Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: compatibility developers documentation

Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/05/11

3 responses

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

In the past 3 weeks, 1387 listed add-ons were reviewed:

  • 1314 (95%) were reviewed in fewer than 5 days.
  • 40 (3%) were reviewed between 5 and 10 days.
  • 33 (2%) were reviewed after more than 10 days.

There are 67 listed add-ons awaiting review.

You can read about the recent improvements in the review queues here.

If you’re an add-on developer and are looking for contribution opportunities, 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.

Compatibility Communications

Most of you should have received an email from us about the future compatibility of your add-ons. You can use the compatibility tool to enter your add-on ID and get some info on what we think is the best path forward for your add-on. This tool only works for listed add-ons.

To ensure long-term compatibility, we suggest you start looking into WebExtensions, or use the Add-ons SDK and try to stick to the high-level APIs. There are many XUL add-ons that require APIs that aren’t available in either of these options, which is why we ran a survey so we know which APIs we should look into adding to WebExtensions. You can read about the survey results here.

We’re holding regular office hours for Multiprocess Firefox compatibility, to help you work on your add-ons, so please drop in on Tuesdays and chat with us!

Firefox 47 Compatibility

The compatibility blog post for 47 is up and the bulk validation has been run.

Firefox 48 Compatibility

The compatibility blog post for Firefox 48 is coming up soon.

As always, we recommend that you test your add-ons on Beta and Firefox Developer Edition 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.

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 remove the signing override preference in Firefox 47.

The preference was actually removed recently in the beta channel (future Firefox 47), though this was done before the unbranded builds were available for testing. We’re trying to get those builds out as soon as possible to avoid more disruption. For now I suggest you use Developer Edition for testing or, if your add-on is restartless, you can also use the temporary load option.

3 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/05/11”

  1. anoyed1 wrote on

    Why ru ignoring comments from users https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/01/22/add-on-signing-update/comment-page-2/#comments
    I repack xpis for personal use – ditch locales & other not needed stuff – too lower memory usege
    Guess I’ll have to use vers. <47 🙁

  2. wolfgang from austria wrote on

    Hello Developers

    Please give the users back the freedom of choice for the add-on’s. Because of my sight problems (grey star on both eyes) is have to use some extensions to improve visability of websites( e.g dark background, white fonts).
    Some of the add-ons are old and not longer developed. If i can’t use them anymore there are only 2 options for me, use an old FF version (wich is potentally unsafe) or another browser.

    Please don’t make FF a browser 4 dummies. At least let the user decide in about:config wich add-on to allow PERMANENTLY.

    thx
    wolfgang

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      You can use Developer Edition or Nightly if you want to keep the preference working. Which add-ons are no longer working for you?