Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: compatibility developers documentation

Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/04/20

5 responses

I post these updates every 3 weeks to inform add-on developers about the status of the review queues, add-on compatibility, and other happenings in the add-ons world.

The Review Queues

In the past 3 weeks, 1226 listed add-ons were reviewed:

  • 1160 (95%) were reviewed in fewer than 5 days.
  • 45 (4%) were reviewed between 5 and 10 days.
  • 21 (1%) were reviewed after more than 10 days.

There are 73 listed add-ons awaiting review.

You can read about the recent improvements in the review queues here.

If you’re an add-on developer and are looking for contribution opportunities, please consider joining us. Add-on reviewers get invited to Mozilla events and earn cool gear with their work. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Compatibility Communications

Most of you should have received an email from us about the future compatibility of your add-ons. You can use the compatibility tool to enter your add-on ID and get some info on what we think is the best path forward for your add-on.

To ensure long-term compatibility, we suggest you start looking into WebExtensions, or use the Add-ons SDK and try to stick to the high-level APIs. There are many XUL add-ons that require APIs that aren’t available in either of these options, which is why we’re also asking you to fill out this survey, so we know which APIs we should look into adding to WebExtensions.

We’re holding regular office hours for Multiprocess Firefox compatibility, to help you work on your add-ons, so please drop in on Tuesdays and chat with us!

Firefox 47 Compatibility

The compatibility blog post for 47 is up. The bulk validation will be run soon. Make sure that the compatibility metadata for your add-on is up to date, so you don’t miss these checks.

As always, we recommend that you test your add-ons on Beta and Firefox Developer Edition to make sure that they continue to work correctly. End users can install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter to identify and report any add-ons that aren’t working anymore.

Extension Signing

The wiki page on Extension Signing has information about the timeline, as well as responses to some frequently asked questions. The current plan is to remove the signing override preference in Firefox 47 (updated from 46).

5 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/04/20”

  1. Rene Hunt wrote on

    What a surprise to see the ill-conceived extension signing enforcement moved up yet again…

  2. Nick wrote on

    When will WebExtensions be moved from experimental to planned release / beta? Any ideas or rough guesses?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      The target is for the first release version to go out with Firefox 48. However, you can use the currently implemented APIs already.

  3. Graeme wrote on

    Is there a similar place for Thunderbird addons? I have an addon that has broken with the release of Thunderbird 45 and I can find no help any where as to what has changed.

    I posted in the forum but have only gotten one response from someone who had the same problem. I posted a bug hoping for some useful information and was told that my addon needed updating. Is there somewhere else?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Thunderbird add-ons get little support, unfortunately. You can try posting on the Thunderbird channels on IRC. That might be your best bet.