Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Discuss application theming and theme development.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Only about half of it displays on my screen. Likely because: viewtopic.php?p=14406041#p14406041
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Frank Lion
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by Frank Lion »

patrickjdempsey wrote:Only about half of it displays on my screen. Likely because: viewtopic.php?p=14406041#p14406041
Yeah, noticed that thread yesterday. My days of helping ill-mannered, ill-tempered children are far behind me. No sense in making a rod for your own back, I reckon, you'll get damn all thanks for it.

What did the guy want anyway? Something like this? - http://postimg.org/image/3rdwfq1db/

That's one of a whole series I did, ages ago. Either for use in local profiles or, as here, where you can bring it up from anywhere in the world with a bookmarklet. - the bookmarklet's JS links to the original .css file on my site. This one is 400px wide with some fancy .css and I've increased the font size slightly to make it easier to read on a small device.

That one above is actually pretty easy. Watch this, one click, and we go from very wide page to this - http://postimg.org/image/f4bvrl48p/

However, the 100px wide one for mobile phones is perhaps pushing that too far, but still useful if ever you're out and get a raging hunger for a nice free range pig's head terrine - http://postimg.org/image/jkjc2y9nd/ :)

You see, much as Mozilla would like to think of Complete Theme writers as village idiots who paint pretty pictures and really should be more grateful for the crumbs that fall off Mozilla's table....the reality is not actually like that....is it? ;)

Somewhat amazingly, Mozilla does actually still have some very good people employed working for it, but they are few and far-between these days.
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mcdavis
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by mcdavis »

Anyone remember when and where Asa said "Can we kill themes yet?" I'm pretty sure it was 2007/2008 and IIRC it was responding to something Patrick said, probably in comments on some blog post. It's hazy, but it made a big impression.
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by malliz »

Hell I can remember when he wanted to kill phoenix. He was still very much the Mozilla Suit fanboy then the feed trough shifted and it was a different story his tiny little trotters danced to a different tune
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KilliK
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by KilliK »

They forgot to explain in their bug how removing Themes support will make the browser "great".

greatness awaits, indeed.
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

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mcdavis wrote:Anyone remember when and where Asa said "Can we kill themes yet?" I'm pretty sure it was 2007/2008 and IIRC it was responding to something Patrick said, probably in comments on some blog post. It's hazy, but it made a big impression.
That may have been the same "discussion" where he said "It's our API!", if that stimulates any memory cells.
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by Frank Lion »

mcdavis wrote:
mcdavis wrote:Anyone remember when and where Asa said "Can we kill themes yet?" I'm pretty sure it was 2007/2008 and IIRC it was responding to something Patrick said, probably in comments on some blog post. It's hazy, but it made a big impression.
That may have been the same "discussion" where he said "It's our API!", if that stimulates any memory cells.
Tried a Google search?
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by malliz »

mcdavis wrote:
mcdavis wrote:Anyone remember when and where Asa said "Can we kill themes yet?" I'm pretty sure it was 2007/2008 and IIRC it was responding to something Patrick said, probably in comments on some blog post. It's hazy, but it made a big impression.
That may have been the same "discussion" where he said "It's our API!", if that stimulates any memory cells.
Lets face it anyone who had anything to do with Dotzler when he was riding roughshod over bugzilla in the old days knows he's a nasty piece of work why not just man up and come out and say it?
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by mcdavis »

Frank Lion wrote:Tried a Google search?
Yes, but that didn't get me anything. Nothing in the first three pages at least. (Not DDG either.)
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by mcdavis »

malliz wrote:Lets face it anyone who had anything to do with Dotzler when he was riding roughshod over bugzilla in the old days knows he's a nasty piece of work why not just man up and come out and say it?
I'm really not trying to make a point, I just want to nail down the when and where and get a look at it again if it's still around. For the historical record.
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WaltS48
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by WaltS48 »

Anybody notice the white text as you scroll down the page of that site?

Problem with Firefox Beta or the site?
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by maxdamage »

Frank Lion wrote:
LIMPET235 wrote:That "new" Black Estate site is crap.

Who ever designed that should be buried alive..
Moral: Never let a geek relative design your website, unless your entire crop has just failed for the year then dig deep and shell out 20 bucks for a decent website template.

Incidentally, is it just me who thinks 'Free range pig's head terrine' is oddly out of place on a Drinks Menu?
Thanks for reminding me that I can use Firefox to test the webpages that I rebuild some of them being wiki pages offline to see if they load like they should.Even archived webpages but usually I can't find certain files as they weren't archived but the pages load okay otherwise in Firefox.What is really cool is that I can test the image changes to the theme so instead of a white background to the image being displayed the background is darker and each image loads in the center of the page from the top and sides which really got me happy!!!! :mrgreen: And I haven't even stuffed Firefox up yet. :D

That wine site is terrible!Someone should wine to them! ;)

[edit]Fixing up those .css files are a pain!
Last edited by maxdamage on November 20th, 2015, 8:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Frank Lion
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by Frank Lion »

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org ... hemes/5306
Benjamin Smedberg wrote: Part of the decision has already been made. We are moving Firefox addons (themes and extensions) away from a model where you can perform arbitrary styling or scripting of the browser chrome. This is an engineering-driven decision, and it's unavoidable and necessary for the long-term health of Firefox. Not only are we moving Firefox away from XUL, but we are likely going to make significant changes in the way the UI is structured. It is likely that some parts of the UI will be implemented using native widgets, and other parts will be implemented in HTML, but the exactly DOM structure may involve independent connected with well-defined API surfaces.

The current theming model where themes can make assumptions about the DOM structure, classes, IDs, and all that is not something we can support any more, and so we are clearly going to kill that. And we are going to do that quickly, so that we can proceed with the other necessary restructuring, including things like gofaster addons. I'd like to see this fully rolled out by Firefox 49 which ships the middle of next year.

What we haven't already decided is the feature set of the replacement system, or what the API might lookslike. Kev, as the Firefox product lead for addons (including themes), is charged with coming up with a plan. There are a bunch of tradeoffs to make and I don't envy his job!....
....especially as you intend to make blindsiding hit and run posts like this, if he looks like getting even close to a solution that normal people would find acceptable?

Something tells me that not all Mozilla people are exactly singing from the same hymn sheet here. :)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 222546#c50

No comment, :P
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by ehume »

mcdavis wrote:
Frank Lion wrote:Tried a Google search?
Yes, but that didn't get me anything. Nothing in the first three pages at least. (Not DDG either.)
Try searching on Yahoo! Sometimes they can find things Google can't, especially if it's in commentard space.
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Re: Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Yahoo is apparently currently using Google results. You'll have to actually go to Bing to see a different set of results.

As far as the mixed messages go Frank, it's pretty clear that the backpedalling in the OP of that discussion is nothing more than PR spin to try to do some damage control before this whole thing blows up in their face. Oh no, we aren't killing themes or extensions... just rebuilding them with new technologies! :roll: Yeah, if anyone believes Mozilla on this, I have some really cheap land I'd like to sell them in Marshall Islands. That fella begging for a statusbar needs a beach!
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