Hello there all my tumblr readers! I'm back with an all new tumblr tutorial that will doll up your every day. Now this new information on themes might be old for many, but sometimes--if you're like me--you won't try the new thing until you've heard it won't crash your computer. Well, I'm here to tell you that after a 4 hour debate with my computer/internet educated brother and constant use at work, that themes are just dandy: for Firefox and Tumblr.
First things first -- if you want your tumblr dashboard to look like the above, you need to be using either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. (Download it here.) I use Firefox, so that's what we're stickin' with for this tutorial. If you haven't tried this type of internet web browser, its basically like Internet Explorer, but allows more creative freedom (basically, you can make it really pretty). As my brother warns, just be careful if you're going to search strange and varied regions of the internet. There's nothing wrong with Firefox, but Internet Explorer has some heightened security features that connect to you Windows System and work really well if surfing the web.
As you can tell by my screencaps, Firefox itself allows you to select pretty themes for the top of your web browser, so your tumblr will be in very good company.. I'm not covering that today though, we're going to install a Firefox "Add On" called Stylish and turn your tumblr from blue to brilliant!
Step 1: Open Firefox/Chrome and visit the Stylish Page. Once on userstyles.org, select download Stylish for Firefox.
Follow the download process which will take you to an authorized Mozilla page to download the add on. It will load and ask you to restart Firefox.
Step 2: Now that you've downloaded stylish, you can now go back to userstyles.org and download different tumblr themes. Install as many themes are you like. Go on, you know you'll want to change your dash theme more than you change socks.
Step 3: Now you'll want to enable only 1 theme and disable all the others you've downloaded. To do this, go to Tools > Add Ons. You're Add Ons Manager will pop up in a new tab at the top. Select "User Styles".
As you can see, I have 6 tumblr themes installed. On the right you have buttons to Edit, Enable/Disable, and Discard. At any one time, you should have 1 theme enabled. At this moment, I'm rocking "Wood Dash". To change your theme, just disable "Wood Dash" and enable a different one by clicking the enable/disable button.
That's its! And now the next time you login to tumblr your dashboard will look like this:
Another way to change your theme, and I think this is super easy, is to have the "Add-On Bar" enabled for Mozilla Firefox. That means this:
Pros - You see your dash more than you ever see your actual layout for tumblr, and I love that I can make it a little different to fit my mood. You can also create your own, and while I haven't tried it yet, the process seems easy. If you can edit a webpage or change your blogger theme, I think you've got stylish nailed.
Cons- Not all the pages are going to load right. For example, some of the buttons or boxes will always be tumblr blue. A good example is the last screencap, where it should be a lighter purple box, they are classic blue. The themes might take a moment to load and can be sluggish.
Overall, I think Themes and the use of Stylish just jazzes up my internet experience and when you spend as much time as I do on tumblr, its refreshing to see a new look!