Add-ons Update – Week of 2013/06/26

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 5 weeks to review.
  • Most updates are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
  • Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 2 weeks.

The recent Firefox 22 release will slow things down a bit more, due to compatibility updates.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

  • 124 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
  • 188 updates in the queue awaiting review.
  • 123 preliminary review submissions in the queue awaiting review.

If you’re an add-on developer and would like to see add-ons reviewed faster, please consider joining us. Add-on reviewers get invited to Mozilla events and earn cool gear with their work. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Firefox 22 Compatibility

The compatibility blog post for Firefox 22 is up, and the compatibility bump for AMO add-ons was run.

As usual we recommend using the Aurora and Beta branches to test your add-ons ahead of time.

Firefox 25 Compatibility

There are some pretty big changes coming up in Firefox 25, so I did an early post on it. Please give it a look.

10 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2013/06/26”

  1. Brittany D wrote on

    I can’t find where to contact Mozilla without logging in, I can’t log in because I don’t know my username anymore. I have no record of it in my email or my password program. And the “forgot password” link doesn’t help because it doesn’t also tell me my username. It only allows me to change my password! I need help! Please email me back at the email address (also my account email address) that I used to submit this comment. Thank you.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      If you’re talking about logging in to the add-ons site, you should email amo-admins AT mozilla DOT org. If you’re talking about something else, you might want to ask on our support site.

  2. Word Counter wrote on

    Add-on statistics has broken for 5 days.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Yes. As I understand it, it’s a continuous problem at the moment, where the stats are showing up a few days late. The developers are aware of this problem.

  3. Elbart wrote on

    What is the point of running compatibility-tests on addons, when obviously broken addons are bumped, too?
    One example is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/bookmark-favicon-changer/, which is using favicon-APIs which were removed with 22. Yet I can install it in 22.

    PS: Submitting this comment caused the following error-message: “Although this page is encrypted, the information you have entered is to be sent over an unencrypted connection and could easily be read by a third party.”

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Since most add-ons have default compatibility turned on, it is really up to the developers to either update their add-ons or let us know that they will break. We can mark add-ons as incompatible with specific Firefox versions, but we rely on user feedback for that. I’ll look into the example you posted and see if this needs any action on our side. Thanks.

      (And we know about the comment submission problem, it really annoys us too)

      1. Elbart wrote on

        There are other examples, like “Brief” (broken in 22+) and “Add Bookmark Here²” (going to be broken in 23+), which were updated several months ago and are now seemingly abandoned, but which are or were still working fine, until some change in Firefox broke or breaks them.

        I doubt that authors of abandoned addons, or authors who switched to other browsers all together, are going to come back and notify AMO of the upcoming incompatibilities.

        I was under the assumption that the AMO-platform is scanning addons for obvious incompatibilites, like binary components or using removed APIs, and then stops offering them to affected Firefox-versions.

        But seeing that many reports via “Add-on Compatibility Report” are wrong, weeding out problematic addons only with these reports as a guideline is probably a difficult task.

        For example, the majority of the reports for “Bookmark Favicon Changer” with regard to Firefox 22 are flagging the addon to be working fine, which just isn’t true: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility/reporter/bookmarkfaviconchanger@sonthakit?appver=1-22.0

        In the article about change to assuming addons to be compatible, it was assumed that more than 90% of addons won’t have any problems.
        While this might be true, people who are being updated to newer Firefox-versions aren’t saying: “Nice, almost all addons are still working.”
        They are saying: “Dang, that addon isn’t working properly, time to revert to the previous version of Firefox.” The plethora of posts on popular Firefox- and Mozilla-forums is testimony of that.

        Updating to new Firefox-version has become some sort of “Russian Roulette” with regard to addons in recent months.

  4. Danny Grimes wrote on

    OK I have already sent in reports, checked updates, etc. No luck. My favicons are still broke to hell. The addons for them don’t work. I even contacted the guy who has made favicons restorer for the last 7 years and he has given up. He says you can made it such a convuleted mess he CAN’T fix it, not won’t. Half mine are missing. Excuse me, but if a site is not FULLY encrypted I get no favicon eh? This is well, stupid.
    I land on the UNITED STATES POST OFFICE HTTPS site and get no icon because suposedly it is only partially encrypted. Oh I can land on any of these so called unencrytped or partially encrypted sites but by golly I don’t get a icon. Wow thanks for that huge protection there. Gotta watch those deadly icons. And please don’t give me lame “oh the icon could contain evil spirits routine”. Yeah and I could be a millionaire but I’m not. I’ve been using Firefox since day one. Was using mozilla wayyy back in the day. Like 80’s anyone? Personally I’m tired of getting Firefox setup like I want it and you “update” it every 30 seconds and break it. Do you realize how annoying that is to people?
    For the moment I’ll just settle for fixing my broken icons. Thanks. /rant off

    chances are I won’t come back here so email me if you want a response. thanks

  5. Walnor wrote on

    I will not install any version of Firefox, above 21 version.
    The version 22 just disabled all my favorite extensions. The crap version 22 keeps insisting to install update, but everyday I install version 21 to have my extensions still working right.
    There were some extensions that have more updates as the Unfriend Finder for Facebook and others, which has been discontinued by the author, but still worked fine until 21 version when I reinstalled it. Now with the 22 version runs, no extension as I know there will be updates of these extensions, it dead. So I rather kill Firefox and resurrect in Chrome or IE new versions that come and go and extensions versions are always intact. Actually I only kept using Firefox because the system of tabs, the extra field of personalized searches and ease of scoring bookmarks (favorites) is still a gap that I prefer, but is very slow, problems with Flash, Plugin Container heats up the processor too the point of turning it off and worse, now the best extensions do not work.
    This Firefox 22 version will be the ultimate demise of the browser.
    The same extensions that I liked, work in other browsers.
    Sorry, but this is the truth. Firefox can’t to reinvent and worse, prejudice your own user.

    1. Tony wrote on

      I cannot believe the authors of Firefox can so easily break many addons overnight with afrequent updates. That’s is just irresponsible!! I am maintaining a firefox extension for the company I work for and with each update I have to fix my addon. It is a freaking cat and mouse game.

      This what you get when you bank on a browser written by a kid in basement mentality. I personally hate to work with anything written as community BS where there is no support, it is just wild wild west. Now if this was a product of a descent commercial company this would never happen. Mazila does not give a shit about its user as there is no revenue and FF is all they have. Can you imagine if overnight, Google breaks down all Chrome users or Microsoft and IE breaks down all their addon with a forceful update. The whole image of Google or MS would go down the drain.