Ever feel a pang of a nostalgia for the way web browsers used to look, but don’t fancy the hiccups or hassle involved in trying to run old software on a newer OS?
Honestly, you probably don’t – but after checking out what the Geckium project can do style-wise to Mozilla Firefox, that may change!
Before I go on let me state upfront that this post is a spotlight, not a manifesto. I’m not here to persuade anyone as to why they should to do this since there is no need – it’s as ‘necessary’ as making Ubuntu look like a Mac or a tiling WM resemble a scene from Blade Runner.
I.e., people who want to do it, do it because they want to.
Geckium: Classic Chrome Skin for Firefox
So what does Geckium do?
I’ll allow the team behind the effort to explain:
Geckium is a Mozilla Firefox CSS and JS modification that restores the look and feel of past Chromium (or Google Chrome) releases, spanning from 1.0 to 58, while also bringing Chromium Theme support to Firefox, bringing obscure prerelease content to the limelight and retrofitting new content into every design.
If you regularly read this site and feel deja vu, don’t panic: you’ve not slipped through a time anomaly.
I shone a spotlight on a very similar project, Silverfox, earlier this year. Silverfox was, as this, also a clutch of canny JS and CSS modifications designed to make Firefox ESR look like classic Google Chrome/ium.
Though promising, Silverfox was sunsetted and improved spiritual successor created in Geckium (which I like, name-wise) — and Geckium works with non-ESR builds too.
Geckium isn’t just one Chrome theme. It’s several. You’re able to hot-swap between the variety of “looks” (some only differing subtly) used in Google Chrome/Chromium from version 1.0 through to 58.
It appears the aim is to be recreate the old versions as faithfully as possible (modern technologies notwithstanding) to the originals.
Trapezoid tabs, parallelogram new tab button, no-frills speed dial, and in-app info bars, detective guy in Incognito mode, original profile avatars, wrench menu, Chrome’s boxy window buttons, recreated settings, error, and extensions pages…
From playing around with this (having blogged about Google Chrome’s early day extensively on this site, and on a sister site dedicated to Chrome/ium and Chrome OS) this project certainly hits me right in the warm and fuzzies (no – not those ones).
But the team has also taken the opportunity to add a lot of extras, from early experimental features and easter eggs in the early Linux alphas through to modern flourishes. For instance, if using the theme with the coloured titlebar it can be set to use the system accent colour:
Geckium works with Linux, Windows 7 and up, and macOS and (some older macOS looks may, the developers note, be less accurate due to a lack of available asset resources). It cannot be applied to the Firefox snap or Flathub builds, and compatibility with forks may vary.
The Geckium GitHub page details the “how to” install for each platform. For my hands-on I downloaded the official Firefox Linux binary build and applied the changes to that as Geckium doesn’t work with the Firefox Snap Ubuntu comes with.
Try it out, or don’t – you do you!
As I’ve said: there’s compelling need to do or use this. Anyone sat mouthing “why?” is asking a question with no real answer — you either get the appeal of retro-aesthetic efforts, or you don’t.
If you do find the idea of skinning Firefox to look like classic Google Chrome (from an era when Google wasn’t viewed with such cynicism or disdain) just follow the links above to try it out – it is currently in beta but as it’s a ‘hack’ anyway, that shouldn’t put you off).
Do make a backup of any critical browser settings, etc prior to trying this out as it does involved replacing a few files Firefox relies on. When a new version of Geckium is available you’ll see a small notice in the wrench menu.
Thanks Dominic