A few years ago software developer Yixin Wang (aka Eason) decided he wanted to “de-Google” his digital life. After switching from Chrome to Firefox, Eason created macOS Monterey Safari Dark theme to mimic the look of Safari while experimenting with themes.
“During this process,” Eason explains, “I discovered that Firefox’s theme colors can be changed programmatically. That’s when it struck me — I could make Firefox dynamically adapt its theme color based on the web page it’s displaying, imitating Safari’s tab bar tinting behavior.”
This revelation led Eason to develop Adaptive Tab Bar Color, an extension that dynamically changes the color of Firefox’s tab bar to match the look of any website.
Upcoming v2.2 will feature a revamped Options page with modern HTML and CSS for a cleaner design. Users will also gain the ability to set a minimum contrast ratio for better UI readability.
While the concept may be simple, Adaptive Tab Bar Color’s development presented unique challenges. Eason understands that users expect his extension to seamlessly integrate colors of any web page they visit, but there are often unforeseeable edge cases. “What happens if a user always prefers dark mode, but the page has a bright color palette?” Eason wonders. “Or if a web page specifies a theme color that’s purely branding related and unrelated to content? What about pages with transparent backgrounds? Balancing these nuances to ensure a consistent and visually appealing experience has been both challenging and rewarding.”
Creating a cool extension like Adaptive Tab Bar Color can lead to unexpected benefits. After Eason put it on his resume, job recruiters came calling. This led to “… an incredible opportunity to write my Bachelor thesis at a company I’d always dreamed of working for. I’m so grateful for the support and enthusiasm of the Firefox community — it’s been an amazing journey.”
Do you have an intriguing extension development story? Do tell! Maybe your story should appear on this blog. Contact us at amo-featured [at] mozilla [dot] org and let us know a bit about your extension development journey.
Bryan
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