Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/08/24

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, 1228 listed add-on submissions were reviewed:

  • 1224 (92%) were reviewed in fewer than 5 days.
  • 57 (4%) were reviewed between 5 and 10 days.
  • 46 (3%) were reviewed after more than 10 days.

There are 203 listed add-ons awaiting review.

You can read about the improvements we’ve made 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 are critical for our success, and can earn cool gear for their work. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Compatibility

The compatibility blog post for Firefox 49 is up, and the bulk validation was run. The blog post for Firefox 50 should be published in the next week.

Going back to Firefox 48, there are a couple of changes that are worth keeping in mind: (1) release and beta builds no longer have a preference to deactivate signing enforcement, and (2) multiprocess Firefox is now enabled for users without add-ons, and add-ons will be gradually phased in, so make sure you’ve tested your add-on and either use WebExtensions or set the multiprocess compatible flag in your add-on manifest.

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.

Recognition

We would like to thank fiveNinePlusR for their recent contributions to the add-ons world. You can read more about their contributions in our recognition page.

8 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/08/24”

  1. Clemens MM wrote on

    Hi Jorge,

    thanks for the heads up. My add-on Trufflepiggy unfortunately belongs to the 3% that take more than 10 days. I was contacted within the first 10 days that some instructions how my minification was done was missing. I totally forgot that. My fault. So I replied to the mailing-list as it was instructed. But here my biggest issue with the Firefox review process begin: I get no feedback if my moderator received the instructions or not. There is no indications what’s happening. I was already at #1 in queue and now I’m back on #3. Here it would be really helpful if you have some kind of feedback system or moderator conversation where you can track your progress and see if the moderator received your answers.

    Because right now I’m waiting already for 18 days(https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/trufflepiggy/) and I have no idea if some action from my side is still required or not.

    Have a nice day,

    Clemens

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Hello Clemens,

      Thanks for the feedback. You’re right that the communication process at the moment is not very clear. In fact, replying to the list doesn’t send the message directly to your reviewer, but it goes to the admin reviewers, who then evaluate if they need to loop in that particular reviewer. We’re in the process of changing this so it’s easier for developers and reviewers to communicate with each other. It should go live in the next couple of months.

      As for your add-on in particular, I don’t see any reply from you to the mailing list, and there’s a request from a reviewer on Aug 17th that apparently hasn’t been responded. If you have that email from the 17th, please reply to it with any questions you have.

      1. Clemens MM wrote on

        Hi Jorge,

        thank you very much for your quick heads up. Your planned updates sound great.

        About my email: strange I actually sent 2 emails to the mailing list: one on 17th just one hour after I received the request and another one 22th to ask if Andreas received my message. I just sent the mail again. May you can give me feedback if it went through.

        Thank you very much,

        Clemens

        1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

          I can confirm we *didn’t* receive your latest message either. Please send an email to amo-admins AT mozilla DOT org and jorge AT mozilla DOT com so we can try to figure out what’s going on.

          1. Clemens MM wrote on

            I just forwarded my last mail to your mentioned addresses. While forwarding my email I noticed that while replying my mail client added an “Aw:” before the subject instead of an “Re:” due my local language settings. Maybe the mailing list has some rules and filters that can’t cope with that!?

            However thank you so much for helping me out!

            Greetings from Vienna,

            Clemens

          2. Clemens MM wrote on

            FYI: my add-on got approved. It seems a new reviewer was faster reading my updated dev notes.

            Nevertheless I hope you can find the issue why my and potentially other emails don’t get through.

  2. Simon wrote on

    Hi there,

    my add-on “Weather Hub” is now in the approval-process since more than two weeks. Yesterday we already reached position 6 in the queue and were already happy that we’re nearly done but today I saw, that we’re back on position 113? Could you please estimate, how long this process will take? And could you please tell us, why we’re pushed back to position 113? :-/

    Thanks and best regards,
    Simon

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      The sudden change in queue numbers was due to a bug in a recent data migration, which added a bunch of add-ons with inconsistent state to the review queues. They were cleaned up, so everything should be back to normal. I didn’t see your add-on in the queues, so I suppose it was handled already.