🐧 The Linux Mint Journey & A Small Contribution

[yosoyignicion]

Hello World

✨

First of all, I’m opening this discussion just to get a direct message over to you in a simple way. There is absolutely no rush for a reply—please feel free to check it out whenever you have some free time!

I wanted to start by telling you that I discovered Zen Browser through a YouTube recommendation. It immediately caught my attention because of its incredible architectural appeal—it feels so comfortable, highly customizable, and honestly superior to the commercial, profit-driven browsers offered by the big tech brands.

🐧 The Linux Mint Journey & A Small Contribution

I installed the Zen Mod: Transparent Zen (v1.17.16). Since I use Linux Mint Cinnamon, and the creator of the video mentioned they hadn't found a way to fix or adjust the blur effect properly for this specific desktop environment, I decided to do some digging.

Fortunately, I found the solution! I left them a comment on their video to help others, which I've translated for you here:

"Cinnamon uses the Muffin compositor. I really like the effect the browser achieves, so I looked for a solution for the blur effect you mentioned:

• There's an official extension called Blur Cinnamon (I found it in Spanish as Cinnamon transparente).
• In the extension's settings, you need to enable: Application Windows. (Personally, I also took the opportunity to enable notification pop-ups and a few other things I found interesting. You can even backlight the focused window with your theme color, wow! 😜)

Another alternative would be replacing the Muffin compositor with Picom, but that involves advanced terminal commands, and I'd rather not break anything, haha."

💡 Feedback & A Quick Question

Because I use Zen Browser daily with the transparency mod, whenever I have to open the old Mozilla Firefox for any reason, the visual contrast is massive! To try and bridge the gap, I installed the Zen Internet extension on my standard Firefox, hoping I could somehow include the "Transparent Zen" mod there.

However, I haven't been able to figure out if something like that is actually possible just through the extension alone on a browser that lacks the full native capabilities of Zen.

So, this is my little message of feedback, support, and a quick question:
Would it be possible to install a Zen Mod directly through the Zen Internet extension, or is there another method to make my Mozilla Firefox look just as gorgeous as my Zen Browser? If Zen Mods are strictly exclusive to the Zen Browser ecosystem, I completely understand!

🎨 Wrapping Up

You have done an absolutely amazing job. Navigating the web efficiently while enjoying this gorgeous transparency customization feels incredibly elegant, modern, and pleasant.

Thank you so much for your time, and once again, truly beautiful work! 🚀

[sameerasw]

Hi there! Appreciate the feedback...

And the answer to your question is actually right in this repo,
https://github.com/sameerasw/my-internet/tree/main/firefox

This is transparent, just not enough with Mica effect on Windows.

Keep in mind, this was done like 10 months ago and then I stopped using ff because it was not fun to use for web dev. Some changes may needed. But this is pretty much you need as a starter.... It was done on a random windows PC but also was tested on macOS so I assume ti should work for you as well... There were some flags needed to be enabled which I can not recall anymore...

But I hope you find a way to fix things if needed and make this usable. :)

I think this might still work as a guide for live editing if you are not familiar but not sure if it's up-to-date
https://www.userchrome.org/