hours. I also now have a Facebook page for AvantGarde should users wish to post for user support there. Feedback via the AvantGarde feedback form has also shown an increased trend of user satisfaction of late, so there are some encouraging signs.


I've always thoroughly enjoyed making Firefox themes. But at one point, I was trying to maintain 8 of them. Bad idea, because although everyone loved all the different colours that were available, it was a chore to keep up with them, and new features were slow to implement. Now I have just one theme, one colour, and it happens to come in 200,000 flavours (which I don't need to maintain, yay!). That's really great. The new coding restructure now makes it simpler than ever for me to add new graphics and skin new elements.


The future's looking bright in AvantGarde land. Join the colour revolution and download AvantGarde today!

It's easily the most awesome way to make Firefox your Firefox. You can now make a Persona overlay on top of AvantGarde 5.3. It's not the simplest thing in the whole world to do, but I've tried to explain it so that anyone can do it. Even you :-) So, here's how you go about it, assuming you've already installed AvantGarde 5.3:

1. Find a Persona you really really like. It's not hard, there's more than 200,000 of them at getpersonas.com

2. Install the Persona. Firefox may ask you to restart the browser. If it does, please do what it asks and restart Firefox. You should now see the default theme (not AvantGarde), but the Persona you chose.


3. Enable AvantGarde. To do this, open the Add-ons Manager. This can be done in two ways. If you have the menu bar activated, select Tools, then Add-ons. If you don't have the menu bar activated, then click the orange Firefox button, and then click Add-ons. Go to the Appearance sub-menu, find AvantGarde, and click Enable. You will be asked to restart Firefox - please go right ahead and do that. You should now see my AvantGarde theme, but no Persona. Don't worry, we're almost there.


4. Open a new tab, and in the URL bar, please type about:config, and hit enter. This leads you to a Firefox warning - "This might void your warranty!", or "Here be dragons!". I must stress at this point that Mozilla does not endorse any tampering with the about:config page, as it alters the fabric of Firefox, and there is a risk that you could change something and screw up Firefox completely. Please heed this caution, but if you want to use Personas with AvantGarde, you had better tell Firefox: I'll be careful, I promise!


5. Now you are faced with a scary looking programming table full of preferences, statuses, and things called booleans. This is the tough part. You need to type this into the Filter search box: lightweightThemes.isThemeSelected. If you did this correctly, there should be only a preference name displayed with exactly the same name. In the column called Value, this parameter is currently set to False. It needs to be set to True for our hard work to pay off. Do this by double-clicking the word False, so that it now reads the word "True".


6. Close Firefox completely, and then open it up again. What do you see? It works!


There are, admittedly, a few limitations with this method. First of all, if you wish to change Persona now, but still keep the AvantGarde theme, you need to do this whole process again with the new Persona. But if you don't change your Persona too often, you should fine that this works perfect. If you're having any problems, please send me a secure e-mail through the "Contact Me" tab at the top of the page.

Great news! AvantGarde 5.1, fully compatible with Firefox 4, has been reviewed by Mozilla and released to the public :-)

Better now? I thought so. Anyway, what's new? Not a whole lot, I have to be honest. The main usability improvement is that you can drag any of my big colourful buttons anywhere you like in the user interface (Customise Toolbars), and you won't screw up the functionality of Firefox. If the button is in the main toolbar, you'll get an AvantGarde button, but if you've moved it to the tab bar or the add-on bar, you'll get the default Strata theme icon. This way, you won't have a useless tab bar that is 48 pixels high just because you like the idea of the home button being up there.

There is one notable omission in AvantGarde 5.1 - unlike previous versions, there are no IconMinis, the tiny little icons which brighten up Firefox's menus. I have to make serious revisions to the way I code IconMinis before I implement them into Firefox 4. Rather than delay the release of AvantGarde 5.1 until I got those pesky little icons sorted, I decided to release it without them, and sooner.

I also know that many people have lamented the fact that AvantGarde doesn't come in a variety of colours anymore. This is not because I have turned my back on colour - rather, because I couldn't make the theme in enough colours to satisfy everyone! Instead, I have been focusing on making AvantGarde 5.1 compatible with Personas. And... it still isn't, because Mozilla STILL won't allow personas to skin on top of themes, even though many theme developers (like me) have already taken the steps to make our themes compatible. BUT! There is a way around this little niggle (although it does have limitations), and I can assure you that I am using a Persona with AvantGarde 5.1 on my home computer. I will be making a tutorial for this blog's user support page very soon.


All in all, what have I done with AvantGarde 5.1? I have: made it fully compatible with the release version of Firefox 4; programmed some things so that AvantGarde can adapt to the even more customisable user interface of Firefox 4; and provided the possibility of using your favourite Persona with your favourite theme.

Though they are few in number, they are nevertheless big points, and provide a base structure for more features to be added in updates for the months to come. Number one on that list... IconMinis. But after that? Well, anything you like - if you have any suggestions for cool things I should add, let me know in the comments below.