Build Date: Wed Feb 5 16:40:12 2025 UTC
The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk they're sober.
-- William Butler Yeats
Skins! For Browsers!
2000-04-11 02:10:14
"Welcome to Fruity Gum," it says above the web browser's address bar. The "back" and "forward" buttons are red and white squares that look like Chiclets. And the icon loading the bookmark file is an orange circle with yellow arrows pointing in all directions, over a purple-and-red honeycomb pattern.
They're skins, ladies and gentlemen. Skins! The preview version of Netscape 6 and various versions of Mozilla now includes the ability to change around the color scheme, icons, and other attributes on the interface -- just like the countless skins for mp3 players! (Their design strategy is simple: Why just have an mp3 player when you can have an mp3 player that displays a picture of Christina Aguilera or the Mountain Dew logo while it endlessly scrolls the titles of your mp3s.)
The browser skin I've tested most is "Fruity Gum," based on an earlier skin called Aphrodite that Open Source coders developed. It's the browser of the future -- fulfilling that long-standing wish to replace the standard-issue green with -- something else! The thing I like is when you hold your mouse over the buttons, grey vertical bars move across them. And at the bottom of the menus, Alphanumerica's developers put pictures of dragons holding office supplies. Just because they could.
The people behind "Fruity Gum" call it a design that "might not make your surfing experience any more useful, but it will certainly make it more fun." (For some reason, the page announcing the skin even linked to "CareBearDragon.com.") Right now it's nearly impossible to use if you want to do anything other than marvel at the interface -- all your bookmarks become illegible. But no matter how stupid it may seem, the novelty is there.
Soon we'll see browsers with anime and headshop psychedilia, as "browser skin authoring tools" let everyone try their hand at design toolbars. Browser designers will find themselves competing with the authors of GeoCities web pages about Knight Rider desktop themes. And everyone will be yapping about how the user interface is finally more DIY. Some people are saying this is a bad thing that will destroy user interface design as we know it -- but the ability to switch skins is already being coded into future versions of Mozilla. For better or worse, they're here.
I've seen the future, and it's skins.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
My dear and close friend, Porn Maven Shannon Mariemont, sent me a titillating message the other day about her new project: the PornOrchestra. Her desire, at most, is to reinvent the porn soundtrack and, at least, to receive a cease-and-desist order like all her cool friends did last year. (More...)
The One I Feel Sorry For Is Joses
We've had a lot of Jesus coverage lately here at the PDJ. But let's face it, we're not exactly cutting-edge in this subject area. Jesus has been making headlines for, oh, I guess it's a couple thousand years now. Jesus is a very strong brand. Jesus has a lot of mindshare. (More...)
Place the Lighter on the Ground and Let Us See Your Hands
So I have been thinking on this whole flag burning issue and all the things it could imply. Now a lot of people right now are saying that there are more important issues at stake and something so trivial is a waste of time. Believing such is really losing sight of some very key changes happening in our nation right now. Being a strict conservative, and currently serving in Iraq, I was surprised to find that I am actually appalled that the House approved a ban on flag burning. (More...)
Johnny Royale loves his Trackman ultra pointer thingy. It's coolio! Read all about it! (More...)
A Blast from the Past! Pao Tzu goes over and under the crucial variables in the production and consumption of Salvia Divinorum. A must read for psychonauts of all stripes. (More...)
