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Use personal background image without submitting to Mozilla (Lightweight themes)

  • 11 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by BatManuel

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Is it possible to change the background image / theme without submitting it to Mozilla and without using Persona Plus plugin ?

I tried the Persona Plus plugin, it doesn't seem to work and besides, feels like overkill for users that just want to add their own and single background image. (there's also the strange "The permission to d1sp2sgy246t7c.cloudfront.net is a necessary work-around for a Firefox issue" thing.

I found this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Themes/Lightweight_Themes It seems that would require users to upload their images to Mozilla AND have their work approved, it's great for sharing but absolutely unusable for personal use.

(I've got Firefox 52.9-ESR and 61.0.2 (Quantum))

Thanks.

Is it possible to change the background image / theme without submitting it to Mozilla and without using Persona Plus plugin ? I tried the Persona Plus plugin, it doesn't seem to work and besides, feels like overkill for users that just want to add their own and single background image. (there's also the strange "The permission to d1sp2sgy246t7c.cloudfront.net is a necessary work-around for a Firefox issue" thing. I found this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Themes/Lightweight_Themes It seems that would require users to upload their images to Mozilla AND have their work approved, it's great for sharing but absolutely unusable for personal use. (I've got Firefox 52.9-ESR and 61.0.2 (Quantum)) Thanks.

All Replies (11)

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I'm sorry, perhaps I'm not understanding your reply and/or perhaps it's just not possible to change the background "theme" image without uploading it to Mozilla first (without writing a new addon). I could be wrong of course, let me know.

]
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For what I know and found these are what can do without uploading as asked.

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https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/personas-plus/?src=search

Make a account and upload so that they are stored in the account and can switch themes from the account.

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Yes, know, this is persona plus lightweight updated 2 mos ago.

So they need to get it working or ignore it.

Thanks.

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I tried going through all the links, I've searched keywords like "lwtheme" and "lightweighttheme-header" and so on. I'm sure it's possible, but I've not managed to mix and match infos to make it work. I've even created the file "userChrome.css" which did not seem to be read or used by Firefox.

In short, there's no easy or at least straightforward way that I am able to follow to make this work (this = use a personal background image as "persona" without uploading it anywhere). I do know that a few years ago, this was very easy to do, so it's sad that it doesn't work.

My original motivation was to have a visual way of differentiating between various versions and profiles of Firefox. It's sad that this trivial operation is so complicated. I've spent way too much time trying to piece everything together.

Thanks for everyone's help, but short of a real and complete answer, this doesn't work, which could be an acceptable answer. I prefer to hear that than to run after links with obsolete and/or incomplete information.

Cheers.

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Hi, sorry not able to make it work with out uploading. I am told this lightweight Persona is easier than before.

If Made the usserChrome Folder and the userChrome file and put it in the Profile folder as per links suplied it will take anything you want as per the examples on the 2nd URL plus info a video and...\\

New Tab Override is good to make a homepage with and background to a page.

Then Cor-el has clear instructions for changing colours.

If you went to the search page and clicked on Themes there could you not find one through tap and look as places theme temp without download. 1000's of themes.

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You do not need userChrome.css. You only need to modify some prefs on the about:config page and place the image files in the main profile folder and give them the correct name (lightweighttheme-header and lightweighttheme-footer). if lightweightThemes.usedThemes doesn't exist then create a new String pref with this name and paste the JSON data posted below as the value. You can modify the values of background "accentcolor":"#" and "textcolor":"#" to #rrggbb values to make text show properly and possibly change name and author as well.

Set these prefs on the about:config page.

lightweightThemes.persisted.footerURL = true
lightweightThemes.persisted.headerURL = true
lightweightThemes.selectedThemeID = 1
lightweightThemes.usedThemes:
[{"id":"1","name":"Unknown","headerURL":"https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/","footerURL":"https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/","textcolor":"#","accentcolor":"#","iconURL":"","previewURL":"","author":"Unknown","updateURL":"","version":"1.0","updateDate":"","installDate":""}]

The lightweighttheme-header and lightweighttheme-footer images will be resized and copied to the lwtheme folder if you select the theme. You need to delete the files in the lwtheme folder with Firefox closed to make Firefox use a new lightweight theme if you replace the lightweighttheme-header and lightweighttheme-footer yourself.

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thanks cor-el for rewriting that, I re-read and it's starting to make more sense. I'm going to try to understand it better and see what I can do*.

So far, by copying what you wrote (I had the png image as lightweighttheme-header in the right place, it's now converted in to the lwtheme directory), however I can't see my image as the background, the background is dark...

I'll need to find the documentation for "lightweightThemes.usedThemes" parameter. I'm puzzled by the "headerURL" pointing to "https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/" where it would seem it should point to my local filesystem.

I actually tried that, headerURL = file:///path/to/file, but no cigar and I cannot find proper documentation for this. I'm happy to try things, but an actual working documentation would be best.

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BTW, it kind of works now, I'm not really sure how and what is happening exactly, perhaps I'll have a further look when I have more time. Thanks again for the help.

I'll still leave this open as unsolved as it's still not very clear yet (images are copied to lwtheme as 1920x1200 where the image is 1920x200, it's all a bit blurry still).