Dark Theme for Firefox 55
Firefox 55, which is the last version of Firefox in which the extension Add Bookmarks Here worked properly is, in my experience, together with its extensions, the most feature-rich, the most user-friendly, and the most highly customizable browser ever developed. It’s superior in almost every respect, including overall appearance, to anything else available, as well as to its own more recent iterations.
Installation
If you’re not using Firefox 55 already, download the installer using the link below. Instructions for installing and stabilizing the program are included.
Stabilization
To ensure that the vigilant, oh, so helpful geeks at Mozilla don’t improve your browsing experience, according to them, by automatically updating you to their latest inferior version of Firefox, follow these steps (included in the instructions):
- During installation, unselect “Install Maintenance Service.”
- In Firefox Options > Advanced > Update, under Firefox Updates, select “Never check for updates,” and under Automatically Update, unselect “Search engines.”
- In about:config, toggle to “false” the preference “services.sync.prefs.sync.xpinstall.whitelist.required.”
- In the Add-ons Manager Tools menu, unselect “Update add-ons automatically.”
- Now import your bookmarks.
- Stabilize the installation:
- Close Firefox.
- Restart the computer.
- Reopen Firefox. It will be updated automatically to a new version.
- Uninstall the updated version.
- Reinstall Firefox 55, but don’t bother to launch it, just close the installer.
- Restart the computer.
- Reopen Firefox. It is now impervious to updates.
Extensions
This theme is tailored to the 58 extensions that I use personally, all of which can be downloaded in a zipped folder at the link below. Full configuration instructions for each extension are included. The user, at his or her discretion, can install some, all, or none of these extensions. However, if Compact Menu 2 is not installed, the theme will need to be tweaked slightly, as described in the instructions, in order to enable the built-in menu bar.
Some of the extensions install toolbar icons and insert items in the menus. Recommendations for reconfiguring the toolbars and menus are included.
The chrome Folder
To install the dark theme, download the chrome folder below, extract it, and move it to the top level of your Firefox profile folder. Open C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Your profile folder is the one named *.default. If you find that a chrome folder already exists there, overwrite it with the chrome folder you’ve downloaded.
The chrome folder contains two text files, userChrome.css and userContent.css. The userChrome file applies the dark theme to the main Firefox window, to the Print Preview window, and to DOM Inspector. The userContent file applies the theme to the New Tab page, to Add-ons Manager, and for those who use it, to FireFTP. Restart Firefox for the theme to take effect.
The chrome folder also contains a third text file, named userChrome.js This is a JavaScript script which will run only if the extension “userChromeJS” is installed. It creates a Tools menu item to open the chrome folder.
Home Page
You will need a Home page that blends with the dark theme. I use the Firefox logo against a plain gray background. My HTML can be downloaded below and used as an example. Along with that, I’ve included in the zipped folder four configuration tweaks that some users might find useful.
The Mozilla Folder
The Mozilla folder in AppData\Roaming preserves every change you make to the bare-bones initial installation. Copy this folder to a convenient backup location at the end of every day, after closing Firefox. If anything goes wrong in the future–Firefox opens to the wrong version, it opens corrupted, changes are missing, the operating system needs to be reinstalled, etc.–simply close Firefox, delete the current Mozilla folder, replace it with a copy of your backup copy, and reopen or reinstall Firefox. All of your bookmarks, extensions, settings, and customizations will be restored.
