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Firefox 4's dark monochromatic icons make Firefox Personas unusable

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  • 11 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Londonist

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The distinctive and colourful toolbar icons provided by Firefox 3 (and add-on developers designing for Firefox 3) have been replaced by dark monochromatic toolbar icons in Firefox 4. The new icons are barely visible with my preferred Firefox persona, so I've been forced to restyle my browser.

The only solution that anyone is offering to the dark icon problem is the Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+. But this is not a solution for me because I want to use a persona of my own choice. Personas are a legitimate part of Firefox's look and feel which we were heavily encouraged to adopt by Mozilla. I don't want to use a standard, pale grey browser, and if I did, then I'd be able to see the dark monochromatic icons quite easily.

I want to restore the Firefox 3-style icons for downloads, history, bookmarks, cut, copy and paste - without installing a theme. I am really hoping that someone will provide some information on how to alter individual toolbar icons the light way, i.e. in userChrome.css.

Why Mozilla chose to make such a fanfare about introducing personas in Firefox 3, and then crippled the concept of personal customisation in Firefox 4 with toolbar icons which are hard to see against dark, bright or complex backgrounds is hard to understand. Of course you can see icons which you place on the navigation toolbar, thanks to the huge new square buttons, but also thanks to the huge new square buttons, you can't fit many icons on the navigation toolbar. In a nutshell, Firefox 4's visual design takes away a little bit of the freedom and choice which made us love Firefox in the first place.

The distinctive and colourful toolbar icons provided by Firefox 3 (and add-on developers designing for Firefox 3) have been replaced by dark monochromatic toolbar icons in Firefox 4. The new icons are barely visible with my preferred Firefox persona, so I've been forced to restyle my browser. The only solution that anyone is offering to the dark icon problem is the Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+. But this is not a solution for me because I want to use a persona of my own choice. Personas are a legitimate part of Firefox's look and feel which we were heavily encouraged to adopt by Mozilla. I don't want to use a standard, pale grey browser, and if I did, then I'd be able to see the dark monochromatic icons quite easily. I want to restore the Firefox 3-style icons for downloads, history, bookmarks, cut, copy and paste - without installing a theme. I am really hoping that someone will provide some information on how to alter individual toolbar icons the light way, i.e. in userChrome.css. Why Mozilla chose to make such a fanfare about introducing personas in Firefox 3, and then crippled the concept of personal customisation in Firefox 4 with toolbar icons which are hard to see against dark, bright or complex backgrounds is hard to understand. Of course you can see icons which you place on the navigation toolbar, thanks to the huge new square buttons, but also thanks to the huge new square buttons, you can't fit many icons on the navigation toolbar. In a nutshell, Firefox 4's visual design takes away a little bit of the freedom and choice which made us love Firefox in the first place.

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I've discovered a solution to my problem. The problem boils down to the issue that Firefox 4 (currently 4.0.1) won't allow personas to be used in conjunction with 3rd party themes (which may or may not be a bug). A thirdparty theme like Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+ will provide FF3-style toolbar icons but it can't be skinned with a lightweight persona. This problem can be solved by changing the value of lightweightThemes.isThemeSelected to true in about:config, after installing the 3rd party theme, thereby allowing a persona to be applied.