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> With 94, you’ll find a selection of six fun seasonal Colorways (available for a limited time only). For a limited time only? What the heck? Feels like Starbu

by sebiw 5y ago

> With 94, you’ll find a selection of six fun seasonal Colorways (available for a limited time only). For a limited time only? What the heck? Feels like Starbucks. Otherwise great release of course.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nisegami 5y ago
Gotta keep the designers on the payroll somehow
Turing_Machine 5y ago
"Colorways"? Like what everyone else calls "themes"? Yeah, you don't actually need to make up your own word for that. That, plus the fact that this is the lead bullet point for their new release makes me think "way too many marketers, not enough engineers".
- detritus 5y ago
  'Colourways' is a fairly standard term to describe different colour options on various different product types. Mozilla haven't made this up for themselves. 'Theme', to me, suggests ye olde browser customisation wherein you could have animated gifs of Homer Simpson barking D'OH as your 'Home' button, &c. I'm assuming that's not the case here?
  - 542458 5y ago
    Yeah, these are “colorways” in the manufacturing sense - they don’t change layout, patterns, etc, only swap out what colors are present. I’ve tried them out, they’re nice. You pick a (curated) colour, and choose nether you want a dark/light/mixed theme based on it. It’s not the most complex feature ever, but it’s well done.
  - account42 5y ago
    It's a completely nonstandard term to descripe color schemes for UI themes. That the word is used in an unrelated industry is irrelevant.
    - detritus 5y ago
      For you, perhaps - I've come across it a lot in similar contexts and all the people who upvoted my comment seem to disagree with you too. I'm not saying I like it necessarily, but it's quite clear what it means in context and language does have a tendency to evolve despite our best efforts. shrug
  - Turing_Machine 5y ago
    > 'Colourways' is a fairly standard term Not in software it isn't. It appears to be a marketing term, just as I said.
- xattt 5y ago
  > way too many marketers The writing was on the wall when they started publishing different white papers about different UI tweaks almost a decade ago. Does anyone remember that video of a collaborative web browsing session? It’s like train fans drawing fantasy subway maps: “Now that the colour for the new subway line is settled, let’s hire a construction firm to figure out how we can get this thing built”.
jitl 5y ago
To be competitive with Chrome and Safari, Firefox needs the following table stakes: - Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :( - A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority. Then, to out-compete the other browsers, Firefox needs exceed the other browsers in those areas, or use marketing tactics on non-technical axes to grow the userbase. Chrome has tons of first-party themes (see https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes), so it makes sense for Firefox to try to drive some engagement here too
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  It is dead trivial to out-compete Chrome by focusing on power users and their needs for privacy-respecting software that doesn't ship with pointless UI changes every second release.
  - jitl 5y ago
    Initial comment: I guess that tactic played out well enough for Debian versus Windows. Edit: Sorry, that was snarky of me. Firefox is regularly releasing new privacy-focused, power-user features like tab containers. Can't they spent a little time addressing non-power users too?
  - asoneth 5y ago
    > It is dead trivial to out-compete Chrome by focusing on power users If that was true I would expect power-user browsers with unchanging UIs to have a larger market share than they do. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide#desktop_browser-ww-monthly-202012-202012-bar/-bar https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
- handrous 5y ago
  > - A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority. 1) Being amazing for power users and also everyone else is why power users did all their marketing work for them in the Phoenix/Firebird days and installed it on every computer they were allowed access to for more than two minutes. We did that because having people in our support-sphere using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox made our lives much easier, and those users happier. Maybe try something bold like building in ad-blocking? Blocking pop-ups by default was basically exactly that, back in the day, and was a huge part of why we evangelized it so readily. 2) How many users do they still have who aren't power users, or didn't have their browser installed by their friendly neighborhood power user?

by sebiw 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nisegami 5y ago

Gotta keep the designers on the payroll somehow

Turing_Machine 5y ago

"Colorways"? Like what everyone else calls "themes"? Yeah, you don't actually need to make up your own word for that. That, plus the fact that this is the lead bullet point for their new release makes me think "way too many marketers, not enough engineers".

detritus 5y ago
'Colourways' is a fairly standard term to describe different colour options on various different product types. Mozilla haven't made this up for themselves. 'Theme', to me, suggests ye olde browser customisation wherein you could have animated gifs of Homer Simpson barking D'OH as your 'Home' button, &c. I'm assuming that's not the case here?
- 542458 5y ago
  Yeah, these are “colorways” in the manufacturing sense - they don’t change layout, patterns, etc, only swap out what colors are present. I’ve tried them out, they’re nice. You pick a (curated) colour, and choose nether you want a dark/light/mixed theme based on it. It’s not the most complex feature ever, but it’s well done.
- account42 5y ago
  It's a completely nonstandard term to descripe color schemes for UI themes. That the word is used in an unrelated industry is irrelevant.
  - detritus 5y ago
    For you, perhaps - I've come across it a lot in similar contexts and all the people who upvoted my comment seem to disagree with you too. I'm not saying I like it necessarily, but it's quite clear what it means in context and language does have a tendency to evolve despite our best efforts. shrug
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  > 'Colourways' is a fairly standard term Not in software it isn't. It appears to be a marketing term, just as I said.
xattt 5y ago
> way too many marketers The writing was on the wall when they started publishing different white papers about different UI tweaks almost a decade ago. Does anyone remember that video of a collaborative web browsing session? It’s like train fans drawing fantasy subway maps: “Now that the colour for the new subway line is settled, let’s hire a construction firm to figure out how we can get this thing built”.

jitl 5y ago

To be competitive with Chrome and Safari, Firefox needs the following table stakes: - Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :( - A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority. Then, to out-compete the other browsers, Firefox needs exceed the other browsers in those areas, or use marketing tactics on non-technical axes to grow the userbase. Chrome has tons of first-party themes (see https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes), so it makes sense for Firefox to try to drive some engagement here too

huhtenberg 5y ago
It is dead trivial to out-compete Chrome by focusing on power users and their needs for privacy-respecting software that doesn't ship with pointless UI changes every second release.
- jitl 5y ago
  Initial comment: I guess that tactic played out well enough for Debian versus Windows. Edit: Sorry, that was snarky of me. Firefox is regularly releasing new privacy-focused, power-user features like tab containers. Can't they spent a little time addressing non-power users too?
- asoneth 5y ago
  > It is dead trivial to out-compete Chrome by focusing on power users If that was true I would expect power-user browsers with unchanging UIs to have a larger market share than they do. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide#desktop_browser-ww-monthly-202012-202012-bar/-bar https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
handrous 5y ago
> - A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority. 1) Being amazing for power users and also everyone else is why power users did all their marketing work for them in the Phoenix/Firebird days and installed it on every computer they were allowed access to for more than two minutes. We did that because having people in our support-sphere using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox made our lives much easier, and those users happier. Maybe try something bold like building in ad-blocking? Blocking pop-ups by default was basically exactly that, back in the day, and was a huge part of why we evangelized it so readily. 2) How many users do they still have who aren't power users, or didn't have their browser installed by their friendly neighborhood power user?