Add-on Collector Retirement

23

We have a lot of exciting things in the works for add-ons and add-on collections. Unfortunately, this means we need to take a look at the different projects we support, and decide which align best with our goals.

After some analysis, we are retiring the Add-on Collector.

It was a hard decision, as it’s popular among many of our active users. However, only a few hundred people have actually used the add-on in the past few months.

We have some very awesome things planned for collections. If we were supporting the Collector, each feature would take almost three times as long to make happen — we would have to add each feature to the site, the APIs and finally the add-on. Additionally, the Add-on Collector uses the Bandwagon API, which resides on the soon-to-be-retired old version of our site. To keep the Add-on Collector working, we would have to rewrite all the APIs in a new language.

The good news is that most of the features (and many additional ones!) are available on the add-ons site already. If you have the Collector installed, you’ll soon see a button in the Add-ons Manager that will take you to them on the add-ons site, where you can continue creating and managing collections. And for anyone who uses the ACR to back up their add-ons, Add-on Sync is coming to Firefox.

We appreciate the work everyone has put into collections, and we’re looking forward to making them even more awesome.

Categories: general

23 responses

  1. taglife

    I do not understand your content.

    It looks good idea collect add-ons !!!
    WHY is retiring ~~~??? ???
    It is BETTER than [Add-on Compatibility Reporter]

  2. shemcphe

    can’t you give us something comparable? this really makes me mad

    1. vinylrake

      You will be able to manage your collections on the firefox add-on site, you won’t need an add-on just to manage your other add-ons.

  3. Ernest

    What Add-On will have the some function as the Add-on Collector.
    Please tell us the name of this AddOn!

  4. David

    I hope bookmark syncing issues have been resolved. It was unreliable syncing a collection of over 16,000 bookmarks/folders.

    Bookmarks stopped syncing frequently and go missing, hiding in “Unsorted” or random folders. No error message was displayed (“it’s supposed to work in the background”). The only indication was my system slowing to a crawl. After failing, syncing was scheduled 5 minutes later. While syncing the CPU was hammered for up to 40 minutes.

    I stuck with the service from the beginning for 1.5 to 2 years. Always hoping the developers would change their “fringe case, reactive perspective”. There were many improvements, but continued as a black hole for my time. I gave up after being force reset all my sync data multiple times in a week.

    Things may be better now. There have been amazing improvements in Mozilla platform recently.

    1. intoxikator

      Like?? html5? xhtml? uh.. fewer crashes? blah. i disagree

    2. Tired of FF

      Firefox: Now Featuring –> Infinite Beta Mode… you can’t expect stability, from Mozilly, Silly!

  5. Jesse

    There is one major feature missing from the addon collection site that made Collector extremely useful: one click addon installation. This made setting up Firefox on new OS installs a breeze. I know that there are ways around the install timer, but nothing will quite compare to the efficiency of clicking install straight down a list, occasionally skipping select addons that I don’t want on that particular OS install. Workarounds here I come…

  6. intoxikator

    WHAAAAT?
    You and google are the f#$### same. Start something good, then abruptly kill it.
    I give up with all of you a#%##holes

  7. pkiff

    Surprised to see the repeated comments venting frustration on this issue, particularly given the clear explanation of the factors that weighed choice. And the fact that add-on sync is already available as a replacement (whether it is fully featured yet or not).

    Thank you to the developers for having kept up with maintaining and extended Add-on Collector over the past several years. I enjoyed using it and, as mentioned by someone else, I found it particularly helpful when setting up a new installation of Firefox. I look forward to learning about add-on Sync and learning how to best take advantage of what it has to offer.

  8. ozl

    Wasn’t add-on sync already included since last year?? or what is the difference?

    Good day people!

  9. Lum-the-Mad

    I liked Add-on Collector, especially for new/re-installs. We’ll need to learn how to make good with the new site. But that’s what’s great about being human: you can learn things without having to let someone change your code. (Would you really want that?) Lum the Mad, J C ‘Lum’ Johnson II

  10. Paul

    The primary use for add-on collector that we saw was installing a core set of add-ons for new installs, in one go.

    The add-on sync only (appears to) sync settings for addons, not their installation.

    With FF becoming more like an OS, managing core extensions is essential, so an option in the addons sync to install extensions that aren’t present (and marked for install) would be extremely helpful

  11. intoxikator

    Know what makes me angry?
    I spent a lot of effort into setting up a quality stack of addons, and had one of the most followed. Retire the thing… fine. But I don’t see any other way of doing a collection/bundle approach to addons without 3rd party apps like delicious, cubby, etc.

    You should have run a campaign to ensure people knew this was coming (I didn’t). I’m 99% sure the community could have put up an officially recognized/recommended hostspace or wiki/blog/vlog/tlog/mlog/glob/clog/slog/

    1. Paul

      The add-on collections are still there and may be accessed via a browser the same as always. You don’t need to have the add-on collector add-on to make use of collections.

      But the collections don’t need to be so hidden and inaccessible as they seem to be.

      Paul

  12. gloria

    I am not able to play my games since the 21th why?

  13. Syd Midnight

    I hope that there will be a replacement besides Sync. I spend a lot of time setting up and cleaning up PCs, and getting users to switch from IE to FF has been a basic part of that. FF is “some assembly required” for maximum usefulness, and Add-on Collector allowed me to quickly install extensions on the fly without having to search for them individually, maintain a web page, carry a list of bookmarks or XPI files… just 1 URL for a list of the extensions I endorse and am familiar with. Maybe there’s an extension that does the same thing but I’m too dumb to find it? I hope so, Sync is obviously not an option here.

    Sorry to complain, I’m a longtime Mozilla fan and I know it’s a lot harder for coders to solve the problem than for a few users to have to hunt down add-ons, but I’ll miss it. It was VERY convenient for quickly setting up Firefox for new users and making them WANT to use it instead of IE, Chrome, etc.

  14. Ff Addon

    So how do I install a collection of 70 Add-Ons?

  15. Why?

    This was my last resort. I’ve spent most of the day trying to organize add-ons for different profiles. I really like firefox, but the sync is as unreliable as syphon sync – it won’t load addons I know are synced in another profile. FEBE is a hassle because FF doesn’t save .xpi’s in plain English.

  16. Shawn P

    Aw, h*ll!!! I understand what you are saying, and don’t blame you for this decision. It still sucks for those of us who used it a great deal. Sigh. I have to admit that the constant flux here makes me use Chrome from time to time. I don’t picture ever going back to IE, but there is something refreshing about the simplicity of Chrome. Then it won’t do something I am so used to FF handling fine and I am back. I would say I use FF about 85% of the time now. For years it was the only browser I used though.

    I appreciate that advancements and changes must be made, but as another person mentioned: it feels like FF is constantly in beta mode…. sometimes, LOL!

    I hope someone out there is working on a replacement for Add-On Collector.

  17. Benjamin McLean

    This really was stupid beyond all reason. It took what was probably the single best thing about FireFox and threw it out. Chrome is looking better all the time at this point.

  18. cozappz

    Bad move Mozilla! And pretty shortsighted because some of us have used addon collector for Thunderbird. Which does not have a sync feature, AFAIK. Now, I have to go to the site in browser, and complicate my life in an instant.
    Some times I really understand Apple, with their KISS policy.

  19. karlsdorf

    I love Add-on Collector!!!