Add-ons Update – Week of 2012/05/23

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

  • Most nominations for full review are taking less than 1 month to review.
  • Most updates are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
  • Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 2 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

  • 143 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
  • 98 updates in the queue awaiting review.
  • 143 preliminary review submissions in the queue awaiting review.

We’re finally catching up and decreasing waiting times. It’ll take a few weeks to be back to normal review times, but things are looking much better now.

If you want this to happen faster, you can help! If you’re an experienced add-on developer, please consider joining our team. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Test Your Add-ons for Memory Leaks!

There is an ongoing effort to track and stomp memory leaks in add-ons. Here’s where you can help, either by testing the add-ons you created, or testing the add-ons you use. Please read the article on Zombie Compartments, particularly the add-ons section. It should give you some pointers on how to find leaks and how to avoid them. The short version is: don’t hold any references to DOM objects after the document is closed.

With the resolution of bug 695480, whole classes of compartment leaks have been resolved on the Firefox side. This means that even if an add-on holds on to DOM references when it shouldn’t, they will be properly claimed. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t test and fix your code! This fix will be introduced in Firefox 15.

Firefox 13 Compatibility

The Firefox 13 compatibility blog post was recently published, and the compatibility bump to 13 should happen this week or the next. I’m already working on Firefox 14 compatibility, so expect that soon as well.

3 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2012/05/23”

  1. Ari wrote on

    Hello! My name’s Ari and I’m Portuguese and Greek. I use Firefox since ever and my fav add-on is the stratiform. It is the prove that this browser can be so awesome!!!! I feel like a Greek god when using this add-on. And you know what? when people ask me why is my browser so awesome, do you know what I answer? The answer is that this add-on has name: stratiform… like a next Greek god or like a a wonderful Portuguese king. Because I can be both. I can change my kingdom (my browser) like a King and do it right like a Greek God! Thank you!!!

  2. Texas wrote on

    Since bug 695480 land, a great amount of leaks has been FIXED, should we consider categorizing the still non-fixed add-ons leaks into a new bug?

    I’ve test nightly yesterday, and found two leaks from add-ons, which should be this kind of leaks.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      You should still report leaking add-ons using the same process. While we might change the urgency of these issues given that there are less now, we will still monitor them and deal with them regularly.