One highlight for me was meeting our European AMO editors in person. We had an informal meetup Friday evening before the welcome festivities at an Irish Pub, where we chatted and caught up over beers (which took a while to order because nobody spoke Polish except Teo). Nils, winner of our New Year’s Challenge joined us, as did Giorgio, Andreas, Teo, Kris, and Andrew. Brian, Axel, and Kent had other MozCamp commitments and couldn’t make it, but we all managed to find each other and catch up during the course of the weekend.

I am possibly biased, but to me AMO editors are unsung heroes. There have been more than 3 billion downloads of add-ons on AMO, and it’s the editors who are at the front line, tirelessly ensuring they are safe to use.

“I suspect the vast majority of even the diehard Firefox community have absolutely no clue how much work AMO has put into quality, speed, and performance testing addons…malware checks and line-by-line code reviews.” – patrickjdempsey

When people write add-ons for Firefox and ask questions about their submissions, a real-life editor answers; and chances are, that editor is a volunteer contributor.

So join us, be a part of a project where people believe in the impact of their contributions, no matter how small or tedious. And maybe we’ll have a beer together, somewhere in the world.

To see all the ways you can contribute to the Mozilla project, click here.

The new year is upon us, and it’s time to make a big push on the review queues! Between December 22, 2011 and February 22, 2012, AMO Editors are eligible to win some great prizes.

Editors who review 100 or more add-ons during the contest period will advance to the final round, where a panel of judges will decide on the winners based on the following criteria:

• Efficiency in reviews
• Adherence to AMO review policies
• Attention to security

Here’s what the winners will get:

First Place: 13” Macbook Air
Second – Fifth Places: Android tablet

All editors who complete 20 reviews or more during the contest period will receive Firefox t-shirts!

Not an editor? If you are an add-on developer who’s interested in making an impact and enjoying some great perks, join us!

The Fine Print:

• No Mozilla employees or contractors are eligible. This is a volunteer-only contest.
• Finalists will be determined based on reviews performed between December 22, 2011 (12:01am PST) to February 22, 2012 (11:59pm PST). (GMT: Feb 22, 2011 8:01am – Feb 23, 2011 7:59am)
• Qualifying reviews include only approvals and rejections for any of the three queues (nominations, updates and preliminary), and does not include the standard temporary rejection for add-ons with binary components.
• Reviews that need to be backed out due to editor mistakes do not count.

See complete contest rules »

Good luck!

AMO Outage

We had a significant outage on our site (and others) earlier this week, which affected some add-on operations such as compatibility checks. AMO is back to normal now and we’re looking into ways of avoiding this from happening again.

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking less than 5 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 10 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 67 new nominations that week. 224 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 101 new updates that week. 135 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 78 new preliminary review submissions that week. 115 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Firefox 10

The Firefox 10 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 10 was run last week, so any add-ons with compatibility under 10.* should be tested and manually upgraded in the Developer Hub, if possible.

You can run the standalone compatibility tool if you want to test your add-on yourself or if it isn’t hosted on AMO.

The Add-ons Default to Compatible feature is progressing, and we expect to land for Firefox 10 or 11. Once this is in place, your compatibility worries will be minimized, and we’ll be taking a more active role in letting developers know if their add-ons are incompatible with a new version of Firefox. This feature will be a big win for both developers and Firefox users, so we’re very excited about it.

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking about 6 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 82 new nominations that week. 247 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 116 new updates that week. 149 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 66 new preliminary review submissions that week. 104 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please read the page on How to Apply.

Firefox 8

There’s a bug that affects themes in Firefox 8, in Mac OS X Lion. Please read this blog post if you’re a theme developer.

Firefox 9

The Firefox 9 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 9 was run weeks ago, so any add-ons with compatibility under 9.* should be tested and manually upgraded in the Developer Hub, if possible.

You can run the standalone compatibility tool if you want to test your add-on yourself or if it isn’t hosted on AMO.

We strongly recommend that you aim to make your add-on compatible with the Firefox version in the Aurora channel. Making your add-on compatible with Aurora qualifies it for our automatic compatibility upgrades, saving you lots of time. If you need more information about this, don’t hesitate to ask.

Firefox 10

Compatibility update coming soon!

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking about 6 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 10 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 6 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 65 new nominations that week. 317 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 166 new updates that week. 168 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 133 new preliminary review submissions that week. 259 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

In order to reduce waiting times, we have hired a full time AMO Editor, who has been helping us for the past weeks. I expect the improvements to be noticeable on the next report. At this moment waiting times are very bad because there was a recent Firefox release and we’re getting many more updates than usual.

Firefox 7 and 8

The breaking changes in Firefox 7 have been detailed in this post.

The Firefox 8 compatibility post is here.

We ran compatibility upgrades to Firefox 7 and Firefox 8, so that as many add-ons as possible have their compatibility set to 8.*. This will also enable all of these add-ons to participate in future compatibility bumps, since we normally only run them for those compatible with Aurora.

Firefox 9

I’ll post on this blog about Firefox 9 compatibility later this week. Most compatibility validation bugs have been filed, and we expect to run the next compatibility bump sometime next week, bringing the majority of our add-ons up to 9.* compatibility.

You can run the standalone compatibility tool if you want to test your add-on yourself or if it isn’t hosted on AMO.

We strongly recommend that you aim to make your add-on compatible with the Firefox version in the Aurora channel, Firefox 9 at this moment. Making your add-on compatible with Aurora qualifies it for our automatic compatibility upgrades, saving you lots of time. If you need more information about this, don’t hesitate to ask.

We are doing pretty well on the compatibility front, but there are still many add-ons that are incompatible with 7, some of them very popular. If any of your add-ons are among this group, I encourage you to read the compatibility documentation available and update your add-on as soon as possible.

Rapid Releases – Get on the Train!

I know many of you are feeling the pain of the rapid release cycle. This is why we introduced the automatic compatibility bumps, that are being run roughly a week after a new version is released. However, one thing that you may not know is that the compatibility bumps are run to keep add-ons up to date with the Aurora channel.

So, if you want your add-on to be automatically upgraded when possible, you need to submit a version compatible with the Firefox 8 builds (or test and upgrade your current version on AMO) as soon as possible. A new version doesn’t need to be approved by the editor team in order to qualify for these automatic checks. It just needs to be on the site. We will run the Firefox 9 compatibility tests in a couple of weeks, and then you’ll be emailed with information about whether your add-on passed them or not. If it passes, you won’t have anything more to do for another 6 weeks. Ideally, this should happen for most add-ons and most releases, which hasn’t been far from the truth so far.

For those of you who like waiting until the final version is available in order to test and upgrade their add-ons (which we don’t recommend), you can treat the current Firefox 7 beta 6 as the final build. Unless something urgent comes up, that is Firefox 7.

Happy coding!

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking about 4 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 64 new nominations that week. 238 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 228 new updates that week. 279 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 89 new preliminary review submissions that week. 226 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Firefox 5 and 6

If you still haven’t updated your add-on, here’s an overview of the breaking changes in Firefox 5 and 6. If you’re a theme developer, also check out this post.

Firefox 7 and 8

The breaking changes in Firefox 7 have been detailed in this post. The compatibility bump for Firefox 7 was run already, so if your add-on is not compatible yet, we recommend you test and see if any changes are required.

The Firefox 8 compatibility post is here. We strongly recommend that you aim to make your add-on compatible with the Firefox version in the Aurora channel, Firefox 8 at this moment. Making your add-on compatible with Aurora qualifies it for our automatic compatibility upgrades, saving you lots of time. Firefox 9 is coming to Aurora in a couple of weeks, so you should look into this soon.

Performance

If you need information on how to test how your add-on affects Firefox startup performance, please read this document: Measuring Add-on Startup Performance.

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking about 3 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 1 week.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 2 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 93 new nominations that week. 195 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 202 new updates that week. 218 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 122 new preliminary review submissions that week. 185 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.
• 969 reviews performed by editors in the month of August so far.

Firefox 5 and 6

If you still haven’t updated your add-on, here’s an overview of the breaking changes in Firefox 5 and 6. If you’re a theme developer, also check out this post.

Firefox 7 and 8

The breaking changes in Firefox 7 have been detailed in this post. The compatibility bump for Firefox 7 was run already, so if your add-on is not compatible yet, we recommend you test and see if any changes are required.

The Firefox 8 compatibility post will be published later this week, and the bump will run next week or the one after.

Performance

If you need information on how to test how your add-on affects Firefox startup performance, please read this document: Measuring Add-on Startup Performance.

Summary

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Nominations are currently taking about 3 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
• We posted a call for new reviewers on our blog recently and many new reviewers have already joined our team and helped us cut down review times drastically. Just look at earlier reports for comparison. If you’re interested, please read on how to apply.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report.
• 85 new nominations that week. 255 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 132 new updates that week. 132 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 126 new preliminary review submissions that week. 135 in the queue awaiting review.
• 1834 reviews performed in the month of July (updated).

Compatibility

The release schedule is available here. The next push is currently scheduled for August 16th. This will be the release date for Firefox 6, the push of Firefox 7 to the beta channel, and the push of Firefox 8 to the Aurora channel.

The AMO compatibility push for Firefox 7 was run less than a week ago. A last minute change (to revert the JSON interface changes) and some bugs on our tools delayed the push significantly. We hope to run the Firefox 8 compatibility push shortly after the Aurora push, in a couple of weeks.

On this front, you should also look into this proposal by Justin Scott, to make add-ons compatible by default after Firefox updates. It’s based on the idea that most add-ons won’t require any code changes to work satisfactorily in new versions of Firefox, specially considering the small changes between releases. Please add your questions, show your support, etc. in the linked discussion.

Firefox 5 and 6

I posted a thorough look at breaking changes in Firefox 5 and 6. If there’s anything missing there, please let us know.

Firefox 7 and 8

The compatibility blog post for Firefox 7 was published some time. It mentions a couple of possible changes in Firefox 8, one of which might be reverted as well (the nsIDOMWindowInternal removal). The detailed compatibility post for Firefox 8 will be published close to its push to Aurora.

Performance

If you need information on how to test how your add-on affects Firefox startup performance, please read this document: Measuring Add-on Startup Performance.

Summary

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Nominations are currently taking about 3 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 10 days.
• We posted a call for new reviewers on our blog recently and many new reviewers have already joined our team and helped us cut down review times drastically. Just look at earlier reports for comparison. If you’re interested, please read on how to apply.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report.
• 101 new nominations that week. 215 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 155 new updates that week. 161 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 109 new preliminary review submissions that week. 140 in the queue awaiting review.
• 841 reviews performed in the month of July so far.

Firefox 5 and 6

I posted a thorough look at breaking changes in Firefox 5 and 6. If there’s anything missing there, please let us know. Make sure to read the comments too!

Firefox 7 and 8

I’ll be posting a Firefox 7 compatibility update shortly after this post. It will also include a couple of early warnings for Firefox 8.

Performance

If you need information on how to test how your add-on affects Firefox startup performance, please read this document: Measuring Add-on Startup Performance.