It's been roughly nine months since any AvantGarde theme has been updated, but AvantGarde 5.0 will be released into the sandbox at Mozilla's Add-on site tonight. In the meantime, you can download it from this blog on the downloads page. Yes, it is very exciting, but as I'm about to show you, this is only the beginning.



It's time to review the seven goals for AvantGarde themes I posted on this blog in May.


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

Well, I haven't released any new themes to do anything about this one yet, but as it stands, the most popular old theme, AvantGarde Rosepetal, is the 23rd most downloaded. The original AvantGarde Skylight is at 45th. It's not really near my target, but it's a pretty good launching platform. AvantGarde themes have, to date, been downloaded more than 1.6 million times. That's something to be proud of.

But AvantGarde will be refocusing. There will, from now on (when AvantGarde 5.0 is approved to the public) be only one "flavour" of AvantGarde. More on why that is later.


2.   Keep the bright, colourful personality you all know and love


AvantGarde 5.0 is a big departure, because I intended for this theme to have as wide-ranging appeal as possible. As such, there is no bright, in your face background any more (but you will be able to make it your own soon). Other than that, AvantGarde is brighter and more colourful than ever before. The main buttons are bigger and better than ever, with a new redesign making them look like multi-coloured billiard balls. Or rounded skittles, if you prefer.

3.   Add the flexibility to mould the AvantGarde theme into your own personality


This is why there will only be one flavour of AvantGarde. Increasingly, the future of themes in Firefox has become the kind of "light-weight" themes that Mozilla Labs' Personas offers. AvantGarde 5.0 will be completely compatible with Personas Plus. Just not yet. Why? Because Mozilla has not yet released Personas Plus for Firefox 4.0 (it's stuck on 3.6). However, my own preliminary testing of AvantGarde + Personas Plus indicates that there will be no compatibility issue. You will be able to choose, everyday, from more than 35,000 different "flavours"of AvantGarde in this way, more than I could ever produce. And the great thing about AvantGarde? It looks cooler with more different kinds of Personas than the default theme does - ultimately, AvantGarde 5.0 is the more flexible user interface.

4.   Cut the size of the theme (in bytes, of course, so Firefox loads quicker)


This is a continuing process. AvantGarde 5.0 is only for Firefox 4.0, and that alone makes it faster. Firefox 4 is the fastest version of Firefox to date by a long shot, and it certainly feels it when doing your day-to-day browser chores. Not only that, this very first version of AvantGarde has cut down in size (marginally, for now). It'll get even smaller in the future, I promise. For now, AvantGarde 5.0 is 14% smaller than AvantGarde Skylight 4.5.4.

5.   Make AvantGarde compatible with more add-ons than you'd ever dream of using


When I last checked, only about 30% of the Add-ons available on Mozilla's web site were fully compatible with Firefox 4. However, as far as I can tell, AvantGarde will be compatible with about 98% (okay, that's a guess) of those add-ons, since they are designed for the default theme, which was AvantGarde 5.0's platform.

6.   Enhanced ease of use, user support, and accessibility


This is not one I should be able to comment on just yet. Any developer always needs to do more work in this regard. However, I have redesigned the AvantGarde blog, for ease of use (isn't it pretty?) and have launched a Facebook Page as another avenue for user support.

7.   Make developing my theme less of a laborious chore, and more of an innovative and creative process (in other words, have less demands on my precious time)


Another reason why AvantGarde will revert to being just one theme. Keeping up with one theme is much better than keeping up with 5 (or 8, as I think I had at one point), and it means that I can keep abreast of new technology in Firefox.


All in all, not bad. But that doesn't mean I'll be resting on my laurels. AvantGarde 5.0 is a great product, and I know I can make it even better in the future. So what are you waiting for? Give it a test drive on Firefox 4 beta today!