12 ms·

New Colorways for Firefox 94

52 points by tech234a 5y ago

Y_Y 5y ago
And the popup won't just go away if you click outside it, you have to feign engagement before it will go away. I got the same "I don't control my computer any more" feeling I get from shitty software like Windows 10.
- kyleee 5y ago
  Yep I loved that part, after clicking not interested in the new theme feature, the user is presented with an additional inescapable popup that only is dismissed by clicking the single button (which I am sure is an analytic metric)
Barrin92 5y ago
gotta say the article sounds like that scene from the Silicon Valley TV show where they try to design the server case[1] but the themes are pretty nice at least, I like the sand colored one [1] https://youtu.be/F6Srzcm8EEg https://youtu.be/F6Srzcm8EEg
kunagi7 5y ago
Looks like it's just a way of indirectly promoting the Firefox Color extension with several built-in examples of what you could do with it... Without talking about the extension that allows this at all. So, this feels like a small project for someone learning the Firefox code with some nice looking marketing on top.
lwh 5y ago
Will there be Iconways and Themeways as well? It would be nice to skip reading through 52 reddit posts to figure out how to fix appearances after an update. Also what are Colour Schemes or Palettes?
EastOfTruth 5y ago
Limited time color themes... wtf is wrong with Mozilla nowadays... Just bring back extensions in Firefox Mobile if you have nothing else better to do.
reolsenfirefox 5y ago
Please Stop the Anoying pop up for colorways every time I open the browser.
reolsenfirefox 5y ago
Please someone tell me how to stop the anoying "Colorways" pop up every time I open the browser.
fwn 5y ago
My most authentic self while browsing the web is when I can finally again start to use the full range of extensions on current Firefox for Android. That would really make me feel included in the experience. It's really hard for me to grasp the many somewhat random new ideas Mozilla works on while some fundamental mechanics of the product are still broken. edit: ... I don't want to sound as if this is in itself a bad addition. It's just that it feels as if the house is burning and they are painting the door.
- contravariant 5y ago
  I mean technically you can already do that, they're just not making it easy. At least not "Look we've made a colour picker so you can mess up whatever theme you had!" easy. They've made a blog post about it a while back, it involves installing the nightly version and working your way through a few menus to switch their 'featured' list of extensions with a custom extension list published on addons.mozilla.com. [1] [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
  - morsch 5y ago
    Wow, that is great! Turns out the introduction of "colorways" had an upside for me, after all!
nemetroid 5y ago
Firefox gave me a confusing popup window on the first start after updating. It didn't explain what "colorways" are. I closed it. This article is called "Introducing new Colorways for Firefox 94" but doesn't explain what the feature does, beyond being "a new feature that allows our users to express their most authentic selves and to bring them joy while browsing the web". I went to mozilla.org and, in two clicks, reached the page for "Firefox for Desktop". It has a section with "Latest Firefox features", one of which is "Personalize your experience with new colorways"... But that text is not clickable, so I'm not getting more information there either. I guess Mozilla doesn't want me to know what "Colorways" are.
- smcl 5y ago
  I had the same experience - a popup that sounded like it wanted me to get into another "Pocket" type thing so I dismissed it. Only when I wanted to switch my theme did I see that actually some of the (ugh) Colorways are kinda nice. It's a bit weird they wrapped it in a vague SV startup name and didn't bother tell us what it was.
- Liru 5y ago
  They're colour themes. Mozilla's celebrating the fact that you can change Firefox's colour theme while trying to spin it as something super unique. > we chose “Colorways” rather than “themes” to show we are branching out from our language of “browser” to speak the language of everyday life and everyday users. Basically, fashion-industry word salad, but for the tech industry! Hooray!
  - slig 5y ago
    They don't seem to care about power users anymore, and "everyday life and everyday users" are on Safari and Chrome. Really sad.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      And they really shouldn't. If you're not pissing off your power users you're not moving fast enough. The only user-stories that mass-market browser makers should care about are casual users browsing the web and software developers publishing to to the web. Power users are a completely different market segment and have totally different needs and expectations from causal users.
iechoz6H 5y ago
From the article: "What inspired you to make the jump from fashion and retail into a tech company?", a question which might help explain the pivot to form over function.
- guilhas 5y ago
  Not exactly new, Mozilla always comes with a "revolutionizing the UI!" every now and then. The annoying part is that is increasing, the accumulated banality combined with useful features being removed
noahtallen 5y ago
> Colorways are just the start of a dialogue of our expression of Firefox, what we believe the experience of using the independent browser should be and could be. Though, I’m not sure this is the beginning of allowing users to customize Firefox :p For example, Firefox color already exists: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color.... It allows for a lot of custom colors across the Firefox UI. It’s even official and easy to use! Not sure why it’s not built in honestly. Plus, editing the base stylesheet for Firefox used to be very common and allowed for even more flexibility. I’m a huge fan of making color themes very easy to use and modify. So I hope this feature allows for complete customization rather than just picking from a few pre-defined swaths. Otherwise, it’s kind of missing the mark on the bit about letting users choose their own environment for the web. > These Colorways are here for the next two product releases (they won’t go away if you’ve selected it). This is a limited-time release which is intended to embrace the “now moment.” I find this odd. They are changing the options every few releases to increase engagement. I don’t get why that’s important for this feature. Why not just add new ones? It doesn’t seem very user friendly. So. It’s cool! But I’m worried it’s more about making Firefox trendy than about giving users power. Edit: I tried it out, and unfortunately there is no user-customization. And I don't even enjoy most of the "colorways"! Where are the blue colors, for example?
- jamesgeck0 5y ago
  It's disappointing to me that they didn't just ship Firefox Color as a built-in addon. They could have even made all these colorways default theme choices.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    What makes people think that individual apps should be snowflakes instead of theming the whole desktop?
    - jamesgeck0 5y ago
      Having a default theme that follows the system is great. But browsers allow running different different windows as different profiles with different cookies and credentials, and being able to tell those profiles apart at a glance is an important use case for web developers.
robertlagrant 5y ago
> of our diverse verbal languages. And we chose “Colorways” rather than “themes” to show we are branching out from our language of “browser” to speak the language of everyday life and everyday users. And they think "Colorways" is a word people will say in everyday life more than "themes"?
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  It's a term used in fashion to describe a given collection's theme, expressed in one or more outfits comprised of one or more pieces of clothing, accessories, and makeup. I can't say whether that's widely understood or not, but I am familiar with it, so fyi for others.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  It’s common in sneakers.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Wow I googled it and it is a thing! Literally never heard of it.
    - handrous 5y ago
      I can just about guarantee it's a less-well-known term than "theme", as far as theme's usage to signify changing or customizing the colors of software. As in, way more people who aren't nerds will see "theme" and know what it means as it relates to software, than will see "colorways" and even have any point of reference for its meaning to maybe figure out the connection. Probably more people know what "Pantone" means, than "colorways". It's that obscure and jargony.
      - diggernet 5y ago
        And you'd be right on all three, at least in book usage. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=color+theme%2Ccolorways%2CPantone&year_start=2010&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=color+theme%2C...
clumsysmurf 5y ago
Both Chrome and now Safari have some attempt at useful tab management via tab groups. I feel like Mozilla is just bike shedding now when they could be making high value improvements in tab and bookmark management.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Is there an article describing the feature for Chrome (or Edge, or Brave)?
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  Firefox used to have tab groups but they removed it: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/discontinuation-of-tab-groups-panorama/5145 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/discontinuation-of-tab-group... Maybe now that other browsers are shipping this they'll bring it back. But does improved tab management "embrace the now moment"?
  - mnadkvlb 5y ago
    The current mozilla ceo is doing whatever they get paid to do by the advertising investors. They are driving firefox slowly to the ground. Firing developers, nerfing the UI, removing feature which had be stable for years. You name it, every single change is to drive this browser to the ground. Mark my word, we wont have a firefox we love in 5-10 years max. Makes me so sad :(‘
    - kyleee 5y ago
      And increasing their own pay substantially while their browser market share vanishes
- morsch 5y ago
  Firefox Android has an innovative tab whack a mole game, where they keep opening a new tab for everything, and every couple of hours you have to individually close old tabs you don't want anymore. Try to avoid hitting the ones you want to keep! It's lots of fun.
qlm 5y ago
The amount of marketing bullshit packed into this announcement about themes is frankly embarrassing, and makes me even more worried about the direction Mozilla is going in.
- gedy 5y ago
  This basically sounds like the way designers talk about a lot of things the rest of the world considers small stuff.
huhtenberg 5y ago
Being a die-hard Firefox user of 15+ years it hurts me to say, but WHO THE HELL CARES. Sounds like yet another random whimsical UI bullshit that Firefox is overflowing with these days. That's not what your core users want, more of an exact opposite, and it's not something that would help you stop FF market presence decline, leave alone reverse it.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I'm really sad about this. Every announcement I see from Mozilla fills me with dread that they're just milking whatever income they've got while driving the browser into the ground, in silent support of the inevitable Chrome monoculture.
  - slig 5y ago
    It does seems to me that the half-billion dollars they get per year from Google is to make sure that Chrome has no competition whatsoever.
- wubbert 5y ago
  Mozilla hates their core users. They think that things like this will attract "trendie" and "diverse" users, which is a futile endeavor. "Trendie" people are always jumping from trend to trend, so even if they switch, they will just switch away when the new trend comes along. "Diverse" people use what ever panders to their race or sexuality the most, and Google panders to them far more than Mozilla ever could. Maybe when Mozilla finally kicks the bucket in a few years, someone will start something else that isn't just a Chrome fork.
  - _hl_ 5y ago
    > "Diverse" people use what ever panders to their race or sexuality the most, and Google panders to them far more than Mozilla ever could. At the risk of sounding ignorant, how the fuck can a browser, the most universal platform we have right now, cater to any specific minority group? I'd get it if you were talking about accessibility, but what does the browser have to do with your race or sexuality?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oehpr 5y ago
The thing that really is baffling about this article is that whenever I see saccharine, unspecific, obtuse, corporate language like this, I at least understand why the language is the way it is. Usually it's some company is in hot water and is trying to make sure no one can quote a single line in their press release. But... Why would Mozilla be trying to obfuscate setting the color of the browser? What's to gain from that? I assume someone looked at this blog post, maybe even multiple people? And then, I assume, thought to themselves: "Yup, this communicated what I want to communicate." But it's hard for me to imagine an audience that would be receptive to ... this.
- handrous 5y ago
  The only way I've been able to make sense of Mozilla over the last decade is to figure they've been taken over by several interests that don't align with a bright future for the browser, for the company/foundation, or the needs of users. There seems to be some kind of slow-motion many-party cannibalism underway.
  - kyleee 5y ago
    Baker is basically stealing from the company: https://calpaterson.com/assets/mozilla-boss-pay.svg https://calpaterson.com/assets/mozilla-boss-pay.svg More sadness: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
  - wolpoli 5y ago
    Based on the recent actions from Mozilla, they appear to believe that the core technology behind their browser is fine and competitive, and that the issue lies with the perception of the market. Futhermore, they believe if they could just get the existing users excited, they'll be able to grow their market share again. Unfortunately, this isn't going to work. Sometimes I wonder if the current leadership team even use Firefox on a day to day basis.
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      Next they should just pay Instagram, uhm, I mean, TikTok, influencers to promote the browser...
bvogelzang 5y ago
Their release notes (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/94.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/94.0/releasenotes/) mention this is available for a limited time only. This articles also states: > These Colorways are here for the next two product releases (they won’t go away if you’ve selected it). This is a limited-time release which is intended to embrace the “now moment.” Unclear to me what this means exactly. Will they remove the feature entirely or just plan to change up the colorways available?
- detritus 5y ago
  It is a bit daft, but I think it's not the underlying functionality, rather just these particular thematic colour combinations. I guess the marketing goons think FOMO's a good hook in this context? Me neither.
- erichurkman 5y ago
  > Will they remove the feature entirely or just plan to change up the colorways available? At least with this feature Mozilla told us how long it'll be before they remove it.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  sounds like there are color themes that users have a limited time to select before they remove the ability to select these specific color themes in future releases, as a marketing tactic. this whole thing is just baffling top-to-bottom. who is this aimed at? normies aren't shopping around for browsers, though maybe the "diversity" platitudes work on someone.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Since releases are like once every 6 weeks, its available for ~3 months. What happens when I buy say a new computer in March 2022? Or if I buy one soon, and it arrived in March 2022? I can't apply this Firefox theme because it was available for a limited amount of time? Everything is available for a limited amount of time. But this is too limited. I find this utterly ridiculous. Its self defeating. Why would I get used to a feature which is going to unavailable in 3 months? Sure, it stays available if you selected it [1] but what happens if you reinstall your OS or get a new device? Given its FOSS though, wouldn't it be possible to re-add this feature, even as themes? After all, its just a theme pack. Or is it proprietary? [1] Supposedly, you could export your profile directory or something like that. But perhaps they're gonna make it available via a subscription in 3 months. Which is their right.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jancsika 5y ago
Would it be possible to use an NFT to be able to own my own Colorway?
PaulKeeble 5y ago
I tried a few different colour schemes, they were all dreadful contrast and went back to default. Who asked for this and more to the point why are they all hard to read? Firefox this is not what I want in my browser. Fix the weird problems with Youtube videos cutting out, improve tab management dramatically, bookmarks equally could do with some work. The core features need work, I don't need yet another way for the browser to look bad.
- xbar 5y ago
  Yup. I am switching browsers from Firefox now. I feel like this is an April 1 thing that accidentally shipped in November: a fabricated nonsense world coupled with an abhorrent and unavoidable eyesoreness to every page. Baffling. Well, at least Microsoft Edge is usable these days...
dan-robertson 5y ago
I remember long ago when Firefox (actually maybe it was chrome) added some theming ability and I went into gimp and crafted my own theme out of gradients and some photos. It was extraordinarily ugly (I was determined to use every single colour) however it was fun to make and it was mine. The article talks a lot about customisation, but you get six times three choices, which is barely 4 bits, to express yourself. I feel like the description does not really line up with the implementation.
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  >but you get six times three choices, which is barely 4 bits, to express yourself. This reminded me so much of that one Better Off Ted[0] episode, especially considering all the marketing speak in that article on top. In it, the Veridian company decided to allow employees to individualize their work space, but couldn't allow them to make choices themselves, so they choose the individuality for their employees, out of 4 exciting and non-offensive choices. "Enjoy your new personalities". [0] S01E07, 5:23, totally legit I am sure copy available here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6l5j39?start=323 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6l5j39?start=323
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Firefox Color? [1] [1] https://color.firefox.com/ https://color.firefox.com/
  - maccolgan 5y ago
    What the fuck are these quotes?
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 5y ago
This could be the stroke of genius for Firefox to finally break free of its funding dependency on Google, with one small addition: paid themes^W colorways. If people's willing to buy custom skins for games, I don't see why not they wouldn't for their browser.
flohofwoe 5y ago
Sheesh, this reads like an Onion article. Isn't this just color themes? E.g. a standard feature before the UI/UX gods decided that taking features away from users is a good thing?
stanski 5y ago
I for one enjoyed trying out the different color schemes to see what looks good. Now what they mean by "limited time only", I have no idea. Are the colours going to suddenly revert with a new version of the browser? If so, why? The FOMO marketing BS definitely puts a damper on the whole thing.
jamoes 5y ago
Like most other readers here, my initial reaction is "Thanks, I hate it." I especially hate the assertion that they're increasing customization when in reality they've steadily been removing/hiding real customization options (e.g. compact theme, UrlBar.preventClickSelectsAll). But, on further consideration I see the value. This feature isn't for power users. The goal of this feature is to increase chances that normal everyday users will make Firefox their daily-driver browser. For many people, having a custom colored browser will be a deciding factor to keep them using Firefox. This is why they didn't call it "themes", which is a techy word that would cause many people to gloss-over and ignore it altogether. And, in reality, Firefox is still the most customizable browser for power-users. This feature doesn't remove userChrome.css, it doesn't stop users from editing thousands of options via about:config. It doesn't prevent hardcore power users from editing omni.ja to restore preventClickSelectsAll functionality. So frankly, I hope this feature can help increase Firefox's market share by even a little bit. The more people using Firefox - even if they're not power-users - the better for the future of the open web.
userbinator 5y ago
My, and I bet many others', reaction to this article can be summed up in one concise acronym: WTF. Sure, take away and slowly degrade all the other customisation opportunities that Firefox has, and what makes us choose it, but at least you can choose the colours!!!! The whole flowery BS language about being diverse and inclusive just gives this shitshow even more facepalm-worthiness. The Mozilla I knew and liked is certainly no more. Again, WTF.
bluedino 5y ago
This is a good illustration of a diversity/inclusion hire bringing new perspectives to a product. I saw the splash screen for this feature the first time I opened Firefox after updating. I selected a colorway, if only to make Firefox browser windows stand out from my other windows, which is useful as I have to log into several cloud accounts. The thing I immediately noticed is that 2 of the 3 'experiences' of each color are basically a 'dark mode' for that color. I don't find any of them very readable. The second thing I noticed is it also gets rid of the specific color theme of Private windows which is a little annoying. So they have some things to fix. Lastly, if you want blue or green or purple browser windows, just change your Windows color theme.
handrous 5y ago
> And we don’t really tolerate this type of what I would say are one-size-fits-all tools anywhere else in our lives. Oh my god, yes we do. Overwhelmingly, yes, that's the norm for tools. Very few people give a shit what color their hammer or circular saw or whatever is, unless it's something to do with colors improving safety. I give no thought to the color of anything in my kitchen unless it's going to be visible most or all of the time, at which point it's a fashion concern, nothing to do with tools. And you know what color's best, then, 99% of the time? "Same as everything else".
- diggernet 5y ago
  And this from a company that keeps taking away options, making their tool ever more one-size-fits-all.
CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
All I ask is that my web browser's appearance fit in well among the other applications in my operating system. Unfortunately, Firefox stopped caring about this a long time ago, along with pretty much everyone else. Australis was the last version of Firefox's interface that I enjoyed using.
fleddr 5y ago
When you want to undo these "colorways", they're still called "themes" in settings :) Which have been around for a decade. My personal research into themes is that they suck altogether. Besides very neutral dark or light tones, almost every other combination conflicts with real world content. I've tried hundreds over the years and always fall back to defaults. Note how both web pages and apps also tend to have neutral tones. Must be a reason for it. Whilst this feature does no harm in itself, I can only agree with some other commenters that Mozilla has turned into a series of contradictions. It preaches a progressive agenda yet has a neoliberal economic policy. It excessively rewards leaders despite mismanagement and then fires workers. It preaches privacy unless it concerns their sponsor, Google. There is a Facebook container built-in, but none for the unavoidable Google. And now they want to get out of the "browser language" and speak the language of common folk. Yet they never seem to have met one. I suppose my old working class father would be a good test: "Dad, this browser allows you to bring your authentic self!" My what? And what is a browser? "They are gray boxes. But not to worry, these authentic colors that somebody else picked are a universal language that transcends the boundaries of our diverse verbal languages" Go on and you're out of the will.
peakaboo 5y ago
I'm stunned by how so many people here in the tech community are describing this popup as confusing. I guess I'm really smart since I understood immediately (by the colors and buttons and the name) that it's a theme picker. And I actually clicked on it and tried a few. I was not confused at all.
- weikju 5y ago
  Same, it was obvious enough for me. It's probably an outgrowth of the trend to complain about Firefox, when there's a very visible feature like this that "takes away resources" from improving the core browser or restoring all add-ons on Android or whatever else.
toyg 5y ago
I love customizing and skinning; I even run my own simple FF theme at work with the company logo, which customers are occasionally impressed by. So I should love this, right...? Except that the hard-push of that damn pop-up resulted in the browser resetting to the default theme, discarding mine. Easy fix, but no thank-yous to the bright sparks at Mozilla for adding a little bit of irritation to my day. It all feels like a committee went "people don't know that we have themes, how can we make them aware...?", and this was the result. Waste of cycles.
firebaze 5y ago
OK, I'm done with Firefox. Supporting and using it as my main browser for the last 7 years. Switching to Brave. Least bad option.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> And we don’t really tolerate this type of what I would say are one-size-fits-all tools anywhere else in our lives. And so, it just feels like a natural extension to allow people to make this tool that they’re leveraging every day feel more of their own, to feel fresh, to be exciting, to just bring in that small moment of delight to their day. And yet they've been steadily removing customization options for the past decade. No no, look, you can customize colors now! We are totally cool!
vlmutolo 5y ago
> These colorway selections will be available in Firefox 94 and 95. From Firefox 96 onwards, you won't be able to opt in to Colorways but you will be able to maintain access to the colorway that is currently enabled when you update to Firefox 96. This is the kind of move you'd expect from a paid, commercial piece of software. Tell potential users that they only have X amount of time to jump on the hype train because after that they're too late for the colors. The lack of that kind of user-hostile "feature" development is the primary reason I prefer open-source software. FOSS won't do this to you because the developers, in theory, shouldn't care how many users they have to the extent that they'll try to FOMO people into their product. FOSS won't do this to you because it's so easy to fork away the annoying parts of the software and just create a new release without the nonsense. See the VSCode/VSCodium divide. But I guess Firefox doesn't really fit in with the rest of FOSS. It's the primary revenue stream for a giant company, and far too complex to fork without a mammoth-sized maintenance effort.
waste_monk 5y ago
What a magnificent example of self-congratulatory masturbation. I don't know if Firefox management have been on a multi-year glue huffing binge or are simply utterly deranged, but every time I see a press release about Firefox it feels like the spectre of collapse is looming ever closer.
antonyh 5y ago
It looks like a set of themes installed that I neither asked for, can't remove, and if I do use might vanish at any time leaving me with a forced visual change. I'm not sure what the value is here - it's just a temporary theme, or have I missed the point?

52 points by tech234a 5y ago

Y_Y 5y ago

And the popup won't just go away if you click outside it, you have to feign engagement before it will go away. I got the same "I don't control my computer any more" feeling I get from shitty software like Windows 10.

kyleee 5y ago
Yep I loved that part, after clicking not interested in the new theme feature, the user is presented with an additional inescapable popup that only is dismissed by clicking the single button (which I am sure is an analytic metric)

Barrin92 5y ago

gotta say the article sounds like that scene from the Silicon Valley TV show where they try to design the server case[1] but the themes are pretty nice at least, I like the sand colored one [1] https://youtu.be/F6Srzcm8EEg https://youtu.be/F6Srzcm8EEg

kunagi7 5y ago

Looks like it's just a way of indirectly promoting the Firefox Color extension with several built-in examples of what you could do with it... Without talking about the extension that allows this at all. So, this feels like a small project for someone learning the Firefox code with some nice looking marketing on top.

lwh 5y ago

Will there be Iconways and Themeways as well? It would be nice to skip reading through 52 reddit posts to figure out how to fix appearances after an update. Also what are Colour Schemes or Palettes?

EastOfTruth 5y ago

Limited time color themes... wtf is wrong with Mozilla nowadays... Just bring back extensions in Firefox Mobile if you have nothing else better to do.

reolsenfirefox 5y ago

Please Stop the Anoying pop up for colorways every time I open the browser.

reolsenfirefox 5y ago

Please someone tell me how to stop the anoying "Colorways" pop up every time I open the browser.

fwn 5y ago

My most authentic self while browsing the web is when I can finally again start to use the full range of extensions on current Firefox for Android. That would really make me feel included in the experience. It's really hard for me to grasp the many somewhat random new ideas Mozilla works on while some fundamental mechanics of the product are still broken. edit: ... I don't want to sound as if this is in itself a bad addition. It's just that it feels as if the house is burning and they are painting the door.

contravariant 5y ago
I mean technically you can already do that, they're just not making it easy. At least not "Look we've made a colour picker so you can mess up whatever theme you had!" easy. They've made a blog post about it a while back, it involves installing the nightly version and working your way through a few menus to switch their 'featured' list of extensions with a custom extension list published on addons.mozilla.com. [1] [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
- morsch 5y ago
  Wow, that is great! Turns out the introduction of "colorways" had an upside for me, after all!

nemetroid 5y ago

Firefox gave me a confusing popup window on the first start after updating. It didn't explain what "colorways" are. I closed it. This article is called "Introducing new Colorways for Firefox 94" but doesn't explain what the feature does, beyond being "a new feature that allows our users to express their most authentic selves and to bring them joy while browsing the web". I went to mozilla.org and, in two clicks, reached the page for "Firefox for Desktop". It has a section with "Latest Firefox features", one of which is "Personalize your experience with new colorways"... But that text is not clickable, so I'm not getting more information there either. I guess Mozilla doesn't want me to know what "Colorways" are.

smcl 5y ago
I had the same experience - a popup that sounded like it wanted me to get into another "Pocket" type thing so I dismissed it. Only when I wanted to switch my theme did I see that actually some of the (ugh) Colorways are kinda nice. It's a bit weird they wrapped it in a vague SV startup name and didn't bother tell us what it was.
Liru 5y ago
They're colour themes. Mozilla's celebrating the fact that you can change Firefox's colour theme while trying to spin it as something super unique. > we chose “Colorways” rather than “themes” to show we are branching out from our language of “browser” to speak the language of everyday life and everyday users. Basically, fashion-industry word salad, but for the tech industry! Hooray!
- slig 5y ago
  They don't seem to care about power users anymore, and "everyday life and everyday users" are on Safari and Chrome. Really sad.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    And they really shouldn't. If you're not pissing off your power users you're not moving fast enough. The only user-stories that mass-market browser makers should care about are casual users browsing the web and software developers publishing to to the web. Power users are a completely different market segment and have totally different needs and expectations from causal users.

iechoz6H 5y ago

From the article: "What inspired you to make the jump from fashion and retail into a tech company?", a question which might help explain the pivot to form over function.

guilhas 5y ago
Not exactly new, Mozilla always comes with a "revolutionizing the UI!" every now and then. The annoying part is that is increasing, the accumulated banality combined with useful features being removed

noahtallen 5y ago

> Colorways are just the start of a dialogue of our expression of Firefox, what we believe the experience of using the independent browser should be and could be. Though, I’m not sure this is the beginning of allowing users to customize Firefox :p For example, Firefox color already exists: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color.... It allows for a lot of custom colors across the Firefox UI. It’s even official and easy to use! Not sure why it’s not built in honestly. Plus, editing the base stylesheet for Firefox used to be very common and allowed for even more flexibility. I’m a huge fan of making color themes very easy to use and modify. So I hope this feature allows for complete customization rather than just picking from a few pre-defined swaths. Otherwise, it’s kind of missing the mark on the bit about letting users choose their own environment for the web. > These Colorways are here for the next two product releases (they won’t go away if you’ve selected it). This is a limited-time release which is intended to embrace the “now moment.” I find this odd. They are changing the options every few releases to increase engagement. I don’t get why that’s important for this feature. Why not just add new ones? It doesn’t seem very user friendly. So. It’s cool! But I’m worried it’s more about making Firefox trendy than about giving users power. Edit: I tried it out, and unfortunately there is no user-customization. And I don't even enjoy most of the "colorways"! Where are the blue colors, for example?

jamesgeck0 5y ago
It's disappointing to me that they didn't just ship Firefox Color as a built-in addon. They could have even made all these colorways default theme choices.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  What makes people think that individual apps should be snowflakes instead of theming the whole desktop?
  - jamesgeck0 5y ago
    Having a default theme that follows the system is great. But browsers allow running different different windows as different profiles with different cookies and credentials, and being able to tell those profiles apart at a glance is an important use case for web developers.

robertlagrant 5y ago

> of our diverse verbal languages. And we chose “Colorways” rather than “themes” to show we are branching out from our language of “browser” to speak the language of everyday life and everyday users. And they think "Colorways" is a word people will say in everyday life more than "themes"?

floatingatoll 5y ago
It's a term used in fashion to describe a given collection's theme, expressed in one or more outfits comprised of one or more pieces of clothing, accessories, and makeup. I can't say whether that's widely understood or not, but I am familiar with it, so fyi for others.
twobitshifter 5y ago
It’s common in sneakers.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Wow I googled it and it is a thing! Literally never heard of it.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I can just about guarantee it's a less-well-known term than "theme", as far as theme's usage to signify changing or customizing the colors of software. As in, way more people who aren't nerds will see "theme" and know what it means as it relates to software, than will see "colorways" and even have any point of reference for its meaning to maybe figure out the connection. Probably more people know what "Pantone" means, than "colorways". It's that obscure and jargony.
    - diggernet 5y ago
      And you'd be right on all three, at least in book usage. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=color+theme%2Ccolorways%2CPantone&year_start=2010&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=color+theme%2C...

clumsysmurf 5y ago

Both Chrome and now Safari have some attempt at useful tab management via tab groups. I feel like Mozilla is just bike shedding now when they could be making high value improvements in tab and bookmark management.

lostmsu 5y ago
Is there an article describing the feature for Chrome (or Edge, or Brave)?
wlesieutre 5y ago
Firefox used to have tab groups but they removed it: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/discontinuation-of-tab-groups-panorama/5145 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/discontinuation-of-tab-group... Maybe now that other browsers are shipping this they'll bring it back. But does improved tab management "embrace the now moment"?
- mnadkvlb 5y ago
  The current mozilla ceo is doing whatever they get paid to do by the advertising investors. They are driving firefox slowly to the ground. Firing developers, nerfing the UI, removing feature which had be stable for years. You name it, every single change is to drive this browser to the ground. Mark my word, we wont have a firefox we love in 5-10 years max. Makes me so sad :(‘
  - kyleee 5y ago
    And increasing their own pay substantially while their browser market share vanishes
morsch 5y ago
Firefox Android has an innovative tab whack a mole game, where they keep opening a new tab for everything, and every couple of hours you have to individually close old tabs you don't want anymore. Try to avoid hitting the ones you want to keep! It's lots of fun.

qlm 5y ago

The amount of marketing bullshit packed into this announcement about themes is frankly embarrassing, and makes me even more worried about the direction Mozilla is going in.

gedy 5y ago
This basically sounds like the way designers talk about a lot of things the rest of the world considers small stuff.

huhtenberg 5y ago

Being a die-hard Firefox user of 15+ years it hurts me to say, but WHO THE HELL CARES. Sounds like yet another random whimsical UI bullshit that Firefox is overflowing with these days. That's not what your core users want, more of an exact opposite, and it's not something that would help you stop FF market presence decline, leave alone reverse it.

klyrs 5y ago
I'm really sad about this. Every announcement I see from Mozilla fills me with dread that they're just milking whatever income they've got while driving the browser into the ground, in silent support of the inevitable Chrome monoculture.
- slig 5y ago
  It does seems to me that the half-billion dollars they get per year from Google is to make sure that Chrome has no competition whatsoever.
wubbert 5y ago
Mozilla hates their core users. They think that things like this will attract "trendie" and "diverse" users, which is a futile endeavor. "Trendie" people are always jumping from trend to trend, so even if they switch, they will just switch away when the new trend comes along. "Diverse" people use what ever panders to their race or sexuality the most, and Google panders to them far more than Mozilla ever could. Maybe when Mozilla finally kicks the bucket in a few years, someone will start something else that isn't just a Chrome fork.
- _hl_ 5y ago
  > "Diverse" people use what ever panders to their race or sexuality the most, and Google panders to them far more than Mozilla ever could. At the risk of sounding ignorant, how the fuck can a browser, the most universal platform we have right now, cater to any specific minority group? I'd get it if you were talking about accessibility, but what does the browser have to do with your race or sexuality?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

oehpr 5y ago

The thing that really is baffling about this article is that whenever I see saccharine, unspecific, obtuse, corporate language like this, I at least understand why the language is the way it is. Usually it's some company is in hot water and is trying to make sure no one can quote a single line in their press release. But... Why would Mozilla be trying to obfuscate setting the color of the browser? What's to gain from that? I assume someone looked at this blog post, maybe even multiple people? And then, I assume, thought to themselves: "Yup, this communicated what I want to communicate." But it's hard for me to imagine an audience that would be receptive to ... this.

handrous 5y ago
The only way I've been able to make sense of Mozilla over the last decade is to figure they've been taken over by several interests that don't align with a bright future for the browser, for the company/foundation, or the needs of users. There seems to be some kind of slow-motion many-party cannibalism underway.
- kyleee 5y ago
  Baker is basically stealing from the company: https://calpaterson.com/assets/mozilla-boss-pay.svg https://calpaterson.com/assets/mozilla-boss-pay.svg More sadness: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
- wolpoli 5y ago
  Based on the recent actions from Mozilla, they appear to believe that the core technology behind their browser is fine and competitive, and that the issue lies with the perception of the market. Futhermore, they believe if they could just get the existing users excited, they'll be able to grow their market share again. Unfortunately, this isn't going to work. Sometimes I wonder if the current leadership team even use Firefox on a day to day basis.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Next they should just pay Instagram, uhm, I mean, TikTok, influencers to promote the browser...

bvogelzang 5y ago

Their release notes (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/94.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/94.0/releasenotes/) mention this is available for a limited time only. This articles also states: > These Colorways are here for the next two product releases (they won’t go away if you’ve selected it). This is a limited-time release which is intended to embrace the “now moment.” Unclear to me what this means exactly. Will they remove the feature entirely or just plan to change up the colorways available?

detritus 5y ago
It is a bit daft, but I think it's not the underlying functionality, rather just these particular thematic colour combinations. I guess the marketing goons think FOMO's a good hook in this context? Me neither.
erichurkman 5y ago
> Will they remove the feature entirely or just plan to change up the colorways available? At least with this feature Mozilla told us how long it'll be before they remove it.
adamrezich 5y ago
sounds like there are color themes that users have a limited time to select before they remove the ability to select these specific color themes in future releases, as a marketing tactic. this whole thing is just baffling top-to-bottom. who is this aimed at? normies aren't shopping around for browsers, though maybe the "diversity" platitudes work on someone.
Fnoord 5y ago
Since releases are like once every 6 weeks, its available for ~3 months. What happens when I buy say a new computer in March 2022? Or if I buy one soon, and it arrived in March 2022? I can't apply this Firefox theme because it was available for a limited amount of time? Everything is available for a limited amount of time. But this is too limited. I find this utterly ridiculous. Its self defeating. Why would I get used to a feature which is going to unavailable in 3 months? Sure, it stays available if you selected it [1] but what happens if you reinstall your OS or get a new device? Given its FOSS though, wouldn't it be possible to re-add this feature, even as themes? After all, its just a theme pack. Or is it proprietary? [1] Supposedly, you could export your profile directory or something like that. But perhaps they're gonna make it available via a subscription in 3 months. Which is their right.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jancsika 5y ago

Would it be possible to use an NFT to be able to own my own Colorway?

PaulKeeble 5y ago

I tried a few different colour schemes, they were all dreadful contrast and went back to default. Who asked for this and more to the point why are they all hard to read? Firefox this is not what I want in my browser. Fix the weird problems with Youtube videos cutting out, improve tab management dramatically, bookmarks equally could do with some work. The core features need work, I don't need yet another way for the browser to look bad.

xbar 5y ago
Yup. I am switching browsers from Firefox now. I feel like this is an April 1 thing that accidentally shipped in November: a fabricated nonsense world coupled with an abhorrent and unavoidable eyesoreness to every page. Baffling. Well, at least Microsoft Edge is usable these days...

dan-robertson 5y ago

I remember long ago when Firefox (actually maybe it was chrome) added some theming ability and I went into gimp and crafted my own theme out of gradients and some photos. It was extraordinarily ugly (I was determined to use every single colour) however it was fun to make and it was mine. The article talks a lot about customisation, but you get six times three choices, which is barely 4 bits, to express yourself. I feel like the description does not really line up with the implementation.

rndgermandude 5y ago
>but you get six times three choices, which is barely 4 bits, to express yourself. This reminded me so much of that one Better Off Ted[0] episode, especially considering all the marketing speak in that article on top. In it, the Veridian company decided to allow employees to individualize their work space, but couldn't allow them to make choices themselves, so they choose the individuality for their employees, out of 4 exciting and non-offensive choices. "Enjoy your new personalities". [0] S01E07, 5:23, totally legit I am sure copy available here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6l5j39?start=323 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6l5j39?start=323
Fnoord 5y ago
Firefox Color? [1] [1] https://color.firefox.com/ https://color.firefox.com/
- maccolgan 5y ago
  What the fuck are these quotes?

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 5y ago

This could be the stroke of genius for Firefox to finally break free of its funding dependency on Google, with one small addition: paid themes^W colorways. If people's willing to buy custom skins for games, I don't see why not they wouldn't for their browser.

flohofwoe 5y ago

Sheesh, this reads like an Onion article. Isn't this just color themes? E.g. a standard feature before the UI/UX gods decided that taking features away from users is a good thing?

stanski 5y ago

I for one enjoyed trying out the different color schemes to see what looks good. Now what they mean by "limited time only", I have no idea. Are the colours going to suddenly revert with a new version of the browser? If so, why? The FOMO marketing BS definitely puts a damper on the whole thing.

jamoes 5y ago

Like most other readers here, my initial reaction is "Thanks, I hate it." I especially hate the assertion that they're increasing customization when in reality they've steadily been removing/hiding real customization options (e.g. compact theme, UrlBar.preventClickSelectsAll). But, on further consideration I see the value. This feature isn't for power users. The goal of this feature is to increase chances that normal everyday users will make Firefox their daily-driver browser. For many people, having a custom colored browser will be a deciding factor to keep them using Firefox. This is why they didn't call it "themes", which is a techy word that would cause many people to gloss-over and ignore it altogether. And, in reality, Firefox is still the most customizable browser for power-users. This feature doesn't remove userChrome.css, it doesn't stop users from editing thousands of options via about:config. It doesn't prevent hardcore power users from editing omni.ja to restore preventClickSelectsAll functionality. So frankly, I hope this feature can help increase Firefox's market share by even a little bit. The more people using Firefox - even if they're not power-users - the better for the future of the open web.

userbinator 5y ago

My, and I bet many others', reaction to this article can be summed up in one concise acronym: WTF. Sure, take away and slowly degrade all the other customisation opportunities that Firefox has, and what makes us choose it, but at least you can choose the colours!!!! The whole flowery BS language about being diverse and inclusive just gives this shitshow even more facepalm-worthiness. The Mozilla I knew and liked is certainly no more. Again, WTF.

bluedino 5y ago

This is a good illustration of a diversity/inclusion hire bringing new perspectives to a product. I saw the splash screen for this feature the first time I opened Firefox after updating. I selected a colorway, if only to make Firefox browser windows stand out from my other windows, which is useful as I have to log into several cloud accounts. The thing I immediately noticed is that 2 of the 3 'experiences' of each color are basically a 'dark mode' for that color. I don't find any of them very readable. The second thing I noticed is it also gets rid of the specific color theme of Private windows which is a little annoying. So they have some things to fix. Lastly, if you want blue or green or purple browser windows, just change your Windows color theme.

handrous 5y ago

> And we don’t really tolerate this type of what I would say are one-size-fits-all tools anywhere else in our lives. Oh my god, yes we do. Overwhelmingly, yes, that's the norm for tools. Very few people give a shit what color their hammer or circular saw or whatever is, unless it's something to do with colors improving safety. I give no thought to the color of anything in my kitchen unless it's going to be visible most or all of the time, at which point it's a fashion concern, nothing to do with tools. And you know what color's best, then, 99% of the time? "Same as everything else".

diggernet 5y ago
And this from a company that keeps taking away options, making their tool ever more one-size-fits-all.

CoryAlexMartin 5y ago

All I ask is that my web browser's appearance fit in well among the other applications in my operating system. Unfortunately, Firefox stopped caring about this a long time ago, along with pretty much everyone else. Australis was the last version of Firefox's interface that I enjoyed using.

fleddr 5y ago

When you want to undo these "colorways", they're still called "themes" in settings :) Which have been around for a decade. My personal research into themes is that they suck altogether. Besides very neutral dark or light tones, almost every other combination conflicts with real world content. I've tried hundreds over the years and always fall back to defaults. Note how both web pages and apps also tend to have neutral tones. Must be a reason for it. Whilst this feature does no harm in itself, I can only agree with some other commenters that Mozilla has turned into a series of contradictions. It preaches a progressive agenda yet has a neoliberal economic policy. It excessively rewards leaders despite mismanagement and then fires workers. It preaches privacy unless it concerns their sponsor, Google. There is a Facebook container built-in, but none for the unavoidable Google. And now they want to get out of the "browser language" and speak the language of common folk. Yet they never seem to have met one. I suppose my old working class father would be a good test: "Dad, this browser allows you to bring your authentic self!" My what? And what is a browser? "They are gray boxes. But not to worry, these authentic colors that somebody else picked are a universal language that transcends the boundaries of our diverse verbal languages" Go on and you're out of the will.

peakaboo 5y ago

I'm stunned by how so many people here in the tech community are describing this popup as confusing. I guess I'm really smart since I understood immediately (by the colors and buttons and the name) that it's a theme picker. And I actually clicked on it and tried a few. I was not confused at all.

weikju 5y ago
Same, it was obvious enough for me. It's probably an outgrowth of the trend to complain about Firefox, when there's a very visible feature like this that "takes away resources" from improving the core browser or restoring all add-ons on Android or whatever else.

toyg 5y ago

I love customizing and skinning; I even run my own simple FF theme at work with the company logo, which customers are occasionally impressed by. So I should love this, right...? Except that the hard-push of that damn pop-up resulted in the browser resetting to the default theme, discarding mine. Easy fix, but no thank-yous to the bright sparks at Mozilla for adding a little bit of irritation to my day. It all feels like a committee went "people don't know that we have themes, how can we make them aware...?", and this was the result. Waste of cycles.

firebaze 5y ago

OK, I'm done with Firefox. Supporting and using it as my main browser for the last 7 years. Switching to Brave. Least bad option.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

> And we don’t really tolerate this type of what I would say are one-size-fits-all tools anywhere else in our lives. And so, it just feels like a natural extension to allow people to make this tool that they’re leveraging every day feel more of their own, to feel fresh, to be exciting, to just bring in that small moment of delight to their day. And yet they've been steadily removing customization options for the past decade. No no, look, you can customize colors now! We are totally cool!

vlmutolo 5y ago

> These colorway selections will be available in Firefox 94 and 95. From Firefox 96 onwards, you won't be able to opt in to Colorways but you will be able to maintain access to the colorway that is currently enabled when you update to Firefox 96. This is the kind of move you'd expect from a paid, commercial piece of software. Tell potential users that they only have X amount of time to jump on the hype train because after that they're too late for the colors. The lack of that kind of user-hostile "feature" development is the primary reason I prefer open-source software. FOSS won't do this to you because the developers, in theory, shouldn't care how many users they have to the extent that they'll try to FOMO people into their product. FOSS won't do this to you because it's so easy to fork away the annoying parts of the software and just create a new release without the nonsense. See the VSCode/VSCodium divide. But I guess Firefox doesn't really fit in with the rest of FOSS. It's the primary revenue stream for a giant company, and far too complex to fork without a mammoth-sized maintenance effort.

waste_monk 5y ago

What a magnificent example of self-congratulatory masturbation. I don't know if Firefox management have been on a multi-year glue huffing binge or are simply utterly deranged, but every time I see a press release about Firefox it feels like the spectre of collapse is looming ever closer.

antonyh 5y ago

It looks like a set of themes installed that I neither asked for, can't remove, and if I do use might vanish at any time leaving me with a forced visual change. I'm not sure what the value is here - it's just a temporary theme, or have I missed the point?