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Does it still have the cursed text with it that says "going away in (some month soon)". It's so stupid and confusing and baffling that I want to rage quit Fire

Does it still have the cursed text with it that says "going away in (some month soon)". It's so stupid and confusing and baffling that I want to rage quit Firefox with this as the absolute last straw. Like wtf, you're gonna take back my color in a few months? Just pull the upsell for it? Why the hell am I having to wonder about any of this? Why on God's green earth was this done instead of spending any effort getting a SINGLE bit of unity among the Bookmarks, Downloads and Add-ons panels, all of which should behave at least rougly similarly. (Because, to be clear, I had a Firefox theme that was imperceptibly similar to this months ago before this Colorways upsell) I don't get it. I do not do not do not get it. And now they're screwing around with another extensions menu that takes space on the toolbar but doesn't de-dupe with the extension buttons themselves (I actually can see where this Might be going, but again, zero clear comms about it). I'm the poster boy for an annoying Firefox advocate and I'm increasingly looking at selling my laptop to build a woodworking shed because it all feels hopeless.

dylan604 4y ago
>Why on God's green earth was this done instead of You are not alone. I'm starting to think something is wrong with me because I don't give an iota of a damn about any of this. I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the choices. (Kinda like trying to find something to watch on streaming platforms) Me, I have the default desktops from the OS, mobile OS, etc. I have too many windows covering my desktop to even care what it looks like. Yes, that's me, and I'm not even close to being everyone else. If this is the thing that convinces people to stop using Chrome, then fine. Spend time making the UI customizable to the point it looks like a MySpace background because that's what 99.9999% of people not me want. I'll do me, you do you.
- forsythe_ 4y ago
  I think the entire point is that Mozilla has depended on people "like you" to stay relevant for years and knows that's not a great long-term growth strategy compared to appealing to the general populace who cares about things like customizable themes.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come from societies that actively despise this kind of stuff, it might actually backfire. Lucky for them I guess most people outside of HN probably never even read that marketing material, so I think it's more of a circle jerk for the marketing dpt.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the planet because Google abused its market position in search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's throats, helped along by bundling it with other installers. Everything else was secondary.
      - insanitybit 4y ago
        Mozilla could have gone to OEMs like Dell and said "We'll pay you to pre-install Firefox" but they didn't, Google did. I wonder if that would have cost more or less than the yearly bonuses the CEO takes?
        dylan604 4y ago
        Has any non-ad driven piece of software ever used this inorganic growth hack? Admittedly, it has been a long long time since I've suffered using an OS burdened with this kind of malady, but it was definitely where I learned about how apps are not as "free" as one might be led to believe. It was these types of apps and the damn browser toolbar installs that were dark-UI/hidden installed when installing a completely different app.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  > I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the choices When done in the physical world this is called decorating, I guess theming is just a digital version of hanging a print from Ikea on the wall. When I do this sort of thing, I usually do accomplish something, because I like looking at pretty things, doing so makes me happier, making my things prettier helps me feel a bit happier when I look at them. Whether that has value depends on perspective, though I feel if it doesn't then that perspective is a pretty dismal one. It's also a way to make an abstract and alien thing feel a bit more familiar and "one's own", and computers are plenty alien and intimidating for a lot of people.
- soundnote 4y ago
  The moronic thing about these new "colorways" is that the company still refuses the sane default: Mostly grayish or very, very lightly tinted UI with a decently dark, contrasting tab bar. All these new themes have a lot of color outside the tab bar, but credit to Mozilla that the "soft" ones still manage more experienced contrast than their white-on-white abomination of a light theme.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    White on white is what chrome uses so they think that's fashionable. They don't understand people love Firefox because it's not Chrome. Not because it's not Chrome enough.
    - soundnote 4y ago
      Chrome uses a very light gray with a medium-light gray for the tab bar. It's noticeably more contrast than Firefox's light theme.
andrepd 4y ago
> instead of spending any effort getting a SINGLE bit of unity among the Bookmarks, Downloads and Add-ons panels One thing I'd actually like is a reasonably powerful history browser/manager. I want to look for websites I visited in a custom time period, how many times I visited a website last month, or in January, or whatever. It's all very poor as it stands: a very simple interface with no power-features whatsover, a fixed set of time periods to view (today, yesterday, last month), and a simple total visit count and timestamp of most recent visit.
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  I believe the history file is a SQLite database. I suppose you could maybe do something with that directly.
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    It is and you can. But the vast vast vast majority of people want to interact with (places in Firefox lingo) bookmarks, history and downloads from the browser instead of closing the browser and open a deeply nested file in a database manager app and write SQL queries to get the data they want.
forsythe_ 4y ago
Counter argument: is it actually worth getting this upset over themes? Yes, the marketing behind it is stupid because it attempts to correlate some deeper symbolic meaning to the act of choosing colors for your web browser. But as a fellow Firefox advocate, I would rather Mozilla plays around with these sort of corny marketing concepts as a way of gaining market share rather than rely on Google's patronage ad-infinitum.
- bityard 4y ago
  I would rather Mozilla put their time and money into actually improving on the things they _used to_ to better than Chrome and IE, like building a vibrant and diverse community, listening to their users, focusing on giving the user control over their own browsing experience, and being first to market with privacy features. It feels to me like they just ran out of either the will or the engineers to do the hard innovative stuff and are just trying to turn Firefox into their own UX art project at this point.
  - tweetle_beetle 4y ago
    > ... listening to their users, focusing on giving the user control over their own browsing experience ... To play devil's advocate, that may well be exactly what they're doing. I've always used Firefox, but I'm aware that I'm not a typical user andmy interests likely don't align with mass adaoption. I've said it before when Firefox has released new features that the HN crowd aren't interested in - there's not enough of you (us) for your opinions on [ themes ] to matter. And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term. I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or not this is the case and contribute to making it harder to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using Google ads, so I can't exactly complain.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      > I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or not this is the case and contribute to making it harder to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using Google ads, so I can't exactly complain. Yes you can complain. They should be well aware that their remaining userbase is very averse to telemetry. If anything the companies going all-in on telemetry and A-B testing are making ever worse products. Like Microsoft with their Teams that gets slower and more confusing every month. > And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term. What growth? I only see a decline. All they succeed at is alienating the users that were still using it. Not gaining new ones.
throwaway82390 4y ago
New colorway themes are a limited time offer because that will create seasonal excitement and users will be more likely to customize their Firefox theme if they know the other options will be taken away from them in a few months. Or at least that's product management's hypothesis for increasing user engagement.
- Macha 4y ago
  So we're going to use FOMO to increase the interaction rate of a feature. I'm sure that looks great on the PM's quarterly review when they can point out how many users used the feature, but is it actually better for the users who were uninterested in the feature?
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Indeed, I also don't even understand why they think colorways is even worth looking at when they're going to remove it anyway. I just don't get the point. Have a feature or not. But not this temporary stuff. I suppose they think doing a "killed by Google" will make them as popular as chrome again :)
boppo1 4y ago
I heard a rumor about 3-4 years ago they culled engineering and expanded DEI/HR. Didn't look into it because I don't care about that kind of thing, but it seems like it could be a relevant explanation.

dylan604 4y ago

>Why on God's green earth was this done instead of You are not alone. I'm starting to think something is wrong with me because I don't give an iota of a damn about any of this. I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the choices. (Kinda like trying to find something to watch on streaming platforms) Me, I have the default desktops from the OS, mobile OS, etc. I have too many windows covering my desktop to even care what it looks like. Yes, that's me, and I'm not even close to being everyone else. If this is the thing that convinces people to stop using Chrome, then fine. Spend time making the UI customizable to the point it looks like a MySpace background because that's what 99.9999% of people not me want. I'll do me, you do you.

forsythe_ 4y ago
I think the entire point is that Mozilla has depended on people "like you" to stay relevant for years and knows that's not a great long-term growth strategy compared to appealing to the general populace who cares about things like customizable themes.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come from societies that actively despise this kind of stuff, it might actually backfire. Lucky for them I guess most people outside of HN probably never even read that marketing material, so I think it's more of a circle jerk for the marketing dpt.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the planet because Google abused its market position in search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's throats, helped along by bundling it with other installers. Everything else was secondary.
    - insanitybit 4y ago
      Mozilla could have gone to OEMs like Dell and said "We'll pay you to pre-install Firefox" but they didn't, Google did. I wonder if that would have cost more or less than the yearly bonuses the CEO takes?
      - dylan604 4y ago
        Has any non-ad driven piece of software ever used this inorganic growth hack? Admittedly, it has been a long long time since I've suffered using an OS burdened with this kind of malady, but it was definitely where I learned about how apps are not as "free" as one might be led to believe. It was these types of apps and the damn browser toolbar installs that were dark-UI/hidden installed when installing a completely different app.
dividedbyzero 4y ago
> I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the choices When done in the physical world this is called decorating, I guess theming is just a digital version of hanging a print from Ikea on the wall. When I do this sort of thing, I usually do accomplish something, because I like looking at pretty things, doing so makes me happier, making my things prettier helps me feel a bit happier when I look at them. Whether that has value depends on perspective, though I feel if it doesn't then that perspective is a pretty dismal one. It's also a way to make an abstract and alien thing feel a bit more familiar and "one's own", and computers are plenty alien and intimidating for a lot of people.
soundnote 4y ago
The moronic thing about these new "colorways" is that the company still refuses the sane default: Mostly grayish or very, very lightly tinted UI with a decently dark, contrasting tab bar. All these new themes have a lot of color outside the tab bar, but credit to Mozilla that the "soft" ones still manage more experienced contrast than their white-on-white abomination of a light theme.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  White on white is what chrome uses so they think that's fashionable. They don't understand people love Firefox because it's not Chrome. Not because it's not Chrome enough.
  - soundnote 4y ago
    Chrome uses a very light gray with a medium-light gray for the tab bar. It's noticeably more contrast than Firefox's light theme.

andrepd 4y ago

> instead of spending any effort getting a SINGLE bit of unity among the Bookmarks, Downloads and Add-ons panels One thing I'd actually like is a reasonably powerful history browser/manager. I want to look for websites I visited in a custom time period, how many times I visited a website last month, or in January, or whatever. It's all very poor as it stands: a very simple interface with no power-features whatsover, a fixed set of time periods to view (today, yesterday, last month), and a simple total visit count and timestamp of most recent visit.

BenjiWiebe 4y ago
I believe the history file is a SQLite database. I suppose you could maybe do something with that directly.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  It is and you can. But the vast vast vast majority of people want to interact with (places in Firefox lingo) bookmarks, history and downloads from the browser instead of closing the browser and open a deeply nested file in a database manager app and write SQL queries to get the data they want.

forsythe_ 4y ago

Counter argument: is it actually worth getting this upset over themes? Yes, the marketing behind it is stupid because it attempts to correlate some deeper symbolic meaning to the act of choosing colors for your web browser. But as a fellow Firefox advocate, I would rather Mozilla plays around with these sort of corny marketing concepts as a way of gaining market share rather than rely on Google's patronage ad-infinitum.

bityard 4y ago
I would rather Mozilla put their time and money into actually improving on the things they _used to_ to better than Chrome and IE, like building a vibrant and diverse community, listening to their users, focusing on giving the user control over their own browsing experience, and being first to market with privacy features. It feels to me like they just ran out of either the will or the engineers to do the hard innovative stuff and are just trying to turn Firefox into their own UX art project at this point.
- tweetle_beetle 4y ago
  > ... listening to their users, focusing on giving the user control over their own browsing experience ... To play devil's advocate, that may well be exactly what they're doing. I've always used Firefox, but I'm aware that I'm not a typical user andmy interests likely don't align with mass adaoption. I've said it before when Firefox has released new features that the HN crowd aren't interested in - there's not enough of you (us) for your opinions on [ themes ] to matter. And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term. I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or not this is the case and contribute to making it harder to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using Google ads, so I can't exactly complain.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    > I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or not this is the case and contribute to making it harder to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using Google ads, so I can't exactly complain. Yes you can complain. They should be well aware that their remaining userbase is very averse to telemetry. If anything the companies going all-in on telemetry and A-B testing are making ever worse products. Like Microsoft with their Teams that gets slower and more confusing every month. > And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term. What growth? I only see a decline. All they succeed at is alienating the users that were still using it. Not gaining new ones.

throwaway82390 4y ago

New colorway themes are a limited time offer because that will create seasonal excitement and users will be more likely to customize their Firefox theme if they know the other options will be taken away from them in a few months. Or at least that's product management's hypothesis for increasing user engagement.

Macha 4y ago
So we're going to use FOMO to increase the interaction rate of a feature. I'm sure that looks great on the PM's quarterly review when they can point out how many users used the feature, but is it actually better for the users who were uninterested in the feature?

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Indeed, I also don't even understand why they think colorways is even worth looking at when they're going to remove it anyway. I just don't get the point. Have a feature or not. But not this temporary stuff. I suppose they think doing a "killed by Google" will make them as popular as chrome again :)

boppo1 4y ago

I heard a rumor about 3-4 years ago they culled engineering and expanded DEI/HR. Didn't look into it because I don't care about that kind of thing, but it seems like it could be a relevant explanation.