Add-ons Update – Week of 2015/10/14

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 10 weeks to review.
  • 212 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
  • Most updates are being reviewed within 9 weeks.
  • 89 updates in the queue awaiting review.
  • Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 10 weeks.
  • 180 preliminary review submissions in the queue awaiting review.

We had a regression in review times in the last week or two due to reviewer availability, but we expect to catch up soon. We’re also adding another contractor to our team, hopefully soon.

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 42 Compatibility

The compatibility blog post is up. I filed the validator bugs today, so we’ll probably run the bulk validator sometime next week.

As always, we recommend that you test your add-ons on Beta and Firefox Developer Edition (formerly known as Aurora) to make sure that they continue to work correctly. End users can install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter to identify and report any add-ons that aren’t working anymore.

Changes in let and const in Firefox 44

The latest Nightlies include some breaking changes that you should all be aware of. Please read the post carefully and test your add-ons on Nightly.

Extension Signing

The wiki page on Extension Signing has information about the timeline, as well as responses to some frequently asked questions. The current plan is to turn on enforcement by default in Firefox 43.

Electrolysis

Electrolysis, also known as e10s, is the next major compatibility change coming to Firefox. In a nutshell, Firefox will run on multiple processes now, running content code in a different process than browser code.

Web Extensions

If you read Kev’s post on the future of add-on development, you should know there are big changes coming. We’re investing heavily on the new WebExtensions API, so we strongly recommend that you start looking into it for your add-ons. You can track progress of its development in http://www.arewewebextensionsyet.com/.

6 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2015/10/14”

  1. Anton wrote on

    Thanks for the update! Is it possible to find out roadmap / status of supporting WebExtensions on AMO? What is already supported is quite enough for my future extension—even though I did need to include several workarounds for missing features.

    http://www.arewewebextensionsyet.com/ is a great resource, though, THANKS!

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      You can track progress for that on this bug.

  2. Ben wrote on

    I just submitted my extension for review. However, I’m very worried that it will stop working for all of my existing users because of the extension signing change. Is there anyway to get a review expedited or delay the requirement? I would liked to have submitted it earlier, but the cfx download was removed and I couldn’t package my app until jpm 1.0.3 was released.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      There are many add-ons waiting in the queue in similar circumstances. I’m afraid we can’t expedite reviews unless there’s an urgent need.

  3. jose Mendes wrote on

    How can I use an old versio of Multofoz ina the new version of Mozzilla Firefox?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      If it’s compatible, all you need to do is install it like any other add-on. You would need to disable updates for that add-on if you really want to stick with the old version (but I don’t know why you would want that).