Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

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Moonchild
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Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Moonchild » 2015-11-07, 16:51

As was pointed out to me on IRC it's now confirmed in bug #1222546: Mozilla's decision has been made to remove support for Themes from Firefox (and potentially derivative products as a result).
Benjamin Smedberg wrote:As part of Firefox great-or-dead, we've decided to stop support for "heavyweight" themes which can do arbitrary styling and replace chrome packages.
You like your Noia, FT DeepDark and similar themes for your browser? Sorry if you're using Firefox (and direct clones) -- once this lands, support for what Mozila calls "heavyweight themes" will be gone. You'll have the Mozilla way (maybe with custom toolbar backgrounds AKA personas AKA lightweight themes) or the highway to choose from.

And in case of the inevitable questions from people who still don't understand what Pale Moon is and is not: No, this will not in any way impact Pale Moon. We pride ourselves on having a nice and growing collection of complete themes.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
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Sleeping

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Sleeping » 2015-11-07, 17:08

Mozilla has gone totally crazy. I must say that I don't use any theme, but I'm happy that Pale Moon will not be affected :)

SGvagon

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by SGvagon » 2015-11-07, 17:42

I use this theme https://addons.mozilla.org/cs/firefox/a ... src=search , so when I installed it, theme me stay and working in future versions of Palemoon?

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Weboh » 2015-11-07, 17:44

Man Mozilla. Firefox's big thing was it's customize-ability, and now they're turning it into a complete Chrome clone--and an uglier one at that. Removing differentiations isn't the way to get people to use your browser Mozilla!

...However, it is the way to get more people to move to Pale Moon. Pale Moon is awesome. It's everything Firefox once was and still should be. Thanks Moonchild!

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by LimboSlam » 2015-11-07, 17:47

What! This is insane!! Who the H*** do they think they are!? F****** MORONS is what!!

I'm so pissed! I'm gonna go take a walk. :evil:


EDIT: forgive my language and negative attitude here.
With Pale Moon by my side, surfing the web is quite enjoyable and takes my headaches away! :)
God is not punishing you, He is preparing you. Trust His plan, not your pain.#‎TrentShelton #‎RehabTime

silvermoonwolf74

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by silvermoonwolf74 » 2015-11-07, 18:10

WTH? That's crazy! FF was supposed to be all about customization and expansion. That was why I loved it so much when it first came out. They are really going corporate nowadays.

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by win7-7 » 2015-11-07, 20:02

Mozilla Corporation decisions lately don't make much of sense. There is already Google Chrome (also Opera 15+ and some others) for customer group who just want simple basic browser. Who are they trying to target as customers?

Firefox strength in past has been because customization. Pale Moon will likely gain more users for these type of decisions. Some more developers might also start get worried with these decisions and decide to support Pale Moon.

Lunix

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Lunix » 2015-11-07, 20:39

Firefox is not Firefox and never will be again.

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Lootyhoof » 2015-11-07, 20:50

In light of these developments, rest assured I'm still churning away themes from time to time. :thumbup:

Themes are certainly still on the agenda here, at least! :)

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Trippynet » 2015-11-07, 20:53

As written on Bugzilla by "Benjamin Smedberg"...
As part of Firefox great-or-dead, we've decided to stop support for "heavyweight" themes...
So, dead then...

Tharn

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Tharn » 2015-11-08, 03:39

Kinda saw this coming ever since they put proper themes in their own sub-category and started serving these horrible 'a background and a colour' themes instead. Much like Opera did before it died. No surprise, but still a wakeup call to anyone who thinks they can salvage Firefox. The inconveniences and shortcomings are mounting in number, and to pivot from a customization-centric browser to a user-friendly monolith, they're pretty much guaranteed to ostracize most of their old userbase. I don't think that's a move Firefox is going to survive.

jumba

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by jumba » 2015-11-08, 08:50

Could this be part of the abandon XUL mission (or clone Chrome)?

extensions --> dead
themes --> dead
firefox --> dead

web (Chrome) extensions --> great
anything chrome has --> great
Chrome --> Grrrrrrreat!!

roytam1

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by roytam1 » 2015-11-08, 10:10

jumba wrote:Could this be part of the abandon XUL mission (or clone Chrome)?

extensions --> dead
themes --> dead
firefox --> dead

web (Chrome) extensions --> great
anything chrome has --> great
Chrome --> Grrrrrrreat!!
You need to add Australis in the list ;)

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Trippynet » 2015-11-08, 11:06

I think that falls under the "Anything Chrome has", seeing as it is in effect a clone of Chrome's user interface...

Faziri

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Faziri » 2015-11-08, 19:18

I've been an addon dev for a year or two now, and have noticed most of the big changes they've done lately. I'm also still pissed off about their now almost cliche sounding problem areas like no x64, STILL no e10s, etc. I've tried to use palemoon, chrome and vivaldi in the past, but couldn't stick with any of them: palemoon didn't have the userbase to be worth it and for me to trust it wouldn't be gone after a few years (like how some linux distros have already died out in my time of using linux), chrome has s*** addons and a s*** store(and so does android, for the record), and vivaldi isn't out yet so yeah... I was also worried about palemoon and such using older versions of the addon sdk, which would saddle me up with a lot of headaches too.

But now with this retarded dumbfuck decision they've made, with 0 input from the userbase as usual, thrown on top of the pile of shitty decisions they've made lately, I think I'll very soon start migrating to either palemoon or vivaldi and consider Mozidiots Firebollox a thing of the past. Even if they had asked user input, they've been absorbing so many "everyday joes" (aka ignorant users who don't deserve to have anything to say) that they'd just call anything their powerusers say a "rare use case" and just go on uninterrupted. I'm getting tired of mozilla spewing crap like "full themes are a rare enough use case to warrant removal" (meanwhile, ft deepdark alone has 190K+ users) and generally antagonizing even remotely advanced users.

Mozilla is freaking dead to me if they do this, and I will adopt palemoon (or vivaldi...) as my one and only son browser.

Edit:
I just told my girlfriend the headline (firefox dropping full themes). She's the kind of person who knows zilch about tech or programming (she thinks if she watches a video in dropbox via the dropbox app on her phone instead of letting it sync, it'll work better because "it doesn't download the video"), and by extension couldn't care less about such things. Her reply was "why would they do that? That's just dumb". Meanwhile mozilla keeps spewing these shitty ideas of theirs, thinking they're making such great decisions. My mind cannot wrap itself around the thick-headedness and denseness of mozilla's current admins.

"Captain, we're getting massive storm-like headwind, and it's getting stronger every second!"
"Good, more wind for the sails"
"But captain, it's headwind!"
"I said more wind for the sails!"

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by ron_1 » 2015-11-08, 20:53

Faziri wrote:
"Captain, we're getting massive storm-like headwind, and it's getting stronger every second!"
"Good, more wind for the sails"
"But captain, it's headwind!"
"I said more wind for the sails!"
Good analogy. And pretty funny, too.

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by LimboSlam » 2015-11-08, 21:03

helloimustbegoing wrote:
Faziri wrote:
"Captain, we're getting massive storm-like headwind, and it's getting stronger every second!"
"Good, more wind for the sails"
"But captain, it's headwind!"
"I said more wind for the sails!"
Good analogy. And pretty funny, too.

Haha! Yeah it is.

@Faziri: By the way, which add-ons are yours?
With Pale Moon by my side, surfing the web is quite enjoyable and takes my headaches away! :)
God is not punishing you, He is preparing you. Trust His plan, not your pain.#‎TrentShelton #‎RehabTime

Faziri

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Faziri » 2015-11-08, 21:06

LimboSlam wrote:
helloimustbegoing wrote:
Faziri wrote:
"Captain, we're getting massive storm-like headwind, and it's getting stronger every second!"
"Good, more wind for the sails"
"But captain, it's headwind!"
"I said more wind for the sails!"
Good analogy. And pretty funny, too.

Haha! Yeah it is.

@Faziri: By the way, which add-ons are yours?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/Marnes/

Supernova

Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Supernova » 2015-11-08, 23:31

They discussed it at mozillazine too : http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&p=14393843

An interesting post from Frank Lion :
Yep, those pesky themes that users didn't want -

http://franklion.co.uk/GEN-LINKS/SNAG-0113.png

That is a pic of the figures for one of mine in 2007, 6 months after it came out. (an AMO bug means you add on the download figures of the top Incomplete - No Files version)

That weekly download figure was a bit of a one-off high spot, but, yeah, top themes in those days were getting 100,000 - 300,000 downloads a week.

Extension writers didn't like it much (quite a few devs were also extension writers) as their figures were far lower and we were getting all the glory. Then came Personas, which people just weren't buying into and themes were still burying them.

Mozilla's solution? - they froze the all the counter figures for 2 months in late 2007 and when they came back, the extension download figures were as expected like before and the theme figures were 10% of what they were across the board.

At AMO, they even tried to deny/dispute the previous theme figures, until we showed them the screenshots (they had forgotten that arty types who make themes always do screenshots, instead of geeky copy 'n paste) They had no answers, but just did a 'because I say so' on us. This was the guy btw

Cameron Nicks of Shift fame packed it in and I left AMO in 2008. Since then, I've been told, there have been a few more less drastic 'downward adjustments' on theme figures and, of course, the continual hiding of where they are and devs bad mouthing Complete Themes ever since.

For what? Just so that their Personas could take off because users had no other option? Instead of creating or competing on a level playing field, they chose to deliberately destroy one of their main competitive edges over other browsers. As the skill level in producing Personas is near zero, then pretty obviously, Chrome and all the other browsers immediately also brought out their versions of it.

N.B. My old pals at Mozilla have all now left and this new bunch are already pretty well aware of what I think of them, which does give me a certain freedom to express myself freely here. :)

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Re: Mozilla to remove Themes from Firefox

Unread post by Trippynet » 2015-11-10, 11:34

Interestingly, one of them commented:
Why not fork Firefox? Surely there is talent around to accomplish that. Or are there legal constraints to that happening? That would be a much more productive endeavor than moaning and groaning . . .

Note . . . I am also a moaner and groaner hoping someone will get it together. I would support such a project as best I could.
I am so glad that PM went the path that it did. Avoiding Mozilla's trail of destruction was definitely a good thing :)

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