The Downfall of Personas

Posted on Feb 22, 2010 in Usability

Now, Firefox’s new Personas feature has seem taken off really well.  Each time I visit the Personas web site, there are more and more backgrounds to use for Firefox.  So with such a good start, what will be the downfall of the Personas?

It all comes down to quantity over quality.  Some of these backgrounds just are not any good.  The same could be said for many Firefox themes too, but with Personas – there are a few simple things that could go a long way before you submit it for the public, that would be so easy to check into.

For example, look at this:

Can You Read This?

I am not going to use a Persona where I can’t read anything inside of the browser. 

Other annoyances would be having text in the background, having the background be too busy, and general “why the heck did you think that would make a good background” questions of designing competence.

So you tell me, what makes for a better Firefox Persona or have you been turned off my many of the ugly background out there? Post your feedback and thoughts in the comments.

  • bogas04
    Who is forcing u? Try simple solid colours , or the famous ones? (Japanese , Firefox Rocket etc)
  • Pumpkin Gal
    My main beef continues to be the fact that 3.6 changed the way Personas is configured and now requires that you must use it only in conjunction with the rather awful FF Default theme, with its horribly boring, dull style and appallingly ugly buttons (i.e.: no more interfacing with "real" themes as before). I applaud all the other changes, such as the organization, the categories, ease of preview and especially being able to create a personal file of "My Favorites". This is all really good. But the other stuff is NOT and I don't seem to be alone in this complaint.
  • Out of 30K plus personas, there are probably 1K good ones.... That's still a lot though, so I still like Personas, except for the fact that it doesn't let you use it over themes(:
  • Conrad
    I use Brushed Metal - XP persona. Really good.
  • I suppose it should be expected that a majority of the Personas are going to look terrible just because they are user generated content. It's just another example of Sturgeon's law (or Pareto's principle, depending on how generic you want to be.)
  • Han
    I've rarely seen any decent personas (even pretty clean ones).

    I prefer a nice Aero look using glasser with a few other stylish tweaks to smooth the rough edges of the default firefox theme.

    h--p://pic.leech.it/pic.php?id=e3d2320fffglasser.jpg
  • campingshadow
    I use the Tranquility persona. I love it. It is clean and all the text is easy to read, but it is also calming as it looks like the sky with clouds with clear white text. I agree that some of the Personas are just too darn busy and too hard to read. I actually "tried on" several before settling on this one. There are way too many to search thru all of them. Maybe they need to be "shuffled" now and then to get some at the end to get up to the front and get a chance to be seen,
  • Nemu
    well i really don't mind since they are 'muted' in a shade slightly lighter than the overall interface. tabs only though. and i think i gotten quite used my layout to really have to read where is what.

    but i agree that ones where there is an over color scheme are better than ones that'll probably garner more attention as an actual image than a skin..

    campingshadow:
    not sure if this is what you're looking for but.. i found this (experimental?) addon at the same time as i found the big p.
    basically it lets you rotate through randomly selected skins from the site. it doesn't show up as 'recently selected' in the bar though so if i found one i really like i can't seem to go back to it. oh and if signed into the website, it rotates through your favorites. not sure if it works since i haven't signed up^^;;

    but i do really love the fact how it's inbuilt as a menu item into the original rather than it's own popup with more configures and yet another status bar icon.
  • I don't even use it ... I hate themes for browsers, but Google Chrome have something that i love. More simpler theme then default one.

    GJ again Google !
  • Robert
    I was hoping to use a persona with a darker background, but the changes don't translate well to the status bar, making text mostly unreadable there
  • xxxevilgrinxxx
    I really like the Personas but I have to agree, some of them are just awful, making it hard to read. Nobody should have to guess what a word is. That being said, there are quite a few that are lovely and I'd miss personas if they were gone
  • I used to run personas, but had the same problem with the really good looking backgrounds making for crap browsers, and the ones that were easy to read were just plain. I've since switched to the SMB theme at home and at work. I wish there are more, well-fleshed themes like this one.
  • Andrew Olson
    I am not interested in anything that takes out the glass transparency to which I have become accustomed.
  • most of personas looks too much, I love simplicity .... so, no Firefox for me :)
  • If you're not into Firefox, why are you reading "Firefox Facts"?
  • I don't use Firefox any more and I follow this blog. No need to get defensive.
  • toddaustin
    I looked at some, but prefer a clean browser look. For the most part it looked like myspace attacked and ate my browser.
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