Another Time Wasting Technology

Well, that's another thing off the list ...

Thanks to being confronted with the notion at the Mozilla home page that if I didn't have a "persona" loaded on my web browser I just wouldn't be cool anymore, I take a few minutes and created one.

Image credit: Screenshot and Firefox persona theme by Cujo359

Yawn. Click on the image for a bigger yawn.

I must admit, I was never that fond of the idea to start with, so call it a case of lowered expectations met. Still, it was pretty easy. The basic steps are:

1. Create a 3000x200 pixel image for the header image.
2. Create a 3000x100 pixel image for the footer image
3. Load the persona module, if you haven't already.
4. Use the persona module to create a custom persona.

I started out with a picture of the sky I liked, and just cut out the two images using Gimp. It only took slightly longer to do it than it did to be completely bored with it.

So, you might be asking, why don't I put something really interesting in the header image? Good question. The reason is, as the instructions explain, you're supposed to use something pretty bland so that you can still see the letters and icons in the header without having to squint or turn up the contrast. That rather limits what you can do, doesn't it? Perusing the personas gallery showed that there wasn't much there that was significantly less boring and still followed the guidelines.

Anyway, if anyone's interested in using this persona, I'll figure out how to post it to the gallery. I'll call it "What I Saw Just Before I Went Mad".

Hint to website content makers - if I'm staring at the header of my web browser, what you're putting on the Internet is really boring.

UPDATE: Trying to get into the spirit of things, created another, more interesting persona. Here it is:

Not quite as boring, right? Now, look at the menus and icons in the header. They're harder to read, even after I enlarged them. That's why bland is better.

UPDATE 2: Since this second persona doesn't suck totally, I've submitted it to the gallery. It's named "Lake Washington Sky". We'll see how tolerant they are of Internet personas named after rabid animals.

UPDATE 3 (Dec. 11): The "Lake Washington Sky" persona is now part of the gallery. Enjoy.