Create Custom Firefox Personas: Guidelines

What is Personas Plus 1.6?

Personas is the widely popular built-in feature that allows Firefox 3.6 users to change the browser’s personality with the click of their

mouse. It also has a Firefox extension to go with it. The Personas Plus 1.6 Firefox extension allows users to change their browser’s personality, but it does so without the user needing to visit the Personas website. It also allows users to create their own persona. By uploading or creating a header and footer and some additional graphics, Persona Plus users can instantly transform their Firefox browser into a radically different and uniquely personal browser. As long as they follow the guidelines and have installed the Persona Plus extension, creating a Persona is easy.

Personas Guidelines & Prohibited Content

Some content is prohibited by copyright or for ethical reasons. Some of the prohibited content and guidelines include:

• No hate material allowed.

• No images of gambling allowed

• Content of a sexual nature, provocative nature or offensive nature is not allowed.

• The user must own the copyright or have express written permission from the copyright owner to use the images.

• The images cannot contain any identifying photos of people without their express consent to contain and display those images, with the exception of images of public celebrities..

• Images used cannot violate any state or federal laws, including discrimination laws.

• No content can be used that might otherwise violate any of the Mozilla or Firefox terms of service or user agreements.

If there is any material the user thinks he or she may want to use but is not sure if it can be used, the general rule of thumb is to ask Mozilla first or be careful and not use it. As for the images themselves, keep in mind that they should be no larger than 3000 pixels wide by 200 pixels tall. Anything smaller will stretch to size. The image should also be a JPEG or PNG image and of contrasting colors or a gradient color scale.

Step One: Enable Custom Personas Options

Now that the guidelines are out of the way, it is time for step one. Enable the ability to create the custom persona by clicking on the

Firefox Persona icon in the lower left corner of the bottom status bar. Click the Preferences option. When the dialogue box opens, check the “Enable Custom persona in menu” option and close the preferences box.

Step Two: Create Persona

Click on the same Persona icon in the lower-left hand corner and when the menu opens, click “Custom Persona.” When the sub-menu opens, click “Edit.” The Custom Persona options are then displayed as a web page so the user may test it on his browser first before applying it (see screenshots). Click “Browse” to open the upload dialogue box and

. Then, repeat the process

When finished, choose a text color and an accent color. If you like the outcome, simply click “OK” to apply the changes (see screenshot).

But I Don’t Like My Custom Persona!

That’s OK, because the Personas are easy to change. Simply go back into the Tools menu on the top menu bar and hover over the

Personas option. When the context menu opens, hover over “recently applied” and then hover over the most recently used Persona to “Try it on” instantly. To apply that persona again, click it and it changes instantly. No worries, however, because if the user ever wants to change the Persona back to the custom Persona, simply access it using the “Recently Applied” menu option again.

Editing Personas

The best bet to make a custom Persona is to begin with an image editing tool, such as Photoshop or SUMO Paint or GIMP. Note that GIMP and SUMO Paint are free to use. Uploading the image to these editors can give the user a bit more latitude when creating the persona, since they can tweak and edit their images before uploading them. The user can use these image editors to create an entire collection of headers and footers to mix, match and switch around images and photos to create the most personalized Personas possible. Then, once editing is complete, the user can simply upload the finished product to Custom Personas and apply it.