14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla seems to have hit a sweet spot with Personas, the theme engine add-on for Firefox and Thunderbird. While the browser had customization options before and themes support from the early stages, most people weren't using them, either because they found it complicated or found the selection of themes was rather lacking. In just several months though, 10 million people have customized their browsers with Personas and the number of available designs is staggering.
“Since Personas was launched earlier this year, over 10 million people around the globe have chosen to personalize their Firefox by downloading Personas. Nearly 35,000 designs were contributed from artists at all levels of experience from all parts of the world (over 1,000 designs / week). Nearly 40 affinity brands, including Harry Potter, Bob Marley, Lady Gaga, and Greenpeace have added their content to the gallery. Localization community has diligently translated the add-on into over 25 languages; Personas website will be localized by the end of the year,” Mozilla's Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez listed some of the team's achievements.
The Mozilla Labs team just released the latest version of the popular add-on, Personas 1.4 which brought several updates and enhancements mostly related to the user experience. With so many designs it's getting harder to choose just one but, luckily, now you don't have to as you can let the add-on periodically change the theme from a pool of favorites you selected. The latest version also enables users to follow an artist they like so that they're notified whenever a new design is available.
Mozilla Labs is becoming increasingly important to the open-source organization and Personas is certainly one of the most popular projects to come out of it. In just half a year, the team managed not only to create a solid add-on, but also to set up the online gallery to host the designs. In fact, Mozilla is so confident in the project that the functionality is now integrated with the upcoming Firefox 3.6, which will allow users to change the look of their browsers with just one click without having to install the add-on.
Personas 1.4 for Firefox and Thunderbird is avaialble for download here.