Add-ons Update – Week of 2012/12/19

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 3 weeks 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:

  • 49 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
  • 52 updates in the queue awaiting review.
  • 48 preliminary review submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Our new reviewer incentives program has been very successful. Volunteer activity has increased and expanded into other areas of contribution. If you’re an add-on developer, please consider joining our team. Add-on reviewers get invited to Mozilla events and earn cool gear with their work. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Firefox 18 Compatibility

The documentation and compatibility bump for Firefox 18 should be up soon.

Animated Themes Breakage

Bug 650968 was fixed on Firefox 18, currently on beta. This fix significantly improves Firefox startup performance when a Lightweight Theme (previously known as Personas) is enabled. The fix broke the animated version of these themes, and you’ll find that they stop animating after a restart.

To work around this bug, you can use the Personas Shuffler extension. Set your animated theme as the only one on the shuffle list, and this will fix the animation problem.

Since this was discovered so late in the release cycle, it’s likely that it won’t be fixed in 18. Also, the current plan is to completely disable the animated themes feature, since they have their own performance issues. However, it’s likely that this feature will continue to exist in the form of an add-on.