Firefox And Pixar Animation Studios team up to help you show your true colors

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/true-colors-with-firefox-pixar-animation-studios-turning-red/

by up6w6 • 4 years ago

96 179 4 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

butz2• 4 years ago

Not sure how many new users last colorways experiment has brought, but I think Mozilla should prioritize working on actual browser features to catch up with Chrome. There are still problems with chat/video conferencing apps, e.g. MS Teams, that work even on Safari. And there are smaller things too: https://wpt.fyi/compat2021?feature=summary

tehbeard• 4 years ago

Shhhh, this money's going to a good cause. Namely middle management bonuses... /s

ramesh312• 4 years ago

but I think Mozilla should prioritize working on actual browser features to catch up with Chrome.

But how would that promote Mozilla's brand awareness while generating corporate synergy?

SubiculumCode5• 4 years ago

Firefox is already as good or better than Chrome.

In the long HN thread from a few days ago the consensus was that Mozilla should focus on Firefox and actively engage in promoting Firefox to increase market share. Here Mozilla is clearly doing that and very well IMO, and now its "stop wasting money blah blah blah." It just so easy to tear people down, that listening to it is usually a waste of time.

dleslie12• 4 years ago

Firefox is already as good or better than Chrome.

I've been a Firefox user since its inception, but I don't think it's better than Chrome and it hasn't been for a very long time.

Chrome is faster on all the devices I've tried it on, and by default it serves less telemetry to external sources than default Firefox does. It also supports uBlock, Decentraleyes, et cetera and de-Googled forks, like Chromium, are easily available.

gtirloni• 4 years ago

It's not either/or. They can do both. AFAIK, marketing people aren't coding C/C++/Rust browser engines so they're free to do their own thing.

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

Marketing people aren't free either. I'd rather have that money go towards browser development.

dleslie12• 4 years ago

Mozilla let go a large number of developers recently.

muizelaar• 4 years ago

Does MS Teams actually work in Safari? I was under the impression that it was Chrome/Edge only.

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

I believe it does if you disable the tracking protection. The disgusting mess that is Microsoft auth relies on dozens of separate domains and I guess ITP blocks cross-domain cookie access. I don't know of a way to disable it per-site though so you either have to use a separate browser or severely compromise your privacy by disabling it globally.

butz2• 4 years ago

While some features does not work on Safari, at least it allows joining call and participating with voice chat. Opening Teams meeting link on Firefox doesn't even display "Continue on this browser" button.

swalls• 4 years ago

'We're committed to an open web - that's why we're teaming up with Disney, the company that locks all their content behind DRM.'

ramesh312• 4 years ago

Mozilla died years ago. Sad to see what a zombie org it has become.

dijonman2• 4 years ago

Mitchell Baker needs to step down.

SubiculumCode5• 4 years ago

What media company does not use DRM?

dleslie12• 4 years ago

GOG, Weightless Books and Bandcamp immediately spring to mind.

Wowfunhappy2• 4 years ago

I'm able to watch programs on PBS.org and the BBC iPlayer without Encrypted Media Extensions. Also The Late Show with Steven Colbert on CBS.com and Seth Myers on NBC. There are probably lots of others, I don't watch very much television.

renewiltord• 4 years ago

Yes, that’s right. The perfect way to operate is to have complete ideological purity. As a matter of fact, it is embarrassing that Firefox even runs on Windows (a closed source operating system that has integrated telemetry) and dare I say that perhaps Intel processors are unacceptable too?

Firefox should only run on completely open source and open firmware open architectures. Anything less is tantamount to endorsing crimes against mankind.

I am currently preparing a breadboard and expect to be completed with my port by 2042. I am going to have to sift for metals in my local stream in order to create resistors that were manufactured by pure provenance.

Currently uncertain about my own personal lineage, though. Have I had an unkind ancestor who did not believe in open source? Is it ethical for me to participate given such a taint? Questions of great import. I will consult a pure institutional review board before proceeding.

SubiculumCode5• 4 years ago

These same people would then complain that Firefox's market share is abysmal.

xvector• 4 years ago

a new pasta is born?

dleslie12• 4 years ago

There's a large difference between running on top of a platform built by an ideologically-opposed organization, and actively aiding an ideologically-opposed organization with marketing agreements.

joebergeron• 4 years ago

n-gate sprung a leak again

kevingadd• 4 years ago

Mozilla fought battles against H264 and video DRM and lost both, giving up marketshare to Google and Apple in the bargain. Why keep wasting energy on a war they already lost? The market spoke and HN posters like you and me are the only people who care.

dleslie12• 4 years ago

Because for every battle they lost, they won several others. The only reason we're not all using Internet Explorer is because Firefox lost some battles and won many others.

rank03• 4 years ago

I'm never giving any more money to this BS organization unless they can get back to their roots and focus on making a competitive web browser.

ct03• 4 years ago

Kind of curious, how much money have you given them and how did you give it?

fuzzer37• 4 years ago

Kind of curious, how much money has Mozilla spend on BS unrelated to their core product over the last 10 years?

rank03• 4 years ago

Definitely less than $100 via past pocket subscription and Firefox vpn. Wanted to support the org but canceled both. I hated pocket and realized the vpn service is just a mullvad resale.

SubiculumCode5• 4 years ago

They HAVE a competitive web browser that needs market share, which means it needs promotion, which this is.

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

The browser is nowhere near competitive. It's a terrible Chrome knockoff, and the features that used to differentiate it from Chrome have been abandoned and removed long ago.

They could be competitive on certain features (security & privacy comes to mind - it should be private out of the box, users shouldn't have to spend 15 minutes installing an ad-blocker and opting out of all kinds of bullshit) but they choose not to.

eitland• 4 years ago

As long as it doesn't get in the way of fixing it it cannot hurt to spread awareness of Firefox.

(Not saying it is worse than anything else, just that it used to be better.)

nimbius• 4 years ago

if history is any indication of progress, expect Microsoft to secure the ever coveted 'Edge sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends' soon.

vernie• 4 years ago

Damn, I was hoping this had to do with color calibration.

chrismorgan• 4 years ago

I expected this to be related to colour gamuts or calibration or something like that.

gap• 4 years ago

Me too. I was hoping that video color management is finally coming to Firefox. I have to use a Chromium-based browser for YouTube and such, since Firefox is unusable for video on wide-gamut displays. But no, it’s wallpapers.

AnEro• 4 years ago

Why is this being hated on? It's a revenue model for them to make the competitive browser we want...

Having these large branded cosmetic additions to firefox is kinda a genius non-intrusive or at least less intrusive way to do advertisements.

marginalia_nu4• 4 years ago

I'm frustrated with Mozilla because they talk really big, but their actions time and time again fail to line up with what they are actually saying.

They can't open their mouths without talking about how much they care about privacy, but at the same time making it nearly impossible to opt out of their telemetry. For Mozilla, invasion of privacy only appears to be bad when other people are doing it.

This just comes off as sanctimonious and hypocritical.

What's really frustrating is that they absolutely could do good. If they actually managed to live up to even half their words, they'd be amazing. But for some reason, they just... don't.

yoasif_15• 4 years ago

but at the same time making it nearly impossible to opt out of their telemetry

It is one checkbox in the settings. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/share-data-mozilla-help...

Two if you don't want to be put into studies - I don't think Origin Trials in Chrome can be opted out of at all (if you know how, it'd be nice to tell us).

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

They can't open their mouths without talking about how much they care about privacy

Agreed. Besides telemetry, merely achieving privacy when it comes to browsing requires manually turning up the tracking protection level to the strictest and installing a third-party add-on: uBlock Origin.

This gives a false sense of security to less tech-savvy users who (reasonably) believe that they'll actually have privacy by installing a privacy-focused browser from a company that claims to be on their side in all their marketing.

brimble9• 4 years ago

Firefox's closest competition, feature-wise, in early versions was Opera, which was adware with a pay-to-remove-ads option and already did pretty much everything that Firefox brought to the table, and then some. I loved Phoenix/Firebird/early-Firefox, but it's hard to make the case it was better than Opera for ordinary users at the time—except that it didn't have ads, and was a little smaller/leaner.

Firefox became far more successful than Opera, at least outside the embedded market.

Maybe the adware browser model can make a comeback and be super-successful this time because things have changed, but it didn't work very well the first time.

("But these aren't ads, they're optional themes" true, but you wanna bet they won't advertise it with one or more pop-ups and/or focus-stealing-to-new-advertising-tab thingies, like they do with everything else? Which is funny because one of their big selling points originally was automatically blocking pop-up ads)

ZeroGravitas2• 4 years ago

I used phoenix/firebird/early-firefox too.

It was never really smaller than the mozilla suite, they just simplified the UI. This is not intended as an insult, it was exactly what was needed and worked out really well for everybody, it's just amazing how much the reality got lost.

In particular, Opera while going the opposite way with their "everything and the kitchen sink" interface for the power user market were legendary for small, fast and nimble code, which is how they ended up running on the Wii and Nintendo DS around this time.

I'd be very suprised if they weren't always a smaller download, even with bitorrent, email, ftp clients and whatever other crazy nonsense they had built in.

I'm going to check though, just in case it's me that's mistaken.

Pheonix 0.1 was double the size of the Opera download at the time.

slg2• 4 years ago

This article is blatantly just an ad for a Disney movie with almost no interesting content. I'm not sure I have ever seen something like this rank so highly on HN. What am I missing? Why are people upvoting this?

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

It's yet another example of Mozilla's insanity.

PKop• 4 years ago

Posts aren't only made for positive portrayal of their subject... it could just as easily have been made as a criticism of what Mozilla is doing.

slg2• 4 years ago

I guess I am missing the criticism then. What is the problem with a sponsored content blog post? This will have zero impact on the average Firefox user. If people want to engage with this content, they can. If they don't, they are free to ignore it.

ravenstine• 4 years ago

Why in the heck is Firefox trying to sell itself as something you use to "show your true colors"? That promotional video tells me nothing other than that Disney has another movie coming out. Is it referring to installing themes/skins? This just seems way out of touch, in which case Disney is the right company for Mozilla.

Tabular-Iceberg• 4 years ago

I thought it was colours as in pride colours, as damage control after the Brandon Eich thing. Which also made me chuckle a bit when they said “be brave”.

waffle_maniac• 4 years ago

They are still worried about something that happened years ago?

NazakiAid• 4 years ago

I see 0 problems with this. Disney gets their exposure. Mozilla gets some money (I hope) and exposure. The users don't really get negatively affected. I hope this helps increase Firefox's market share to make it more competitive to Chrome.

The fact that Disney use DRM means that Mozilla should not have done this is a weak point at best. DRM is used by most media companies.

I feel like people just get angry at Mozilla for the hell of it without understanding that they have to pay their employees somehow. Also Mozilla could "team up" with any org and someone would find a way to get angry over it.

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

they have to pay their employees somehow

What are their employees doing though? If they're churning out BS like this, are they even necessary?

Most Firefox features that gave it marketshare long ago have been left to rot if not outright deprecated. What remains is a terrible Chrome knockoff.

---

Edit: this comment is rage/venting so I'll elaborate: my problem with Mozilla's recent (~5 years?) evolution is that Firefox's power-user features that not only gave it its original marketshare but are the last line of defense in an increasingly user-hostile web are being left to rot if not outright killed off while being replaced by useless garbage like this and while their marketshare continues to dwindle (no surprise there considering any differentiating features are on the back-burner), their CEO increased their compensation to ridiculous levels.

Firefox is the most user-hostile FOSS software I know of - on-par if not worse than a lot of paid, proprietary software. Upon first run it'll load several tabs with Google Analytics spyware, has Pocket, ads/sponsored links and telemetry enabled by default (the latter is in breach of the GDPR) and makes bold claims about privacy while it doesn't even come with a built-in adblocker (even its strongest tracking protection is inferior to uBlock Origin and not even enabled by default). Every update will interrupt your flow with a useless "what's new" tab (and I think the recent "Colorways" update had its own tab/modal in addition to the usual update). I'm worried this new development will also have its own annoying notification next time I start the browser.

yoasif_15• 4 years ago

What are their employees doing though?

This really isn't hard to find: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/

pelagicAustral• 4 years ago

whoa! Don't hold back...

lancesells• 4 years ago

I'm always confused by the Mozilla hate here on HN. I mean Firefox works quite well as far as a browser goes, it's infinitely less evil than Google who is molding the web to their advantage and it's way more customizable than Safari.

brimble9• 4 years ago

They'll push it as an ad pop-up, is the problem.

Modern Firefox borders on being adware, like Opera was back when Phoenix was first released. And it's more aggressive about pushing ads than that ever was. At least those were constant and stayed in a little banner area, rather than interrupting you while you're trying to do stuff.

FinalBriefing• 4 years ago

If people using Disney+ get an ad for Firefox, that would be great. Firefox needs more exposure to combat Chrome's ads in all of Google's apps.

jdlshore2• 4 years ago

I use Firefox as a daily driver and I've never seen a pop-up ad from Mozilla. Are you fantasizing about what you imagine might happen, or what has actually happened? If the latter, please provide some evidence.

AceJohnny22• 4 years ago

I hope this helps increase Firefox's market share to make it more competitive to Chrome.

It's got a long way to go :(

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

As of posting, it's at 4.18%, similar to MS Edge, and basically in the bottom-rung of the also-rans. For comparison, the real contenders are Chrome at 63% and Safari at 19.84%.

mintplant• 4 years ago

I'm always skeptical of these reports because they rely on tracking data collection that Firefox has been stricter and stricter about blocking. Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures. StatCounter in particular was infamous for under-reporting.

ZeroGravitas2• 4 years ago

Mozilla is like Barack Obama for certain people, it's a symbol of everything they politically hate.

Teaming up with Disney is like Wearing a Tan suit or a bicycle helmet, it's only the worst thing ever when your politcal enemy is doing it and you have nothing better to complain about.

fartcannon5• 4 years ago

Disney is one of the worlds worst companies. Mozilla teaming up with them is bad because Disney is bad. It's straight forward.

Disliking the choices Mozilla has been making doesn't mean you instantly love Google/Chrome. We're fighting for a better web, not a less worse web.

apostacy• 4 years ago

This is like seeing Obama do a charity event with Halliburton and Dick Cheney.

Disney is probably the company most directly aligned against the values that Mozilla purportedly holds. They spent decades funding projects to kill the modern web.

Has Disney indicated that they have stopped being the bad guys? As far as I can tell, Disney is still pushing their dystopian nightmare world. The least that Mozilla can do is not normalize them.

meetups323• 4 years ago

What's interesting here is that "good different, different good" is both completely meaningless, and also the exact argument that comes up on HN whenever firefox is brought up as an alternative to chromium browsers.

afavour2• 4 years ago

HN: Mozilla depends way too heavily on revenue from Google paying to be the default engine. They need to find other ways to make money.

Also HN: why is Mozilla wasting time promoting a Disney movie?

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

Maybe it should just align the incentives and get the users to pay for it? The Enterprise™ spends millions on very dubious security products. On the other hand, the browser is on the front line when it comes to online attacks - a paid browser with enterprise-level features such as ad, malware & phishing blocking or DLP could sell for decent money and actually provide tangible security benefits.

micromacrofoot• 4 years ago

get the users to pay for it

Unless they switched to a subscription-only model (which I don't think aligns with their mission) this would almost definitely doom them... users don't want to pay for shit, especially with freely available alternatives.

babypuncher• 4 years ago

I'll take "fastest ways to kill a web browser for $200", Alex

acomjean2• 4 years ago

Thats actually not a bad idea.

It would be a nice change from when I had to run to a different machine run citrix to logon to a windows NT machine to run IE because our time keeping software only worked on ie..

akersten• 4 years ago

Phew, it's just a sponsored Firefox theme. I was so worried when I saw the headline that they were doing something like Proprietary Disney+ HDR...

matt321• 4 years ago

Showing true colors? No thanks, I prefer people wear their masks of polite discourse in public.

bee_rider3• 4 years ago

In celebration of “Turning Red,” streaming on Disney+ on March 11th, we are creating new Firefox desktop colorways and mobile wallpapers based on the movie as an optional way to show your personality through your browser. We’ve also created a destination for all things 2002 nostalgia and will be having conversations with people about their journeys to embrace their true colors online.

Making a couple themes and an ad site couldn't have been a big project, presumably this is the sort of thing a couple marketing interns can throw together in a couple months, right? If this got Mozilla a nice check from The Mouse which they can use to fund browser development, I don't see any downsides here.

acomjean2• 4 years ago

I'll agree. It also seems like taking good advantage of a coincidence:

The movie main character looks like a red panda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_panda) which I think is the mythical firefox.

thibran• 4 years ago

I don't see any downsides here.

I do. Next time I see a blog.mozilla.org post here I will ignore it and maybe miss a great technology blog post.

bee_rider3• 4 years ago

The headline is posted here, it should be possible to determine if it is a technical post or not.

If you've decided to impose some extra downside on yourself... I think that's a bad idea, but the rest of us don't suffer for it.

roblabla2• 4 years ago

The great tech posts are mostly on hacks.mozilla.org. I think blog.mozilla.org is mostly for firefox update stuff and Mozilla Foundation stuff.

jdkjs• 4 years ago

What makes you think this money is going to development of the browser instead of… everything else they do?

bee_rider3• 4 years ago

Money is fungible, some of the pot goes to development, this is adding to the pot.

yoasif_15• 4 years ago

This is clearly a commercial arrangement for Firefox. That would be the province of the Mozilla Corporation, which runs the browser.

kome• 4 years ago

hacker news is so frustrating with firefox, if it's love, it's toxic love :)

whatever mozilla do or don't, it's not good.

lkxijlewlf• 4 years ago

Grumps: Why is FF losing market share!?

Mozilla: Does stuff to gain market share.

Grumps: Pissed off Mozilla does stuff to gain market share.

It's a freaking browser. Browsers peaked like 30 years ago. They're ALL on maintenance at this point.

brimble9• 4 years ago

How is pushing ads at users going to gain them market share? I know it'll get them more money, but it'll annoy users and I've not seen evidence that the reason they're struggling is because they're capital-constrained.

Nextgrid22• 4 years ago

How does this gain market share? It's still a knockoff, slower version of Chrome, just that you can install a Disney theme.

In its default configuration, it doesn't bring anything to the table that Chrome doesn't already have, and making it actually privacy-respecting requires being tech-savvy enough to configure it and install the right third-party ad blocking add-on - which if you are tech-savvy enough, chances are that you're already running it.

Browsers peaked like 30 years ago. They're ALL on maintenance at this point.

The web is changing and is getting more user-hostile every day. A browser that's actually a user-agent would be a great tool to fight back. Unfortunately Mozilla only claims to be on your side but actually does very little at the technical level.

yoasif_15• 4 years ago

In its default configuration, it doesn't bring anything to the table that Chrome doesn't already have

That is clearly false, and you have replied to my comments referencing this demonstrating that you ought to know better.

See:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-now-ava...

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/07/firefox-72-fing...

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/03/23/introducing-sma...

No opt-ins required, and features that Chrome doesn't have at all.

spike021• 4 years ago

Firefox has a soft spot for red pandas thanks to our logo

I'm confused. Isn't the animal on the logo a... (fire) fox? Not a red panda?

thecrumb• 4 years ago

How ironic - two once innovative companies that have completely lost their imagination and become basically corporate shills.

endisneigh• 4 years ago

Mozilla leadership is an embarrassment. They just need to make things that Google cancels - RSS/news aggregator, Google Inbox like email client, etc.

Make it and sell it, generate revenue and get off Google’s tit.

digitalsin• 4 years ago

So bold. So brave. Good grief.

ldjb• 4 years ago

Although I don't have a problem with this kind of promo, I think it's a shame the sweepstake page [0] does not clearly explain that only US residents who haven't previously subscribed to Disney+ are eligible. To find this out, you have to click a tiny link to the official rules [1] which are full of legalese.

It personally feels a bit deceitful that they're, in a sense, tricking people into signing up for Firefox news under the guise of a sweepstake that many people won't be eligible for.

[0] https://truecolors.firefox.com/contest

[1] https://truecolors.firefox.com/contest/rules

sebow• 4 years ago

Well well.. seems like I really nailed this one [0] 2 days ago we had a thread about FF losing market share and what some would do to help that.I was right in pointing out Mozilla's priorities: color themes & data-collecting extensions, definitely not for fueling ad-based companies with data which trickle down in profit for both parties.

I guess nobody even at Mozilla gives a damn anymore, just make the browser an equivalent of a mobile app for browsing tiktok and consuming media already, because between that and pushing color themes, there's nothing on the horizon for people who just want an usable browser.At this point i expect even Edge to catch-up heavily, at least we're expecting consistent garbage from Microsoft so in that regard there won't be any surprises.

[0] (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30336317)

kyleee2• 4 years ago

ceo is getting paid so what do they care? i'm sure there are some other c levels pillaging the coffers as well

up6w6• 4 years ago

For those who didn't find, there is actually a sweepstake of 500 disney+ subscriptions sponsored by Mozilla Corporation.

https://truecolors.firefox.com/contest

Firefox And Pixar Animation Studios team up to help you show your true colors

Related Stories