747108 - what are we doing with personas plus?

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Code Quality, defect, P3)

Description

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Filing a bug so we can block it on the migration so we don't forget about it.  If this add-on is EOL'd we don't have to migrate the features over from getpersonas.  If it's not, we'll need to migrate the features and someone will need to update the add-on.

Comment 1

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Fligtar is looking into this.  Bumping to next week.

Comment 2

[BrianZ]

Please don't let Personas Plus die.  It has some important customization features for both users and designers.  For example, many use its "Random Selection from Favorites" feature to rotate their personas in the browser, and there is another rotator add-on which also depends on it.  Further, it provides a Custom Persona installation feature for the local PC that allows designers to test compatability of their designs with toolbars and header spacing before submitting them.  Taking this away would create a lot of unnecessary edit submissions to be reviewed.  It would also prevent designers from installing their designs locally when they cannot be published due to quality or legal standards.

I have some suggestions to improve the color picker for custom personas, and to move the "Random Selection from Favorites" option to the beginning of its menu, not below the list of favorites; but, these are not critical, and anything would be better than nothing.
Thanks.

Comment 3

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

If there are obvious things that should be uplifted into Firefox then I'd be interested in discussing that since I may have resources for that. Perhaps the custom persona feature?

Comment 4

[BrianZ]

That's great to hear, Matt.  
- Yes, the offline custom persona local installation is an important feature for the reasons I mentioned.  If possible, it should use a complete color selector for text and background colors, like the one used when submitting personas online.  It should also permit copying the color hex codes for replication when publishing a persona on AMO.  The current custom persona installer allows only a very limited color palette and no way to reproduce the color when publishing.  
- I would also like to see the "Random selection from favorites" feature preserved, since that can be used to rotate the installed persona.  If possible, two enhancements I would suggest for this feature are 1. Keep the favorites list, but don't put this menu item at the end of that list, because it is a pain to find it if you have to scroll through hundreds of favorite personas; 2. Allow setting a time interval in minutes.  Currently, I have to go into about:config and change the extensions.personas.rotationInterval parameter to, say, 600, if I want it to change every ten minutes.  
- I also like the menu item, "View Details", which can be selected for the currently displayed persona in order to get to the details page online for more information or to see more personas by that designer.
Those are the 3 features of Personas Plus that I currently use and would like to see preserved & improved.  Thanks.

Comment 5

[Christopher Van Wiemeersch [:cvan]]

It seems bug 678663 is the blocker to let themes be previewed during submission (or as a preview tool on AMO).

What is the conclusion here?

Comment 6

[BrianZ]

Preview during submission may be nice to have, but what about the ability to install a custom persona on the local PC without submitting it?  That is the function we already have in Personas Plus that is useful during design work before submission and for those who want to install a persona without publishing it.  Is there some plan to remove this capability?  What about the "Random selection from favorites" function - will that be preserved?

Comment 7

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Personas Plus will be preserved in the short term although with reduced functionality.  The ability to browse the new and popular themes from within the add-on will be removed, however, the favorites rotation and custom theme installation will be maintained.

I'll close this bug, others will sprout up soon with details of how we'll maintain that functionality onto AMO.

For the record, support for custom theme installation (without uploading it to AMO) is being developed in Firefox now.  If we get it uplifted to Aurora it can ship in Firefox 22 (mid May), otherwise it will catch the next train, so expect to see a lot friendlier way of creating themes this year.