Disabling Support for Skins (Themes) on BMO on May 15

[Emma Humphries]

On May 15th we will disable the preference enabling selecting an
alternate theme on bugzilla.mozilla.org and all users will switch to
the default skin.

We are doing this because the current theming system is not an
additive layer on the default skin. There's significant differences in
skins at the structural level and that adds time to UI work. With a
limited team we need to limit the scope of work when touching the UI.

This is also consistent with upstream Bugzilla which announced that
they will be removing theme support.

If you want to alter the bugzilla.mozilla.org theme, we recommend
using an add-on like Stylish[1].

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/stylish/

Thanks,

-- Emma, for the BMO team

[Emma Humphries]

On May 15th we will disable the preference enabling selecting an
alternate theme on bugzilla.mozilla.org and all users will switch to
the default skin.

We are doing this because the current theming system is not an
additive layer on the default skin. There's significant differences in
skins at the structural level and that adds time to UI work. With a
limited team we need to limit the scope of work when touching the UI.

*This is consistent with Red Hat's Bugzilla instance.*

[hba...@mozilla.com]

On Wednesday, May 3, 2017 at 4:13:51 AM UTC+2, Emma Humphries wrote:
> If you want to alter the bugzilla.mozilla.org theme, we recommend
> using an add-on like Stylish[1].
>
> 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/stylish/

The addon is apparently broken with at least Nightly. And it will be disabled in two releases anyway (57) - now marked as a "legacy" addon.

I really want to restyle since I find the "default" theme coloring horrible.

So thanks, but this doesn't help at all and makes me very sad...

[Karl Tomlinson]

On Tue, 2 May 2017 19:13:02 -0700, Emma Humphries wrote:

> On May 15th we will disable the preference enabling selecting an
> alternate theme on bugzilla.mozilla.org and all users will switch to
> the default skin.

For those that prefer sharp well-hinted fonts, the simple solution with
gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled;false
has some problems:
1. PDF.js for example depends on downloaded fonts for document fonts.
2. Although system fonts are usually sufficient to read Latin
script in HTML, many sites assume downloaded fonts are
available for sets of icons for close buttons, dropdowns, etc.

FWIW changes in the pref are re-read on reload of the page.

A solution that only disables Fira Sans and is effective for
bugzilla.mozilla.org when using the Linux port of Firefox is

% mkdir -p ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d
% cat > ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/50-fira.conf <<EOF
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
<match target="scan">
<test name="file" compare="contains">
<string>DejaVuSans-as-Fira</string>
</test>
<edit name="fullname">
<string>Fira Sans</string>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="scan">
<test name="file" compare="contains">
<string>DejaVuSans-Bold-as-Fira</string>
</test>
<edit name="fullname">
<string>Fira Sans Bold</string>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>
EOF
% mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts
% ln -s /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf ~/.local/share/fonts/DejaVuSans-as-Fira.ttf
% ln -s /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf ~/.local/share/fonts/DejaVuSans-Bold-as-Fira.ttf
% fc-list : file fullname | grep Fira
/home/bzuser/.local/share/fonts/DejaVuSans-as-Fira.ttf: :fullname=Fira Sans
/home/bzuser/.local/share/fonts/DejaVuSans-Bold-as-Fira.ttf: :fullname=Fira Sans Bold

A restart of Firefox may be necessary to clear out its cached font info.

There is also some use of Fira Sans SemiBold in b.m.o, but this
appears to be limited. If you go back and edit 50-fira.conf after
adding the fonts, then the scan is not necessarily performed.
"fc-cache --force" makes this happen.

Assuming your favourite font has a suitable licence, the same could be
achieved on other platforms my copying the font and changing the fullname.

Thank you to the BMO team for making this possible through src: local().