Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Discuss application theming and theme development.
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LoudNoise
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by LoudNoise »

Someone allowed this to happen. Jorge, at least, gave a passive ok . If he is not paying attention he should clean up the mess.
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Frank Lion
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by Frank Lion »

LoudNoise wrote:Someone allowed this to happen. Jorge, at least, gave a passive ok . If he is not paying attention he should clean up the mess.

Mozilla have always had an innocent patsy around at AMO. In the old days, it was Mike Morgan.

Yeah, another innocent mistake and down will go the figures yet again. Hurrah for Mozilla, they win again.........or do they?

Without wanting to build up the importance of Firefox Themes, has it ever occurred to anyone that these are our sole advantage over the competition? Personas...whoosh..Chrome brings them in instantly. Extensions? ...whooosh..them as well. Duh, the competition cannot do proper themes because of their own restrictions on branding! That's why every single Chrome 'theme' has to use the Chrome toolbar button set, the Chrome scrollbars, the Chrome urlbar. Meanwhile, we can, and do, change every single part of the UI.

How do Mozilla react? Consistently hide and diminish the only advantage it has.

=D>
Last edited by Frank Lion on January 14th, 2013, 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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jivko
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by jivko »

David.Vincent wrote:I have lost over 1200 downloads per day. :cry:


Same here bro! :( Frank you're 100% correct.
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WaltS48
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by WaltS48 »

Maybe they are making it easier for future LibreOffice 4.0 users to customize it.

LibreOffice also gained support for Firefox themes (formerly Personas), which enables users to skin the toolbar in the application with themes available from Mozilla.

LibreOffice 4.0RC1 supports Firefox-compatible themes
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jorgev
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by jorgev »

The initial change was made on bug 822486. As you can see, it was quickly fixed and there wasn't any approval because it was assumed that this is what we wanted, based on old designs. It also doesn't help that we're making some changes in the Add-ons Team and there are some gaps to fill, specially between the AMO dev team and the rest of the Add-ons Team.

The main change we're making to improve the situation is to move up the Full Themes section in the Themes page, so that it is visible without scrolling. That's bug 829754 and it is already fixed. It should be pushed live on Thursday, but you can see it working on our staging site.

If you have other suggestions for improvement, specially in the Themes dropdown menu, we'll be happy to hear them. It's clear that things will always be messy when having two different add-on categories under the same name, but we don't want to damage full themes or bury you on the site.

A bit offtopic, we're also working with Ken to create a featured themes group so that we can bring back fresh featured themes to AMO.

Update: see also bug 830355 for a separate bug that we need to fix.
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David.Vincent
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by David.Vincent »

I think that this would be more well-balanced like this (photomontage) :

Image
Last edited by James on January 14th, 2013, 5:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Made as a thumbnail link as image was way too big for img tags.
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jivko
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by jivko »

I like the design. This way it is fare and users can decide what do use.
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LoudNoise
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by LoudNoise »

I won't count on it. From bug bug 822486 (see link above)

Chris Van Wiemeersch [:cvan] 2013-01-08 16:52:09 PST

https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni/commit/7bc7451

And I'll just sneak that one past everyone ...


Hmmm, didn't I read something about community recently?

On the plus side Mozilla, as usual,made a complete pigs breakfast out it.

Considering that true Themes cost nothing to Mozilla I wonder why they are so hot to get rid of ... err,de-emphasize ... them. There are at least 168 personas out there that are offered for the single purpose of putting superfish on unsuspecting users computers. Both we and sumo spend a fair of amount of time helping folks removed it. As far as I know there isn't a single theme that does that.
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Ken Saunders
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by Ken Saunders »

While it's true that this should never have happened, and really happened with no clear reasoning (lightweight themes taking the spotlight and pushing out full ones when there's room for both), at least the AMO team is responding with action and sincerity.

Jorge Villalobos
"If you have other suggestions for improvement, specially in the Themes dropdown menu, we'll be happy to hear them."

Kris Maglione
"I'm a member of the Mozilla add-ons team. I just want to say now that we're as unhappy about the decreased visibility of full themes as you are and are working to do something about it"

Amy Tsay
"we are moving the Full Themes promo box up to the spot below the main header on the Themes page... If you have other suggestions, we’d like to hear them"

In my experience and what I've witnessed for several years now, aside from Mozilla governance issues, individuals from the AMO team have responded better than any other Mozilla group and have done so pretty decently and have interacted very well and positively with add-on developers.
Am I defending them? In a sense, yes.
When there's a product feature change proposed, planned, etc, try getting anyone to change their minds about it despite what the majority of the feedback is from users and the community.
I believe that some things they have control over, others they don't and they answer to a higher authority.

With all of that being said, my support for theme developers has always been very strong for many reasons and I hope that this incident doesn't dissuade the few of you that are left and that you please, please continue your work.



Move Full Themes promo box above the fold
RESOLVED FIXED

AMO Blog
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2013/01 ... es-on-amo/
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by Ken Saunders »

LoudNoise wrote:made a complete pigs breakfast out it.


I've never heard this line. I love it. :D
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LoudNoise
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by LoudNoise »

This is amusing.
Justin Dolske https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2013/01 ... es-on-amo/

The current top persona (other than the Yahoo one) has 238,997 users. Personas are easy to make and enormously popular with users. Sorry that you feel they’re “crap”, but a _lot_ of users clearly disagree.


This is amusing. The asshole is using my research, which pointed out that Themes are more slightly popular then Personas, to promote Personas.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2640791&p=12594203&hilit=yahoo#p12594203
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LoudNoise
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by LoudNoise »

Just a note. I posted a tame version of the above at https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2013/01 ... es-on-amo/ I pointed out that that Firefox users seem to like both Themes and Personas.
It should be interesting to see if the post is approved.
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LoudNoise
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by LoudNoise »

jorgev wrote:The initial change was made on bug 822486. As you can see, it was quickly fixed and there wasn't any approval because it was assumed that this is what we wanted, based on old designs. It also doesn't help that we're making some changes in the Add-ons Team and there are some gaps to fill, specially between the AMO dev team and the rest of the Add-ons Team.

The main change we're making to improve the situation is to move up the Full Themes section in the Themes page, so that it is visible without scrolling. That's bug 829754 and it is already fixed. It should be pushed live on Thursday, but you can see it working on our staging site.

If you have other suggestions for improvement, specially in the Themes dropdown menu, we'll be happy to hear them. It's clear that things will always be messy when having two different add-on categories under the same name, but we don't want to damage full themes or bury you on the site.

A bit offtopic, we're also working with Ken to create a featured themes group so that we can bring back fresh featured themes to AMO.

Update: see also bug 830355 for a separate bug that we need to fix.


Jor is there any chance you can push this through? Frankly we have beaten up considerably more important folks then you at Mozilla.
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by jorgev »

LoudNoise wrote:Jor is there any chance you can push this through? Frankly we have beaten up considerably more important folks then you at Mozilla.

Push what through? If you mean the bug fixes, they should be pushed live tomorrow evening, which is the regular AMO push day.
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LoudNoise
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Re: Mozilla want to kill the themes?

Post by LoudNoise »

Since I had no clue that Thursday was the push day it looked like it wasn't being done. Let's face it, when the bug that caused the problem to happen to includes "And I'll just sneak that one past everyone ..." there isn't a good reason not to ride the folks who are promising to change it.
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