New Colorways for Firefox 94
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
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.
> 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!
Meanwhile, I'd never heard of "color ways" until like 3 years ago, and I'd still not have if I didn't pay (too much) attention to tech and industry news.
[EDIT] Oh my god, it's even worse, I read other posts on this thread and just realized that I got it from getting very slightly into shoes, not even from tech news. LOL. Yeah, this is a terrible name.
And I know people in more general clothing fashion, and also interior design. Is this a fashion term or is somebody on the naming committee really into shoes?
It's sort of odd to use shoe-industry lingo instead of tech-industry lingo when you are a web browser company.
Colorways is such a niche lingo that most people outside the niche don't even recognize that it's a word.
Power users are a completely different market segment and have totally different needs and expectations from causal users.
Bold of you to assume they really care about which browser they use. I'd not be surprised if the vast majority of them use Edge and Safari.
The other day my mother asked me to check her pc for problems, while at it I was like
"...let me remove Chrome and install Firefox"
-"Don't do that" she said
-"Why?!" I was surprised because she is old and not technical at all, why would she even know what a Firefox is... Or have such strong opinion
-"Just don't do it, I don't like it"
-"Ok, I'll leave Chrome and you can try both"
-"Won't that use more space?"
-"Not really a problem as long you don't open both at same time"
-"Don't do it I have already tried it" and more or less ended there, but I am still curious why
Maybe I should explain her that now it is different because they have colors ways....
(with fast internet, low ram, and still HDD, I thought that Firefox with disk, and memory, cache disabled would be best)
It’s the first time in my life I’ve heard the word “colorway”. That’s how disconnected Mozilla is from reality.
What's weird here is that they consider "branching out from our language of \"browser\"" a completely normal phrase but the word "theme" far too technical for 'everyday users'.
Though that's nowhere near as weird as the fact that they think "Colourways" is a normal word, that'll disqualify anyone who has English as their second or third language for a start, but maybe it's more commonly known amongst native speakers?
This is incredibly misguided to me.
Who is your core base? Clearly, someone who went out of their way to install a third-party browser on an operating system that likely comes with a pre-installed Chromium browser (whether Microsoft or Google) did that for a reason.
And they likely didn't do it because they wanted better themes or were unaware such a feature exists.
My #1 reason for using Safari, despite its kinda sucking in a lot of ways, is battery life.
#2? Lighter load on system resources generally, than Chrome or FF.
#3, though? It doesn't spam me all the time with "helpful" messages about very frequent updates.
They don't. They want the user to try it out, to get them get used to a temporary feature. Who on Earth would want to get used to a temporary feature?
Compare it to subscription software. I hate such, I prefer to buy a license and own it forever, but I understand devs gotta eat. With a subscription software at least you know next month/year/whatever you are going to have to pay for access or the next version. With Mozilla Firefox, the feature is... going to be removed.
I'm very curious who came up with this idea. I wonder if its some marketing fellow who has zero clue about technology. Cause it very much feels like a feature from the physical world being applied to the digital one. Improperly applied, I might add.
Or perhaps its a lie to trigger FOMO, and in 2 versions they'll say "ah, due to the great success we are going to keep the feature" or they'll perhaps make it part of Mozilla subscription. Which is, TBH, fair enough, but then it makes me feel like a beta tester. Which is, TBH, fair enough, but be upfront about it and I opted out of beta tests/surveys/etc.
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.
More sadness: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
Sometimes I wonder if the current leadership team even use Firefox on a day to day basis.
It says right in the article: allows our users to express their most authentic selves and to bring them joy while browsing the web.
There are a lot of people living in a head bubble who think they can put in two years at a FAANG and change the world. This is an outgrowth of that mentality where trivial things are sold as something revolutionary so someone can feel like they "made a difference".
All those futile things about people, spirituality and creating stuff were exhaustively complicated.
https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
Hint to Mozilla - the only effective marketing you have is: "Firefox isn't feeding your data to Google's AI and it has uBlock Origin."
I'll hold my breath
As far as I know it's the only browser for Android that supports the uBlock addon, that's why it is my go-to browser.
There was a time when one could run many extensions on Firefox on Android. Mozilla restricted it to just a few.
I am still sad about losing Stylus.
I didn't mind playing with colorways for a few minutes.
The joke to me is the blog post explaining it. I had to dig for a while to find out what a colourway even is. The first few paragraphs were meaningless marketing dribble.
This is one of the things that really got me on board with the ideas of free software and Richard Stallman. I understand why corporations would want to force users to comply with data, tracking, etc. But they even go to the point of imposing cosmetic decisions. The ideal Android UI for me was whatever my Galaxy S3 had, yet for some reason I'm forced to upgrade to new, increasingly uglier system UIs as I upgrade Android versions. why?
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.... 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?
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.
Maybe when Mozilla finally kicks the bucket in a few years, someone will start something else that isn't just a Chrome fork.
I hoped for quite a while that Servo was the beginning of something that would become the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox to Firefox's current bloated, Mozilla-(the browser)-like state. The layoffs mostly crushed that hope.
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?
Colorways and current Mozilla is the same, appearances over content
And they think "Colorways" is a word people will say in everyday life more than "themes"?
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=color+theme%2C...
I can't say whether that's widely understood or not, but I am familiar with it, so fyi for others.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=theme%2Ccolorw...
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.
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".
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?
I guess the marketing goons think FOMO's a good hook in this context? Me neither.
At least with this feature Mozilla told us how long it'll be before they remove it.
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.
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.
Also what are Colour Schemes or Palettes?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-extensio...
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.
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...
I got the same "I don't control my computer any more" feeling I get from shitty software like Windows 10.
Maybe now that other browsers are shipping this they'll bring it back.
But does improved tab management "embrace the now moment"?
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 :(‘
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!
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.
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.
Switching to Brave. Least bad option.
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.
So, this feels like a small project for someone learning the Firefox code with some nice looking marketing on top.
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.