Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: compatibility developers documentation

Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/08/03

7 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, 1228 listed add-on submissions were reviewed:

  • 1106 (90%) were reviewed in fewer than 5 days.
  • 80 (7%) were reviewed between 5 and 10 days.
  • 42 (3%) were reviewed after more than 10 days.

There are 98 listed add-ons awaiting review.

You can read about the improvements we’ve made 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 are critical for our success, and can earn cool gear for their work. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Compatibility

The compatibility blog post for Firefox 49 is up, and the bulk validation was run. The blog post for Firefox 50 should come up in a couple of weeks.

Going back to the recently released Firefox 48, there are a couple of changes that are worth a reminder: (1) release and beta builds no longer have a preference to deactivate signing enforcement, and (2) multiprocess Firefox is now enabled for users without add-ons, and add-ons will be gradually phased in, so make sure you’ve tested your add-on and either use WebExtensions or set the multiprocess compatible flag in your add-on manifest.

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 obtaining the unbranded builds to test on release and beta. We will try to make them easier to get to, but for the most part the Firefox 48 release marks the end of deploying this change, after years of work.

Recognition

We would like to thank these people for their recent contributions to the add-ons world: Rob Wu, NilkasG, and h4ever.

You can read more about their contributions in our recognition page.

7 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2016/08/03”

  1. Stanislav Ushakov wrote on

    Hi Jorge,
    Thanks for this post.

    My questions is about Web Extnesions.
    There are still several Chrome API methods exists, which not supported in 47 release of Firefox and which is rather important for my add-on.
    I hoped that it will be supported in new 48 release.

    Some of this methods are:

    chrome.runtime.onInstalled
    and
    chrome.runtime.onMessageExternal

    according to this doc:
    http://www.arewewebextensionsyet.com/

    these methods still not supported.

    Tell me please, how actual the information from this doc?
    Also, 48 release has any improvements regarding Web Extensions functionality? If yes – could you please tell me – what exact improvements was done?

    And the last question: in what release you are planning a full support of chrome api? In other words – from what firefox version I will be able to import a chrome extension to firefox without any modifications in code (except manifest file, of course)?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      onInstalled is bug 1252871 (little activity at the moment) and onMessageExternal is bug 1258360 (looks close to completion). I couldn’t give you exact timelines for these bugs to be fixed in release versions of Firefox.

      To see what’s new in 48 with WebExtensions, you can read this post. And this is the one for 49. We post regularly on this blog, so I suggest you subscribe to it to stay up to date.

      As for “full support of the Chrome API”, that’s not really a goal. We want to cover the APIs that developers need and use the most, but there are APIs that we won’t implement, or implement differently, for various reasons. We want most Chrome add-ons to work in Firefox without any changes, but I doubt we’ll ever get to a place where all of them do.

  2. hone wrote on

    Why WebAnimationsAPI is not work in ContentScript?

  3. Tom wrote on

    Hello
    Is it really need that mozilla follows the concept of M$ to eliminiate usability?
    For example, some weeks ago we were able to just click a red heart in mozilla addons to mark an addon as favourite. Or it was really simple and obvious how to add addons to own lists of addons.
    Today… 10 of 10 IT professionals don’t know where those features are.
    It’s annoying.
    Kind regards, Tom

    1. Chan wrote on

      You can want to read and comment here:
      https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/no-favorite-button-in-new-amo-design/8015

  4. Humberto Madeira wrote on

    Hi Jorge,

    I tried following the link to the “Add-on Compatibility Reporter” you mentioned and it looks to be about 10 versions or so out of date (it works with v39). Where can we get a version that works with v49?

    Regards,
    –Bert

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      The compatibility of the latest version of the add-on if “Firefox 39 and later”, so it includes current and future versions.