For the Google Chrome browser, the Chrome Web Store is the address to visit when you are thinking of installing a new theme. When you compare installations of themes to extensions in the store, you will notice that themes appear to be more popular than extensions. Two themes already broke the one million installation mark with several closely behind. When you look at extensions, you won’t find a single extension with that many installations.

One reason for that could be that themes are not serving a specific purpose like extensions do. With themes, it comes down to taste only and not functionality, as they do not modify or add functionality to the browser. Another reason that comes to mind is that themes are usually future proof while extensions might stop working after a browser update.

When you open the first page of the popular Chrome themes page at the web store you will notice that the 16 themes listed there are installed by more than 10 million users. Only four of the top 16 themes are brand based. The number one spot Porsche theme, number five Dolce & Gabbana, number twelve Vivienne Westwood and number fourteen Ratchet & Clank Future 2.

The top 16 Chrome themes:

Porsche – 1,000,000+ users
James White – 1,000,000+ users
Anna Sui – 932,423 users
Chuck Anderson – 825,105 users
Dolce&Gabbana – 761,762 users
Splendid – 731,967 users
Clouds Theme (Aero) – 673,286 users
Rampage – 604,665 users
Cath Kidston – 459,531 users
Kate Spade – 357,950 users
Hedgehog in the fog – 354,256 users
Vivienne Westwood – 340,990 users
LukasHudec – 295,688 users
Ratchet & Clank Future 2 – 282,556 users
Chloe – 282,430 users
Yann Arthus-Bertrand – 281,641 users

Google Chrome users can install new themes with two clicks right from the Chrome web store. Do you have themes installed in your browser?

The following list is a selection of ten great Google Chrome themes that can be used to change the look of the web browser.

1. New Moon

2. A light and blue theme

3. Dark Atmosphere

4. TENORI-ON

5. Draves

6. Mac Grey

7. Yulia

8. Hedgehog in the fog

9. James White

10. Bayonetta

Do you know of any other Google Chrome themes that should have made it in this list? Let us know in the comments.

Upon conclusion of that article you will have a very basic installation of Chrome that will browse quite well and fast. The problem is, however, you won’t have flash working, nor will you know how to add themes to your installation. Although themes are not crucial to using Chrome, flash is. Without getting flash working, you won’t be able to do things like view youtube videos.

By the end of this article you will be running Google Chrome with flash support enabled and using the available themes.

Before you begin

The first housekeeping task you need to do is make sure you have flash working for Firefox. Most likely you already do. To figure this out open up Firefox and enter “about:plugins” (no quotes) in the address bar and hit enter. When this page appears you should see Shockwave Flash listed somewhere on the page. If you do, Flash is working fine and you are ready to go. If not you will need to get flash installed. If you are using Ubuntu 9.04 this is simple: Navigate Firefox to a page that requires Flash. When the toolbar popup appears informing you a missing plugin needs to be installed go ahead with that installation. Make sure, however, you install the “official” Flash plugin – not either of the open source versions. After this is installed restart Firefox and check the “about:plugins” page again. Is it there? Good. You’re ready to move on to Google Chrome.

The first step is to make sure you have the most recent build of Chrome. As of this writing the most recent built is 4.0.202.2. You can find that out by clicking on the Settings dropdown and selecting “About Google Chrome”. Once you know you have the latest build you are ready to go.

Adding Flash support

The first thing you need to do is locate the file libflashplayer.so. To do this issue the command:

locate libflashplayer.so

The results of that command should look similar to:

/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/iceape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

The file you will want to work with is in:

/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/

But before you do anything you need to create a plugins directory for Chrome. To do this issue the command:

sudo mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins

Now you need to copy the libflashplayer.so file to the newly created plugins directory with the following command:

cp /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins/

The final step is to run Google Chrome with plugins enabled. To do that you start Google Chrome with the following command:

google-chrome –enable-plugins

Now if you enter “about:plugins” (no quotes) in the address bar of Google Chrome, you will see an entry for Shockwave Flash listed.

You might want to change all of your Google Chrome launchers to reflect this command change.

Themes

Themes are simple. All you have to do is navigate to the Google Themes Gallery, select the theme you like, and click the Apply Theme button underneath the theme. After the file has downloaded the theme will change automatically. The only issue I have found with Google Themes on Linux is the Transparent theme will not work properly.

Final thoughts

I will warn you that the Flash plugin will crash a lot. Fortunately, the way Chrome works is that Flash crashing will not bring the browser down.  But so far, Google Chrome has failed to disappoint on any level.

The Google Chrome themes website is now live and the button leads to a page that is currently displaying 28 new themes for the Google browser plus the original classic theme the web browser ships with. The themes can be installed by clicking on the apply theme button that is located beneath every theme thumbnail.

The Google browser will download the selected theme and install it automatically. The theme of the browser will be instantly changed after the download without having to restart it. Google Chrome does not come with a theme manager yet. The only way to uninstall themes is to enter chrome://extensions/ in the address bar of the web browser. This internal page displays all installed Google Chrome themes with the option to uninstall them.

The theme browser on the Google Chrome website can be accessed by other web browsers as well. Users only need to point their web browser to this link to see the themes on the page.

The second important addition is about theme support in the web browser. The developers have again turned the rather complex process of installing new Google Chrome themes into a much simpler process. Users who wanted to install themes in the web browser had to replace a file in the Google Chrome directory. The problem with this approach was that it would overwrite the default theme which could cause all kinds of troubles especially for users without backup.

Theme support has now been added officially to the Google browser which means that themes can be directly installed from within the web browser. A basic theme manager is available in the Google Chrome options allowing users to revert back to the default theme after installing a new theme. There is unfortunately no way of displaying the installed themes right now which is something that the developers surely plan to add in a later development stage.

A get themes button is also available in the same menu. This button opens a website that is currently unavailable but is most likely the address of the official Google Chrome theme repository. Two test themes have been created by the Google Chrome developers which can be accessed at the Chromium website. Camo and Snowflake are currently not accessible as well but were earlier on.

Webupd8 have posted screenshots of the Camo theme and the prompt that appears when pointing the Chrome browser to a theme location.

The two changes to the extension engine and theme support are definitely important steps for the Google browser. It is now much easier to work with extensions and themes in the web browser. Future builds will surely continue to improve on that and provide access to a theme manager and working websites where the themes can be downloaded.