Personas will be merged in Namoroka (Firefox 3.6)

[ehume]

I'm using 3.6etc. I'm not touching 3.7etc. until 3.6 is out: I have been burned in the past when the devs pulled things back after I had invested substntial time in making icons and code to support the new features. So now I don't work too far ahead.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Kuden]

Fixed: Bug 510909 - Integrate most recently used lightweight themes into the themes list in the add-ons manager

How to try:
1. about:config
2. contextual menu -> New -> String
3. New string value -> Enter the preference neme -> lightweightThemes.usedThemes
4. Enter string value -> lightweightThemes.usedThemes -> copy and paste this -> OK
5. Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
6. Enjoy

Screenshots

Lightweight themes UI landed by Mossop

[patrickjdempsey]

This actually makes quite a bit of sense. If Personas are to work exclusively with the default theme then they should be in that same list with other themes, making it obvious you have to choose between the two.

This statement from Dave Townsend about the possibility of Personas allowing compatibility with non-default themes in the future in that Bug, is rather interesting:

"The Personas extension may investigate and support this notion and it may come
to a later version of Firefox based on the results of that."

First of all, the "investigation" aspect is being done everyday by thousands of users. And secondly, when those users are pushed out of being to use the skin of their choice on top of the theme of their choice, the logical result will happen... which is that someone will take the existing stand-alone Personas code and fork it to allow for non-default themes.

Lastly, an anecdote... I've noticed that when I have Personas running my browser gets pretty slow, and especially if the internet connection is bad, there are hang-up issues when it tries to load skins. If Personas is automatically turned off when using a non-default theme, wouldn't that mean that compact (not bloated) non-default themes might end up being faster than the default theme?... even when a Persona isn't loaded, the Persona program will still be running. Or will people be able to opt-out of Personas all-together for a performance boost?

[Kuden]

Fixed: Bug 511771 - Web content needs a way to install lightweight themes
- test page

I seem to have completed a basic implement.

Lightweight browser themes on the Web by Dão Gottwald

[Kuden]

Fixed: Bug 518806 - make getpersonas.com deliver lightweight themes to Firefox 3.6

Nightly builds (trunk/Namoroka) can install the lightweight themes (Personas) from sm-personas01.mozilla.org.

Screenshots

Permission change

[Kuden]

Fixed: Bug 522571 - Link from themes manager to personas gallery
- screenshot

When "Get Themes" is clicked, Personas page is opened.
What we are making seems not to be Theme!

See also Bug 521363.

[Euchre]

If clicking the "Get Themes" button has been directed to a Personas only gallery page, that seems like a simple way of saying 'time for themes to die, get with personas'.

No thanks.

[Aronnax!]

If clicking the "Get Themes" button has been directed to a Personas only gallery page, that seems like a simple way of saying 'time for themes to die, get with personas'.

No thanks.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=522571#c50

[ehume]

Thanks for the link.

IT's actually a page that is primarily personas with a link to get to the
themese gallery

OK, we get it now. We're halfway out the door.

Well, my 3.6 themes are mostly done. I guess it'll be time to find a new hobby now.

[Euchre]

So I'm not sure if this is a better example of twisted bugfix logic, or marketing logic.

As an analogy, it's like talking to an auto dealer who offers the following reasoning:
"I like serving customers. When they walk on to the lot looking for a car, I'll sell them a truck because that's what I like and it's worth more to me."

With that kind of customer service, why would you bother going down to trade in your car? Might as well just go to the repair shop and try to fix up what you've got - it's as good a solution as getting something you don't really want anyway.

Hey look, with Aero now IE can change the color of it's chrome right along with the rest of the OS. With that, I don't even need to bother downloading Firefox to get that 'persona' thing.

[Aronnax!]

OK, we get it now. We're halfway out the door.

... I guess it'll be time to find a new hobby now.

Are we halfway out the door?

Maybe want someone add here something:
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla. ... b0d0e0bcd0

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla. ... f934adf804

[DonGato]

-_-;

Not much more to say...

[ehume]

For those of you who didn't follow the link, Mike Beltzer said this:

I'll try to answer your questions in order; you asked many.

We believe that Personas are a better user experience than XPI Themes.
While not as robust or powerful, they are quick and easy for users to
install, can be activated without requiring a restart, and are simple to
create. Although not very old, the Personas Add-on has been downloaded
by more than 10M people and is very popular.

For that reason, we will be promoting Personas as a new, different type
of theme that requires less commitment to install and use. They will be
displayed on the first run page for Firefox 3.6 users, and the link in
the Themes panel will go to the Personas gallery.

Personas are still themes, though, just a different type. We hope to add
more capability (ability to change the appearance of buttons, work with
other XPI themes, etc) over time. XPI themes will eventually be
installed like extensions, which better represents their capability and
function; an XPI theme can totally change the "face" of the browser, not
just the skin.

We do not have any plans to remove support for XPI themes. We expect
that most users will prefer to use Persona-style themes and will be
investing in making those the preferred mechanism for quickly changing
the appearance of the browser. However it would be foolish and against
our values to remove the capability to customize the full appearance of
the browser.

I hope this helps,
mike

Indeed it does help. I'm looking at a lot of work that I will not have to put in to make my themes compatible with Firefox 3.7 and 4.0. I'll check out my 3.6 themes, and I guess they'll be my last.

[patrickjdempsey]

Well if you follow the bugs listed on the "Firefox 3.6 theme changes" pages you might notice that an alarming about of time is being spent "fixing" Firefox to work properly with Personas. It's interesting... Mozilla will ignore problems in the basic UI like the scrollbars if they mostly effect themers, but they are going hog-wild tweaking the UI to work with Personas. If that alone doesn't show where they place their priorities, then I don't know what does. The fact that Personas can work without a restart and that you can use Stylish to change the UI in almost every way that a major theme does tells me that restarting to load themes is probably just a BS excuse. Just because nobody over at Mozilla thought it was a priority to figure out how to load a theme without a restart doesn't mean that themes are not still valid and besides... with faster restart times coming out of the new builds, does it really matter?

[aaron]

Wow