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Mozilla Plans To Remove Support For Firefox Complete Themes

Posted by timothy on from the too-much-freedom dept.

AmiMoJo writes: Mozilla's engineers have announced the removal of Firefox complete themes as a way to lighten the browser core and remove a feature they don't see as heavily used any more. "Personas", or lightweight themes that are basically just wallpaper images, will remain. The Firefox community did not respond well to this piece of news, most seeing it as the engineers "chromifying Firefox." The change is part of Mozilla's Great-or-Dead initiative, which plans to simplify the Firefox codebase and remove features that are not popular.

11 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Always seemed redundant to me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We already have gui toolkit theming, why do we also need individual application theming?

    1. Re:Always seemed redundant to me. by GuB-42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think GP is talking about the sponsored start page and pocket integration. Pocket is the worst.

  2. Agree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Look, if a few people are the only ones using a specific feature, and they can't live without it, fork the code. Don't continue to bloat the browser for the other 99% of users that would rather have a light, fast browser without this obscure feature.

    1. Re:Agree by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And Hello?
      And the fucking proprietary DRM and media shit?
      And the "about:newtab" shit that shows you your top visited sites, and "recommended" sites?

      All of that shit should be nuked from the code base, and everyone involved should be stripped naked, tied to a tree in the woods, and have their genitals coated in honey.

    2. Re:Agree by Burz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FF still ignores OS themes, making their special "complete themes" necessary for many people. And I do mean "necessary"...

      I like to read at night without having to turn display brightness to nearly zero (which is still too bright and makes everything look like dishwater). Even if I use an extension like BYM to darken web pages, I still have the FF GUI blaring at my eyes. The solution is to use an addon like DeepDark to tame the UI.

      Now I'll have a browser that neither honors my Gnome dark theme setting, nor honors its own custom dark theme. THAT is a clusterf*ck.

    3. Re:Agree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They already announced that Pocket will be removed. Not removed, but placed inside its own add-on. http://webscripts.softpedia.com/blog/mozilla-to-move-pocket-integration-to-a-standalone-firefox-add-on-495871.shtml

      That is awesome news! Moving integrated add-ons like Pocket to "featured add-ons" is a great idea! Keep the core browser lean and mean. Like it was meant to be.

  3. Firefox Loses Another Customization Feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Mozilla seems to be bent on taking away almost every customization feature (cosmetic and otherwise) and turn it into a knockoff of Chrome after destroying every feature that made it different. At this rate they should just re-badge Chromium and call it a day.

  4. Re:Storm in a glas of water by cdrudge · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So you basically want Chrome then?

  5. Please please by ADRA · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can someone tell me if this actually affects me? Oh they removed some underlying feature. That is neither here nor there if its of truly marginal use or something that can be added back with Add-Ons. All this isn't clearly outlined in the comment or announcement, so here goes:

    I have the following plugins. Which Add-Ons if any will be broken without any future fix after the deprecation?
    - Classic Theme Restorer
    - Add to Search Bar
    - Adblock Plus
    - Quick Search Bar
    - Hard Refresh
    - Flashblock

    --
    Bye!
  6. Re: Storm in a glas of water by MyAlternateID · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most people just want to use their browser. Almost everyone I know uses Firefox mostly because IE sucked so much in the past. And they do not play around with themes. They might install icon sets, but only at home.

    I know geeks like to configure everything and that is OK , but it is not what matters for the majority of users.

    And no I do not want to use the Google sees it all tool for obvious reasons.

    The great number of useful extensions is my own main reason for using Firefox. I also have Chromium and Konqueror installed but I hardly ever use them.

    The Web is just too shitty of a general experience to use any browser without a good ad blocker. The many, many other available extensions is just icing on the cake.

  7. A complete overreaction by Lirodon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is actually a side effect of the other changes they are planning; particularly, the deprecation of XUL. The bug itself has comments dictating that they are not removing the concept entirely, but want to revamp it to fit the new architecture. Theoretically, a new theme system could be built under the new architecture.