3 ms·

I think you should re-read the complaints with slightly more empathy for both sides. I love my purple Firefox (apparently via Colorways). Meanwhile, the "Colorw

I think you should re-read the complaints with slightly more empathy for both sides. I love my purple Firefox (apparently via Colorways). Meanwhile, the "Colorways" feature UX and messaging is stupid and confusing. I'm not exaggerating, me and others are quite confused about what it is/isn't and if it's going away. All for freaking what? My mom sees that shit? She's gonna go "uh I don't know what Colorways is, why's it gonna go away, I'll just stick with Edge where it showed me 12 colored icons under the Theme heading and I just clicked one." Because that's exactly what I did until the slight annoyed-curiosity-purple-enthusiast got the better of me. I feel like the scene in Zoolander when the character is befuddled and exasperatedly asks "am I taking crazy pills".

Spivak 4y ago
> All for freaking what? Because they wanted something to talk about social media that was fun and limited time. They were following the Nike playbook with shoe drops including the terminology. Look at the screenshot in the blog post about colorways the art is even a shoe with a basketball. They were trying something new. Limited time cosmetic drops for browsers that get people hyped in every other context. It confused white people because of how they executed it. Live and learn I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Every non-chrome browser has to answer the question "why use me instead of Chrome" and for Firefox it's the activism. you might not like that but it's what Mozilla's got. At least it's not some crypto nonsense.
- stoplying1 4y ago
  So Mozilla is chasing Nike shoe trends to advocate for their browser via colorschemes. I'm not even saying you're wrong, and I guess I'm not even sure that's an absolutely bad idea but Christ if that's "our" play for the future of browsers and privacy, I need to start building that shed ASAP!
  - Spivak 4y ago
    I get you dude, Firefox got popular because IE stagnated and Mozilla capitalized on it, Chrome ate the world because Google made a significant technical improvement at just the right time neither of which can be replicated again so long as Google keeps up their frankly ridiculous development pace. Safari only lives because a popular platform requires it. Mozilla angling for a cultural victory in the browser war is weird but it's the only thing they and every other alternative browser has. I actually thought the colorway thing was fun when it popped up, browser did actually look fresh and new but yeah probably not gonna move the needle.
    - acheron 4y ago
      Chrome only “ate the world” because Google leveraged its monopoly in another area to push it. We used to think that was a bad thing.
    - soundnote 4y ago
      > Mozilla angling for a cultural victory in the browser war is weird but it's the only thing they and every other alternative browser has. Or, you know. Do what Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera etc. all do. Features. It works.
  - soundnote 4y ago
    I'm fairly sure the play for browser privacy looks like a lion.
- ndriscoll 4y ago
  > Every non-chrome browser has to answer the question "why use me instead of Chrome" and for Firefox it's the activism. you might not like that but it's what Mozilla's got. The problem is that Mozilla's raison d'etre used to be about technical merit and user agency, including privacy and customization features. Chrome doesn't set a particularly high bar here, so Firefox could still be about this (and in fact Firefox is still the better choice despite themselves), but over the last few years they've gone in exactly the wrong direction. Browsers were themeable 20 years ago. Everything used to be themeable. Things like CSS show these roots in their design, but Mozilla thinks that user stylesheets are a "legacyUserProfileCustomizations" instead of a fundamental design feature now. The whole idea of limited time marketing is to create anxiety and FOMO. It's completely anti-ethical to user-focused design.

Spivak 4y ago

> All for freaking what? Because they wanted something to talk about social media that was fun and limited time. They were following the Nike playbook with shoe drops including the terminology. Look at the screenshot in the blog post about colorways the art is even a shoe with a basketball. They were trying something new. Limited time cosmetic drops for browsers that get people hyped in every other context. It confused white people because of how they executed it. Live and learn I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Every non-chrome browser has to answer the question "why use me instead of Chrome" and for Firefox it's the activism. you might not like that but it's what Mozilla's got. At least it's not some crypto nonsense.

stoplying1 4y ago
So Mozilla is chasing Nike shoe trends to advocate for their browser via colorschemes. I'm not even saying you're wrong, and I guess I'm not even sure that's an absolutely bad idea but Christ if that's "our" play for the future of browsers and privacy, I need to start building that shed ASAP!
- Spivak 4y ago
  I get you dude, Firefox got popular because IE stagnated and Mozilla capitalized on it, Chrome ate the world because Google made a significant technical improvement at just the right time neither of which can be replicated again so long as Google keeps up their frankly ridiculous development pace. Safari only lives because a popular platform requires it. Mozilla angling for a cultural victory in the browser war is weird but it's the only thing they and every other alternative browser has. I actually thought the colorway thing was fun when it popped up, browser did actually look fresh and new but yeah probably not gonna move the needle.
  - acheron 4y ago
    Chrome only “ate the world” because Google leveraged its monopoly in another area to push it. We used to think that was a bad thing.
  - soundnote 4y ago
    > Mozilla angling for a cultural victory in the browser war is weird but it's the only thing they and every other alternative browser has. Or, you know. Do what Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera etc. all do. Features. It works.
- soundnote 4y ago
  I'm fairly sure the play for browser privacy looks like a lion.
ndriscoll 4y ago
> Every non-chrome browser has to answer the question "why use me instead of Chrome" and for Firefox it's the activism. you might not like that but it's what Mozilla's got. The problem is that Mozilla's raison d'etre used to be about technical merit and user agency, including privacy and customization features. Chrome doesn't set a particularly high bar here, so Firefox could still be about this (and in fact Firefox is still the better choice despite themselves), but over the last few years they've gone in exactly the wrong direction. Browsers were themeable 20 years ago. Everything used to be themeable. Things like CSS show these roots in their design, but Mozilla thinks that user stylesheets are a "legacyUserProfileCustomizations" instead of a fundamental design feature now. The whole idea of limited time marketing is to create anxiety and FOMO. It's completely anti-ethical to user-focused design.