Add-ons Review Update – Week of 2010/10/26

Summary

  • These bi-weekly posts explain the current state of add-on reviews and other information relevant to add-on developers. There’s a lengthy overview of the Add-on Review Process posted in this blog that should be read as a general guide about the review process. I’ve skipped  the last couple of updates due to a long vacation. Sorry for the interruption.
  • Most nominations are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
  • Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.

The Review Queues

  • The stats are taken from the current queues, since last week I didn’t post a queue report in the forum.
  • 96 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
  • 45 updates in the queue awaiting review.
  • 621 reviews performed by AMO Editors this month. There were 9 editors performing reviews last week.

See the Add-on Review Process and You for information on how to check your  add-on status.

Firefox 4 Compatibility

Firefox 4 is coming later this year, and beta 6 is currently available for download. This will be the most difficult upgrade path for add-on yet, so everybody should keep an eye on beta updates and all the documentation that is being published. At the moment these are the most useful documentation resources:

Beta 7 is the first release after the codebase has gone through feature freeze. This means that after this release, no major changes are going to be performed, and add-ons that work correctly on beta 7 are very likely to work in the same way until the final release. After beta 7 is out,  I will be posting a very extensive view of Firefox 4 compatibility issues, including all that I’ve mentioned in previous posts. We will also be contacting all developers that have add-ons compatible with 3.6 and Firefox 4 betas, letting everybody know that they should be updating their code and Firefox 4 final is around the corner.

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.
  • 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