When are themes recommend (EXACTLY) and when are they RE-recommended (EXACTLY)

[Mr.Cline]

I found that creating themes is a fun way to be creative and customize my own browser.
There are just a view things concerning “recommended” themes I would like to know.

I’ve made about a 100 . . one theme got recommended and I was delighted.
Meaning this theme got thousands of downloads . . WHILE the others (and some in much much better quality) never get viewed because the way themes are recommended and shown wenn you click on theme-sites ist very poorly made. My first theme has . . more than 10.000 Users . . my second most? about 20 . . you see the difference? . . and the second one is not even close to very good . . my best themes are nearly invisible . .
Now my recommended theme was put off its recommended status . . and I don’t know why. It all seems so random to me. Most recommended themes are so childish and have very poor visibility … and contrast . . and lack in creativity.
So my question is: What are those so called “high standarts” for themes exactly?
And who ist checking this? . . it seems that it’s all up to some dudes personal choice at the other end.

Here two examples . .

(WAS) recommended

OldWood – Get this Theme for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

has no clicks . . but looks much better.

OldWood | Intense – Get this Theme for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

[caitlin (Caitlin Neiman)]

Hi @Mr.Cline, thanks for reaching out!

Recommended themes are curated by long-time volunteer community members and add-ons staff. When selecting themes to recommend, we look for designs of high aesthetic quality, resolution, and composition in a variety of styles, colors, and moods. We rotate themes through the “Recommended” category every few weeks.

If you’re interested in joining the curation team, I’m happy to share more information.

[VanillaOrchids (Pamela Rosensteel)]

I’d rather see mozilla rotate the themes and not just show the same 6 everywhere.

Can I ask what you mean by ‘the same 6’? The featured list has a little over 30 themes recommended right now.

I do know that if you go to Tools > Add-ons in the browser there are only 3 themes under the Recommendations section (one of which I see is yours) along with other add-ons. So I’m just genuinely curious where you are seeing only 6 recommended themes.

[caitlin (Caitlin Neiman)]

Thanks for sharing your opinion; I would ask you to please be respectful of the other theme designers and curators in this community when critiquing things that are not to your personal taste.

I’m curious what you mean by “let the creator choose which ones are shown.” Shown where?

[caitlin (Caitlin Neiman)]

Thanks for those details. Currently, those themes are selected by popularity (number of average daily users). I can certainly forward your suggestion to allow designers to select which six themes show up to the developers.

[VanillaOrchids (Pamela Rosensteel)]

I am talking about the box on every individual theme-site.
The box below contains the themes the user will click on next . … because it’s the fastest way to look at other themes. This box shows six other themes of the same creator . . but they are nearly everytime the same. And they geht hunderets of clicks . . but no further users because they are too far of of what they wanted. And with every click on another theme of this creator they keep seeing THOSE six themes . . and since they are clicked the most they are cemented on every themes site forever. Sometimes a new one slips in . . but that’s it.

So if a user clicks on a wood theme I would like to show him further wood themes and not rainbows and Flowers . .

Ah, thank you for the explanation. I see what you mean; however, it didn’t used to be that way. I noticed before that those suggestions would change depending on the category that the theme being viewed is listed under. So for example, say a theme was in the Movie/TV category, all the themes in that area would be other themes the designer had listed in that category and so forth. Now I see that’s not the case anymore.

[grahamperrin]

Of the three that are currently recommended to me at about:addons

• one is among the thirty-eight at https://addons.mozilla.org/search/?page_size=100&recommended=true&sort=created&type=statictheme
• the other two are not
• one of the two is (with respect) nice as artwork, but it can seriously reduce legibility.

I’ll not name the troublesome theme, but from discussion elsewhere it seems that there may be platform-specific font rendering differences.

Food for thought …

PS I guess, the simple explanation is that:

• it’s no longer recommended at AMO
• Firefox is somehow lagging behind the current recommendations.

[grahamperrin]

@caitlin

… personal taste. …

My customisation revolves around making space for many extensions, one of which can become almost invisible – if I prefer a theme that uses a mid-grey background for the area that’s normally occupied by bookmarks:

Better for that one extension, worse for a handful of others:

Better overall – OldWood (one of the two in the opening post):

Subtly worse, for me – OldWood | Intense (the one that was better for the opening poster):

Personal taste plus the need to work around peculiarities with the icons of some extensions.