Firefox Personas is back! I’ve seen a handful of blogs covering this re-launch I guess you could call it all weekend long. It is an awesome project and I am happy to see it is getting a little more time in the sun. Personas are lightweight designs that “skin” the Firefox web browser. Delivered as a web service, the menu interface and the Persona designs are exceptionally dynamic, and should allow for a wide range of interesting possibilities.
Here are a couple of points that make Personas a winner:
- You can select a Persona from the dynamic menus and see results instantly without having to discover, select, download or install a separate bit of software or code.
- Personas can be added, removed or updated by their designers at any time, without requiring a software update.
Personas = Future of Firefox?
The bigger idea behind Personas though that I think Mozilla is really looking at is generating a part of the browser from the Web. The Persona selector is dynamically loaded and populated from a JSON feed and all designs are loaded via URLs to remote resources.
I have to think that they would love to be able to deliver more content, tools and services this way. With that said is Personas really a preview of Firefox 4 (maybe Firefox 5) or is it just a neat tool to change your browser look and feel of your browser?
Another point worth bringing up is it does work with a handful of other Firefox themes out there (other than Firefox’s default theme). To get an example of this go download the Cylence Theme : Emerald Variation. If Personas grow in popularity theme designers might want start taking note if their theme works with Personas or not.
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