487824 - support alternate application themes

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Mozilla Labs Graveyard :: Personas Plus, defect)

Description

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Personas only supports the default application theme.  It sometimes works to some degree with alternate themes, but more often than not it fails, with various elements of the browser window not being styled according to the specifications of the persona, which generally makes the window look pretty bad (see for example this discussion in the forum <https://labs.mozilla.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=5485>).

The modifications that Personas makes to the application's theme were designed to apply the persona and make it look good on the default application theme, and they don't work the same on other themes, presumably because the Personas modifications interact differently with the different rules in each alternate theme.

Making Personas work equally well on all alternate themes seems like a herculean task, but perhaps there is some low hanging fruit that would make things better.  It's possible that bug 486264 would help, given that many of the styles Personas sets are required by the limitations that bug addresses.

In the long term, I think Personas should replace application themes, and this bug should be wontfixed.  In the short term, it would be useful for Personas to play better with application themes, so if there are some easy fixes to make that happen, we should do them.

Comment 2

[Suneel]

the low hanging fruit in this case may be for Personas to detect and notify

Comment 3

[Suneel]

continuation of last comment...

the low hanging fruit in this case may be for Personas to detect whether user has a non-default theme installed and notify that the images may not look right if both are installed. filed 499011 for this step.

also, aligning both of these bugs to personas 1.6 for the time-being, but will move them to 1.3 once we do some reorganizing in bugzilla.

Comment 4

[Eric Moore]

Have you considered leveraging the "Add-on Compatibility Reporter" instead? Personas isn't the only add-on with interoperability issues. You could mention it in the release notes and perhaps someday bundle it in the setup program. 

If that is not politically possible you could at least prominently mention it in the Mozilla Add-ons web page and your web site.

Comment 5

[Alfred Kayser]

Some themes, like my Nautipolis and LittleFox do actually support the use of Personas.
There should be a way to allow the combination of a Personas 'theme' with a normal 'Theme'. 
When Personas was just an extension this was possible (and still is via the extension), but now that FF3.6 has 'lwtheme' build in, it outcasts existing themes.
This outcasting behaviour is not Mozilla like, and one should allow theme extensions. 
Note, I have been theming Mozilla for 10 years now, ofwhich5 years for FF, and now this is stopped because of this.
I have invested time to support Personas in my themes (with great effect), but now Personas is refusing to support me....

Comment 6

[Ryan Doherty (:rdoherty)]

This is now handled via Firefox. If this is still an issue please open a bug under Firefox -> Theme.

Comment 7

[Alfred Kayser]

There is a lot of discussion in all the fora about allowing Firefox to combine Personas with the non-default theme. Firefox now blocks alternative themes when a Personas is selected, but the wish of many is to allow Personas with another theme.

Comment 8

[Ryan Doherty (:rdoherty)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> There is a lot of discussion in all the fora about allowing Firefox to combine
> Personas with the non-default theme. Firefox now blocks alternative themes when
> a Personas is selected, but the wish of many is to allow Personas with another
> theme.

Bug 520124 is the bug for that issue.