Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: compatibility developers documentation

Add-ons Update – 2017/07

7 responses

Here’s the monthly update of the state of the add-ons world.

The Road to Firefox 57 explains what developers should look forward to in regards to add-on compatibility for the rest of the year. So please give it a read if you haven’t already.

The Review Queues

In the past month, our team reviewed 1,597 listed add-on submissions:

  • 1294 in fewer than 5 days (81%).
  • 110 between 5 and 10 days (7%).
  • 193 after more than 10 days (12%).

301 listed add-ons are awaiting review.

If you’re an add-on developer and are looking for contribution opportunities, please consider joining us. Visit our wiki page for more information.

Compatibility Update

We published the blog post for 55 and the bulk validation has been run. Additionally, the compatibility post for 56 is coming up.

Make sure you’ve tested your add-ons and either use WebExtensions or set the multiprocess compatible flag in your manifest. As always, we recommend that you test your add-ons on Beta.

If you’re an add-ons user, you can install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter. It helps you identify and report any add-ons that aren’t working anymore.

Recognition

We would like to thank the following people for their recent contributions to the add-ons world:

  • Aayush Sanghavi
  • Santiago Paez
  • Markus Strange
  • umaarabdullah
  • Ahmed Hasan
  • Fiona E Jannat
  • saintsebastian
  • Atique Ahmed
  • Apoorva Pandey
  • Cesar Carruitero
  • J.P. Rivera
  • Trishul Goel
  • Santosh
  • Christophe Villeneuve

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

7 comments on “Add-ons Update – 2017/07”

  1. kwerboom wrote on

    I don’t mind that you are moving to WebExtensions. I think its great that this move is helping move Firefox move to multiprocessor. What worries is that the WebExtensions API doesn’t seem as robust or complete unlike XUL overlay extensions, bootstrapped extensions, and SDK extensions. What made Mozilla’s products unique and popular was the amount of power and flexibility its add-ons could have. It seems like Firefox is growing more limited it what it can do.

    1. Kees wrote on

      For reasons beyond my understanding the transition to WebExtensions is done in a very sloppy way, the person repsonsible for managing this is obviously not really thinking about having a smooth path towards WebExtensions.

      To get a good user experience the transition should be done *after* the *next* LTS Firefox, where the user who is using a legacy (XUL) extension gets the possibility to switch to the LTS version and a warning that this will mean that the legacy add-on is supported for about 1 more year. (Somehow it seems to me that Mozilla managers/developers/product owners are not thinking about the user experience at all – even although this should be very, very unlikely).

      In addition to getting a correct user experience the WebExtension API should be covering at least the features used in the top-25 most populair add-ons (with may-be a few [less than 5] exceptions).

      Based on the various blogs from add-on developers I would conclude that feature completeness is not reached sufficiently, so this is not a good sign at all.

      The comment about the fact that it is not possible to change the switch-over to another Firefox version is really puzzling me (as no indication AT ALL is given why exactly this version must be the cut-over point). As indicated by me and others, it is better (especially from a UX point) to do the switch over just after the release of a new Firefox LTS version. The resources available to do the internal changes could be re-assigned to make WebExtensions even more complete and robust…

      The only set-back would be that whatever change is planned between Fx 57 and the next Fx LTS version would be delayed for a couple of months – from a user/developer friendlyness point of view this would be a small price to pay…

      (However getting [almost] no negative press about the way Mozilla is handling disabling the legacy extensions would be priceless)

      1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

        There are numerous changes coming to Firefox, many of which will land on 57, which would have broken add-ons in significant ways anyway. These are wide-ranging, architectural changes that can’t be delayed for months and couldn’t be rolled out if legacy add-ons were a concern. The milestones in the timeline aren’t arbitrary.

        Given that Firefox 52 (the current ESR) will not be discontinued until about a year from now, that’s already a fairly long time we’ll continue supporting legacy add-ons in one of our products.

  2. Ivarn wrote on

    Note. This is a machine translation by Google translation.

    I agree with kwerboom’s wishes.

    Please visit our Firefox Add-ons site. Half of the 20 addons on 1 page of “Featured Extensions” can now list Firefox 57 compatibility.
    But in “Most Popular Extensions” and “Top-Rated Extensions” you can say none.
    Even though the migration does not proceed by the author of the add-on being used, although it can not be done anyhow, it seems that this reality clearly expresses the difficulty of the transition.
    My Firefox profile has as many add-ons as you can express it as an add-on junkie, most of which are currently only disabled for Firefox 57 transition.
    For some time it is inevitable to consider using ESR version or even using Pale Moon even if you restrict functionality.

    There may be circumstances that the voice of a real Firefox user is hard to reach, but maybe there are elements that should also be turned to the voice of real Firefox users and to listen to? It seems that it is this time.
    From the outfield of Minority who can not raise voice, I may not need such complaints this time, but I thought that I would like to raise even once I raise it, I wrote.

    *I can not give back your reply in English, so it is not content you especially want reply to.
    If it is inappropriate writing to the place, you can delete it.

    —
    注.これは，Google 翻訳による機械翻訳です。

    私も kwerboom さんの意に賛同です。

    あなたたちの Firefox Add-ons サイトをご覧ください。”Featured Extensions”の1ページ，20あるアドオンの半数は Firefox 57 互換を掲げられるようになりました。
    しかし，”Most Popular Extensions”や”Top-Rated Extensions”では皆無と言っていいでしょう。
    使われているアドオンの作者さんによって移行が進まなければどうしようもないとはいえ，この現実は移行の困難さを如実に表しているのではと思えます。
    私の Firefox profile はアドオンジャンキーと表現してもいいほどの多数のアドオンがありますが，そのほとんどは現在のところ Firefox 57 移行にあたっては使用不可となるものばかりです。
    しばらくは ESR 版を使う，あるいは機能を限定しても Pale Moon を使うことを検討せざるを得ない状況です。

    現実の Firefox ユーザーの声が届きにくいという状況もあるのかもしれませんが，もっと実際の Firefox ユーザーの声にも目を向け，耳を傾けられるべき要素もあるのではないか？と今更ながらに思えます。
    声も上げないマイノリティの外野から，今更こんな苦言を必要としていないかもしれませんが，一度声を上げるだけでも上げたいと思い，書き込みさせていただきました。

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      We expect most of the popular add-ons to migrate. However, many of them are also amoung the most complex, so it will take some time for them to be fully migrated. Some will cut it pretty close to 57, but we’re in touch with the developers and making sure they will make it. Some, of course, won’t or can’t migrate, which is unfortunate, but it’s part of a difficult process that needs to happen to ensure a stable future for add-ons.

  3. Mike wrote on

    Hi Jorge
    One of the recent changes in 55 or 56 broke the “No Resource Uri Leak” SDK addon.
    remoteRequire() causes an error about not finding one of its content scripts:
    core.js:100 – message:”Module `sdk/remote/resource-filter/process/filter.js` is not found at resource://gre/modules/commonjs/sdk/remote/resource-filter/process/filter.js”
    It doesn’t work with e10s disabled either.
    Do you know what caused that, if it’s a known bug, or if it’s possible to fix it?
    Thanks

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Firefox 55 had some changes that affected the SDK, but I don’t know what broke, specifically. The SDK is no longer being maintained, so I don’t expect that bug to be fixed.