Mozilla want to kill the themes?

[LoudNoise]

Sekular-

Most of the themes getting downloads are compatible with the current version. They will always have a few problems simply because there no way to test against every set up.

[LoudNoise]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=831835

I noticed that this bug is still marked as New. Looks like this thread is going to last at least another week.

[jivko]

They've changed the title from full to complete themes. I'm sure this will "bring the weekly downloads back".

[David.Vincent]

I have seen this change too.
But no other change : I think that Mozilla team don't want to put back the "complete themes" at the same level than "themes".

[LoudNoise]

Yeah, it looks like AMO is going to give you folks a rename and an apple and "deemphasize" and kill themes. It would take about 40 minutes to cure this problem and then it is merely a wait for Thursday to post it. I suspect you folks have gotten what they are willing to give.

What strikes me is the basic dishonesty here about. When jorgev took me to task when I didn't know the installed stats were gibberish I was sent a link that would let me see the actual usage of a theme (it wasn't from jorgev). On a lark I decided to do this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... s/?last=90 . It returns "Oops! Not allowed."

Either AMO is keeping the usage stats of personas secret or they haven't a clue and are supporting personas because of some sort of finger touching exercise. I would like to believe the first (it would replace incompetence with an evil) but I will bet on the second.

[Ngamer01]

EDIT - Redacted upon request. Sorry, but I've been annoyed at the state of Mozilla today. I miss the days where devs actually embraced the core principle of Firefox, customization (including full/complete themes) instead of of treating it as a hazardous substance. -_-

[malliz]

Yeah, it looks like AMO is going to give you folks a rename and an apple and "deemphasize" and kill themes. It would take about 40 minutes to cure this problem and then it is merely a wait for Thursday to post it. I suspect you folks have gotten what they are willing to give.

What strikes me is the basic dishonesty here about. When jorgev took me to task when I didn't know the installed stats were gibberish I was sent a link that would let me see the actual usage of a theme (it wasn't from jorgev). On a lark I decided to do this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... s/?last=90 . It returns "Oops! Not allowed."

Either AMO is keeping the usage stats of personas secret or they haven't a clue and are supporting personas because of some sort of finger touching exercise. I would like to believe the first (it would replace incompetence with an evil) but I will bet on the second.

Yes I am definitely over the mushroom treatment.

[LoudNoise]

jorgev and Amy- Assuming you are not under orders to "deemphasize" Themes could you resolve this please. Two Thursdays have passed and this thread is becoming tiresome.

Either fix it or be honest enough to mark the bug "Wont Fix"

[jivko]

jorgev and Amy- Assuming you are not under orders to "deemphasize" Themes could you resolve this please. Two Thursdays have passed and this thread is becoming tiresome.

Either fix it or be honest enough to mark the bug "Wont Fix"

Forget it man. They won't change it. They won't listen and they won't add a similar design like the one used for personas. I like the suggestions given above. I also think there's no point to keep developing themes. Theme downloads have dropped by 2/3 and the top theme has 15 000 weekly downloads. Look what I had stored on my pc. It's an image from 2011 I think and back then themes were much more popular than they are now. I miss these days http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/8003/recorduh.png

[jorgev]

What strikes me is the basic dishonesty here about. When jorgev took me to task when I didn't know the installed stats were gibberish I was sent a link that would let me see the actual usage of a theme (it wasn't from jorgev). On a lark I decided to do this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... s/?last=90 . It returns "Oops! Not allowed."

Either AMO is keeping the usage stats of personas secret or they haven't a clue and are supporting personas because of some sort of finger touching exercise. I would like to believe the first (it would replace incompetence with an evil) but I will bet on the second.

Add-on stats are private by default, but developers can make them public if they choose to. So, for example, you can see the stats for Remote XUL Manager, but not the stats for Easy YouTube Video Downloader. Same goes for themes. Personas are different because I believe the update ping still points to getpersonas.com, so they are handled differently. If I try to look at the stats for a Persona, I see a message saying there is no data.

As for the bug fix being delayed, that tends to happen when there's design work at play. First the design needs to be approved, then implemented and finally pushed. We're trying to get this out as soon as possible. The change to Complete Themes (another oversight in the old design) was just an easy change which is why it was done first.

Also, I'd like to apologize for the sparse updates. I'm supposedly subscribed to this topic, but I often don't get the notifications.

[mcdavis]

I'm supposedly subscribed to this topic, but I often don't get the notifications.

It's the same for me; I miss a lot of good discussion from that. If I log in I'll get notifications for a day or so then they stop.

[LoudNoise]

jorgev-
I did a bit of surgery on your profile. Let me know if it works.

Basically, the forum software decides to forget a preference from time to time. The joy of a user database that has been around since 2002 and had a monstrous crash in 2007

[malliz]

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2650547
I wonder how many just don't bother to ask?

[Gingerbread Man]

Reminds me of this gem from April 27, 2011:

I'll re-iterate that I think 3rd party old-style themes are an outdated technology not worth advocating. It's absolutely fine for Firefox to use because it's our API for the front end look and fee. But we apparently have the resources that no old-style theme out there does because the overwhelming majority of old-style themes are simply incomplete or make a mess of critical UI elements. In addition, they have very little following among end users. Recognizing that, we've moved to a new and better system that's generated tons more user enthusiasm than old-style themes ever did and that was absolutely a great move. Now I just hope we drop old-style themes completely and relegate that kind of change to extensions.

We're making some adjustments that should be applied to the site soon.

Thank you in advance for any meaningful changes that might make their way to the theme landing page. With the page in its current state, full themes have been tucked under the rug: not even people who know about them are likely to find them now.

And that's not even considering the naming mess. Did you mean themes? It's that thing we used to call personas. No, not BrowserID, I mean those toolbar background things. Oh, you meant actual themes? We're calling them “full themes” now.

[LoudNoise]

The name mess is going to big. Someone is going to have to go through MDN and replace Themes with Complete Themes and Personas with Themes. If you do a google search the only hits you get for Firefox making Themes that have anything to do with Personas is how-to pages from Brandduhder which means the means that there is likely to be an increase in hijacked search questions.

If you call something "Themes" for more then 12 years and then suddenly decided to call them something else you are asking for the trouble you are going to get. For at least a few years someone who wants to make a nice skin is going to have to work through a vast collection of useless information (to them) if they do a search. They will also need to rename all the Persona utilities at AMO.

The same problem is likely to make BrowserID largely irrelevant. It is like Coca Cola decided to concoct a new fruit drink and name it Coke while renaming the legacy cola drink Sprite.

This is classic Mozilla. It would not have been all that difficult to find a new name for BrowserID (which I'll admit sucked). Instead they chose not to do so, will either spend a hell of alot of money (or not, I have never been impressed by their attention span) changing things to avoid confusing folks, confuse them anyway and piss off a number of folks both during the change and for quite a bit afterwards.

All of which would be fine if "Persona" was an extremely compelling name to describe BrowserID. It isn't, if anything it works better for the skins. secureid isn't trademarked (securid is so it might not be the best choice) and would be a considerably better description of the product.