TechCrunch reported on the Mozilla Labs Personas work, allowing you to theme your Firefox web browser. I share Robin’s opinion that Mozilla should maybe, just maybe, focus on making Firefox a kick ass web browser, and leave the doodads and geegaws for other folks. Enter Brand Thunder, a company in Columbus, OH looking to “offer companies a compelling, patent-pending solution for creating a more persistent presence with their internet consumer.”
Change your browser’s look and feel without restarting! Install any of the Booms below, when you have more than one – click the B/T button in the toolbar, choose “Pick a Boom” and you’re there. Booms run on the Firefox browser. If you’re not already using Firefox, you can get it for free right here.
We started Brand Thunder to work with some of the world’s leading brands to bring you REALLY cool themes and extensions. Based on your response, we are onto something. We employ an incredible team of designers, developers and marketers to work with the brands to bring these bundles to you for free!
I’m not the target audience for this kind of thing, but I know a lot of people who want to show their school pride all over their computer desktop, and would be only too happy to keep that going into the browser. The same holds true for folks’ favorite bands, favorite emo poets, and favorite Martha Stewart color ensemble.
Hey Mozilla, why not leave the decorating to these folks, and focus on what you do best?
Mozilla’s flexible theming system allows companies like Brand Thunder to work with other partners to make rich browser customizations like this.
Personas are meant to be like fashion accessory, you can swap them easily, turn them on and off, and develop them in a cinch. In fact, since we’ve launched, over 150 have been developed.
Like Robyn, you seem to imply that Mozilla can either focus on quality, performance and security OR on trying to improve the browser experience for our users. I think that we’re a much more versatile organization than that, and have a broad-skilled community that allows us to show fantastic performance and responsiveness gains (have you tried a Firefox 3.5/Shiretoko nightly) while also experimenting and iterating with things like lightweight customization.
Don’t be a fool. Use Opera.
Are you serious? Opera will be amongst the Dinosaur bones in the near future.
I don’t prefer changing the skin of firefox it will only add something to make your browser act slower specially when you have a lot installed in it.
I too prefer not to change the Skin since my addons and toolbars run half of the page and I use them often
Thinking the same thing magnet … all the dodad addons are nice but they sacrifice speed. Firefox is slow and clunky. Had to switch to chrome for that reason … even though I prefer the functionality of firefox better (especially miss adblocker). You don’t suppose one of the drive forces behind google’s push with chrome is the advent of adblocker and similar firefox extensions that one cannot ad to chrome? No, that couldn’t be it.
Of course you realize that Google Chrome installs services that are constantly chatting with the “mother ship”. I, too, thought Chrome was pretty cool until I found that even without launching Chrome that Google was in contact with my PC. The result? Goodbye Chrome.
I can’t speak for all extensions and themes, but nothing we do affects or contributes to a degradation in performance.
To Raghavan’s point, these may not be for a power user if you’re already using a lot of browser real estate for other things. The Booms bring the look and feel (and the emotional connection) of a team or entertainer – and they also bring their content and functionality. That takes some space.
Love the comments though. Great to get additional perspectives.
I definitely agree, firefox should keep doing whatever to maintain their usability as a web browser and let a 3rd party design firefox for the aesthetic looks.
I use Mozilla Labs Personas ,and m pretty much happy with it …but will surely give brandthunder a shot ! (hoping this does not eats up browser speed )
or Why not just customize your browser homepage….Checkout PimpMyHomepage.com
I am not sure if they are using licensed images though :)
I have downloaded several “Booms” from Brand Thunder over the past couple months and have not had any performance or speed issues with my browser. Great idea and they are consistently adding new downloads.
Last night I attended the OSU Fisher’s Business Builders Club meeting at OSU and Kevin from Brand Thunder was the keynote speaker. It was great to actually see him demonstrating how they work.
Thanks, Simon.
Was a blast to be there. And BBC is an amazing group of entrepreneurial-minded students.
Lots a great stuff happening in Columbus OH.
Columbus, Ohio is a nice city to live in. lived there several years. Love German Village and that area especially. Glad to see a growing tech community there.
@PimpMyHomePage. If you look at the BrandThunder site, their booms have licensing agreements. You don’t get a testimonial from the Capitals without one. I get too much content through my iGoogle page to theme my whole homepage. Way to get the shameless plug in there though.
I have downloaded many Brand Thunder customized browsers in the past few months and there is no such thing as downtime with them. It has no effect on the performance of the browser and only offers some very useful add-ons.
My favorite is a new one created by Brand Thunder and a website I never heard of in jocklife.com. The browser has scrolling sports headlines that I can click on in the browser and go straight to the story and it appears to be an AP feed just like ESPN uses. They also have some cool videos and blogs and there is a Yahoo! search bar as well.
Good stuff, I have enjoyed them so far and Mozilla is way better than Chrome. Chrome is only used by neo-cons.
NO PERFORMANCE IMPACT!
As a representative of Brand Thunder I can confidently say that the Booms do not affect the browser’s speed performance.
And although the customization is not for everyone, our users that try one or more of our most recent Booms, really appreciate the ability to seamlessly switch between those they have chosen to use. There is also the ability to continue using other addons and toolbars in addition to the Boom of choice.
This is a hot concept gaining a lot of traction and attention, we look forward to working with our partners and end users to continue enhancing the experience.
Performance impact? You guys forget that most of the consumer public doesn’t give a damn and couldn’t care less (or even notice unless things slow to a crawl).
But yeah, I cringe. I can imagine tweens with Hannah Montana and Jonas Bros Firefoxes already.
We’ve been working with BrandThunder since end of last year. Great folks with a strong product and excellent customer service.
We launched the Point Boom a few months ago and are seeing strong user metrics. It creates a unique extension of our brand, with an RSS fed sidebar that delivers our content easily to our Firefox users.
We’re still working on monetizing the effort, but at least user response has been favorable so far.
http://www.1057thepoint.com/Browser/
from an aesthetic point of view, nice designs
Actually, Brand Thunder booms are not themes.
We are significantly smaller than a theme, while still providing the dynamic features of an extension.
Where booms differ is through interactivity. We allow the user to have a connection to brand, not just ’see’ the brand…but actually get news, media and links to their website.
And again, this is all done with a smaller footprint than a typical firefox theme, but still utilizing the full skinning of the browser.
Most performance issues can be tracked to an extension/plugin, which may be working in the background while you browse. For instance, some RSS reader extensions may slow down your system, but this is typically due to loading a ‘large’ feed. So you have to expect some slow down because the reader needs to parse through all that data.
The theming system is fairly optimized, with various media loading and caching enhancements. Plus themes are stored locally on your machine, so there should be no real ’slow’ down as the theme is loaded from your hard drive.
All of this, as Mike Beltzner said, is thanks to Mozilla’s great extension system. I think Mozilla deserves a lot of praise for creating the largest, and IMHO, the most versatile browser extension system to date. Mozilla is also very active with the community, and is always working on the feedback we provide.
Very cool! Another reason to love Firefox.
Yo, I went on dat site and couldn’t find a skin for black people. Dis is RACIST!!
@Chris, i was implying that i am not sure if PimpMyHomepage.com got licenses to use those images, not brand thunder…BTB, they have Capitals theme too, http://pimpmyhomepage.com/hp/nhl_washington_capitals/en/
Maybe you want to talk with Capitals if PimpMyHomepage has rights to use their logo??
Today my firefox with less than 15 tabs with “simple” html pages was using more than 650mb, while my VMWare running linux using less than 100mb.
Ahhhh, I forgot to understand that is a FF feature!
@srw, well I have 26 tabs open, with flash, gmail, youtube, etc.
I’m using 389mb.
And its 3.08 i’m using.
(WITH a boom installed.)
Yuck!
I’m using Firefox persona and very happy with it. Why should firefox limit itself by not working on beauty part of its amazing product. I believe they are doing GREAT job.
lol
I love personas!!!
@pimpmyhomepage … ouch, nice shameless plugs highlighting a site that is blatantly using unlicensed copies of images from sports teams, actors, musicians etc.. if that sites making money off of those images (which they are from the custom google search boxes on each page) those teams/artists/actors/etc have full right to issue DMCA notices and use legal routes to get any revenue that was made off their copyrighted & trademarked properties.