7 ms·

Worst Idea of 2010: Firefox Personas

28 points by gacba 17y ago

jfi 17y ago
I suppose they are trying to appeal to a younger audience, but I couldn't agree with you more. I find the new skins distracting and far away from the core value that I've come to expect and enjoy from the talented folks at FF.
- robotron 17y ago
  You aren't required to use them.
javery 17y ago
When did Firefox turn into Netscape? What I loved about Firefox was how it was lean and simple to use. If it wasn't for a handful of add-ins I would have switched to Chrome or Safari by now... and it's only a matter of time until those add-ins are available in one of those browsers. This seems to be a problem with lots of open source projects, features keep getting added and added and added. It's easy to add new features, it's hard to take a stand and keep things simple.
- robotron 17y ago
  Chrome has the same thing: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148695 http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...
gchucky 17y ago
Is this really worth making a big fuss over? The only time most of us would interact with personas is when Firefox upgrades and we see the update splash page. Aside from that, it basically stays out of the way and you can use the browser normally.
- cookiecaper 17y ago
  I agree. This is a total non-issue. If you don't want to decorate your chrome, no one's here making you. It doesn't seem to have any adverse technical effects. And pretty much the same functionality has existed in Themes since forever.
ThomPete 17y ago
To many people the browser is just stuff around the page they are interested in. Yes some of those personas is but ugly but it doesn't have to be. I don't understand the problem. You don't have to use them.
mortenjorck 17y ago
Oh dear. Mozilla has just exhibited its first symptom of "everything disease," in which it has noted the ascendancy of a competitor (Chrome), observed it, and started copying it without critically evaluating what it's copying. Call it a shark jumping or whatever you will, but this to me marks the moment Firefox's post-peak status became unambiguously evident. Remember Blake Ross' philosophy that a browser should be as invisible as possible? By turning the browser UI into a dormitory wall, Firefox's gradual descent into bloat is made concrete, and its acknowledgment of Chrome as the future leader is implicit in its blind imitation of its theming system. As for me, I'll stick with Safari.
- tlack 17y ago
  Absolutely. It's perverse that they'd even worsen their dire startup lag with this kind of bullshit bloat. What has happened to the good people at Mozilla?
- sp332 17y ago
  I'm not saying Firefox doesn't take cues from other browsers, but it had Personas for a while before Chrome had themes. The first Personas were uploaded in December 2008.
jerhinesmith 17y ago
Maybe I'm not looking in the right places on their (Mozilla's) site, but how is this different than the 'themes' that have been a part of firefox for several years now?
- Kliment 17y ago
  Zero-click preview, one click installation, and much, much easier to create than themes. But I don't see much real value in it either.
  - jerhinesmith 17y ago
    Is there anything 'functionally' different once you have one applied? Or is it really just Themes 2.0?
    - Perceval 17y ago
      No, no functional difference. The key difference is that personas are just a wallpaper for the default chrome, whereas themes can actually change the shape and positioning of the chrome, not just the color.
robotron 17y ago
This was actually implemented way back in 2009. It is also entirely possible to not use a persona and completely ignore this feature. Skinning/theming is actually a feature that some users may want. I've tried it and it doesn't seem to impact performance at all.
thwarted 17y ago
Chrome has this too, and Opera's had support for it for a long time. I'm not sure Mozilla should get the credit for this "idea".
bad_user 17y ago
I take issue with the WinAmp comparisson ... normal users liked that stuff. It's partly the reason Winamp was such a success (the other being that it was ingeniously simple to use). I think the author is the one thinking like a programmer.
- mortenjorck 17y ago
  It is and it isn't a valid comparison. Some Winamp themes were genuinely just different spins on the main window chrome, and even looked kind of nice. Some, though, had "backgrounds" and otherwise got in the way of the UI. Which is the only thing that Mozilla personas do.
hkuo 17y ago
K. I have a simple solution for this guy. Don't change your Firefox persona. It's a feature, and guess what? You don't have to use it! I, myself, sifted through a few of them and landed on one that I quite like. I've lived with it for a day, and I like it. It's not distracting, and it livens up the grayness of the toolbar a little bit. So I fall on the side of people that like it. There will be some that don't. But again, you have the choice to do so or not. Nothing to create a whole rant over!
- hkuo 17y ago
  btw, I work in the field of user experience. I see zero usability problems with this. Any choice a user makes for his or her own interface is their choice, and if it works for them, then who is to tell them that they are wrong? It is the usability expert's job to discover how and why a person does the things they do, and not tell them how they should be doing it. For example, have you looked at some of your coworker's desktops? Everyone sets it up differently to how they prefer to work. Some have icons littering their desktop. Some have 50 apps in their taskbar. Some people like to use spotlight. Some people like to click through folders. There will always be a better way, certainly, if they so desire, but some people just like things the way they like it. And if they're happy with that, then they're happy. And that's the most important thing.
  - mullr 17y ago
    Though I agree with you on this particular issue, I don't think the broader one is quite as clear-cut. In particular, littered taskbars and desktops are seldom the consequence of user intent. It's far more likely that the user lacks either the knowledge or the motivation to go and change things. While they are technically customizable, they get mucked with and messed up every time you install something on the computer. (talking about windows, clearly) I suppose it's a difference between an opt-in and an opt-out system.
- krainboltgreene 17y ago
  Yeah, it's not like they had people develop this feature. It fell right out of the sky! All the developers could just finish other stuff. No, wait, that's not how this works.
dpcan 17y ago
I thought we were talking about attracting the "Normals" around here today, and then this rant appeared. It feels kind-of out of place. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when software companies start going after the "Normals". Pretty pays, so function tends to take a back seat. I believe that if you ask a "Normal" if they'd rather have more keyboard shortcuts or a rainbow colored browser, they'd probably take fancy over function every time.
- dasil003 17y ago
  Well since they don't use obscure keyboard shortcuts it's sort of a no brainer. But if you asked whether they would prefer unicorns or more pages rendering correctly it's not so clear cut.
- ajb 17y ago
  Quite. I first heard about Firefox Personas in a group inhabited mainly by 'Normals'. They liked it. One person decided to switch it back off, but wasn't upset by the process.
- wdewind 17y ago
  To say "pretty pays so function takes a back seat" is to horribly misunderstand the relationship between aesthetics and functionality. as steve jobs says, the user has no fucking clue what they want. if they did they'd just do it. effective UI design is about providing blinders for people so that they get to what they want fastest. facebook could let us all change the color and layout of our profiles, but is that really a good idea (coughmyspace)?
wdewind 17y ago
To everyone saying this is a non issue: Like all dev teams firefox has a limited number of resources. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong about this (well there is but that's a different argument): it's that they could've been working on much more important shit. It's also another completely unnecessary moving part which, even though this one is probably relatively simple, adds unnecessary complication. From a UI dev perspective it's also a feature that isn't supported on OSX, and I assume it's also not supported on the linux versions. It's even more of a waste of a time to focus on a feature that pulls these three in different directions. Logically: stupid. This is pretty small though, so mountains out of mole hills? Yes.
- harrybr 17y ago
  Given Mozilla is well into metrics - It's very possible that they've A/B tested various landing pages, and found that the persona stuff has been generating an uplift in conversions (downloads / installations / etc), which could be why it's gaining prominence. They also track usage of and satisfaction of features in-app via projects like 'Test Pilot'. So, they might be seeing a nice adoption curve. A lot of assumptions there, but really it might boil down to how different most web users are in comparison to hacker news readers.
- cfinke 17y ago
  Personas are very much supported on OSX. Where did you get your information?
thingie 17y ago
Worst idea? Uh. I also thought that browser should look like everything else and so on, but then I simply tried some of these Chrome themes and some Firefox Personas, and hey, I liked it. Why not. Not all of them are ugly and makes everything in your browser illegible. It's just something nice to look at, something that looks a bit "artsy". I'm living in a rented shared flat with just gray wallpapers, some furniture, and the only decoration is an xkcd poster. I'm so glad that I can get at least this, no matter how desperate it may sound. And, well, I have quite a lot in common with a teenage girl, but don't know why I should be ashamed for that… (You may not share my taste: http://imgur.com/5r2B2.png http://imgur.com/5r2B2.png http://imgur.com/kuo4X.png http://imgur.com/kuo4X.png) But please. Don't call something that I like and use, while you don't have to, a "failure".
dasboot 17y ago
This is not personas, it's simple theming. An actually useful persona feature would allow cookie profiles/sessions that can be run in parallel (per window, for example) to log into several gmail accounts at once, segment my search identities, etc. I've found the extensions I've used lacking (maybe I've missed a good one). But privacy and power usage don't seem to matter as long as everybody is distracted by "OOHHH SHINY!". It's the curse of marketing to the hump of the normal distribution.
- frankus 17y ago
  That's exactly what I thought when I first heard the term: something like Safari's Private Browsing on steroids. It would be nice when I'm demoing something on my home laptop at work and I type is bellingham.craigslist.org if /cas wouldn't immediately pop up as a suggestion.
- cgranade 17y ago
  If you look at Mozilla's Weave project, they're doing exactly that. The time they've spent on Personas pales in comparison to the time they've spent on Ubiquity, Test Pilot, Weave and other Labs projects. Using a computer should be fun, and so I don't mind a bit of ooo-shiny every now and then. It sure isn't keeping Mozilla from getting shit done. Edited to add: a nice work around that I use for multiple identities in the mean time is to use the profile manager. Run Firefox with "firefox -P -no-remote" to start a separate instance of Firefox with the profile manager, create a new profile, and you're good to go. It is a pain, but as a workaround, I've seen worse.
rradu 17y ago
I upgraded today too and played around with the personas. Most of them wanted me to puke profusely, but I quickly found this one: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/1498 http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/1498 It's a simple gray gradient that adds some subtle shadows to some of the text. It's a welcome change. This brushed metal one is cool too: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/10897 http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/10897

28 points by gacba 17y ago

jfi 17y ago

I suppose they are trying to appeal to a younger audience, but I couldn't agree with you more. I find the new skins distracting and far away from the core value that I've come to expect and enjoy from the talented folks at FF.

robotron 17y ago
You aren't required to use them.

javery 17y ago

When did Firefox turn into Netscape? What I loved about Firefox was how it was lean and simple to use. If it wasn't for a handful of add-ins I would have switched to Chrome or Safari by now... and it's only a matter of time until those add-ins are available in one of those browsers. This seems to be a problem with lots of open source projects, features keep getting added and added and added. It's easy to add new features, it's hard to take a stand and keep things simple.

robotron 17y ago
Chrome has the same thing: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148695 http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...

gchucky 17y ago

Is this really worth making a big fuss over? The only time most of us would interact with personas is when Firefox upgrades and we see the update splash page. Aside from that, it basically stays out of the way and you can use the browser normally.

cookiecaper 17y ago
I agree. This is a total non-issue. If you don't want to decorate your chrome, no one's here making you. It doesn't seem to have any adverse technical effects. And pretty much the same functionality has existed in Themes since forever.

ThomPete 17y ago

To many people the browser is just stuff around the page they are interested in. Yes some of those personas is but ugly but it doesn't have to be. I don't understand the problem. You don't have to use them.

mortenjorck 17y ago

Oh dear. Mozilla has just exhibited its first symptom of "everything disease," in which it has noted the ascendancy of a competitor (Chrome), observed it, and started copying it without critically evaluating what it's copying. Call it a shark jumping or whatever you will, but this to me marks the moment Firefox's post-peak status became unambiguously evident. Remember Blake Ross' philosophy that a browser should be as invisible as possible? By turning the browser UI into a dormitory wall, Firefox's gradual descent into bloat is made concrete, and its acknowledgment of Chrome as the future leader is implicit in its blind imitation of its theming system. As for me, I'll stick with Safari.

tlack 17y ago
Absolutely. It's perverse that they'd even worsen their dire startup lag with this kind of bullshit bloat. What has happened to the good people at Mozilla?
sp332 17y ago
I'm not saying Firefox doesn't take cues from other browsers, but it had Personas for a while before Chrome had themes. The first Personas were uploaded in December 2008.

jerhinesmith 17y ago

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places on their (Mozilla's) site, but how is this different than the 'themes' that have been a part of firefox for several years now?

Kliment 17y ago
Zero-click preview, one click installation, and much, much easier to create than themes. But I don't see much real value in it either.
- jerhinesmith 17y ago
  Is there anything 'functionally' different once you have one applied? Or is it really just Themes 2.0?
  - Perceval 17y ago
    No, no functional difference. The key difference is that personas are just a wallpaper for the default chrome, whereas themes can actually change the shape and positioning of the chrome, not just the color.

robotron 17y ago

This was actually implemented way back in 2009. It is also entirely possible to not use a persona and completely ignore this feature. Skinning/theming is actually a feature that some users may want. I've tried it and it doesn't seem to impact performance at all.

thwarted 17y ago

Chrome has this too, and Opera's had support for it for a long time. I'm not sure Mozilla should get the credit for this "idea".

bad_user 17y ago

I take issue with the WinAmp comparisson ... normal users liked that stuff. It's partly the reason Winamp was such a success (the other being that it was ingeniously simple to use). I think the author is the one thinking like a programmer.

mortenjorck 17y ago
It is and it isn't a valid comparison. Some Winamp themes were genuinely just different spins on the main window chrome, and even looked kind of nice. Some, though, had "backgrounds" and otherwise got in the way of the UI. Which is the only thing that Mozilla personas do.

hkuo 17y ago

K. I have a simple solution for this guy. Don't change your Firefox persona. It's a feature, and guess what? You don't have to use it! I, myself, sifted through a few of them and landed on one that I quite like. I've lived with it for a day, and I like it. It's not distracting, and it livens up the grayness of the toolbar a little bit. So I fall on the side of people that like it. There will be some that don't. But again, you have the choice to do so or not. Nothing to create a whole rant over!

hkuo 17y ago
btw, I work in the field of user experience. I see zero usability problems with this. Any choice a user makes for his or her own interface is their choice, and if it works for them, then who is to tell them that they are wrong? It is the usability expert's job to discover how and why a person does the things they do, and not tell them how they should be doing it. For example, have you looked at some of your coworker's desktops? Everyone sets it up differently to how they prefer to work. Some have icons littering their desktop. Some have 50 apps in their taskbar. Some people like to use spotlight. Some people like to click through folders. There will always be a better way, certainly, if they so desire, but some people just like things the way they like it. And if they're happy with that, then they're happy. And that's the most important thing.
- mullr 17y ago
  Though I agree with you on this particular issue, I don't think the broader one is quite as clear-cut. In particular, littered taskbars and desktops are seldom the consequence of user intent. It's far more likely that the user lacks either the knowledge or the motivation to go and change things. While they are technically customizable, they get mucked with and messed up every time you install something on the computer. (talking about windows, clearly) I suppose it's a difference between an opt-in and an opt-out system.
krainboltgreene 17y ago
Yeah, it's not like they had people develop this feature. It fell right out of the sky! All the developers could just finish other stuff. No, wait, that's not how this works.

dpcan 17y ago

I thought we were talking about attracting the "Normals" around here today, and then this rant appeared. It feels kind-of out of place. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when software companies start going after the "Normals". Pretty pays, so function tends to take a back seat. I believe that if you ask a "Normal" if they'd rather have more keyboard shortcuts or a rainbow colored browser, they'd probably take fancy over function every time.

dasil003 17y ago
Well since they don't use obscure keyboard shortcuts it's sort of a no brainer. But if you asked whether they would prefer unicorns or more pages rendering correctly it's not so clear cut.
ajb 17y ago
Quite. I first heard about Firefox Personas in a group inhabited mainly by 'Normals'. They liked it. One person decided to switch it back off, but wasn't upset by the process.
wdewind 17y ago
To say "pretty pays so function takes a back seat" is to horribly misunderstand the relationship between aesthetics and functionality. as steve jobs says, the user has no fucking clue what they want. if they did they'd just do it. effective UI design is about providing blinders for people so that they get to what they want fastest. facebook could let us all change the color and layout of our profiles, but is that really a good idea (coughmyspace)?

wdewind 17y ago

To everyone saying this is a non issue: Like all dev teams firefox has a limited number of resources. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong about this (well there is but that's a different argument): it's that they could've been working on much more important shit. It's also another completely unnecessary moving part which, even though this one is probably relatively simple, adds unnecessary complication. From a UI dev perspective it's also a feature that isn't supported on OSX, and I assume it's also not supported on the linux versions. It's even more of a waste of a time to focus on a feature that pulls these three in different directions. Logically: stupid. This is pretty small though, so mountains out of mole hills? Yes.

harrybr 17y ago
Given Mozilla is well into metrics - It's very possible that they've A/B tested various landing pages, and found that the persona stuff has been generating an uplift in conversions (downloads / installations / etc), which could be why it's gaining prominence. They also track usage of and satisfaction of features in-app via projects like 'Test Pilot'. So, they might be seeing a nice adoption curve. A lot of assumptions there, but really it might boil down to how different most web users are in comparison to hacker news readers.
cfinke 17y ago
Personas are very much supported on OSX. Where did you get your information?

thingie 17y ago

Worst idea? Uh. I also thought that browser should look like everything else and so on, but then I simply tried some of these Chrome themes and some Firefox Personas, and hey, I liked it. Why not. Not all of them are ugly and makes everything in your browser illegible. It's just something nice to look at, something that looks a bit "artsy". I'm living in a rented shared flat with just gray wallpapers, some furniture, and the only decoration is an xkcd poster. I'm so glad that I can get at least this, no matter how desperate it may sound. And, well, I have quite a lot in common with a teenage girl, but don't know why I should be ashamed for that… (You may not share my taste: http://imgur.com/5r2B2.png http://imgur.com/5r2B2.png http://imgur.com/kuo4X.png http://imgur.com/kuo4X.png) But please. Don't call something that I like and use, while you don't have to, a "failure".

dasboot 17y ago

This is not personas, it's simple theming. An actually useful persona feature would allow cookie profiles/sessions that can be run in parallel (per window, for example) to log into several gmail accounts at once, segment my search identities, etc. I've found the extensions I've used lacking (maybe I've missed a good one). But privacy and power usage don't seem to matter as long as everybody is distracted by "OOHHH SHINY!". It's the curse of marketing to the hump of the normal distribution.

frankus 17y ago
That's exactly what I thought when I first heard the term: something like Safari's Private Browsing on steroids. It would be nice when I'm demoing something on my home laptop at work and I type is bellingham.craigslist.org if /cas wouldn't immediately pop up as a suggestion.
cgranade 17y ago
If you look at Mozilla's Weave project, they're doing exactly that. The time they've spent on Personas pales in comparison to the time they've spent on Ubiquity, Test Pilot, Weave and other Labs projects. Using a computer should be fun, and so I don't mind a bit of ooo-shiny every now and then. It sure isn't keeping Mozilla from getting shit done. Edited to add: a nice work around that I use for multiple identities in the mean time is to use the profile manager. Run Firefox with "firefox -P -no-remote" to start a separate instance of Firefox with the profile manager, create a new profile, and you're good to go. It is a pain, but as a workaround, I've seen worse.

rradu 17y ago

I upgraded today too and played around with the personas. Most of them wanted me to puke profusely, but I quickly found this one: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/1498 http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/1498 It's a simple gray gradient that adds some subtle shadows to some of the text. It's a welcome change. This brushed metal one is cool too: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/10897 http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/10897