Link from themes manager to personas gallery - Theme discrimination
Aronnax
this is a follow up to Bug 522571 - Link from themes manager to
personas gallery
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=522571
The developer want the diccussion here.
Ok, here we go again ;-)
> It is intended to have a page that is primarily personas, as you said.
Hi,
Why, please tell me why ;-)
I think a lot of themer are interested to know, why their stuff should
be hidden and why this limited background image change system should be
highlighted. Why?
Is it then as well intended to hide the normal extensions, when Jetpack
is later a part of the default installation?
And when you are still on the way to tell some reasons.
Why works Personas on 3.6 by default only with the default themes. Is it
still intended to change it with 3.7 or later. Why works the Personas
1.4 extension still only on Mac OS X only with the default theme and why
is there absolutely no progress in the last months to improve the
situation.
By the way,
i know a lot of themer, who think Mozilla want to kill the old theme
system. Some words as well about it would be very nice. It is hard to
find an example that something else is intended. This theme page
primarily for Personas is then only one example more.
Cheers
Mike Beltzner
I'll try to answer your questions in order; you asked many.
We believe that Personas are a better user experience than XPI Themes.
While not as robust or powerful, they are quick and easy for users to
install, can be activated without requiring a restart, and are simple to
create. Although not very old, the Personas Add-on has been downloaded
by more than 10M people and is very popular.
For that reason, we will be promoting Personas as a new, different type
of theme that requires less commitment to install and use. They will be
displayed on the first run page for Firefox 3.6 users, and the link in
the Themes panel will go to the Personas gallery.
Personas are still themes, though, just a different type. We hope to add
more capability (ability to change the appearance of buttons, work with
other XPI themes, etc) over time. XPI themes will eventually be
installed like extensions, which better represents their capability and
function; an XPI theme can totally change the "face" of the browser, not
just the skin.
We do not have any plans to remove support for XPI themes. We expect
that most users will prefer to use Persona-style themes and will be
investing in making those the preferred mechanism for quickly changing
the appearance of the browser. However it would be foolish and against
our values to remove the capability to customize the full appearance of
the browser.
I hope this helps,
mike
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Pardal Freudenthal
thank you very much for answering here and clarifying things. I'm sure
the theme developers community, like me, very appreciate to know that
third party themes or "old-style" themes will not be deprecated.
I think and have stated that Personas is a nice feature and the way it
works now (on the user's side) is almost perfect (technically it has
some problems to be solved). Easy to install, to manage, to try and
see the results "on the fly". Users have the opportunity to choose
which persona fits well with the theme they are using making the
customization an easy and nice experience. Many authors are making
efforts to support Personas and the reviews of my theme pointing this
support are very positive.
My concerns are about how the integration on Firefox is going to be
implemented.
I can see two constellations depending if Bug 520124 - Enable to
activate a 'heavy weight theme' together with 'lwtheme':
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=520124 will be fixed or
not:
1) Personas will work with third-party themes:
In this case, IMHO, it would be much better to have it where it is
now: on the menu. Independently of which theme are in use at the
moment, for the user is a lot easier to just click on the menu and see
immediately which effect a persona will have on the browser. The
persona's change on mouse over in the sub-menus is simply amazing! And
without needing to visit a site to get it..
The menu is also a lot more "discoverable" than the Addons Manager (I
know a couple people that has never opened the Addons Manager, but for
sure have opened the menus...).
In this constellation, although, I can't see how Personas would
implement buttons changes. This would not work with third party themes
at all...
2) Personas will only work with the default theme:
In this case I can imagine it as a feature from the default theme,
making sense to be listed at the Addons Manager as sub-items from the
default theme (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=529729).
In this constellation I can imagine that Personas could very well
offer the ability to change buttons. In this case, the Personas
extension could be further offered to be used with third-party themes.
I personally prefer the first option...
Actually I don't agree that Personas is a better user experience than
XPI Themes. For me it's more a different user experience (with the
same target), a kind of complement customization. The user choose the
preferred theme and "change" its background.
So, I can't see why compare one against another. They can live
together without (too much) problems just like they do now. This
document: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Using+themes+with+Firefox
explains very well the differences from Personas and "full themes"
without any discrimination or treating Personas as a better user
experience as themes...
Sorry, but I think that, in the way it is being implemented so far, it
is more difficult to use both, Personas and third party themes.
Just my two cents.
Aronnax
thanks but i think it it helps only to start a new discussion.
First of all:
Who is We? Who decide it? Who had talked for the theme system?
I can�t remember only one Mozilla developer, who ever talks about his
theme experiences and i read now many years Mozilla blogs, discussions,
wikis and so on - not one. I have my doubt that many even care about
theme stuff and the few who cares works then probably only for the
default theme(s) ;-)
Another example: The first edition of the last redesign from
addons.mozilla.org had not even a theme listing. They removed the point
and added themes below Appearance together with tab stuff, new toolbars
and everything else. The themes were completely hidden and obviously
thought nobody that this is a problem.
A Mozilla guy for example, who has full time job to advertise Firefox,
compares theme systems from different browser talks then only about
Personas - can�t be true
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/08/29_vs_7000.html
I don�t think that all these We, who obviously don�t care about themes
stuff should alone decide, what happens with the theme system, behind
closed doors somewhere in Mountain View California.
----
Who cares about themes?
We have many many themes with 2 millions, 3 millions � one (very old)
with 23 millions or the current most popular with 10 millions downloads ...
Personas on the other hand has after some years and a lot of advertising
in the last mounts only 10 millions. Just for the record: 10 millions
are not a high number, when we consider the hype behind it and the
themes has nobody who hype them. They are actually more or less hidden.
I think a lot of user still care , what happens with themes.
----
Mike Conner talks the first time many months ago about these themes
system changes leaves many questions open. Your post answer not really
these questions and added actually a few more. For example: How should
it works, when Personas change the buttons and a theme do the same. It
is exactly the reason, why Personas on Mac OS X works only with the
default theme. Ok, stuff like this can be fixed, but who works now on a
concept to prevent bugs like this. Likely nobody. I think nobody cares -
only Personas counts now ;-)
-----
XPI themes will eventually be installed like extensions.
- It is then only logical to remove these extension-themes from the
theme selection of the Add-ons manager.
- They will be hidden somewhere in addons.mozilla.org. and many user
will not even know that these themes exist.
- Under this conditions will be many themes aborted � the theme
community will slowly die .. the documentation will die .. bugs will be,
sooner or later, fixed without a consideration of theme needs.
Without a doubt would it be the end of the current themes.
-----
"We believe that Personas are a better user experience than XPI Themes."
Without a restart is nice ;-) - naturally - And? Is this all?
Personas can do some things better and themes can do other things much
better.
This will be never changed. Personas can have many new user and themes
have already much more � i still don't understand why themes should be
hidden.
-----
I think Mozilla treated currently themer like stupid fogs in a cooking
pot .. and slowly increase the temperature .. everyone knows what will
happen ;-)
Suggestions like the XPI extensions-themes are for example maybe
something for frogs, but surely nothing for the themes community.
Cheers
J M R
>
> Personas are still themes, though, just a different type.
That's just rubbish. They're nothing alike. Themes are whole house
decorations and remodeling and Personas are just window blinds.
Personas all in all is just a vanity project. Bragging about millions of
downloads but not about how many of them are really in use.
Personas images can be previewed by just hovering the mouse over them.
Does this count as a download?
Do users continue to use the images or they revert back?
How frequently do they replace their images?
90% of Personas images are an usability nightmare, do you have seen a
rise in usability problems?
How will Personas images fit with the new interface that has a reduced
surface in v3.6 and then further reduced in v3.7? How will Personas
images be justified if users can hardly see them?
This is how i used them: in the personas web site I experimented with 20
to 30 of them, concluded that most of them are just rubbish and the
other make using Firefox more difficult I reverted back. This alone
counted as 20 to 30 downloads.
I understand the appeal. It's easy and faster to just to loose 30
minutes of time with that but, it's just not that rewarding. It isn't.
It's a fad.
Dave Townsend
> Mike Beltzner wrote:
>
>>
>> Personas are still themes, though, just a different type.
>
> That's just rubbish. They're nothing alike. Themes are whole house
> decorations and remodeling and Personas are just window blinds.
They both do basically the same thing, they change how Firefox looks.
Whether you want a low impact aesthetic change or a complete reworking
of the UI is a personal choice. The fact that xpi style themes can in
fact do a little as a persona means that they are lumped in the same
boat in my head.
> Personas all in all is just a vanity project. Bragging about millions of
> downloads but not about how many of them are really in use.
>
> Personas images can be previewed by just hovering the mouse over them.
> Does this count as a download?
No. Personas do update checks the same as regular themes do so we will
be able to get good stats on how many are in use, not just how many
have been downloaded or previewed.
> 90% of Personas images are an usability nightmare, do you have seen a
> rise in usability problems?
I've certainly seen more bug reports filed due to issues with xpi-style
themes than with personas, but that is only to be expected since the
xpi-style themes are such high impact it is easier to cause problems
with them.
> How will Personas images fit with the new interface that has a reduced
> surface in v3.6 and then further reduced in v3.7? How will Personas
> images be justified if users can hardly see them?
An excellent question, but I imagine personas will evolve to support
small areas pretty easily, they are after all just images. As for
justification, well we will have the usage stats to indicate if users
are no longer finding the feature compelling and can use that as a
basis for deciding whether maintaining support is important or not.
> This is how i used them: in the personas web site I experimented with 20
> to 30 of them, concluded that most of them are just rubbish and the
> other make using Firefox more difficult I reverted back. This alone
> counted as 20 to 30 downloads.
>
> I understand the appeal. It's easy and faster to just to loose 30
> minutes of time with that but, it's just not that rewarding. It isn't.
> It's a fad.
This is of course all subjective and has no real bearing on this
discussion I think so I won't bother to respond to it.
DonGato
say supposedly isn't. :P
Firefox is becoming bloated, slow and buggy; things that made me move
from IE to Firefox on the first place.
Instead of fixing bugs, making it more stable and improving
performance and resource usage the developers are wasting time in
vanity things like Personas or making it a clone of Chrome.
A lot of theme bugs are because Firefox doesn't work properly with
themes. There are many bug reports with 2 years of existence and still
no fix. If you want themes to work 100% fix those.
Shawn Wilsher
> Firefox is becoming bloated, slow and buggy; things that made me move
> from IE to Firefox on the first place.
completely subjective...
> Instead of fixing bugs, making it more stable and improving
> performance and resource usage the developers are wasting time in
> vanity things like Personas or making it a clone of Chrome.
Right, we haven't fixed a single bug and are only adding features and
making it a clone of Chrome...
The reality, of course, is that we have fixed bugs, and we have improved
performance. http://graphs.mozilla.org/dashboard/snapshot/ shows that
we are improving in terms of performance in general. We've also fixed
nearly 5000 bugs since Firefox 3.5. None of this is subjective.
/sdwilsh
Ed Hume
> >https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
>
>
OK. I see the reference to "XPI themes." It's been a long time since
XPI packaging was allowed for themes. Did you have something else in
mind?
Despite your lip service to third-party themes, I can see what you
have in mind for us. I just have one request: please make sure that
visually-impaired users can get big icons, and that your default theme
allows for extra-large text. Right now you are optimized for guys who
prefer tiny text and icons.
Ed
Jeff.tet
10 million downloads. If I had the resources or the ability to
advertise my theme on addons.mozilla.org start page my theme would
also have a significant download number. This brings me to one of
Arronax's comments that making it more difficult to view a variety of
heavy weight themes they will slowly die. I and probably most people
don't want to spend allot of time "searching" for a theme vs clicking
on a link and being brought to a page that lists themes that you can
scroll through. I don't know about everyone else but that along to me
is the beginning of the end of the use of heavy weight themes.
If Mozilla wants to promote Personas why not just add them to the
current themes section if they are just themes like heavy weight
themes?
How does one get involved with making an intelligent opinion about a
significant change such as the one we are discussing here?
I am also going to ask Why? I don't want a politically correct answer
or a comment that defends the current ideals instead of truly
answering the question.
Please re-think and consider that by including Personas with heavy
weight themes together is giving users more choices for their Firefox
Experience and not will say "masking" a choice to give the illusion
that we're starting to phase out Themes as users currently know them.
Remember its about progress not regression!
Thank
Jeff
Chris Ilias
> I find funny how people say something is subjective while what they
> say supposedly isn't. :P
> Firefox is becoming bloated, slow and buggy; things that made me move
> from IE to Firefox on the first place.
> Instead of fixing bugs, making it more stable and improving
> performance and resource usage the developers are wasting time in
> vanity things like Personas or making it a clone of Chrome.
Hi DonGato,
Have you tried Firefox 3.6? -
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
Pardal Freudenthal
> current themes section if they are just themes like heavy weight
> themes?
>
Can you imagine how the user reviews of Personas would look like? :-)
Looking at how things are being done, I understand this: "We expect
that most users will prefer to use Persona-style themes..."
like: "We are doing our best to integrate Personas in Firefox in a way
that we expect
that most users will prefer to use Persona-style themes..."
Dave Townsend
> Despite your lip service to third-party themes, I can see what you
> have in mind for us. I just have one request: please make sure that
> visually-impaired users can get big icons, and that your default theme
> allows for extra-large text. Right now you are optimized for guys who
> prefer tiny text and icons.
>
> Ed
I believe the default theme's text changes size based on the OS font
sizing, if not we should certainly fix that. I guess the icons probably
don't right now but we should probably try to do that too.
Mike Connor
On 20-Nov-09, at 9:53 AM, Aronnax wrote:
> Hi,
> thanks but i think it it helps only to start a new discussion.
>
> First of all:
> Who is We? Who decide it? Who had talked for the theme system?
This was proposed a _long_ time ago, and I blogged about the ideas and
linked to the wiki doc you mention. Feedback was minimal.
> Mike Conner talks the first time many months ago about these themes
> system changes leaves many questions open. Your post answer not
> really these questions and added actually a few more. For example:
> How should it works, when Personas change the buttons and a theme do
> the same. It is exactly the reason, why Personas on Mac OS X works
> only with the default theme. Ok, stuff like this can be fixed, but
> who works now on a concept to prevent bugs like this. Likely nobody.
> I think nobody cares - only Personas counts now ;-)
Ultimately, the reason why we don't have <choose theme> + <choose
Persona> is that the UI starts getting harder to understand, and it's
largely a technical distinction. It also is harder to ensure a good
experience for users (many themes were poorly implemented).
If you had questions, did you raise them then?
> XPI themes will eventually be installed like extensions.
> - It is then only logical to remove these extension-themes from the
> theme selection of the Add-ons manager.
> - They will be hidden somewhere in addons.mozilla.org. and many user
> will not even know that these themes exist.
> - Under this conditions will be many themes aborted … the theme
> community will slowly die .. the documentation will die .. bugs will
> be, sooner or later, fixed without a consideration of theme needs.
>
> Without a doubt would it be the end of the current themes.
I think that we erred greatly in treating themes as somehow different
from extensions. They're just a type of customization, and I do not
believe that they are more or less interesting than any other type of
customization that users will do with current-style addons, except
that they're harder to build and maintain, in many ways.
> "We believe that Personas are a better user experience than XPI
> Themes."
> Without a restart is nice ;-) - naturally - And? Is this all?
Easy install/update, easy to create and tweak, very very sandboxed (no
chrome access, no trust decision required).
> Personas can do some things better and themes can do other things
> much better.
> This will be never changed. Personas can have many new user and
> themes have already much more … i still don't understand why themes
> should be hidden.
To turn it around, why should current themes get primacy over another
type of customization like tab addons, or toolbars?
-- Mike
Mike Connor
On 20-Nov-09, at 4:50 PM, Ed Hume wrote:
> OK. I see the reference to "XPI themes." It's been a long time since
> XPI packaging was allowed for themes. Did you have something else in
> mind?
Nope. The idea of "XPI themes" was shorthand for taking the
limitations off what a "theme" can do and have them simply be a type
of extension, with all of the same privs for authors. Rather than
simply styling the elements (alternate CSS+images) we would enable
theme authors to do more radical changes, and even provide alternate
widgets (i.e. separate back/forward buttons, or even different UIs).
It's really more "stop treating extensions and themes as separate
things in the UI" as a concept.
-- Mike
Mike Connor
There's a bug, somewhere, on solving this better as higher-dpi screens
start coming out. One shouldn't need to install a third-party addon
to get sanely-scaled icons.
We didn't blow up with Extra Large fonts on Windows last I mucked with
themes, but that's a good 18 months ago. If we don't now, a bug
should be filed.
-- Mike
Aronnax
Am 23.11.09 01:52, schrieb Mike Connor:
>
> On 20-Nov-09, at 9:53 AM, Aronnax wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> thanks but i think it it helps only to start a new discussion.
>>
>> First of all:
>> Who is We? Who decide it? Who had talked for the theme system?
>
> This was proposed a _long_ time ago, and I blogged about the ideas and
> linked to the wiki doc you mention. Feedback was minimal.
Some themer asked therefore the same questions (i as well) some months
ago, if it is intended to replace themes and the answer was no.
From a themer point of view was this minimal feedback enough. And we
have still no detailed plans, how themes and Personas should work in the
future together, or?
>
>> Mike Conner talks the first time many months ago about these themes
>> system changes leaves many questions open. Your post answer not really
>> these questions and added actually a few more. For example: How should
>> it works, when Personas change the buttons and a theme do the same. It
>> is exactly the reason, why Personas on Mac OS X works only with the
>> default theme. Ok, stuff like this can be fixed, but who works now on
>> a concept to prevent bugs like this. Likely nobody. I think nobody
>> cares - only Personas counts now ;-)
>
> Ultimately, the reason why we don't have <choose theme> + <choose
> Persona> is that the UI starts getting harder to understand, and it's
> largely a technical distinction. It also is harder to ensure a good
> experience for users (many themes were poorly implemented).
I read for example some blogs from Personas guys and they talked in
particular about time problems to get everything ready for 3.6.
Therefore only now with the default themes and later will it be maybe ..
probable .. who knows .. expanded. What should someone say against
(about) these time arguments? Not easy ;-)
>
> If you had questions, did you raise them then?
I talked with Myk M. about special Mac Personas problems and asked D�o
G. from time to time, how he build it for 3.6 (He build it in a kind of
way, that every theme could use it - now, or later)
When i read then on the other hand only about time problems .. What
should i asked more? I thought there are now only other questions for
the time after 3.6.
>
>> XPI themes will eventually be installed like extensions.
>> - It is then only logical to remove these extension-themes from the
>> theme selection of the Add-ons manager.
>> - They will be hidden somewhere in addons.mozilla.org. and many user
>> will not even know that these themes exist.
>> - Under this conditions will be many themes aborted � the theme
>> community will slowly die .. the documentation will die .. bugs will
>> be, sooner or later, fixed without a consideration of theme needs.
>>
>> Without a doubt would it be the end of the current themes.
>
> I think that we erred greatly in treating themes as somehow different
> from extensions. They're just a type of customization, and I do not
> believe that they are more or less interesting than any other type of
> customization that users will do with current-style addons, except that
> they're harder to build and maintain, in many ways.
Yes, correct.
But there is one difference.
Themes have a very weak lobby and will be from time time forgotten.
>
>> "We believe that Personas are a better user experience than XPI Themes."
>> Without a restart is nice ;-) - naturally - And? Is this all?
>
> Easy install/update, easy to create and tweak, very very sandboxed (no
> chrome access, no trust decision required).
Yes, as well correct ... and you had for example forgotten to mention
that many many have a very very bad usability .. and they can not
replace the other themes, when someone want more ;-)
>
>> Personas can do some things better and themes can do other things much
>> better.
>> This will be never changed. Personas can have many new user and themes
>> have already much more � i still don't understand why themes should be
>> hidden.
>
> To turn it around, why should current themes get primacy over another
> type of customization like tab addons, or toolbars?
>
Themes do not need or earn a primacy.
A fair treatment is enough. For example have themes not even anymore an
own name and must share it now with these Personas background images.
By the way,
what is now the official name of these themes?
For example: Old rusty heavyweight XPI extension themes, or what? ;-)
> -- Mike
>
Aronnax
Aronnax
We have for example alredy some theme-extentions
Brand Thunder https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/37347
Even my Mac OS X only themes have higher download numbers ;-)
They are hidden somewhere in Appearance Add-ons + Toolbars Add-ons
and this is probably one of the reasons.
When you want to kill themes, when treat all the other themes in the
future like these theme-extentions ;-)
On the other hand have we more and more themes, which includes
additionally an extension.
For example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10674
I think many themer would be happy with possibilities, but not when they
are then hidden in nowhere of the Appearance selection ;-)
Cheers
>
> -- Mike
Pardal Freudenthal
> > off what a "theme" can do and have them simply be a type of extension,
> > with all of the same privs for authors. Rather than simply styling the
> > elements (alternate CSS+images) we would enable theme authors to do more
> > radical changes, and even provide alternate widgets (i.e. separate
> > back/forward buttons, or even different UIs). It's really more "stop
> > treating extensions and themes as separate things in the UI" as a concept.
Ohh. It sounds wonderful, but NO THANKS.
As Aronnax! has pointed, we have already such possibilities in those
two ways: the "extension-themes" (and that example "ruins" another
themes with their "wonderful skinned" toolbars; and looking for the
number of "themes" they produce (82?), one can imagine the propo$e$
from them...) and the bundles (that also need some guidelines to avoid
missing up other themes). So, we have already the possibilities (with
the bundle) you are talking about.
The great advantage from themes against extensions is the way they
register the skin providers and how they are selected. The skin
providers brought from themes substitute the originals. This is a
great feature, since if the user has installed a crap theme, he/she
must only to select another theme and will have no annoying side
effects.
Styles brought from extensions that are made only looking for the
default theme will still living there even if the user choose a third-
party theme. This could be simply avoided, we have enough
documentation and guidelines for it. I can say I spend 70% from my
work on my themes repairing things that extensions break that should
never get broke...
Again, we have already a great theme system, that really makes the
difference comparing to the boring models from the others. Why kill
it?
And what about the link to the real themes on personas home page? It
still not existing there.
Cheers
Mike Beltzner
> Again, we have already a great theme system, that really makes the
> difference comparing to the boring models from the others. Why kill
> it?
Nobody has ever stated that we are "killing" anything. Also, the uptake and ease of development, application and deployment of Personas fix real problems with the existing theme system. This is win-win.
I'm sorry you feel differently, but don't think there's much point to discussing this further.
cheers,
mike
Aronnax
>
> ... deployment of Personas fix real problems with the existing theme system. This is win-win.
Currently have some Personas user as well some difficulties to see this
win-win ;-)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/reviews/display/10900
Or they have maybe as well another opinion about a real win-win ;-)
Cheers
CatThief
> Again, we have already a great theme system, that really makes the
> difference comparing to the boring models from the others. Why kill
> it?
I'm with you, Pardal.
--
Regards,
CatThief
To reply privately, please PM me at MozillaZine...
http://forums.mozillazine.org/ucp.php?i=pm&mode=compose&u=25774
Alfred Kayser
A win-win situation is where both Personas and 'xpi' themes can live
together.
But currently, FF3.6 with and without Personas 1.5 extension:
1. doesn't allow a theme together with a personas. It even switches back
from a selected theme to the default theme.
2. doesn't point to the addons/theme site.
Especially 1 is an active method of disabling/removing existing theme
usage: or 'killing' it.
Killing is never a 'win-win'...
I don't understand why the mozilla organization thinks that
'heavy-weight' themes are such a trouble.
They are 'sandboxed' and cannot do the harm that normal extensions do.
Allowing (or even forcing) the existing themes to become an XPI
extension, just paves the way for new issues...
Introducing Personas as a type of theme is fine (even with the extra
competition),
but locking out the old type of themes in the way as described above,
is considered 'unfair' in terms of competition (see the IE case in the
European open market issue).
Shawn Wilsher
> I don't understand why the mozilla organization thinks that
> 'heavy-weight' themes are such a trouble.
> They are 'sandboxed' and cannot do the harm that normal extensions do.
things. It wasn't the original intent, sure, but it is certainly possible.
Cheers,
Shawn
Pardal Freudenthal
Ok! I agree with you that the idea to "kill" the theme system is quite
absurd.
Such a decision could only be done as a long time target, with a lot
of discussions. Killing the theme system now, would mean that this
decision was made a long time ago.
So, which kind of people would encourage a lot of developers to work
without any payment sacrificing their free time (and believe me,
making themes demands a looooot of work and time), having in mind to
"kill" this work after a while? What would these people say to these
developers now? Some of these developers are working on this for more
than 5-6 years now!
No, this is impossible.
So, I suppose the document from Mike Connor:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Mconnor/PersonasUplift#Deprecation_of_old-style_themes
contains a typo. "Deprecation of old-style themes" must be read as
"*Depreciation* of old-style themes".
This is exactly what is happening now. Themes are going to be
"depreciated", pushed to the status of second-class citizens.
Maybe having seen the issue in this way, it serves as a basis for
further discussions?
Themers have already a lot of issues to deal with. like changes on XUL
that kill backwards compatibility, lack of classes and ID's that would
be helpful for other UI approaches than that from default theme, style
rules living on content, hard codded images, inline styles, poor
written stylesheets brought from extensions and so on... With this
"depreciation", the chances for solving these issues are minimal.
(Maybe are exactly these issues the reason for "depreciating" third
party themes?)
I don't think that theme developers deserve "depreciation". They
deserve just a little respect...
Boris Zbarsky
> They are 'sandboxed' and cannot do the harm that normal extensions do.
Would that it were so. It's not. The false perception that this is the
case is a huge problem from a security standpoint. The obvious solution
to that is to make reality match expectations, by either changing
reality (a lot of work in core code, breaks some nontrivial fraction of
themes, makes themes less useful than they are now) or changing
expectations (e.g. eliminating the distinction between XPI themes and
XPI extensions)...
-Boris
Mike Connor
We've changed the install flow so it should be the same for XPI installs
in general. I don't know if there's still an education problem, but I
think the reality is that XPI themes shouldn't be sandboxed at all.
-- Mike
Alfred Kayser
> I don't think that theme developers deserve "depreciation". They
> deserve just a little respect...
it would have been nicer to introduce this to the 'old' theme authors
in a much more nicer way. At least by telling why this happing,
the timing of this, and by supporting these authors in converting and/or
migrating and/or bailing out of this...
Philip Chee
Also please note that "Heavy Weight" XPI themes are *not*
deprecated/depreciated in SeaMonkey. I very much hope that when you
disable these themes in Firefox you don't remove the underlying
toolkit/gecko functionality that other applications expect.
A bit of consideration for other consumers will be gratefully appreciated.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
Mike Beltzner
> Also please note that "Heavy Weight" XPI themes are *not*
> deprecated/depreciated in SeaMonkey. I very much hope that when you
> disable these themes in Firefox you don't remove the underlying
> toolkit/gecko functionality that other applications expect.
I don't know how many times I have to say this, but this will definitely be my last contribution to this thread which shows little evidence of people actually listening, but lots of people desperate to speak "truth to power."
There are presently no plans to delete, dilute, deprecate, disable, destroy or any other d-verb "heavy weight" themes. There are also no plans to invest deeply in developing that technology, but (and this is important) there weren't every such plans in the works in the years that I've been involved with the project, really.
There are plans to move the primary UI mechanisms for theming towards "Personas" style lightweight themes which can be designed, developed, and delivered more easily to users. That's all that's happened. We think that they provide a better user experience for the majority of users, and so we've added them in 3.6, and are trying to figure out how to enhance them (add styling to buttons) so that they displace (not *replace*) Themes in the primary customization UI in a future release. Beyond that we've made no firm decisions.
We may, at some point, decide that we need to stop supporting classic themes. That decision would be made based on the costs vs. benefits, but we're not there yet.
> A bit of consideration for other consumers will be gratefully appreciated.
I don't mean to pick on Philip, but as someone who has spent literally years doing my absolute best to gather input, weigh costs and benefits, and guide the project in ways that are most beneficial for not only the Firefox product but the overall community, I find the implication in this comment to be hurtful.
I think everyone needs to be much more careful in the way we discuss these sorts of decisions. These are not arguments that need to be "won" or "fought." They are decisions that need to be debated on their merits and with respect.
cheers,
mike
Aronnax
thanks
We have still the question, if a theme should work (again) together with
a personas in future versions of Firefox.
Cheers
Pardal Freudenthal
said or not. I don't care about words, neither d-verbs nor l-verbs. I
believe on attitude. The facts are clear enough and we provide a lot
of examples from what we are concerned about.
To make things easier I will try to list the complains:
1. WE DON'T WANT Personas being treated as "themes". They are not!
Personas are "skins". Don't suppose our users are not "smart" enough
to understand the difference between them. Of course they are smart!
They use Firefox ;-)
2. WE DON'T WANT a "Get Themes" link pointing to the "Get Personas"
page. This is quite offensive (not only for us, theme developers, but
also for our users). For more than two months ago we talked about this
on Bugzilla and the talk was about "primarily" Personas page but with
a link to the themes section. Until now nothing happened... And this
is also not really something that would satisfy us....
3. WE DON'T WANT Personas listed as Themes on Add-ons Manager. This is
confusing and will bloat the UI. 1. and 2. explain why.
4. WE WANT that the new feature, to change skins (personas) at real
time, also works with third party themes. (Could you imagine if
Microsoft would allow the "feature" Glass only for Microsoft
Products?)
For kind of feedback on the above points, look at the few reviews to
Personas from people using the 3.6 betas. Also this comment on MZ is
very enlightening: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=8385025#p8385025
5. WE DON'T WANT Themes working as Extensions. The benefits of the
actual system, concerning chrome registration, how themes substitute
the skin providers for the main packages and how the
general.skins.selectedSkin key works are enormous.
6. WE WANT that themes will be listed like they used to at AMO, not at
the end of the list. (Interesting that everything there is listed on
alphabetically order but Personas...)
So, please treat these complains seriously and with the respect they
deserve. Please explain us why these decisions, that obviously
displease the whole theme community, were taken.
Mike Beltzner
I would like to move towards a point where lightweight themes can work with heavy themes, allowing users to skin and theme in completely flexible ways. So far no solution has presented itself, but I think that it would definitely be functionality that would be advantageous to users and developers, so it should be investigated.
I am sorry that this will leave you unsatisfied and upset, but it is a Firefox product decision based on our belief that lightweight themes are closer to what the majority of Firefox users are looking for in terms of visual customization of the browser. This is supported by metrics, user feedback, and comparing experiences with other browsers.
cheers,
mike
> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-firefox mailing list
> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
Aronnax
> I would like to move towards a point where lightweight themes can work with heavy themes, allowing users to skin and theme in completely flexible ways. So far no solution has presented itself, but I think that it would definitely be functionality that would be advantageous to users and developers, so it should be investigated.
>
D�o G. has already build the lightweight themes system inside 3.6 in a
kind of way that every theme could use even now.
(By the way, he asked therefor the themer, what we want and need and
build it then - very obliging ;-) )
We have only the problem, that the 3.6 Add-on manager not approve it and
has some missing features to choose a themes and a Personas together.
All we have to do is to find therefor an easy to use solution and add
these changes to the Add-ons Manager.
Themes on the other hand must only add some code changes and everthing
is fine again.
Cheers
Mike Shaver
> 1. [YOU, PARDAL] DON'T WANT Personas being treated as "themes". They are not!
I don't understand: are you saying that if there were an XPI,
chrome-override theme that just customized the background the way a
Persona does, you wouldn't consider it a theme? Or you wouldn't want
it listed in AMO under Themes? Unless Personas are somehow *more*
powerful than Themes, which I very much doubt, they are truly just
another type of theme, and the user shouldn't care about whether it's
packaged as an XPI, has a chrome.manifest, etc.
They *should* care about whether they can be applied without a
restart, are quick to download and update, etc. The tradeoff for the
flexibility that "full-power" themes provide (especially since they
can run script) is that it is very hard to reliably change between
them without reinitializing the browser, and that they require more
care for users when installing. Personas provides a way for theme
authors to constrain themselves to a "sweet spot" of theme capability
-- simple visual customization of the dominant main-window chrome
areas -- "in exchange" for which the theme can participate in a more
streamlined installation experience. This improved user experience
is, in our not-totally-uninformed opinion, very valuable in having
*more* people experience the power of customizing their browser. Some
of them will want deeper customization, and once they have a hint that
it's possible, I think they're much more likely to seek out
"full-power themes" that fulfill their wishes.
I love themes, and the shockingly creative things that people do with
them. There are a pile of us running and tweeting about the Strata
family of themes and add-ons right now, for example, and some that are
considering an operating-system switch to do so! This isn't about
disliking themes, and certainly not about disliking their creators.
(I daresay that the least respectful and co-operative tone
demonstrated in this thread has been from indignant full-power theme
authors, unfortunately.)
> 4. [YOU, PARDAL] WANT that the new feature, to change skins (personas) at real
> time, also works with third party themes. (Could you imagine if
> Microsoft would allow the "feature" Glass only for Microsoft
> Products?)
My understanding of this issue is that, indeed, any theme can support
personas if it makes appropriate code changes to accommodate the
persona customizations, and that "we" (Dao, really) went to some
lengths to make sure that was possible. This is almost exactly
analogous to how applications have to add support for Aero Glass,
which we have in fact done for Firefox. (There may be some rough
edges still to sort out, but enumerating those in bugs and helping
find resolutions to them is much more likely to get to an outcome you
want than nailing your demands to the newsgroup with liberal use of
ALL CAPS. This is again quite analogous to us finding issues with
different types of OS integration!)
I can understand that there is an emotional reaction here, and it's a
reasonable one: it's now possible for people to create a Firefox theme
(albeit a minimally-powerful one) with much less effort than before.
Even I could do it! For some people, it will feel like the prestige
attached to the label "Firefox theme creator" has been diminished, but
I don't think that's an appropriate view. It's *always* been the case
that some themes were more complex, more fully polished, and indeed
more widely-used than others. Personas as a tool for a subset of
theme capabilities doesn't change that, it just improves the user
experience where we are effectively able to do so, and ideally
introduces more people to both the use *and* creation of Firefox
themes. It may be that more people choose to use Personas than
full-power themes, for any number of individual reasons that are
difficult to predict crisply. But that means that those users are
getting a browser they like better than without it, since it is indeed
an active choice to use a theme of any "power level", and that seems
like what everyone in this thread is after.
A similar, though not analogically perfect, case from my own work: I
originally dreamed up and got people to work on FUEL, as a way to make
extension authoring easier and more future-proof. It didn't really
pan out, though it's used by some people. Jetpack is a much more
promising direction for reaching that goal. Do I feel a bit of sting
that we're going to deprecate FUEL in favour of Jetpack? A little: I
"was there first" with API improvements for extension developers, and
very similar goals. But not a lot, when I think about it: I did FUEL
because I wanted to make it easier for developers to make extensions,
and that goal is being attacked much better than it was before. You
made a theme because you wanted users to have another attractive
options for how their browser looks -- we want to give them a LOT of
such options, so it seems like we are allies here, not predator and
prey.
(If you made the theme because you wanted the exclusive cachet of
being able to do the difficult work of manipulating XUL and cascades
and packaging and overlays, and you don't think people should be able
to claim that they are theming the browser without going uphill both
ways in the snow, then we are not aligned on outcomes, and that we
helped each other was pretty much coincidental in the first place, I
fear. It wouldn't really be possible in good conscience to impede
improvements to user experience to preserve the exclusivity of the
developer circle, after all. I'm not at all saying that you, Pardal,
have that motivation, just recognizing that some authors might, and
that *those* people are not going to come out of this process with
what they want.)
Mike
Mandy
> > 4. [YOU, PARDAL] WANT that the new feature, to change skins (personas) at real
> > time, also works with third party themes. (Could you imagine if
> > Microsoft would allow the "feature" Glass only for Microsoft
> > Products?)
>
> My understanding of this issue is that, indeed, any theme can support
> personas if it makes appropriate code changes to accommodate the
> persona customizations, and that "we" (Dao, really) went to some
> lengths to make sure that was possible. This is almost exactly
> analogous to how applications have to add support for Aero Glass,
> which we have in fact done for Firefox. (There may be some rough
> edges still to sort out, but enumerating those in bugs and helping
> find resolutions to them is much more likely to get to an outcome you
> want than nailing your demands to the newsgroup with liberal use of
> ALL CAPS. This is again quite analogous to us finding issues with
> different types of OS integration!)
Even I know that Firefox 3.6 only allows Personas to be used with only
the default theme. This is because the Persona chosen appears in the
Addons Manager and as only one theme can be in use at any one time,
then as soon as you select that Persona a restart is required to
disable any third party theme that was being used. After restart the
Persona appears, using the default theme.
How could you write such a long post here without knowing that?
Robert Strong
be done (by Dao, really) on the Firefox side and on the theme side (by
Theme authors) to make it so other themes can also be used with Personas.
Robert
Philip Chee
> I can understand that there is an emotional reaction here, and it's a
I believe that you are misreading the situation here. As far as I can
tell there are at least two issues.
1. You (collective you) are treating Personas vs traditional themes as a
zero sum game. In order to promote LWTs you feel the need to
de-emphasise HWTs. I'm sure that most if not all themers aren't actually
objecting to LWTs. What they seem to be objecting to is that (due to
current limitations of technology to be sure) a LWT and HWT cannot be
allowed to be active at the same time.
2. Secondly there is the deliberate obscuration of the difference
between LWTs and HWTs in both the Add-ons manager and on AMO. While it
is true that both are "themes" in the greater scheme of things it could
be also argued that the reductio ad absurdium is to remove the various
extension/theme/plugin panes in the addons manager and on AMO and put
everything in one window or category on the grounds that they are all
just "addons" after all.
I believe that there is significant public benefit to having separate
categories for LWTs and HWTs, or at least some obvious signifier to
differentiate these two. For example, distinctively different icons in
both the addons manager and on AMO.
I think that part of the paranoia currently floating around is due to
the current implementation on AMO where every other category is sorted
alphabetically except in the themes category where personas /appear/ to
be listed out of order. And as we all know perception can sometimes be
more powerful than reality. *And* there is no obvious way to search only
for HWTs or only for LWTs.
As an aside, I believe that there may be actually two distinct (though
overlapping) groups of users, one that prefers LWTs and another that are
interested only in HWTs.
There is also another issue with the combined theme category on AMO. I
think it is instructive to look at some past events on AMO. Some of you
might remember the decision to combine themes together with extensions
that were tagged with Appearance into one mixed category. That was I'm
sure everyone now agrees an extremely suboptimal decision causing a
great deal of confusion not just in the themer community but also for
the end users looking for some specific theme. I seem to remember a
similar problem caused by lumping dictionaries with extensions in the
"Language" category, but I could be mis-remembering.
May I suggest that in line with Mozilla's public aim of promoting choice
on the web that you strongly consider providing some way of clearly
distinguishing LWTs from HWTs for those users who desire such? For
example it could be one of the options in the advanced search option on
AMO to allow users to search only in LWTs or only in HWTs. For the
majority of users who don't care for the distinction, they should then
see none.
And then for the Addons Manager there could be an optional way of
visually separating LWTs from HWTs, perhaps as a toggleable option or a
checkbox. This should also go some way of assuaging complaints from
themers that the get more themes link now points only to LWTs instead of
giving the end user a choice of LWTs, HWTs or both. (I could be wrong I
don't actually use Firefox except to test my extensions in).
Also I might add that in the themer forums there seems to be a movement
to add CSS to their themes to hide the "Get more themes" link as long it
points exclusively to Personas. By all means do promote LWTs, but please
don't remove the ability of the user to find HWTs (or make the user jump
through various hoops in order to do so).
Aronnax
> I can understand that there is an emotional reaction here, and it's a
> reasonable one: it's now possible for people to create a Firefox theme
> (albeit a minimally-powerful one) with much less effort than before.
> Even I could do it! For some people, it will feel like the prestige
> attached to the label "Firefox theme creator" has been diminished, but
> I don't think that's an appropriate view.
Hi,
i think not one themer has therefore an emotional reaction ;-)
Personas is now a core Firefox feature and it is the first time that a
theme can not use or support every Firefox feature.
Themes are now second class, compared with the default theme, and when
you know that there are only excuses, why this happens, have some themer
a problem with it.
But they have now the trouble, when user ask why his (her) theme works
not anymore with Personas and they maybe think it is the fault from a
buggy theme.
And for a themer is Personas on the other hand completely boring (not
powerful enough).
When many new Personas themer other have now as well fun with an easier
to use theme system is this only as well nice.
Cheers
Mike Shaver
> 1. You (collective you) are treating Personas vs traditional themes as a
> zero sum game. In order to promote LWTs you feel the need to
> de-emphasise HWTs. I'm sure that most if not all themers aren't actually
> objecting to LWTs. What they seem to be objecting to is that (due to
> current limitations of technology to be sure) a LWT and HWT cannot be
> allowed to be active at the same time.
Why is that more objectionable than two "HWT"s not being active at the
same time? Two Persona-based themes can't be active at the same time
either.
Now, some structural-theme developers may wish to allow further
customization of their visuals based on the Personas infrastructure
and gallery. For now, they will have to do that work in their theme
(or perhaps an accompanying extension, though I don't think that's
strictly a necessary separation) manually. It may be that some common
model emerges that we can support. I would welcome your input on what
that might look like, if there are specific things you want to see to
make it easier for your theme to use the Persona infrastructure to
allow additional customization.
> 2. Secondly there is the deliberate obscuration of the difference
> between LWTs and HWTs in both the Add-ons manager and on AMO. While it
> is true that both are "themes" in the greater scheme of things it could
> be also argued that the reductio ad absurdium is to remove the various
> extension/theme/plugin panes in the addons manager and on AMO and put
> everything in one window or category on the grounds that they are all
> just "addons" after all.
What is the relevant difference for the user between those, in Firefox
3.6? Only one of them (LWT or HWT) can be active at a given time.
Changing between and HWT and another HWT, or an HWT and an LWT
requires a restart, while LWT -> LWT doesn't, but I don't think that
warrants a separation.
You are welcome to whatever absurdums you want, but they're not useful
in making product decisions. We have evidence that users do know what
"themes" are, from other software experience as well as other Firefox
users and articles and such. SeaMonkey may choose to go another path
with this, and that would be a *perfectly* valid product decision for
you based on your knowledge of your users.
> I believe that there is significant public benefit to having separate
> categories for LWTs and HWTs, or at least some obvious signifier to
> differentiate these two. For example, distinctively different icons in
> both the addons manager and on AMO.
> I think that part of the paranoia currently floating around is due to
> the current implementation on AMO where every other category is sorted
> alphabetically except in the themes category where personas /appear/ to
> be listed out of order. And as we all know perception can sometimes be
> more powerful than reality. *And* there is no obvious way to search only
> for HWTs or only for LWTs.
> As an aside, I believe that there may be actually two distinct (though
> overlapping) groups of users, one that prefers LWTs and another that are
> interested only in HWTs.
Why do you believe that a meaningful number of users even know there's
a difference, let alone have an interest in a theme based on its
underlying technology? Our research indicates exactly the opposite,
to my knowledge.
> May I suggest that in line with Mozilla's public aim of promoting choice
> on the web that you strongly consider providing some way of clearly
> distinguishing LWTs from HWTs
How does that promote choice on the web? Why would a user explicitly
want a HWT, per se? What about its heaviness is part of what they're
looking for?
> for those users who desire such?
I haven't seen user demand for it, though I can imagine users wanting
at some point to limit their search to add-ons (Persona-based themes
or Jetpack-based extensions) that don't are safer (less-privileged)
and don't require restarts. If you have reason to believe that there
is Firefox user demand for that sort of search criterion, I recommend
you file a bug against AMO and take it from there.
> And then for the Addons Manager there could be an optional way of
> visually separating LWTs from HWTs, perhaps as a toggleable option or a
> checkbox.
Maybe -- want to write an extension and see if people find it useful?
Is this what SeaMonkey will do?
> This should also go some way of assuaging complaints from
> themers that the get more themes link now points only to LWTs instead of
> giving the end user a choice of LWTs, HWTs or both.
The first ones we present are those which can be instantly installed,
without restart. I think that's a pretty important user experience to
promote, now that it's possible.
> (I could be wrong I
> don't actually use Firefox).
Well, don't let that stop you from telling us how to build it! :-P
> Also I might add that in the themer forums there seems to be a movement
> to add CSS to their themes to hide the "Get more themes" link as long it
> points exclusively to Personas.
It points first to the Persona-based themes, with a link to more, just
as in the past it has pointed to the recommended themes list with a
link to more of them. What is the objection, exactly? It has always
promoted a way for users to get another theme, and I don't know why
themers object to users changing to an LWT more than to an HWT -- can
you elaborate on why, once the user has chosen to use a different
theme from an author's, the author should care what technology or
tools were used to build the user's new theme?
Mike
Benjamin Smedberg
> 2. Secondly there is the deliberate obscuration of the difference
> between LWTs and HWTs in both the Add-ons manager and on AMO. While it
> is true that both are "themes" in the greater scheme of things it could
> be also argued that the reductio ad absurdium is to remove the various
> extension/theme/plugin panes in the addons manager and on AMO and put
> everything in one window or category on the grounds that they are all
> just "addons" after all.
This is what Firefox Mobile does, and it works well for the small screen
real-estate there.
But from a user perspective, a lightweight theme and a heavyweight theme
*are* the same thing: it's a way to modify the appearance of the browser.
The technical details of how it's done are irrelevant to most users, and
therefore the UI decision to obscure the differences between them is the
correct decision.
--BDS
Pardal Freudenthal
>
> But from a user perspective, a lightweight theme and a heavyweight theme
> *are* the same thing: it's a way to modify the appearance of the browser.
> The technical details of how it's done are irrelevant to most users, and
> therefore the UI decision to obscure the differences between them is the
> correct decision.
>
> --BDS
If each Persona *is* a theme, then please list them on the themes
section from AMO.
Asa Dotzler
What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications, and
can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
unusable) then what is so horrible about moving all of your work over to
the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
light-weight themes which don't require a restart, don't have serious
security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
extensions world?
- A
Robert Strong
extension and the user doesn't care about these differences.
Robert
Philip Chee
> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
I hope you aren't serious about this question!
> If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
> ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications, and
> can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
> unusable) then what is so horrible about moving all of your work over to
> the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
> light-weight themes which don't require a restart, don't have serious
> security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
>
> What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
> extensions world?
You do know that something like this was tried on AMO before right? And
it was universally unpopular with the *end users*. What makes you think
it would be any more popular the second time around?
Aronnax
> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
A theme change the style and an extention add features.
>
> If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
> ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications,
Do you have an example that a theme ever caused a serious security
implications? And themes have many limitations, because of security
questions.
A Personas image can theoretical import a virus - as well a serious
security implications, or?
and
> can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
> unusable) then what is so horrible about moving all of your work over to
> the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
> light-weight themes
Themes change the style - Personas change the style.
It makes in a horrible kind of way no sense to treat similar stuff
different ;-)
which don't require a restart, don't have serious
> security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
You have not tried many Personas, or?
There are many, which makes the browser completely unusable ;-) (hard to
read text for example - even serious usability problems)
>
> What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
> extensions world?
And what change it?
A new extention feature works with all the other installed themes and
extentions. But a theme should not affect another theme, or you could
install only one.
It must be then anyway again a new and different kind of extention.
The same stuff only with new name is not really an improvement ;-)
Cheers
Mook
> The tradeoff for the
> flexibility that "full-power" themes provide (especially since they
> can run script)
I'm curious where this is possible - are there any examples of this? As
in, actual, working ones, and not theoretical things? I'm mostly asking
because (really old, and possibly no longer true) documentation and
experience said normal scripts don't load from skin packages; knowing
when I'm wrong is always a fun thing for me :)
--
Mook
Michael Lefevre
>
> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
>
> If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
> ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications, and
> can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
> unusable)
The theme authors didn't and don't actually want most of that, as far as
I know. The additional security implications and the restart are the
result of Mozilla's design decisions (and your failure to fix bugs that
would eliminate them).
> What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
> extensions world?
Themes are for changing the appearance of the browser, extensions are
for adding extra functionality. If you think it's a good idea to design
Firefox's UI based on how the code works, then knock yourself out...
Michael
Dao
Themes can attach xbl bindings, from where they can do anything. Since
xbl bindings can be detached, I don't think that's the central reason
for why the restart is still required.
Robert Kaiser
> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
You can install any given number of extensions together and don't need
to switch between them, while you need that for themes.
Robert Kaiser
Aronnax
> the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
> light-weight themes which don't require a restart, don't have serious
> security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
By the way,
to prevent a similar discussion some months later.
With the same arguments can you remove the current extensions out of the
extention panel and replace it then with the new Jetpack stuff.
We should also create already now a new panel for example with the name:
Rusty but still lovely extention and themes stew.
This then for 3.7 and later with Firefox 4.0 is this stew naturally no
anymore lovely and we delete it then again.
And every developer who has a problem with it can Mozilla explain:
Nothing can be useful enough that restart is justifiable and the
competition has as well only limited theme and extensions systems.
Cheers
Pardal Freudenthal
> Themes can attach xbl bindings, from where they can do anything.
javascript allowed.
Dao
> On Jan 7, 1:22 pm, Dao <d...@design-noir.de> wrote:
>> Themes can attach xbl bindings, from where they can do anything.
> javascript allowed.
That's news to me. In that case, I second Mook's question. Is there
another way for themes to do scripting, an official one or a hack?
Benjamin Smedberg
A hack, yes. I'd prefer not to go into details here, but suffice it to say
that a combination of data:, javascript:, themes and XBL can cause themes to
execute arbitrary script, and so we decided that rather than trying to patch
all the possible holes we would just give up on the pretense that themes
can't execute script.
--BDS
Mike Shaver
<benj...@smedbergs.us> wrote:
> A hack, yes. I'd prefer not to go into details here, but suffice it to say
> that a combination of data:, javascript:, themes and XBL can cause themes to
> execute arbitrary script, and so we decided that rather than trying to patch
> all the possible holes we would just give up on the pretense that themes
> can't execute script.
You refer here to skin/ code, right -- did we disable themes packaging
script and overlays that way as well? Can't remember now how far we
got along that whack-a-mole.
Mike
Boris Zbarsky
> A hack, yes. I'd prefer not to go into details here, but suffice it to
> say that a combination of data:, javascript:, themes and XBL can cause
> themes to execute arbitrary script, and so we decided that rather than
> trying to patch all the possible holes we would just give up on the
> pretense that themes can't execute script.
Just to be clear, this was done after it was discovered that trying to
block all methods of executing script would also break various other
things that themes were doing....
-Boris
Benjamin Smedberg
> You refer here to skin/ code, right -- did we disable themes packaging
> script and overlays that way as well? Can't remember now how far we
> got along that whack-a-mole.
Yes, themes are only allowed to package chrome://foo/skin/, never */locale/
or */content/.
--BDS
Mike Shaver
And their components/ directory isn't traversed? OK.
Mike
Pardal Freudenthal
> The great advantage from themes against extensions is the way they
> register the skin providers and how they are selected. The skin
> providers brought from themes substitute the originals. This is a
> great feature, since if the user has installed a crap theme, he/she
> must only to select another theme and will have no annoying side
> effects.
>
More: http://www.tudobom.de/articles/yatt/
and: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=7469305#p7469305
Philip Chee
I notice that if I set the |extensions.dss.enabled| pref to true
(dynamic skin switching) SeaMonkey 2.0 will switch skin without
restarting. This seems to be toolkit functionality so it should also
work in Firefox 3.5.
Philip Chee
There might have been some obscure loopholes in the past but Mossop and
others appear to have been rather diligent in closing all of them down.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]This is just a hobby. Perfection is not required. Fun is.
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Robert Strong
> On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:46:42 +0100, Dao wrote:
>
>> On 07.01.2010 15:26, Pardal Freudenthal wrote:
>>
>>> On Jan 7, 1:22 pm, Dao<d...@design-noir.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Themes can attach xbl bindings, from where they can do anything.
>>>>
>>> D�o, XBL Bindidngs allowed for themes are very, very limited. No
>>> javascript allowed.
>>>
>> That's news to me. In that case, I second Mook's question. Is there
>> another way for themes to do scripting, an official one or a hack?
>>
> There might have been some obscure loopholes in the past but Mossop and
> others appear to have been rather diligent in closing all of them down.
>
this is confirmed by bsmedberg's reply as well.
Robert
Benjamin Smedberg
> I notice that if I set the |extensions.dss.enabled| pref to true
> (dynamic skin switching) SeaMonkey 2.0 will switch skin without
> restarting. This seems to be toolkit functionality so it should also
> work in Firefox 3.5.
This is true, but if you do it much you'll find that it leaves turds on skin
switch fairly regularly: among other things, fastload often ends up with
mixed pieces of the old and new skin, various caches like imglib aren't
completely cleared, and the style system itself doesn't always invalidate
layout frames which may be affected by dynamic skin switching (it also
causes tons of assertions in debug builds). It's an unknown but non-trivial
amount of work to actually make DSS work correctly.
--BDS
Asa Dotzler
>> what is so horrible about moving all of your work over to
>> the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
>> light-weight themes which don't require a restart, don't have serious
>> security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
>
> By the way,
> to prevent a similar discussion some months later.
>
> With the same arguments can you remove the current extensions out of the
> extention panel and replace it then with the new Jetpack stuff.
I'd certainly vote for that.
- A
Asa Dotzler
> Because as far as the user is concerned it is a theme and not an
> extension and the user doesn't care about these differences.
>
> Robert
Yeah, maybe for the relatively small number of theme users we have
today. What percentage are they of the 1.5 billion people online or the
large portion of that group that would appreciate easy customizations?
Or even of the 350 million Firefox users and the several hundred million
more we'll have over the next couple of years?
If we're only designing for the users we have today, then I think we're
doomed. I don't think that's what you're suggesting, but it seems like
an almost de facto theme coming from the supporters of heavy weight themes.
- A
Asa Dotzler
> On Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:39:27 -0800, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>
>> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
>> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
>
> I hope you aren't serious about this question!
I'm very serious.
>
>> If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
>> ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications, and
>> can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
>> unusable) then what is so horrible about moving all of your work over to
>> the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
>> light-weight themes which don't require a restart, don't have serious
>> security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
>>
>> What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
>> extensions world?
>
> You do know that something like this was tried on AMO before right? And
> it was universally unpopular with the *end users*. What makes you think
> it would be any more popular the second time around?
>
Again, I think you and others here are arguing about what our current
users think. Current users may indeed be averse to change. That's a
pretty common phenomenon. But we're not building a browser exclusively
for our current users (or our current HWT users). The Web is 4-5 times
larger than all Firefox users today. The universe of people who would
appreciate more and easier customization of their browser is orders of
magnitude larger than the current set of heavy weight theme users.
It seems to me like you're arguing that we should cater to the current
uses and use cases rather than trying to make the Web better for the 75%
who haven't yet moved to a better browser or the probably 80-90% who
don't or won't use customizations even thought they might find them
extremely valuable.
I reject the idea that we cannot change because our current user base
doesn't want us to change. If we do not change, we will die. It's that
simple. We must be looking to future users at least as much as we cater
to existing users.
- A
Asa Dotzler
>
>> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
>> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
>
> A theme change the style and an extention add features.
You're wrong. There are plenty of extensions that change the style of
the browser.
>> If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
>> ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications,
>
> Do you have an example that a theme ever caused a serious security
> implications? And themes have many limitations, because of security
> questions.
> A Personas image can theoretical import a virus - as well a serious
> security implications, or?
Heavy weight themes are less secure than Personas. If you want to argue
with the people that designed these systems and know that HWTs are less
secure, feel free to do it. But it doesn't make your arguments more
credible.
> and
>> can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
>> unusable) then what is so horrible about moving all of your work over to
>> the extensions panel and letting the theme panel be exclusively used for
>> light-weight themes
>
> Themes change the style - Personas change the style.
> It makes in a horrible kind of way no sense to treat similar stuff
> different ;-)
Extensions can change the style too. By your logic, they should all be
treated the same.
> which don't require a restart, don't have serious
>> security implications and cannot make the browser completely unusable?
>
> You have not tried many Personas, or?
> There are many, which makes the browser completely unusable ;-) (hard to
> read text for example - even serious usability problems)
I have, and none that I've used made the browser unusable. Personas can
make the browser less usable, but they cannot eliminate the default
controls the way a HWT can. If you're truly arguing that Themes cannot
do more than Personas, then most of what you've said in this thread is
mooted.
>> What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
>> extensions world?
>
> And what change it?
> A new extention feature works with all the other installed themes and
> extentions. But a theme should not affect another theme, or you could
> install only one.
So Extensions are even more powerful tools to adjust the look and feel
of the browser and can be used together where HWT are less capable and
cannot be used together? That sounds like a great argument for doing
themes as extensions. It allows a much wider variety of possible
combinations for serious and heavy customization.
- A
Asa Dotzler
> On 07/01/2010 00:39, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>>
>> What is the compelling explanation from heavy-weight theme authors here
>> why a heavy-weight theme is not just another extension.
>>
>> If heavy-weight themes are just like extensions in all the important
>> ways, (require a restart, have more serious security implications, and
>> can make major changes to the browser up to and including making it
>> unusable)
>
> The theme authors didn't and don't actually want most of that, as far as
> I know.
They don't have to use what they don't want. But there's even more
opportunity if they do want it.
> The additional security implications and the restart are the
> result of Mozilla's design decisions (and your failure to fix bugs that
> would eliminate them).
The people who could fix those bugs are busy catering to our 350 million
users rather than the tiny fraction using heavy weight themes with their
security implications and need for restarts. I think that's absolutely
the right priority.
>> What is the objection to heavy-weight themes just being merged with the
>> extensions world?
>
> Themes are for changing the appearance of the browser, extensions are
> for adding extra functionality.
This is just plain wrong. Extensions can change the appearance of the
browser without adding any extra functionality. I've used plenty of them
that do exactly that.
- A
Asa Dotzler
That's a real shame and one that's easily corrected by treating heavy
weight themes as extensions. I'd love the idea of being able to mix and
match all of my heavy weight customizations.
- A
Aronnax
I choose apparently the wrong title for this thread ;-)
Powerful themes and extensions system discrimination in favor of limited
systems without restarts - would be a better choice.
To tell the truth have i not much experience with Jetpack, but when
Jetpack is matchable limited as Persoans compared to real themes and
Mozilla treated the extension developer in a similar kind of way as now
the themer. Then has Mozilla and many of the leading developer really
big problem with the countless extremely pitted extensions developer.
But thankfully can they still gain some practice with the few poor
themer, how to deal with it ;-)
By the way,
when the old systems is so wrong.
Why should someone still use Firefox , or should build themes and
extensions for this browser?
Chrome has for example already now such limited systems without restarts.
Cheers
Pardal Freudenthal
> Yeah, maybe for the relatively small number of theme users we have
> today. What percentage are they of the 1.5 billion people online or the
> large portion of that group that would appreciate easy customizations?
> Or even of the 350 million Firefox users and the several hundred million
> more we'll have over the next couple of years?
>
I suppose your statement is based on AMO statistics.
There are two bugs concerning those statistics:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384084
and:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402796
At this last one there are reports about the counter not showing the
real numbers.
Aronnax
Great idea ;-)
You have then for example ten heavy-weight-extention-themes and every
one change the style of the buttons and backgrounds and so on .. and on
the the same time naturally. For sure much better than now ;-)
Ten or more are always better than one ;-) And everything works then
like a miracle together - surely ;-D
Cheers
Aronnax
Hi,
you add many other new comments here all over and one thing is now
obviously:
You have not really well-thought-out, what a theme system needs.
What you describe is for sure useable - it is nonsense.
On the other hand,
If we do not change, we will die ... and so on
or Personas is a great fun for many new user ... and so on
Yes - naturally ;-)
But together with real themes even much more ;-)
Aronnax
> Yeah, maybe for the relatively small number of theme users we have
> today.
As we know, use only 30% Firefox extentions. When you have more
informations about the themes user - please enlighten the rest of us ;-)
Dave Townsend
Actually neither of these, we can see how many users have themes
installed and even how many users are using a non-default theme based on
the update pings. The numbers as of September of last year are that
around 7% (6.7 million) of Firefox users were using a non-default theme.
Of course it is difficult to extrapolate up from that number to the 1.5
billion of people online that Asa refers to. My expectation would be
that the percentage would drop as we gain more and more less technical
users.
Dao
>> The additional security implications and the restart are the
>> result of Mozilla's design decisions (and your failure to fix bugs that
>> would eliminate them).
>
> The people who could fix those bugs are busy catering to our 350 million
> users rather than the tiny fraction using heavy weight themes with their
> security implications and need for restarts. I think that's absolutely
> the right priority.
You're saying that we won't fix the restart issue, because only a small
fraction of users use these themes, because of the need for restarts?
Dao
You can mix any number of extensions with a theme. Mixing themes doesn't
make any sense, as they all implement the same thing (browser.css,
Toolbar.png and so on).
Alfred Kayser
theme system with a smaller, easier, simpler, safer, etc system. But, it
is better to introduce this as a new system (with the Personas name),
than redirecting from themes to persones (like the 'Get Themes' link
pointing to the 'Personas' page).
Why not just introduce the 'Personas' as the new thing, with all the new
benefits, under its own very name,
and keeping 'Themes' as the existing thing?
Themes as they currently are, are a known thing in the mozilla
community for over ten years, with about 100 million users, with a large
group very active contributors (like myself), and seeing this
discussion, feeling very strong about losing the 'old' theme thing.
The very core of this discussion is the 'hijacking' of the Theme to
Personas.
Note, I do like Personas very much, but I also like the Theme thing very
much, and would want to keep both!
It is all about choice.
Greetings, Alfred
O
Alfred Kayser
theme system with a smaller, easier, simpler, safer, etc system. But, it
is better to introduce this as a new system (with the Personas name),
than redirecting from themes to persones (like the 'Get Themes' link
pointing to the 'Personas' page).
Why not just introduce the 'Personas' as the new thing, with all the new
benefits, under its own very name,
and keeping 'Themes' as the existing thing?
Themes as they currently are, are a known thing in the mozilla
community for over ten years, with about 100 million users, with a large
group very active contributors (like myself), and seeing this
discussion, feeling very strong about losing the 'old' theme thing.
The very core of this discussion is the 'hijacking' of the Theme to
Personas.
Note, I do like Personas very much, but I also like the Theme thing very
much, and would want to keep both!
It is all about choice, so have a "Personas' panel, a 'Themes' panel, a
'JetPack' panel, etc.,
instead of locking out options...
Robert Kaiser
WTF? How should idfferent themes apply on top of each other? I think
you're thinking in some way that I can hardly follow. But then, many of
the Firefox folks seem to follow crooked thinking patterns more and
more. I wonder if a mind disease or a jump in evolution is going on
there - or if I'm getting senile. :P
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> Extensions can change the style too. By your logic, they should all be
> treated the same.
Themes are very limited in what they can do, they cannot script (there
might be ugly holes for it, but then I hope all AMO reviewers as well as
the new AMO security check scripts block all those attempts), they
cannot create new functionality, they just change the style.
Just like language packs only can change the strings, but not functionality.
Only real extensions can mess with anything (and even there we disallow
a number of things through AMO reviews).
Robert Kaiser
Benjamin Smedberg
> the new AMO security check scripts block all those attempts), they
> cannot create new functionality, they just change the style.
Yes, but "changing the style" means that full themes can hide arbitrary UI
elements (such as the "Get More Themes" items discussed here!) which are an
essential part of the product.
> Just like language packs only can change the strings, but not
> functionality.
Language packs can execute arbitrary script through their DTDs.
Both of these things could possibly be checked/disallowed during the review
process, but I really doubt we have these sorts of checks currently: I
haven't heard of them!
--BDS
Benjamin Smedberg
> You're saying that we won't fix the restart issue, because only a small
> fraction of users use these themes, because of the need for restarts?
Yes. I personally think we should move away from heavyweight themes
entirely, for the same reason that we should transition away from
heavyweight extensions to jetpacks: both heavyweight themes and heavyweight
extensions depend on particulars of the XUL layout for a particular release,
and allowing them significantly inhibits Firefox's ability to do smaller
release cycles without breaking extension/theme compatibility.
But before we actually accomplish that, we need to make sure that jetpack
and personas are sufficiently powerful that they can solve most users desires.
--BDS
John J. Barton
> On 1/8/10 4:28 AM, Dao wrote:
>
>> You're saying that we won't fix the restart issue, because only a small
>> fraction of users use these themes, because of the need for restarts?
>
> Yes. I personally think we should move away from heavyweight themes
> entirely, for the same reason that we should transition away from
> heavyweight extensions to jetpacks: both heavyweight themes and
> heavyweight extensions depend on particulars of the XUL layout for a
> particular release, and allowing them significantly inhibits Firefox's
> ability to do smaller release cycles without breaking extension/theme
> compatibility.
Is this really the primary reason Firefox cannot shorten its release
cycle? As a developer of a couple of heavyweight extensions I cannot
recall ever having a problem with XUL layout changes.
> But before we actually accomplish that, we need to make sure that
> jetpack and personas are sufficiently powerful that they can solve most
> users desires.
From what is discussed in public the current direction of jetpack does
not seem to head to more power. Instead the focus seems to be on compact
Javascript, inventive ideas expressed in 50 lines.
Personas and jetpacks are great! But rather than warping them towards
the space served by themes and extensions, we should diverge these
frameworks. We should improve platform support for the themes and
extensions. Cater to those with the most development backing. Attempt to
aggregate these development teams to create more impact. Direct the
smaller efforts towards personas and jetpacks.
jjb
Aronnax
>
> But before we actually accomplish that, we need to make sure that
> jetpack and personas are sufficiently powerful that they can solve most
> users desires.
Personas will never be powerful. It was never intended to make it
powerful. To create a Personas is it for example not necessary (or
possibel) to write only one line of code.
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_thread/thread/7ea89af8e3e8dc64#
Aronnax
>
> Yes, but "changing the style" means that full themes can hide arbitrary
> UI elements (such as the "Get More Themes" items discussed here!) which
> are an essential part of the product.
>
;-) Yes, with themes is it as well possible to fix some mistakes.
That is one of the reasons, why some create themes.
Some Chrome user for example would be happy, when then could do the
same, but they can't do it.
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12035
Cheers
Robert Kaiser
> On 1/8/10 8:13 AM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>
>> the new AMO security check scripts block all those attempts), they
>> cannot create new functionality, they just change the style.
>
> Yes, but "changing the style" means that full themes can hide arbitrary
> UI elements (such as the "Get More Themes" items discussed here!) which
> are an essential part of the product.
Right, though I'm not convinced that personas can't do that (I have
never used personas myself and don't really see a need for that, I
heavily use a very uncommon "heavy" theme though).
>> Just like language packs only can change the strings, but not
>> functionality.
>
> Language packs can execute arbitrary script through their DTDs.
One reason more to move to L20n and ditch our misuse of DTDs - and do
some automated checks on AMO in the mean time.
> Both of these things could possibly be checked/disallowed during the
> review process, but I really doubt we have these sorts of checks
> currently: I haven't heard of them!
We have the security check infrastrcture along with a number of
automated tests on AMO, I'm not sure if those checks specifically are up
there - but that sounds like something to fix there, and not like an
argument for removing any UI distinction between full-blown extensions,
themes, and langpacks.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> I personally think we should move away from heavyweight themes
> entirely, for the same reason that we should transition away from
> heavyweight extensions to jetpacks
Doing that exclusively would cripple the Mozilla platform enough that
its heavy weight in terms of code will pull it to the ground, while
lighter frameworks such as Chromium will win.
Only our completely cross-platform capability of full extensions is what
gives us a technological advantage to those alternatives.
Robert Kaiser
Asa Dotzler
Because that's the way heavy weight themes are implemented today. I'd
love, for example, to be able to get icons from one theme and toolbar
treatments from another theme. Or to get font treatments from one theme
and icons from another theme. Or to get menu icons from one theme and
toolbar icons from another. The possibilities are almost infinite.
I could imagine an extension "options" dialog that said "use this
theme's ()icons ()toolbar styles ()label fonts ()tab styles" etc etc
etc. Can't do that with today's themes but could probably easily do it
with today's extensions (perhaps even JetPacks).
- A
Aronnax
>
> Because that's the way heavy weight themes are implemented today. I'd
> love, for example, to be able to get icons from one theme and toolbar
> treatments from another theme. Or to get font treatments from one theme
> and icons from another theme. Or to get menu icons from one theme and
> toolbar icons from another. The possibilities are almost infinite.
>
> I could imagine an extension "options" dialog that said "use this
> theme's ()icons ()toolbar styles ()label fonts ()tab styles" etc etc
> etc. Can't do that with today's themes but could probably easily do it
> with today's extensions (perhaps even JetPacks).
>
> - A
Thanks for this new unrealistic suggestion ;-)
Foxdie is for example something near it. http://www.foxdie.us/
He needed many hundreds of hours to make it useable only with a few
icons sets, backgrounds and some other options until it works flawlessly
together.
I want for example a theme system, which make it possible to polish
everything - to balanced everything. (like the current system)
Your intended quick and dirty mix everything with everything machine is
the opposite from it and the opposite from good design.
It is, by the way, already now not a problem for Firefox user to find
enough unpolished quick and dirty themes.
Cheers
Pardal Freudenthal
> Because that's the way heavy weight themes are implemented today. I'd
> love, for example, to be able to get icons from one theme and toolbar
> treatments from another theme. Or to get font treatments from one theme
> and icons from another theme. Or to get menu icons from one theme and
> toolbar icons from another. The possibilities are almost infinite.
>
> I could imagine an extension "options" dialog that said "use this
> theme's ()icons ()toolbar styles ()label fonts ()tab styles" etc etc
> etc. Can't do that with today's themes but could probably easily do it
> with today's extensions (perhaps even JetPacks).
>
> - A
Aha, a kind of "Frankenstein's interface"?
But how could an extension be able to choose a "theme's icons, -
toolbar styles, -label fonts, etc." if there are no themes?
I could imagine a theme with an option dialog with several choices of
icons, toolbar styles, etc.; everything trimmed out to work the best
together.
mcdavis941
> Why not just introduce the 'Personas' as the new thing, with all the new
> benefits, under its own very name,
> and keeping 'Themes' as the existing thing?
> Themes as they currently are, are a known thing in the mozilla
> community for over ten years, with about 100 million users, with a large
> group very active contributors (like myself), and seeing this
> discussion, feeling very strong about losing the 'old' theme thing.
I agree with Alfred's comment, especially as regards terminology.
Half the time now, when I see the word theme, I can't be sure what
people are talking about. Traditional theme? Persona as add-on? Built-
in Personas in 3.6? Trying to use a persona and a traditional theme
at the same time? Simple communication has become harder.
Also, the term "heavy-weight" seems needlessly pejorative. "Heavy-
weight" is a good thing for main battle tanks and orbital battle
stations, but not so much for software. We could just as easily call
them "fully-functional" themes and extensions, since they can do more
than their proposed alternatives. (Or, in light of Rob Strong's
comment about scripts and themes, maybe that would be "fully armed and
operational"[1].) "Traditional theme" seems neutral and descriptive.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_JyoK8RVPE#t=4m36s ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMd93aCvd0
Dao
> Also, the term "heavy-weight" seems needlessly pejorative.
It has been introduced by theme authors.
Mandy
Actually, it was introduced by Sharebird to describe a much more easy
method of making simple traditional themes to help new authors like me
-
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1472225
http://www.tudobom.de/articles/yatt/#light_weight
Theme authors have never called personas anything other than Personas.
Pardal Freudenthal
>
> Actually, it was introduced by Sharebird to describe a much more easy
> method of making simple traditional themes to help new authors like me
> -
>
>
> Theme authors have never called personas anything other than Personas.
The first time I've used this was in the context of this thread:
Starting to think about Firefox.next - light weight themes .. old-
style themes - http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_thread/thread/7ea89af8e3e8dc64/67425e8f8a8aeff8
(Actually, before this, we've started to discuss this issue at this
thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_thread/thread/cba189f02aa448d8)
My opinion about these words was:
"...More than this: it is called "lightweight", "new-style" Themes in
opposite to the third-party themes, the "heavyweight", "old-style"
Themes (give the words "light" and "new" the impression to be better
then "heavy" or "old"?)"
Mike Connor
being cited, I feel I should reinforce some things, but I wanted to
make sure this went wider than this thread, so I've posted to my blog
instead.
http://steelgryphon.com/blog/2010/01/09/on-personas-and-themes/
This thread is really past a productive and useful discussion. I
would encourage everyone reading this to take a few days to consider
what our goals are with these changes, and why that matters to the
larger product roadmap, and how your own desired outcomes can fit with
and ideally support those larger goals. I'd be happy to talk to
people privately via email/IRC, if that's something people would
consider useful.
-- Mike
mcdavis941
Yep, you're right. That wasn't meant to be blamatory. I simply saw
people trying out different terms without coming to agreement and
wanted to suggest one I hadn't seen used yet, and that came without a
connotation.
> We could just as easily call
> them "fully-functional" themes and extensions
That was supposed to be another example of an _unfair_
characterization arising from choice of words, this time in a
different direction. It very specifically was not a comment about
technology -- just terminology.
Mike Beltzner
> Since my original uplift doc (written almost a year ago now!) keeps being cited, I feel I should reinforce some things, but I wanted to make sure this went wider than this thread, so I've posted to my blog instead.
>
> http://steelgryphon.com/blog/2010/01/09/on-personas-and-themes/
Your blog post states things a little more strongly than I believe is warranted, and I think mixes aspiration with implication in dangerous ways. This has caused a little consternation which, sadly, will I fear work against your desired outcome. As someone who's a touch more intimately familiar with upcoming Firefox product releases, schedules and development goals, I hope to clarify the situation:
The JetPack project is very interesting to Firefox, and we are participating (as should all of you, as interested consumers and stakeholders!) in its development both in terms of building the platform and setting requirements on that platform. It is a stated goal of the Firefox team to do what we can to make it easy to install, uninstall and manage JetPacks alongside other customizations such as Add-Ons, Plugins, Search Providers, Themes, and Personas.
We also plan on continuing to dedicate time to working with the JetPack drivers to help them shake out requirements based on existing Add-Ons and what we know the most common compatibility "gotchas" are. It's my sincere hope that mconnor's "call to arms" will be heeded and that everyone contributes to that effort. JetPack is being built specifically for the purpose of making it easier to write customizations for Firefox, so please, tell us what you find difficult and help us understand what your requirements are.
Many people have interpreted mconnor's post to mean that the Firefox product team has already made a strategic decision to remove support for the existing extensibility platform and technology in the near future: this is not the case. What mconnor wrote was that from a strategic perspective, we will be focusing on building an effective and viable alternative platform in conjunction with our extension development community in order to address specific limitations of the current system. I do not see this as a zero sum game, although as a separate but related issue, some specific aspects of the current model may need to be modified for security and performance reasons (I'm referring to binary components, which will likely need to migrate to js-ctypes.)
I hope this clarifies things, somewhat.
cheers,
mike
Philip Chee
> Many people have interpreted mconnor's post to mean that the Firefox
> product team has already made a strategic decision to remove support
> for the existing extensibility platform and technology in the near
> future: this is not the case. What mconnor wrote was that from a
> strategic perspective, we will be focusing on building an effective
> and viable alternative platform in conjunction with our extension
> development community in order to address specific limitations of the
> current system. I do not see this as a zero sum game, although as a
I agree, this isn't and shouldn't be a zero sum game and I have made a
modest proposal to show how this can be managed to become a win-win
situation. Unfortunately Mike Connor has made it crystal clear that he
considers this a zero sum game.
Quote:
"Deprecating the old systems in favour of the new systems is a required
part of the strategic plan, because it is not enough to simply build a
better system, we must migrate our users and our developer ecosystem to
that system to reap the benefits."
Now focusing on the new is one thing. However actively "deprecating the
old systems" and forcing developers on to the new system sounds actively
hostile to me. Of course English is not my native language and it is
entirely possible that I have completely misunderstood mconnors blog
post, as has happened more times in that past than I care to admit.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]I can resist everything except temptation.
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Mike Beltzner
> I agree, this isn't and shouldn't be a zero sum game and I have made a
> modest proposal to show how this can be managed to become a win-win
> situation. Unfortunately Mike Connor has made it crystal clear that he
> considers this a zero sum game.
I'm sure others - many of whom have posted to this thread - agree with mconnor that these are zero sum decisions, which may be why several people are upset that we're including support for Personas by default in Firefox 3.6 - it would mean removing something else to get it. I have already stated at least twice in this thread that adding support for these new technologies does not come at the cost of removing support for the existing technologies, and that we continue to carry "completely customizable and extendible" as a requirement of the Firefox product.
Yes, there are differing opinions, even amongst those who work for Mozilla Corporation, and even between myself and Mike Connor. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's watched the development of Firefox; Connor and I disagree quite frequently. What I agree with is that the Personas and JetPack projects are promising ways of solving 80% of the difficulties we are experiencing with the development of and deployment of software that extends Firefox's capabilities, and that it is worth investing time and effort into them in order to address the needs of our existing *and future potential* Add-On developers.
cheers,
mike