Real time customization for Firefox with Personas

Mozilla’s Chris Beard has released a very early version of Personas, a Firefox extension that provides another way of customization to Firefox. In the visual side, it is limited to changing toolbar and status bar backgrounds only so you may think of them as very light themes. Innovation is in the way the customization is delivered.

Personas, adds an icon to the status bar that expands to personas categories, subcategories and personas, so switching personas is just a couple of clicks away and there are 13 currently available with more to come as people submit more by email right now and through an automated web form in a near future.

The most interesting part however is that personas are served live so they could be set to be refreshed on a specific basis for example setting a sunset background in the evening and a sunny beach landscape at noon, from places around the globe, or family pictures, news, season images and almost anything.

The extension currently only supports Chris’ feed but as development continues any publisher would be able to provide feeds users can subscribe to.

Personas is just a working prototype but I am betting it will add much more appeal to Firefox as “the pimpable browser” and will get a fanbase of its own very very soon. It’s just such a cute extension.

You can try Personas here.