Summary

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. The new review system required hundreds of add-on developers to renominate their add-ons, which has placed a large workload on the editor team. Nominations are currently taking several weeks (~5) to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days. An avalanche of updates were submitted following the final Firefox 4 release, so we have been spending extra time keeping updates in line.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 weeks.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report.
• 91 new nominations that week. 271 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 209 new updates that week. 122 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 134 new preliminary review submissions that week. 253 in the queue awaiting review.

Firefox 4

Firefox 4 is out! If your add-on is already compatible, you should update your maxVersion to 4.0.* to cover all future 4.0 releases. Most of the necessary documentation to upgrade your add-on for Firefox 4 is readily available:

• Firefox 4 for developers at MDC.
• Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4.
• Toolbar buttons and icons for Firefox 4.
• Firefox 4 Compatibility discussion in the Add-ons Forum. This is the best place to post any feedback and bugs related to Firefox 4 and add-on development.

Firefox 5

Yeah, it’s time to begin thinking about Firefox 5. The development cycle for future versions of Firefox will be very fast, moving changes between 4 different update channels, as explained here. There will be a new major Firefox release roughly every 3 months.

On our side, we will automatically upgrade the compatibility of your add-on to Firefox 5 unless we have reasons to believe the add-on is incompatible. Since major releases are produced faster, it also means they’re milder in terms of breaking changes. The discussion about this new add-on compatibility process has begun in this newsgroup. If you want to get more details or have any feedback, please dive in.

The Firefox repo has already branched into the Aurora track, meaning that no major changes will happen until final release. We’re already tracking down all changes performed before the Aurora branching, and I will post updates on this blog once I have more specific information to add. For now, here are a couple of useful links:

• Firefox 5 for developers.
• Features wiki. This link is useful for long-term planning. It’s a feature development plan for the Firefox team (and others), and it includes several prioritized lists of what is being planned for future versions of Firefox. It’s a new approach to planning, so it’s bound to change rapidly.

Notes for Developers

• Our add-on performance initiative was launched recently, beginning with a page that lists add-ons that have been identified as slow by our Talos testing system and backed up by real world usage data and manual tests. Some developers have responded negatively to the release, pointing out a number of bugs in the testing system as well as problems in the wording of the slow add-ons page. We take these bugs seriously and thank these developers for filing bugs and being responsive. We have also scaled down the slow add-ons list until we correct the issues that we consider critical to move forward.
• The AMO Editor Guide. This is a comprehensive guide to the work performed by AMO Editors. If you want to have a clear idea of how we test add-ons, or you’re interested in joining us, this is a good place to begin.
• Useful Information for Add-on Authors. How to improve review times for your add-on, information about the review process, etc.

Summary

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. The new review system required hundreds of add-on developers to renominate their add-ons, which has placed a large workload on the editor team. Nominations are currently taking several weeks (~4) to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days. An avalanche of updates were submitted following the final Firefox 4 release, so we have been spending extra time keeping updates in line.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 10 days.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report.
• 64 new nominations that week. 224 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 238 new updates that week. 114 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 187 new preliminary review submissions that week. 209 in the queue awaiting review.
• 1252 reviews performed by AMO Editors in March.

Firefox 4 Compatibility

Firefox 4 is out! If your add-on is already compatible, you should update your maxVersion to 4.0.* to cover all future 4.0 releases. Most of the necessary documentation to upgrade your add-on for Firefox 4 is readily available:

• Firefox 4 for developers at MDC.
• Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4.
• Toolbar buttons and icons for Firefox 4.
• Firefox 4 Compatibility discussion in the Add-ons Forum. This is the best place to post any feedback and bugs related to Firefox 4 and add-on development.

The Compatibility Dashboard shows how we stand in the compatibility front. Of the most popular add-ons (95% of usage), 85% are already compatible with Firefox 4. This number has been growing a percentage point every couple of days since the release, so here’s to 90%!

Notes for Developers

• Mozilla has been focused on performance for quite some time now, and add-ons are no exception. We’re reaching out to authors about this and we recommend all authors to read and implement the recommendations we have on our Add-on Performance Best Practices documentation. AMO will integrate performance metrics for all listed add-ons  very soon, and you don’t want to be left behind!
• If your add-on listing has been disabled, it could be related to the mass sandbox cleanup we performed recently. You can still get it enabled again if you contact us. There are instructions on your add-on page.
• The AMO Editor Guide. This is a comprehensive guide to the work performed by AMO Editors. If you want to have a clear idea of how we test add-ons, or you’re interested in joining us, this is a good place to begin.
• Useful Information for Add-on Authors. How to improve review times for your add-on, information about the review process, etc.

Jorge Villalobos

Add-ons Developer Relations Lead, Mozilla

Completely new Add-ons Manager

Discovering, installing, and managing add-ons is simple with the new Add-ons Manager in Firefox 4. The tab-based layout allows ample room to view your installed add-ons and search for new ones. The Get Add-ons pane now features our favorite picks and even recommends add-ons for you based on those you currently use.

Install add-ons without restarting Firefox

Firefox 4 allows certain types of add-ons to be installed, managed, and removed without restarting your browser. These add-ons are marked as “No restart required” in our gallery. Go ahead, give it a try!

Automatically keep your add-ons updated

Add-on updates mean new features, bug fixes, and an active add-on development community, but for users with several add-ons, the update prompts can be frequent and distracting. That’s why in Firefox 4, you won’t see them by default; your add-ons will stay up-to-date automatically! If you’d rather update your add-ons manually, or update manually for specific add-ons, it’s easy to do that from the Add-ons Manager.

Hit the ground running

Now that you know about the great customization features of Firefox 4, grab a copy and head over to our Firefox 4 Collection to find some of our favorite add-ons.

• These posts written every 2 weeks explain the current state of add-on reviews and other information relevant to add-on developers.
• Nominations at the moment are being processed slower than usual. The new review system required hundreds of add-on developers to renominate their add-ons, which has placed a large workload on the editor team. Nominations are currently taking several weeks (~4) to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 10 days.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report.
• 53 new nominations that week. 239 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 70 new updates that week. 78 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 70 new preliminary review submissions that week. 135 in the queue awaiting review.
• 363 reviews performed by AMO Editors in March.

Firefox 4 Compatibility

Firefox 4 will be released very soon! RC1 is the current stable release and it should become 4.0 final very soon. AMO already supports 4.0.* as a valid maxVersion, and there are no major changes expected that affect add-on developers. If your add-on is already compatible, you should update your maxVersion to cover all future 4.0 releases. Most of the necessary documentation to upgrade your add-on for Firefox 4 is readily available:

• Firefox 4 for developers at MDC.
• Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4.
• Firefox 4 Compatibility discussion in the Add-ons Forum. This is the best place to post any feedback and bugs related to Firefox 4 and add-on development.
• Toolbar buttons and icons for Firefox 4.

Notes for Developers

• If your add-on listing has been disabled, it could be related to the mass sandbox cleanup we performed recently. You can still get it enabled again if you contact us. There are instructions in your add-on page.
• Add-on Performance at XUL School. This article is highly recommended to all developers. It explains a few methods to improve add-on performance, including how to easily measure startup times.
• The AMO Editor Guide. This new page in the wiki is a comprehensive guide to the work performed by AMO Editors. It will serve as an introductory guide for new editors, and is a step forward in being as transparent as possible with our review process.
• Useful Information for Add-on Authors. How to improve review times for your add-on, information about the review process, etc.

Jorge Villalobos

Add-ons Developer Relations Lead, Mozilla

• These posts written every 2 weeks explain the current state of add-on reviews and other information relevant to add-on developers.
• Nominations at the moment are being processed slower than usual. The new review system required hundreds of add-on developers to renominate their add-ons, which has placed a large workload on the editor team. Nominations are currently taking a week or two to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 5 days.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report. Preliminary queue stats are still pending.
• 59 new nominations that week. 161 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 80 new updates that week. 50 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 2620 reviews were performed by AMO Editors in February (updated March 1st).

Firefox 4 Compatibility

Firefox 4 will be released very soon! Beta 12 is the current stable release and the first Release Candidate (and hopefully the final 4.0 release) should follow soon. AMO already supports 4.0.* as a valid maxVersion, and there are no major changes expected that affect add-on developers. If your add-on is already compatible, you should update your maxVersion to cover all future 4.0 releases. Most of the necessary documentation to upgrade your add-on for Firefox 4 is readily available:

• Firefox 4 for developers at MDC.
• Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4.
• Firefox 4 Compatibility discussion in the Add-ons Forum. This is the best place to post any feedback and bugs related to Firefox 4 and add-on development.
• Toolbar buttons and icons for Firefox 4.

Notes for Developers

• If your add-on was recently disabled, it could be related to the mass sandbox cleanup we performed recently. You can still get your listing enabled again if you contact us. Your add-on page should have instructions on how to contact us.
• Add-on Performance at XUL School. This article is highly recommended to all developers. It explains a few methods to improve add-on performance, including how to easily measure startup times.
• The AMO Editor Guide. This new page in the wiki is a comprehensive guide to the work performed by AMO Editors. It will serve as an introductory guide for new editors, and is a step forward in being as transparent as possible with our review process.
• Useful Information for Add-on Authors. How to improve review times for your add-on, information about the review process, etc.

Jorge Villalobos

Add-ons Developer Relations Lead, Mozilla

Firefox 4 Beta is now API frozen, so if you haven’t already done so, please make sure your add-on is compatible. Firefox 4 is a significant upgrade that may require a little more work to be done to make sure your add-on works than in previous Firefox releases.

Jorge Villalobos has outlined the changes to Firefox 4 that may affect add-on compatibility. If you have any further questions, or concerns, or know of any breaking changes that are not listed, please post in this forum thread, or join #extdev on irc.mozilla.org for real-time assistance.

Don’t forget, Firefox 4 Beta for mobile is available in the Android Market and preparing for final release. Learn more about how to make your add-on mobile compatible.

Firefox 4 Add-on collection competition

To celebrate Firefox 4′s arrival, we are launching a new add-on collection, which will showcase some of the best add-ons for Firefox 4. The collection will be promoted for two months after Firefox 4 is launched, through the Add-on Manager, our Add-ons Gallery, Facebook, the Rock Your Firefox blog, and through Twitter, among other channels.

To have a chance of being featured in the Firefox 4 add-on collection, once your add-on is ready – email us at fx4-compatibility@mozilla.com with “Add-on competition” in the subject line, a link to your add-on, your name, and a brief description of your add-on’s functionality. The winning 10 add-ons, as chosen by the Mozilla Add-ons team, will be promoted from the Firefox 4 launch day.

Get your entries in by March 6th 2011. If you win, we’ll reach out to you to let you know shortly before the launch of Firefox 4. Download the contest rules here.

A couple of months ago I wrote an overview of toolbar buttons in Firefox 4, including all the CSS and image work necessary for your add-ons to work on all 3 platforms. It was met with many questions, the gist of them being why is this so convoluted when it could be really simple? So, bugs were filed and revisited, and many problems were finally solved.

Firefox 4 beta 12 will contain fixes for bug 626382 and bug 616472, both of which bring the necessary icon and styling work down to almost the bare minimum. You can test these changes on the current nightlies

First of all, if you followed the recommendations in the previous article, no changes should be required. I tested the add-on I created for that post on the latest beta on all platforms and it worked just the same. So, if you already did the compatibility work for Firefox 4 testing in earlier betas, you should be good. Now let’s get to the new, simpler way of doing this.

Assuming you want to support all 3 major platforms and your add-on adds a toolbar button, the minimum you need is a 16×16 px icon and a 24×24 px icon. The 24×24 px icon is normally only used on the default Linux theme (I tested on Ubuntu) on Large Icons mode, which is the default value for the main toolbar. For all other platforms and modes, the 16x16px icon is used, with varying margins around it on Windows. In terms of CSS, all you need is this:

#icondemo-toolbar-button {
 list-style-image: url("chrome://icondemo/skin/toolbar-large.png");
}

toolbar[iconsize="small"] #icondemo-toolbar-button {
 list-style-image: url("chrome://icondemo/skin/toolbar.png");
}

Nothing else is needed.

Now, if you want to take this one step further and be a better Mac OS X citizen, your icon will look much better if it’s monochrome. For this, I recommend using chrome manifest flags to either have completely different skins altogether, or just override the main skin with the Mac OS skin when necessary. The sample add-on in the previous article uses the former, the sample add-on in this one uses the latter.

Here’s a link to the demo add-on I adjusted for the new system. It’s simpler and smaller because of one icon and some CSS files that weren’t needed anymore.

If you’re a theme author or you want to understand the details of the new system, perhaps if you need specially-sized icons for your add-on, you should read this comment that explains the changes very well. Alfred Kayser also maintains this Mozillazine thread up to date with everything that concerns theme authors. Thank you, Alfred!

Also, special thanks to Dao and Paolo for all the hard work they put into resolving these bugs!

• These posts written every 2 weeks explain the current state of add-on reviews and other information relevant to add-on developers.
• A few weeks ago, a new version of the Developer Tools was pushed live at AMO. It includes a new review process among a ton of other changes. More information here.
• Nominations at the moment are being processed very slowly. The new review system required hundreds of add-on developers to renominate their add-ons, which has placed a large workload on the editor team. Nominations have been delayed at least a couple of weeks.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 7 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 15 days.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report. Preliminary queue stats are still pending.
• 58 new nominations that week. 194 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 74 new updates that week. 62 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 985 reviews have been performed by AMO Editors this month.

Firefox 4 Compatibility

Firefox 4 will be released very soon, beta 10 is currently available for download and AMO already supports 4.0.* as a valid maxVersion. Most of the necessary documentation to upgrade your add-on for Firefox 4 is readily available:

• Firefox 4 for developers at MDC.
• Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4.
• Firefox 4 Compatibility discussion in the Add-ons Forum. This is the best place to post any feedback and bugs related to Firefox 4 and add-on development.

Beta 7 was the first release after the codebase went through feature freeze. This means that no major changes are going to be performed, and add-ons that work correctly on current betas are likely to work in the same way until the final release. Here are some pending issues of Firefox 4 compatibility that haven’t been addressed in other blog posts:

• Since toolbar buttons are very important for developers and button sizes changed for Firefox 4, I wrote this analysis of toolbar buttons and icons in Firefox 4. One problem was brought up in the comments, which triggered the creation of bug 616472. The bug and other related ones have been fixed on the latest betas. I’ll post an update on this topic very soon, so stay put.
• The Add-on Bar is supposed to appear automatically when a button or other items are added to it. Bug 616419 was filed for this. It doesn’t look like it will be fixed soon, but an alternate solution is proposed in the comments.

Notes for Developers

• Add-on Performance at XUL School. This article is highly recommended to all developers. It explains a few methods to improve add-on performance, including how to easily measure startup times.
• The AMO Editor Guide. This new page in the wiki is a comprehensive guide to the work performed by AMO Editors. It will serve as an introductory guide for new editors, and is a step forward in being as transparent as possible with our review process. It’s currently being edited to adjust it to the upcoming review system.
• Useful Information for Add-on Authors. How to improve review times for your add-on, information about the review process, etc.

Jorge Villalobos

Add-ons Developer Relations Lead, Mozilla

We love add-ons and want everyone to discover how customizable Firefox is, but we also know there are some add-ons that cause extreme slowdowns in Firefox because of poor coding practices, in extreme cases adding 30 seconds to start-up time. Unfortunately, we usually don’t learn about these problems until it’s too late and already affecting a large number of users. That’s why we recently modified the daily add-on metadata ping in Firefox 4 to also include how long it last took Firefox to start up. With this new information, we can identify add-ons that are causing significant performance problems in Firefox before they become widespread problems, and work with the developer to correct the issues.

User control and respect for privacy are fundamental to Mozilla’s mission, which is why we’ve explained this in the Firefox Privacy Policy and offer an easy way for users and developers to opt out of this metadata ping.

We hope you enjoy these new features of the Add-ons Manager and look forward to improving the Firefox experience for users with slow add-ons installed.

• These posts written every 2 weeks explain the current state of add-on reviews and other information relevant to add-on developers.
• A few weeks ago, a new version of the Developer Tools was pushed live at AMO. It includes a new review process among a ton of other changes. More information here.
• Nominations at the moment are being processed very slowly. The new review system required hundreds of add-on developers to renominate their add-ons, which has placed a large workload on the editor team. Updates and preliminary reviews are under control, but nominations have been delayed at least a couple of weeks.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 10 days.

The Review Queues

• These stats are taken from the last queue report. Preliminary queue stats are still pending.
• 97 new nominations that week. 534 nominations in the queue awaiting review (yeah, that’s not a typo).
• 81 new updates that week. 109 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 2416 reviews were performed by AMO Editors in the month of January. That’s a new review record for us

Firefox 4 Compatibility

Firefox 4 will be released very soon, beta 10 is currently available for download and AMO already supports 4.0.* as a valid maxVersion. Most of the necessary documentation to upgrade your add-on for Firefox 4 is readily available:

• Firefox 4 for developers at MDC.
• Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4.
• Firefox 4 Compatibility discussion in the Add-ons Forum. This is the best place to post any feedback and bugs related to Firefox 4 and add-on development.

Beta 7 was the first release after the codebase went through feature freeze. This means that no major changes are going to be performed, and add-ons that work correctly on current betas are likely to work in the same way until the final release. Here are some pending issues of Firefox 4 compatibility that haven’t been addressed in other blog posts:

• Since toolbar buttons are very important for developers and button sizes changed for Firefox 4, I wrote this analysis of toolbar buttons and icons in Firefox 4. One problem was brought up in the comments, which triggered the creation of bug 616472. The bug and its dependencies are progressing, and hopefully all the fixes will be included on the next beta. Once they make it to a beta or release candidate, I’ll post an update to the toolbar button article.
• I posted an explanation about the threading and worker changes in Firefox 4. If your add-on used the Thread Manager and doesn’t work in Firefox 4, that article is meant for you.
• The Add-on Bar is supposed to appear automatically when a button or other items are added to it. Bug 616419 was filed for this. It doesn’t look like it will be fixed soon, but an alternate solution is proposed in the comments.

Notes for Developers

• Add-on Performance at XUL School. This article is highly recommended to all developers. It explains a few methods to improve add-on performance, including how to easily measure startup times.
• The AMO Editor Guide. This new page in the wiki is a comprehensive guide to the work performed by AMO Editors. It will serve as an introductory guide for new editors, and is a step forward in being as transparent as possible with our review process. It’s currently being edited to adjust it to the upcoming review system.
• Useful Information for Add-on Authors. How to improve review times for your add-on, information about the review process, etc.

Jorge Villalobos

Add-ons Developer Relations Lead, Mozilla