Paul Carbo Web Design & Development

A few things inspired me to try my hand at creating a theme for my browser of choice, Google Chrome. A short while ago the 3.0 Beta version was released which is now officially supporting themes. I have been patiently waiting for this because I was getting bored with the blue, though, I wasn’t very unimpressed with the themes they were offering. So I decided to design one that I liked.

Another reason was because I had recently upgraded the appearance of my desktop with a premium WindowBlinds skin and a beautiful wallpaper, both very dark. Only to find out that Google Chrome and WindowBlinds don’t like each other very much, so I was stuck with this un-skinned, bright-blue browser on top of a sea of black. Being the anal-retentive person that I am, I hated every second I had to look at it’s awkward contrasting. Still being the anal-retentive person that I am, I refused to start using Firefox again, even though WindowBlinds made it fit right in with it’s surroundings. Nothing against Firefox, I am just in love with Chrome.

I was aware that themes have existed for Chrome for quite sometime now, but it required hacking DLL files, and I didn’t like the idea of half-assing my browser’s theme. Plus, the themes that I found weren’t really what I was looking for. When I found out I was able to get my hands on the new Beta which was going to now allow me to properly, and officially theme my browser, I was very excited. But, since Google is just beginning to provide support for this functionality they didn’t seem too concerned with coming up with any really nice designs. It seems they were going for the opposite. There are a few that are bearable, but I was looking for something very specific and instead of wasting time trying to find it, I decided to just figure out how to make my own.

Impatience forces me to do a lot of things myself, which is good because I am always learning something new.

I am constantly busy and didn’t have too much time to waste on it, so I really only grayscaled the whole thing and added a few little things that I liked.

Since I was only concerned with designing this specifically for me, I replaced the Home button with a Google logo since Google is always my homepage.

For some reason, even though all the images appear to be right, the colors do not change when the window is inactive or when I am Incognito. Since everything on my desktop is black, I wasn’t too concerned with this and didn’t want to waste the time trying to figure out what the issue was. I also never use the Incognito window, that’s what Firefox is for.

When I was all finished up and began happily using my newly created theme, I noticed one more thing that needed to be taken care of, the icon. Obviously I couldn’t have an all black theme with a brightly colored icon, so I made the one you see below.

It was easy enough changing the ones for the shortcuts, even for the main exe, but in order to replace the one that showed up in my taskbar I had to hack the chrome.dll file with IconWorkshop.

I can assume there is already a theme very similar to what I designed that has been around for a while now. Like I said, I wanted something specific, was interested in the process and would rather waste time learning how to make my own rather than waste time looking for something someone else designed. Either way, I am offering this up to who ever wants it.

Currently, this this theme is only compatible with 3.0.196.2, so included in the package is an installer for this version of Chrome to use if you needed to.

» Get the theme.

» Get the icons.

UPDATE, 11.07.2009

This theme has been upgraded into a CRX theme and can be found by clicking this link.