better firefox web form widgets in mac os x

looking around linux write-up sites, i stumbled upon oleg’s blog outlining the steps for a more pleasing web form widgets on firefox. having applied it to my linux box, i set out to install it to my mac since the *nix backend is similar (somewhat easier to relate the guide to).

download this, save it to your desktop.

fire up your terminal and do the following (each “$” denotes a new line | copying & pasting would be wise | you’ll be prompted for your sudo password)

$ cd ./Desktop
$ tar zxf firefox-form-widgets.tar.gz
$ cd ./firefox-form-widgets
$ sudo cp /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css.backup
$ cat ./firefox-form-widgets/res/forms-extra.css | sudo tee -a /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css >/dev/null
$ sudo cp -r ./firefox-form-widgets/res/form-widgets /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/

that’s it! quit firefox, re-launch it, navigate to a forms site and enjoy a more refined look. for any reason that you do not fancy the change and would like to revert, fire up terminal again and do this :-

$ sudo cp /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css.backup /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/res/forms.css

and the change will be reverted (this is why its always wise to have a backup before changing anything).

customary screenshots to compare your change to:-

before:

after:

last but not least, many thanks to oleg smetanin for the instructions this was based upon.

discovering xee

in my short time that i have been using the mac, i find that the default “preview” app for viewing pictures kinda sucks. top of the list is having to select files then right clicking and select “open with preview” before you can preview multiple pictures – wastes precious mouse movement seconds. on top of that, you can only “preview” the files that were selected and loaded; if you need to view the ones that weren’t selected, you need to go back to finder and double click it again (hand needs to move off keyboard to the mouse to navigate and double click – wastes time). “use a media manager to view all  photo/picture files instead you bloody oaf” others might say but what is the point if the purpose is just to have a quick view and not have to fire up an app then loading the file in before you can?

xee is a “preview” replacement that works a lot like windows picture viewer (i can’t find a better app to compare to. it’s not that its any good but it does at least work the basics proper). install it, set it to be the default viewer and one will be easily able to browse through a folders worth of picture/photo files with the mouse wheel or left/right keys. file download’s mighty small (1.3mb) and its free too!

not sure if “preview” has been updated/upgraded to include such simple features with leopard, but my take is that the guys at apple should just adopt xee as a standard in their future os releases.