Mozilla makes Firefox skinning easy with Personas

[Seraphim]

In a move aimed at making Firefox easy to personalize, Mozilla has released an extension called Personas. After a quick install, users can easily change the look of their beloved browser without the frustration of dealing with Firefox "Themes".

I agree with the Mozilla labs blog that themes are way too hard to find and install. Plus having to restart your browser just to apply a theme can be just downright annoying. Another advantage for Personas is that graphic designers can apply different styles to the browser without having to write code.

Here's how it works. First you install the plugin and restart your browser. After Firefox comes back up, you see a little fox in the lower left hand corner (screenshot below), click the fox and select among the themes. Your browser is instantly skinned with no headache whatsoever! Personas is ready to use on Firefox 2.0 through the 3.0 Betas.

A feature I love is that the list of "personas" will auto-magically update on a regular basis -- how cool is that! I wonder if Mozilla labs just made browser skinning so easy that our parents could do it? Naaahhhhh maybe not! So check it out when you get a chance!! :thumbsup:

 

[Sheep]

Seraphim said:
I agree with the Mozilla labs blog that themes are way to hard to find and install.

They are?? I suppose clicking two levels down into a menu or visiting the Mozilla site to pick and choose from hundreds of themes IS too much for some people...

The only way I can see that comment making any sense is that latest public version of Firefox did hide the skins options in the add-ons menu after giving them their own menu item in previous versions.

 

[T J]

Wow, this is great and works good. Now if only they have a bigger variety of personas.

 

[Seraphim]

Sheep said:

Seraphim said:
I agree with the Mozilla labs blog that themes are way to hard to find and install.

They are?? I suppose clicking two levels down into a menu or visiting the Mozilla site to pick and choose from hundreds of themes IS too much for some people...

The only way I can see that comment making any sense is that latest public version of Firefox did hide the skins options in the add-ons menu after giving them their own menu item in previous versions.

Themes are not hard to use for BBS members, but they do require a restart of the browser in order for them to take effect. I was sensationalizing that line for the sake of the readers.

 

[BriGuy]

Pretty cool, and it works differently from themes. I used to be big on the themes, but lost interest in them. This is something new to play around with. Thanks for pointing it out!

Right now I'm using the Firefox logo skin. Clean, elegant, nice use of colors and I really like the FF logo.

 

[Seraphim]

^^Glad you like. I am using tranquility.

I just switched to Foxkeh Green Winter.

 

[Gertch]

Oh this is great! Thanks.

Blue spheres at the moment for me.

Is there anything about making your own?

 

[Seraphim]

Grintch said:
Oh this is great! Thanks.

Blue spheres at the moment for me.

Is there anything about making your own?

My question exactly. I'm looking for that as well.

 

[Gertch]

It's in their forum. You submit them there and they will pick the best to add to the Public repository. There is an option for a Private file but it has a bug and doesn't actually show the image. They will be working on that.