Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: developers

User Feedback for Desktop Firefox Add-on Developers

14 responses

Hello Add-on Community!

My name is Aakash and I work as the Product Lead for the Firefox Input team. The integration of a user feedback service onto Firefox has been a major boon in delivering timely and helpful bug reports, praise for a job well done to the development and UX teams, user-experience insights, compatibility breakages, performance and stability clusters.

What we’ve noticed is that users already send feedback via Firefox about these add-ons using the “Submit Feedback” option in the Help Menu or via the Feedback button. They consider add-ons to be an integral part of the Firefox product experience. So, why not extend support to add-ons themselves within the Add-ons Manager?

We have been experimenting with opening up Input to Add-on Developers and the reception from our users have been positive. So, what we would like to do is add feedback as a strict opt-in service for add-on developers via AMO. If an add-on author does opt-in to have feedback received for their add-on, the following will occur:

The team believes this will create a closer connection to add-on users and authors as well as help propel the development of add-ons. With all of this said, we don’t know if this is something an add-on developer would want and or use.

So, please take a minute to fill-out a very short survey on this topic:

Click here to take the survey.

14 comments on “User Feedback for Desktop Firefox Add-on Developers”

  1. patrickjdempsey wrote on

    Please make sure that there is a way for us to contact users giving feedback. We already receive virtually useless feedback reports via Addon Compatibility Reporter. I have completely stopped checking these reports because they were more frustrating than they were useful. Without the ability to ask our users what platform they are running, what OS theme they are using, version of Firefox they are running, version of my add-on they are running, what other add-ons they are also running, if they have tried disabling the other add-ons, and screenshot requests, it becomes virtually impossible to track down and access problems… or even prove if the problems are caused by my add-on or a different one. Fundamentally, there is no difference between the requirements add-ons authors need for triage and what BugZilla provides for Firefox bug reports. In forums I encounter users all of the time who give up using their favorite add-ons without ever even bothering to contact the author and report problems. I’ve also received many “Reviews” on AMO where users “report” problems but never reply to my follow-up response. We aren’t Mozilla… we don’t have armies of testers waiting in the wings for us… most of us really rely heavily on user feedback, so if you are going to give us a direct channel… be sure it’s actually a direct channel and not one that discourages our users from using the support links we provide for them. Thank you.

  2. patrickjdempsey wrote on

    P.S. Question 3 in your survey says “(If yes to Question 4)” when there is no question 4. I’m guessing you mean Question 2?

    1. adesai wrote on

      Indeed it does! Thanks, it was left out from some previous editing.

  3. Ken Saunders wrote on

    I added something similar to what Patrick said. AMO has improved communications between users and developers through email alerts for user’s reviews on AMO which is great because in the past, the chances of a user returning to check a developer’s reply were slim, but Alert the Developer is currently only a one way channel.
    Perhaps a short feedback form would be more helpful than just 3 buttons with options including Praise, Bugs/Issues, and Requests/Suggestions and include the ability to paste in the user’s about:support info like SUMO does.

    1. adesai wrote on

      Thanks, Ken. You’re right. It would be a bit more helpful as a support task, but Input is designed to collect larger amounts of anonymous feedback and determine top insights. There are some ideas that have been thrown around to add browserId and the Phonebook profile system to Input feedback (if a user opts-in to). Though, this is something that will take time.

  4. Mingyi Liu wrote on

    Getting feedback/praise/criticism/suggestion directly from addon manager would be nice.

    On the other hand, I agree with the above comments that for bug reports, listing support emails/site might be more helpful to get things fixed. Frankly, I feel users who don’t care to email authors about issues, usually don’t check back to see developers’ reply/request for more info.

    It would also be useful if the feedback form allow user-permitted auto-submission of system info (OS, FF version, Addon version). That’d make it more effective.

  5. Jeff wrote on

    I have just upgraded my Firefox to 8.0.1, I really hate this new version. It does not have a toolbar for my Roboform. I can’t find any of my old toolbars, a lot of my addons stopped working. How do I get this back to a previous version? I used to love my Firefox and now I am completely lost on this new version. I wish I had never updated from the old version.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on

      Hi Jeff, can you check to see that the add-ons you want are not disabled? To do this, go to Tools > Add-ons. This will open the Add-ons Manager, which will display the add-ons you have installed. You can enable the ones you want from here.

  6. Jack Frossed wrote on

    I can’t seem to find where do install “speed-dial” to my Firefox. Where do I do that?

    1. Jack Frossed wrote on

      Speed-Dial please. . .

  7. Thanshanth wrote on

    what happened to this firefox??? it’s crashing continuesly, when I click the restart button, okay, if leave that prob, it says to update my firefox, then I updated it, I also like to update the new versions, but, when I update it, it will work good, but after opened firefox, two or three times, the restore previous session button is not working, but I want that previous sessions, if this firefox does this, what should I do??? is this rite or wrong? how many timemes I got this problem know!!! please try to fix these problems or fix any one problem of these… so sad of firefox, I’m using google crome now… 🙁

  8. INGRID SIEVERT wrote on

    YOUR NEW FIREFOX SUCKS, HOW CAN I GET THE OLD ONE BACK? THE NEW ONE IS TOO SLOW
    AND MATTER OF FACT IT IS AWFUL. IF SOMETHING WORKS GOOD, WHY CHANGE IT?

  9. affan shaikh wrote on

    hi,

    One of the best browser in the world.
    I love surfing on it…
    i would like to ask…is there any way to connect ftp through (firebug) that we can change our content,css there only?

    Regards,
    AFFAN

  10. Bill wrote on

    I am not liking the new Firefox. After downloading, I find that my tool bar at the top of the page is missing. I cannot access my Favorites, Tools or anything else that was stored in that tool bar. How can I revert to the previous version so that I can use my browser properly? Heck, I can’t even save this site in my favorites. So, I will have to search to find this page again to get my reply. Unless you can email me an answer.