Should custom themes be able to opt in/out of personas?
Dave Townsend
with the default theme. There were a few reasons for this including the
facts that we could guarantee a good experience and exposing the UI for
persona selection was greatly simplified.
For the future we can consider allowing personas to apply with any theme
but we need to consider whether this will work with every theme or just
certain ones. Certainly it is possible for all developers of custom
themes to make their themes support personas, but for some it may not
make sense, like where a particular background is an intrinsic part of
the theme so we could see some themes actively block personas.
With that being the case should we still just allow applying personas on
any custom theme (which might be confusing to the user when nothing
happens or it doesn't work very well) or should we provide some way for
a theme to say that it is compatible with personas and assume all others
aren't (or vice versa)?
hiryu
Like I written before. Themes with Personas support could be marked as
Themes + or Themes enhanced or somewhat similiar.
OR
Below the add to firefox button put a info 'NOT compatible with
Personas" so users would be warned that adding personas will lead to
problems and only fault of them is user forcing personas to work with
3rd party themes.
Of course some adjustments for themes authors to detect and when is
incompatible block personas is also good thing but still users should
know if theme support personas or not.
Also I think all themes which supports personas could have another
option - choose personas for CURRENT theme which could be done within
theme (personas collection site could open automatically) or simply
after installing Theme+ remind users about personas mask on the down
bar so they can choose additional background image to completely
customise their Firefox appearance.
P.S - Dave I've forwarded you an e-mail which you was asking about -
check out mail :)
Regards
Axel Grude
Personas that might enforce transparency for those extensions that chose
to ignore its backgrounds, but I do think this should not be activated
by default.
My workaround for my extension (which uses a toolbar) was to add a
transparency option for the toolbar and translucency options to the
included buttons:
https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/attachment.cgi?id=6253
for the ones that don't play nice, simply provide that "enforce
transparency" option in Personas. Also, have a look at Windowblinds,
this has quite a few options to deal with inconsistencies in themes. I
do believe it should be persona's responsibility to provide these, and
not that of the extensions.
regards,
Axel
Justin Dolske
> With that being the case should we still just allow applying personas on
> any custom theme (which might be confusing to the user when nothing
> happens or it doesn't work very well) or should we provide some way for
> a theme to say that it is compatible with personas and assume all others
> aren't (or vice versa)?
One question here is how well this will work (and if it's even useful)
in the long term, assuming that future versions of Personas allow for
greater customization (eg, changing button icons).
Although I'd guess that even in the future there will still be lots of
simple Personas (backgrounds only, as they exist today), because that's
easy for anyone to create. Taking advantage of greater customization
generally takes more time and skill -- but perhaps the Labs folks will
surprise us!
[Note that AFAIK there's no plan to extend Personas like this, beyond a
few offhand "hey this might be neat" comments.]
Justin
John J Barton
> For 3.6 we made the decision that we would only allow personas to work
> with the default theme. There were a few reasons for this including the
> facts that we could guarantee a good experience and exposing the UI for
> persona selection was greatly simplified.
>
> For the future we can consider allowing personas to apply with any theme
> but we need to consider whether this will work with every theme or just
> certain ones.
As a consumer of personas and themes, the only logical solution here is
for personas to layer on top of themes, just like I can get the Sport
Body pack in Magnetic Gray or Electric Blue for my car. Anything less
is just a kludge.
jjb
Robert
Simple solution: Let authors of Themes opt-out, but by default, let
any Theme accept any Persona. It may not make to me sense to place
certain Personas over certain Themes, but then again, some people like
hot peppers dipped in chocolate, which I cannot stomach. To each his/
her own tastes. Experiment and decide what looks best to you, I say.
If a Theme does not accept Personas, the Personas options should all
be grayed-out for that Theme. Very simple. Maybe a pop-up reminder
saying "This Theme does not support Personas". Very simple. But maybe
not so simple to code for these two changes -- that's for the
developers to work out.
The Themes which are NOT compatible with Personas should be the ones
to inform users of their incompatibility. By default, most Themes
should be assumed to be compatible with Personas. Graying out the
Personas options would reinforce any incompatibility warnings. But
make sure the Themes are truly compatible with Personas. Anything is
better than allowing a conflict between Themes and Personas to result
in possible misconfigurations and loss of browser functionality.
Robert Kaiser
> With that being the case should we still just allow applying personas on
> any custom theme (which might be confusing to the user when nothing
> happens or it doesn't work very well) or should we provide some way for
> a theme to say that it is compatible with personas and assume all others
> aren't (or vice versa)?
I think I'd prefer an opt-in setting in install.rdf (though we might
switch it to an opt-out at some later point).
Robert Kaiser
Gervase Markham
> any custom theme (which might be confusing to the user when nothing
> happens or it doesn't work very well) or should we provide some way for
> a theme to say that it is compatible with personas and assume all others
> aren't (or vice versa)?
That seems like the best solution (with the default being "not compatible").
Gerv
Dao
support personas in order to enable richer customization, we could make
it a requirement, just like they are required to keep up with other
developments.
But maybe we should allow them to opt out for some time, as authors who
just took the default theme and replaced some icons might not have a
clue how to fix these themes... though, again, these authors will likely
have problems with other UI changes when we do major updates anyway.
Robert
Robert, I can see your point. How about this:
All Themes are considered by default to not support Personas. Theme
authors can opt-in. If a Theme does support Personas, the end-user
when going to that Theme's Download Page, will see, next to the
Download Button, a little Foxeh logo, indicating that Personas can be
applied on top of this Theme. If Foxeh isn't there, the Theme does not
support Personas. Plain and simple presentation.
In the browser, when a Theme does support Personas, a button will
appear to the right of the "Use This" Button, saying "Enable
Personas". When selected for a compatible Theme, this button allows
Personas to be used with this Theme. No need for additional clutter in
the Add-ons Menu. As with my earlier suggestion, when Personas is not
available for the current Theme, its options will be grayed-out.
Clear, simple and clean presentation.
Frank
> For the future we can consider allowing personas to apply with any theme
> but we need to consider whether this will work with every theme or just
> certain ones.
I think you make a good point. I can see the case where a native based
theme would benefit greatly from Personas, if the OS theme did not
enhance the overall look, but I see that as a matter for choice for
both user and such theme authors alike.
The position becomes slightly less clear when looking at themes that
are fully themed throughout and time has been spent on producing a
deliberate cohesive, unified look. Even then, some theme authors would
have no objection to that look changing, whilst others very probably
will.
I am advised, that they may even be ethical questions by some authors
regarding this, i.e. did they make Open Source images in their themes
just to have Sony's latest film ad plastered across them?
It should also be born in mind, that many theme authors have still not
actually tried out/used Personas and that this is early days for many
to decide either way.
On balance, Shaver's suggestion of -
> I would prefer a way for theme authors to opt in to persona support
> through an install.rdf/update.rdf item. It should probably be
> versioned.
...would seem to be the most sensible solution, showing consideration
to both users and to the volunteer theming community alike.
Certainly, I would have no objection to such a opt in/opt out
transition route.
Jabbermonkey
When you say "future" I hope you are talking about the near future.
You have a large number of people very unhappy with the results of the
decision to integrate Personas with Themes. Just take a look at the
comments https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/reviews/display/10900
Note that most of these comments are about the Personas functionality
in 3.6 and not just the add-on. It looks like the users have spoken
and are impatiently waiting for an answer.
Two complaints are prevalent:
1. Personas and Themes have suddenly become an either-or decision when
they weren't before.
2. Personas now require a restart
"suddenly without warning" taking away functionality detracts from the
positive upgrade experience and for some people this may even outweigh
any other advantages in the upgrade. It's evident that most users
complaining DO understand and appreciate the difference between
Personas and Themes and they feel, correctly IMO, that the upgrade has
removed functionality and caused extra steps where there were none
before. From what I've seen of this type of issue in the past it's
vital to find and deploy a quick fix to calm the users down and then
work at addressing the integration issues.
The right thing to do is to split Personas from Themes again for now,
going back to whatever restrictions did or didn't exist between the
add-on and Themes before and work out a more sensible strategy for
integrating them properly later. If changing Personas didn't require a
restart before then they shouldn't require one now, or ever.
I'd recommend that you either split Personas and Themes on the add-ons
or provide an option or config to disable the Personas in Themes
functionality and move it back to the Personas add-on like the
previous version. Whichever fixes the problem quickest and still
maintains flexibility around the long-term approach.
My key point is that this decision has degraded the user experience
and needs to be reversed quickly even while new approaches are under
consideration. It's been three weeks since these threads started and
almost five months since bug 520124 raised the issue. While I'm sure
the Mozilla Themes/Personas teams are working hard on this, there's no
obvious end in sight. The longer you wait to fix the perceived problem
the more annoyed users you will have on your hands.
You guys do a great job in general and Personas is a wonderful idea. I
hope you do get this sorted out quickly and keep Firefox out in front.
cheers,
Paul