The Independent Voices Colorway collection has arrived! What’s your favorite Colorway?

[rayf]

Hello community!

Ray here, from the Firefox Desktop Product team excited to engage with you :). If you get a chance, we encourage you to check out the new Colorways collection in the Fx106 release version. Each Colorway was carefully created in an external partnership with former sneaker designer, Keely Lascio, and portray their own individual stories, imagery and characteristics. Give them all a try and find a color that matches your personality!

If you’re curious to read more about this feature please check out this article!

As we work to make this feature better for you, we’d like to welcome any and all feedback.

• What’s your favorite Colorway?
• Do you feel more connected to the browser when using this feature? Do Colorways bring you joy?
• Are you satisfied with the quantity of colors provided in this collection? 
• Are you interested in collecting and keeping Colorways from a series of timed collections?
• What else would you like to see in the future for Colorways?

P.S. be sure to have your favorite Colorway enabled on the collection expiration date in order to keep it with you!

Thank you in advance for your participation! We look forward to hearing from you.

[NovaFox]

I don't like the colorways - especially if they are limited-time.  If I set the color of my browser, I expect to be able to set it to what I want forever.  Also, the pseudoscience-esque "orange means you are an innovator" nonsense just makes Mozilla come across as patronizing instead of trying to be an industry leader who makes a solid product that stands on its own feature set and not on non-technical FOMO puff pieces from their Marketing department.

[Shepherd_Book]

Concur. Suddenly my colours were different, without my consent, and I still haven't gotten them back to where I'm used to having them. People like to change colours and themes? Great. I'm glad they have more choices. But leave me out, unless I positively consent.

[rayf]

@Shepherd_Book-- are you still having trouble finding your previous theme? This article should help you with that.

[benlimanto]

I also agree that colorways should promote colors rather than put people in some.. confinement I guess.. there are a lot of rants on Reddit.. and even on mozillazine.org https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ybfy2a/i_feel_that_the_irony_of_stating_independent/

[rayf]

@benlimanto-- thanks for the feedback. May I ask where you selected your Colorway? Was it during the Onboarding upgrade experience? Or were you doing it in Firefox View?

[rayf]

Hello. Do you feel that you'd appreciate Colorways more if they were NOT limited time offerings? Or are they not delightful for you at all?

[MondoBurrito]

1) Remove the insincere description of Colorways. You are not out to change the world by colour. Lets be honest here. That is a huge stretch. It is VERY lame to read through all that verbal diarrhea.

2) A browser is a tool to surf the net. Not a social tool to change society. So actually make it into a useful tool that EVERYONE will find handy. Therefor...

3) Simply create a custom colour-picking tool to allow everyone to create their own colour pallet (and you can include presets) and don't make it limited time. And DO NOT, tack some cheesy, woke, social-justice sounding vocabulary to it. That is totally unnecessary. Give us the power to customize Firefox EXACTLY how we want it, at any time we want to.  Limited time on a colour-picking tool is ridiculous.

[rayf]

Thanks for the feedback @MondoBurrito . Would you personally prefer a tool similar to Firefox Color to customize the browser on your own?

[MondoBurrito]

Sure. That sounds like a fine idea to me.

[eggplant_23]

That is going to be awesome!

[eggplant_23]

Hello. It will be nice if you make the colorways NOT limited and free to use by the users. This limited time offering is awful and I don't know who even came up with this nonsense.. Like come on, let people enjoy stuff.

[kremlinbot]

No, because the colorways themselves feel clunky and too saturated, almost like they were made in a rush in 2-3 hours.

I think Mozilla should add more nice and calm themes for everyday use. On Reddit, I've already suggested making a few after popular IDE themes (e.g. Solarized dark/light, Nordic, Gruvbox, Monokai, maybe FF Devtools-inspired one etc.), everyone (especially power users) would really appreciate it!

[Jon]

We’re excited to connect with you all about Colorways and work together to make the feature even better! 

A quick reminder…

When participating in this discussion, please remember to:

-Follow the Community Guidelines 

Anything that violates the guidelines will be flagged and removed. 

-Stay on topic

Let’s keep this thread focused and productive. If you have additional product feedback or ideas unrelated to the discussion topic, create a new post.

Thanks so much and looking forward to hearing your feedback 🙌

-The Community Team

[Jon]

We’re excited to connect with you all about Colorways and work together to make the feature even better! 

A quick reminder…

When participating in this discussion, please remember to:

-Follow the Community Guidelines 

Anything that violates the guidelines will be flagged and removed. 

-Stay on topic

Let’s keep this thread focused and productive. If you have additional product feedback or ideas unrelated to the discussion topic, create a new post.

Thanks so much and looking forward to hearing your feedback 🙌

-The Community Team

[Sahak]

They are good, but the fact that they are available in limited time, makes me worried.

[rayf]

@Sahak- Thanks for the reply! Would you prefer to have access to all Colorways in a given collection in perpetuity?

[1_0V3R_THNK]

Colors are great and the UI feels snappy!

However, I feel like the whole premise a designer, being brought in to select colors is lost after the fact. There's nothing pinning each colorway to being "unique or rare" in terms of the color in it's self or the Artist who produced it. There's nothing here to remind the user that this is limited. Therefor you may miss this engagement opportunity. To most a "Limited Time" feature may come off as, options that are no longer available, simply changed because of an update. People at the most basic of users overlook lots of features because the presentation comes off as standard, very "Select your car, now choose your color." If you seek further engagement, try think something more tangible, Reddit avatars or even web 3.0 re branded version of a Tamagotchi.  Just some food for thought.

[rayf]

@1_0V3R_THNK-- this is very helpful feedback. Thanks! Especially love the perspective about having a tangible component.

[tomscha]

i finally got rid of these (awful) colours and back to normal. only the firefox item in the apps list (mac os main screen) still has a black background square. how do i get rid of that one too? firefox was so clean and nice before. why did you change?

[NL-T]

My color scheme has been ruined and I am really annoyed having to spend time to restore it.

[NovaFox]

Here's an idea: Why not just give us color sliders?  The colorways feature looks like it just takes a color and builds out the rest of the theme using pastel accents of that base color.  So maybe just give us a traditional RGB color picker and let us choose whatever color we want?

[rayf]

Thanks for this suggestion! I'll discuss with the team and see what we can come up with. @NovaFox 

[rayf]

Thank you all for the comments thus far! Appreciate you taking the time to respond. We'll get to address most of the questions directly soon, but I do want to offer directions on how to retrieve a previous theme:

• Open the application menu
• Select Add-ons and themes
• You'll find all of your saved themes here and can easily disable your Colorway if desired

More about this here!

[rayf]

@jmag520-- I saw your post in the FxView thread. I hope these directions help you with your theme?

[NL-T]

This may be incorrect. My scheme was a minor tweak of an existing theme and as far as I can see it is simply gone.

Edit: Found! When I disabled Firefox Colors because FF somehow reverted to some previous theme that I had rejected. What a waste of time.

[Crashzoom]

I simply adore the Colorway Themes and colors and the fact that you can dim them as well.  Wish they could remain permanent.  Good job.

Anne Michaels - Houston, Texas

Go Astros!!!

[rayf]

Thanks @Crashzoom ! We seem to be getting a lot feedback around making them permanent. We'll take this back to the team for review.

[VanGarrett]

I appreciate the idea, and it's a nice approach to being able to change the colors to your preferences, but what I'm finding is that the results are jarring. I go ahead and choose my favorite colors, but the bright is way too bright, the dark is way too dark, and the mid-range gives me a color palette that's indistinguishable from the websites I'm visiting. I think I could deal with it, if I had an option to desaturate the palette, to make my interface look like an interface, instead of part of Facebook. Instead, I have these pure, saturated colors drawing my eyes to the top of my screen. I'd really like to turn it off and had what I had before the latest update, but that option isn't jumping out at me. I also don't understand why there's an expiry date on it.

[rayf]

thanks for the feedback @VanGarrett ! I especially think it could be interesting to introduce a more manual user customize component.

[premier69]

how do i remove... all of it... i just want a PK free firefox 🙂

[MrSafetyCache]

I hate it all so so much.

[Anonymous]

You should review numerous opinions on design before asking about color.

[wimmso]

I love the current selection of Independent Voices colorways! The green is so green, and the blue is so blue.

But please for the love of god allow there to be a way to access past colorways after they've "expired." I would hate to lose this theme when installing Firefox on a brand new computer, or be unable to go back to it when experimenting with a new theme, or be unable to choose any of the other colors from this theme after it expires.

[KevinCarbonara]

I think the true lesson here is that our "independent voice" is temporary and that Mozilla doesn't care about our opinions

[rayf]

Thank you @wimmso ! This is great feedback and pretty consistent with what others have shared. We'll look into this!

[hokonch]

Disclosure: I am a contributor to the Japanese l10n community and has been assigned to the localization of Colorways. So I am confident that I have some understanding of the background of Colorways.

There is a huge amount of feedback on Reddit and this forum that says "I like the new colors, but I don't have no ideas why it is for a limited time". I see the issue from a slightly different perspective. I don't think that they don't want Colorways to be limited time because they like the new colors, but that they see little value in the new colors, so they feel silly to make the shades limited time and further diminish the value.

Firefox has 200 million users. My guess is that Mozilla designers are too aware of them. A design vaguely drawn like Colorways so far to be acceptable to the all users will not resonate with anyone. Mozilla should focus heavily on just some of them.
The collaboration with Disney on "True Colors" was a good challenge. Some in the community suspected that it was an advertisement for Disney, but on the other hand, there are many lovers of the Disney brand. While no one wants to collect Mozilla color themes, there are people who find much value in the Disney official theme. The only things that are even more valuable because they are limited are those that are inherently valuable, like Disney.
What was disappointing about True Colors Colorways was that they were just colors. The meaning of color is never constant in any culture, and it should be easy to understand. It would have been better if the silhouettes of the characters had been depicted in the Colorways.

If you want to make the limited time functionality worthwhile, collaborate with authentic brands not a former Nike designer. In addition, make the design so that the brand is always felt to be there while browsing, not just color. Otherwise, drop the limited time concept.

P.S. I'm a Pokémon fan, so I'm hoping for Colorways to collaborate with Fox Pokémons.

[NovaFox]

The fact is that a web browser like Firefox is a tool above all else.  Most people don't care about what their tools look like, but they instead care about what the tools do.  So instead of focusing on FOMO color themes that most people won't care about, I would instead rather see Mozilla focus on being the best/fastest/safest/etc. browser out there.  You aren't going to reclaim market share from Chrome because Firefox users can "collect themes like Pokemon" or whatever.  You're going to reclaim market share by being a fundamentally better browser than Chrome.

And for the few people out there who may happen to care about colorways, Chrome's themes aren't limited-time AFAIK so Mozilla is actually giving those people a reason to switch to Chrome.  If they want better theme selection all the time, Chrome is the browser for them according to Mozilla.

So while I acknowledge your point of view, I don't agree with it at all.  Mozilla needs to be pouring 100% of their resources into figuring out how to improve their core Firefox features in order to gain ground on Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.  Otherwise, Firefox is doomed.

[Sbernecchia]

It's easier to simply change some color than to make a fast and safe browser.

I think firefox is doomed with the current mozilla management.

[Anonymous]

The easy way leads to destruction.

[Anonymous]

FirefoxがMozillaのマニフェストを実現するための手段であるためには、Firefoxが誰にも依存しないブランドであるべきだと思います。そのためには、Firefoxが優れたブラウザであり続ける以外の方法はないと信じています。もしあなた方が既存のブランドとのコラボでFirefoxを権威付けることが出来ると思うなら、その試みは失敗するでしょう。

For Firefox to be a vehicle for Mozilla's manifesto, Firefox should be a brand that is independent from anyone else. To that end, I believe there is no other way for Firefox to continue to be a good browser. If you think you can authorize Firefox by collaborating with existing brands, then the attempt will fail.