Google Reader Theme

I’ve been using Flickr as a bit of testbed for a new site theme I’ve been working on for Google Reader. C’mon after the Bloglines thing, I bet you saw it coming didn’t you?!

Same drill again then. There may well be oddness and inconsistencies, and Google may well make radical changes to the Reader’s markup tomorrow, mucking the whole show up. But for what it’s worth, here it is! Its not trying to be original or ‘better’ than the default theme, it’s just trying to make it look like a Mac OS X app – that’s all I want!

Actually, while this may create bugs, it actually solves a bug that I was seeing in WebKit browsers with the default css. When scrolling, some sidebar elements would annoyingly bounce up and down. Not any more!

The download includes a list of known bugs/todos. If you seen anything not on this list, please leave a comment! I’ll update this page when I upload newer versions of the theme.

Changes

17/4/07 – Fixed 2 bugs that were annoying most people: I’ve reinstated feed list highlighting and pressing U now shows the entries list full width

Installation

Download gReader.zip. There are 2 versions, one for Mozilla browsers and one for WebKit & Opera.

Firefox

Once you have the Stylish extension installed, just copy and paste the css into the ‘create styles for this page’ window.

Camino

In Camino, either paste this into your /Library/Application Support/Camino/chrome/userContent.css file, or if that file doesn’t exist, rename the greader.css file to be userContent.css. The theme will be applied when you restart Camino.

Safari

Once Safaristand is installed, place the greader.css file in your user/Library/Safari/Stand/UserStyleSheets folder. Then visit Google Reader, go to SafariStand > Settings > Site Alteration. Add the site, enable Site Alteration and choose the greader file from the list. Make sure the matching pattern is just www.google.com. You may have to empty your cache, restart Safari and refresh before seeing any changes!

Omniweb

In Site Preferences > Page Appearance, choose the greader.css file under ‘Style Sheet’. The change should happen instantly!

Opera

Put the greader.css file anywhere you like! Right-click on the Google Reader page, choose "Edit Site Preferences" and select the CSS file through the display tab, under ‘My Style Sheet’. Like Omniweb, the change should apply immediately.

Have you found this theme enhances your life beyond all telling?

Please consider donating some spare change to the Hicksdesign Cheese Fund:

Tags: browsers, css, google, googlereader, themes