Labs/Personas/Support

The official Personas FAQ lives on getpersonas.com.

Some additional questions are answered here.

Why Doesn't The Selected Persona Appear Correctly?

Sometimes, when you select a persona, its images don't appear at the top or bottom of the browser, or they only style part of the "chrome" (the interface of the browser). The three most common reasons this happens are:

• You are using a Firefox theme. Personas is not compatible with Firefox themes, which can make changes to Firefox's interface that Personas cannot anticipate. To fix the problem, switch back to Firefox's default theme.
• You are using an operating system theme. Personas is not compatible with operating system themes, which can make changes to the default interface for applications (including Firefox) that Personas cannot anticipate. To fix the problem, switch back to the operating system's default theme. Note: this is not an issue on Mac OS X, which doesn't feature operating system themes.
• Personas and another extension are making conflicting changes to Firefox's interface. To fix the problem, try disabling other extensions one by one to identify the extension causing the problem, then leave that extension disabled.

Workarounds for specific cases:

• You are either using the Windows 2000 operating system, or the "Windows Classic" desktop theme on a later Windows operating system. (The only operating system desktop theme on Windows 2000 is named "Windows Classic" in later Windows operating systems which add more desktop themes.) The statusbar remains gray, not showing the Personas footer image. Personas does not maintain and test theme-specific workarounds to override the -moz-appearance CSS rule for the statusbar of this theme (bug 487711).
  • One workaround: Personas Windows Classic Statusbar, an extension add-on for Firefox or Thunderbird.
• You are using both the Personas ≤1.4 add-on and Firefox ≥3.6 Lightweight Themes. This may produce mismatches such as light colored text on a light colored background. Lightweight themes modify the “Default” theme in a similar way to Personas.
  • Before setting a Lightweight Theme, please set the Persona to “Default”.
    (statusbar ⇒ Personas icon ⇒ “Default”)
  • Before setting a Persona, please set the Lightweight Theme to “Default”.
    (Tools ⇒ Add-ons ⇒ Themes ⇒ “Default” ⇒ Use Theme)

Can I apply a Persona while using a theme?

No, Personas currently only work with the default Firefox theme.

Why Can't I Change My Persona?

Occasionally after an update, some users find themselves unable to change personas via the website. The most common causes for this are:

• The AdBlock Plus extension (sometimes) doesn't trust getpersonas.com. To fix this, add http://getpersonas.com to your AdBlock Plus whitelist.

• The NoScript extension may block mozilla.net scripts. Tell NoScript to allow mozilla.net content. (The content delivery network now supplies getpersonas-cdn.mozilla.net files.)

• You are using an out of date version of firefox. Currently, users running Firefox 3.0.16 and earlier experience this issue. To fix, please update to the latest, stable release (3.5.7 currently).

Personas & Other Extensions

Sometimes Personas doesn't work or look quite right when used along with other extensions. Here are some of the known issues:

• All-in-One Sidebar: the Personas background image only partly shows through underneath the sidebar.
  
  • This is a problem with Gallery Personas, which have a limited height of 300.  However it is possible to fill the full height of the sidebar by creating your own taller custom persona from a local file.

How can I download a Persona to use offline?

See Personas/Saving_a_Gallery_Persona

What tools are available for creating Personas?

There is a tutorial on the getpersonas.com website.

There is a bash script shape_persona.sh which uses imagemagick to add add 3d gradient effects to persona images. A live web page which allows you to use this script from your browser is being tested here.

The GIMP and Photoshop are good tools for editing images. If you use layers and keep a copy of your .xcf or .psd file you can apply the same overlay effects to different background images in the future.