Availability of new addons.mozilla.org (AMO) site

The AMO team has been hard at work for the last many months on a major site redesign and is pleased to announce the availability of the new AMO site. This is a significant release and chock-full of goodies for end users and add-on authors alike. The focus has been predominantly to provide a visual refresh, simplify navigation and rework the add-on developer tools area. But that doesn’t quite capture just how much effort has gone into this release. So, here is a full rundown of all the changes.

What’s New in AMO 3.2?

Visual Identity & Navigation

  • An easy-on-the-eye visual identity (called “Eco” for its soothing color) with new menus, buttons, drop-down lists, and site header
  • Add-on categories available from all pages for easier navigation
  • Quick links to dictionaries, themes & search engines
  • More add-ons can be viewed per page (configurable for up to 100/page)
  • Indicator status such as “experimental” (aka sandbox) or “recommended” is displayed
  • An “Application” drop down menu for easy access to Thunderbird, SeaMonkey & Sunbird add-ons
  • Experimental/Sandbox addons are shown even when a user is not logged in but installation requires login. Removed option for “include sandbox items” from user preference.

Smart Install Buttons

  • As we are in a transition time between Firefox 2 and preparing for the release of Firefox 3, we’ve added OS platform and Firefox version detection to the “Add to Firefox” buttons that appear. So, depending upon the version of Firefox that you are using and the compatibility of the add-on, you’ll see one of the following:
  • When an add-on is compatible with your version of Firefox, you’ll see


  • When an add-on is only compatible with an older version of Firefox, you’ll see


  • When an add-on is only compatible with a newer version of Firefox, you’ll see


  • If the add-on is in the sandbox, it’ll be marked “experimental”, and you’ll need to login to install it


  • For Thunderbird, add-on buttons indicate “Download Now” instead of “Add” to more accurately reflect what happens

Add-on Search

  • About 50% of users come to AMO to search for a particular add-on. It used to be exceedingly difficult to do that. So, we’ve given the search box in this new design significant prominence.
  • Ability to limit searches within categories
  • The search result page now has install buttons (no need to go to the details page any more)
  • Experimental (sandbox’ed) add-ons are now shown in search results and clearly marked (no need to switch between public and sandbox search any more)

Site Content

  • Add-on download counts are now visible publicly to help users discover popular add-ons
  • A revised ratings form with a new 5-point rating scale. (All previous add-on ratings have been adjusted accordingly.)
  • A revamped add-on version history page (without Smart install buttons so that you can download add-ons for any Firefox version or OS platform)
  • A new viewer for add-on images
  • Massively revised dictionaries & language pack page with support for more than 60 languages.

Featured & Recommended Add-ons

  • We’ve revamped how recommended add-ons work. In the past there was a single list of recommended add-ons that was available. From that list, one was randomly selected and featured on the AMO front page. As this list grew, there was less “exposure time” for each add-on and no filtering whatsoever.
  • This revision of AMO introduces two new capabilities: featured add-ons and locale-specific targeting.
  • Now, when an add-on is marked as recommended it is done so for a single category. The revised category pages include 2 “slots” where recommended add-ons will appear. See the Social & Communications category for an example. We will be increasing the number of recommended add-ons to accommodate these extra slots.
  • Featured add-ons are a selection of recommended add-ons that are shown in one of 3 slots on the front page of AMO. Caegory recommended add-ons will be rotated on a regular basis onto the front page.
  • We’ve also added per locale featured and recommended lists – this allows AMO editors and the Mozilla community to tailor AMO for particular locales
  • Themes can also be recommended

Search Engines

  • Revised search engines page (and added OpenSearch support)
  • Support for search engine categorization
  • Firefox search field integration on the search engine details pages. You can easily add search engines using the Firefox Search Engines menu

Discussions…Frozen

  • Feedback from many add-ons authors indicated that they were dissatisfied with the discussion system on AMO, mostly because most authors already maintained a separate support forum elsewhere. mozillaZine Forums, MozDev forums or other. So, we’ve frozen all existing add-on discussions. Users can no longer add new topics but existing topics can be read. We’ll maintain the content for a few months and then eventually remove them.
  • As a replacement for discussions, we’ve added new support forum URL & support email links for each add-on. Add-on authors should edit their add-ons and point to either a support email or a support forum location and AMO will link to there.
  • Required Actions for add-ons authors: Determine a location for your support discussions and update your add-on please.

Developer Tools

  • The ever clever Justin Scott was the brains behind the reworking of this area of AMO. He’s blogged about this earlier during the beta cycle.
  • A new add-on dashboard with summary information (along with an RSS feed that you can subscribe to)
  • Authors will also find beautiful, functional charts that graph both add-on active daily users (ADU) as well as total downloads
  • The entire data history of the add-on from July 2007
  • Graph zoom in/out and expand graph capabilities
  • For active users, you can filter and chart by the versions of the add-on, by versions of Firefox, by addon status or by users’ operating system
  • Add-on authors may choose to make their detailed statistics public – you can visit this link to see which add-ons have opted to do this
  • Finally, you can export the data as a CSV in order to perform your own analysis

An amazing 24 languages!

  • That’s right. From Albanian to Ukrainian, we’ve got your locale. Special thanks go out to the Mozilla web localizer community who did an incredible job to help us simultaneously launch this site with 24 languages!
  • The list includes: Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Spain) and Ukrainian

This has been an incredible effort and lots of long hours by many groups. Please help me congratulate the entire dev, QA, UX, product, IT/Operations, AMO Editors and localization teams for helping make this a great release.

Enjoy!

For those that love detail – here’s a full list of fixes as tracked in Bugzilla

44 comments on “Availability of new addons.mozilla.org (AMO) site”

  1. Zealot wrote on

    Multiple “Download Now (Platform) (log in to install)” boxes might not fit into the extension’s box. See e.g. PrintPDF here.

  2. Alex Sirota wrote on

    Amazing release – congrats guys!!

  3. Pat wrote on

    Congrats for the new site I have been using it for a while and the improvements are great, however the “Categories” menu is unnecessarily too long,some items span on two lines, it has too much padding for each menu and it does not fit on smaller height screens.

    I think changing screen.css (line 207) from

    #cat-list a, #cat-list span {
    display:block;
    padding:0.5em 10px;
    }

    to

    #cat-list a, #cat-list span {
    display:block;
    padding:0.5em;
    }

    makes it look much better

  4. Jacques wrote on

    Come on guys,

    Each time a new AMO goes online it spells REGRESSION.

    Where is the list of new/updated modules?

    Please put back online the old AMO until you find a way to display modules by their order of addition (new release list).

    The best way to find about new modules is to display them in a list showing the addition date and the version number.

    Please redo your homework.

    All the cuties in the world in the new version of AMO will not compensate for a “Recent addition” list.

  5. Ray wrote on

    Somebody still forgot to include the ability for a registered user to change their email address.

  6. Ray wrote on

    I have also noticed there is no quick link to find newly updated add-ons, something that was prominent on the old page. To users like me who install their add-ons globally, we are forced to search for the updated add-ons so we can then save them to our computers for manual installation.

  7. Jay Freeman wrote on

    But where is the link to the most recent/last updated/new? The “we recommend” list does very little for me.

  8. Jay Freeman wrote on

    I end finding it myself https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:22?show=10&exp=on&sort=updated

    But there isn’t any indication on the front page how to get there. 🙁

  9. David McRitchie wrote on

    Just Got Worse:

    Now we have to put up with a search box that is five times taller than needed with coloring as if people can’t find a search box.   Anybody searching for an extension would be better off using an AMO site search with Google anyway, and especially after the Advanced Search was removed Mar 2007.  The Advanced Search provided a basis for a personalized search engine or a search with a keyword bookmark (included user’s platform among other things).

    What’s with the inability to download based on maxVersion this is nonsense, and requiring login also nonsense and doesn’t get you anything anyway, except maybe allow you to comment.

    The download size should be right on the install button, instead that, and the developers comments, and his home page is hidden in “Advanced Details” shown only by expanding. The user ratings details, and discussion details should be links and should be below (inferior to) the Developer’s own comments, which should be always visible and read first.

    The user “Discussions” are missing in this new format, which should be entirely separate from any rating system. Doesn’t matter if the author has his own place for discussions, it still should be here, sooner or later the author’s own site will be down/disappear so this is always needed.

    There is a new flavor of image previews, the additional images area still causes blackening of screen and doesn’t allow you to view the full size image separately in Firefox or an image viewer. Additional Image Previews shouldn’t be loaded except on request, but there does seem to be less fitting square pegs into round holes.

    At the Top.
    Search box upper right corner, 1 row occupancy only.

    I read left to right, put the short description at the top starting on the far left, put the picture preview on the right side. The site picture preview continues to be rather dysfunctional.

    Put the long description immediately below the short description.

    Drop the reviews down to the bottom that are now on the right side (don’t need or want sidebars).

    Please include something to discourage rating on platform availability or whether if supports latest Beta version of Firefox, and ten point system was better. That can be put into the discussion (user comments) if it was not included in the developer comments.

  10. FP wrote on

    On this page, one link says there are 4 reviews and the other says there are 3 reviews:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6622

  11. Arthur W. Schaefer wrote on

    Just for the record, I very much dislike the new site format for themes and add-ons. While it looks cute and cool it takes a goodly number of paging to get anywhere. It also no longer has the two features that I use to use the most. (1) What is newest; and (2) What has been most recently updated. I hate it when I lose capabilities and I hope Monzilla is not taking the currently populist form over function route.

  12. David McRitchie wrote on

    The line Arthur Schaefer wanted is not real obvious but see Jay Freeman’s comment and start from
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:22?show=10&exp=on&sort=updated

    I am using a keyword shortcut of
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=%S&cat=all&show=100&sort=name&exp=on

    because I prefer by name instead of by updated, which is what you asked for. On high speed access, I prefer 100.

    Not seen any documentation on how to use the search at AMO (addons.mozilla.org), the link Jay posted was posted in the newsgroup, but without that link you don’t have much. While you have access to much of the old Advanced search, you still don’t have (or see) everything that was there and might be available, but I don’t see evidence of platform being a field in an addons article. Mainly I have never seen any operators or rules for search operators in Mozilla’s searches.

  13. Mike Challis wrote on

    The redesign looks nice at first, but then I quickly find feature regressions.
    The compatibility information is missing, shame on you.

    Can no longer see stuff like this:
    “Works with: Firefox: 2.0.0.8 – 3.0b4” next to the download/install button:

    The new AMO site uses javascript to manipulate the download button based on Firefox version in a “MS Bob” way.
    Regardless of what browser I version am viewing the site with, I would like to see the Compatibility Hints textual information and be able to download the extension for offline install.
    I have more that one computer, the version I am browsing with is not always relevant to what I am looking for.
    The old AMO had this feature, why regress features.
    Sorry to be so harsh, maybe if the side developers would comment that they will work on it to add back some of the regressed features, it would ease tensions.

  14. Sam Hasler wrote on

    “Add-on authors may choose to make their detailed statistics public – you can visit this link to see which add-ons have opted to do this”

    That link is to the preview site. There’s many many more addons listed here:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/statistics

  15. Zak Greant wrote on

    Hey Basil,

    Nice work from the entire team on the new AMO website!

    It is great to see posts like this, as they share expertise and ideas that the FOSS community is typically less good about sharing than code or documentation.

    Cheers!
    –zak

  16. Christopher Smith wrote on

    Pretty, but useless. Add the two together and it becomes pretty useless. It’s time to go back to the drawing board guys, only this time, pay attention to what your users are telling you is WRONG with the site.

  17. Stefan Scholl wrote on

    I’m missing one important information: Which versions of Firefox are supported for a given add-on?

    Really bad timing. I wanted to check my favorite add-ons to see how far they are and if I can switch to FF3 as soon as it is released.

  18. A.S. wrote on

    Looks much better, but there is no way of knowing at a glance for what version of the browser the add-ons were built.

  19. AndyEd wrote on

    Wish we could filter by Firefox version (e.g. show me all v3 compatible add-ons).

    I posted a short Jing video capture of browsing the site with my vision simulator, http://screencast.com/t/drNYt3Rg8

    Looks great.

  20. Glenn wrote on

    Yes, the new AMO is “pretty”, but I confess that doesn’t really mean a whole lot to me–I’m sure I’ll get used to it, though. Mostly, the search bar is just way too large, and I’d prefer being able to see the version number and the date on the summary page instead of having to drill down to the extension page–there’s certainly enough “white space” to allow for it. The added Fx version checking also seems to slow things down even more than before. Thanks for all of the hard work, but there’s still a bit more to do. 😀

  21. Magnus Bergmark wrote on

    Why, oh, why do we have to register to test stuff on the site? This made me lose a huge amount of respect.

    Sure, it’s a nice look and all that. I’m not complaining about anything but the required registration to install stuff. I see absolutely no reason for this at all. Could you please explain why this change got implemented?

    Will a Login-box show up when searching for extensions within the Extension Manager in Firefox 3, too? I think not, but you never know… I never though Mozilla would jump onto the ’90-style mandatory registrations, either. It’s almost surprising you don’t want to know my zip-code and State — even tough I don’t live in the U.S. (like the majority)… 😛

    Anyway, like I said, I love the rest of the changes. 😉

  22. DavidONE wrote on

    Copy of email sent to http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/author/pkim@mozilla.com:

    Hi,

    I was disappointed to see that comments are not allowed at http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2008/03/27/mozilla-add-ons-site-redesigned-available-now/. A curious decision for a supposedly user-focused, web-based company….

    With regards the new addons site design – I’m not impressed, like many others.

    * where are user comments? This was an extremely valuable source for communicating with user and devs. This must be reinstated ASAP
    * preventing installation of addons which have not been bumped for current version is just stupid. I now need to change user agent string to install addons in to FF3 beta. Provide a warning but don’t block installation
    * supported version is no longer displayed. Why would someone decide to remove this?
    * locating ‘Advanced details’ at bottom of screen serves no purpose, it just makes navigation disjointed. Also, developer comments, home page and changelog are hardly ‘advanced’
    * it seems changes have been made for the sake of change. Changing UI without clear and compelling benefit is bad – see Vista. Was any user testing done before this was released? I find it hard to believe there was….

    These are just a few criticisms from the hundreds pouring in at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=642440.

    Madhava Enros: “… I think we’ve managed to improve the user-experience of finding and installing add-ons in a number of interesting ways.”

    What are these ‘interesting’ ways? I don’t want ‘interesting’. I want useful, transparent, click-reducing, value-added. I see little evidence of this, and many changes which have harmed the user experience, as detailed above. It’s unfortunate that his website is called ‘egotism’, because that could be one explanation for the poor redesign.

    Regards,

    David.

  23. Ken Barbalace wrote on

    One word “REGRESSION”.

    The self congratulations about the new AMO site was very premature as was rolling it out as a live site. It really seems that the AMO developers have isolated themselves in a bubble and totally forsaken the needs of those who will be using AMO.

    The new AMO site is WAY TOO BUGGY to have been released as a live site and it is a usability disaster (I’m sorry if people feel this is being too blunt). Here are a few bugs that particularly annoy me (go to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org):

    425326 Add-on download link not showing correct OS

    425382 New AMO layout doesn’t provide some useful information

    426085 “Get more search engines…” link in browser goes to slightly confusing page (this title is misleading it should have said “very confusing”)

    402796 Download counter not showing real count (supposedly fixed but it isn’t or there is a new bug)

    426086 Inappropriately categorized add-ons

    The last bug has always been a part of AMO, but it wasn’t too big of an issue until now and it mostly effected extensions. Now, however, that someone saw fit to promote extensions in what were traditionally non-extension categories (e.g. Themes & Appearance, Dictionaries, Search Engines) this has become a much bigger issue. For instance on the main “themes & appearance” page an extension that is nothing more than a game keeps been promoted as a recommended add-on. The extension is a game and has absolutely nothing to do with themes or browser appearance. In fact to get to themes, one has to click on a link at the bottom of this page (not very user friendly). In another example, if one clicks on the “get more search engines” link from the Firefox “manage search engines” dialog box the landing page at AMO if full of extensions which only marginally have anything to do with search engines. To actually get to a list of search engines that can be added to the Firefox search bar one has to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on another link. This is ridiculous!

    The category separation needs to go back to the old ways where extensions were only under extensions and the other categories were extension free. Themes, search engines and dictionaries each should have their own categories that are at the same level as the master extension category and their categories should be exclusively for their respective add-ons. If I go to the search engines category I expect to see a page dedicated to finding search engines that I can add to my search bar. I am not looking for an extension that can remove ads from the search results.

    If there is a desire to promote related extension categories on say the themes page then do it as a sidebar menu list titled maybe “related extension categories.” The main category page, however, should be dedicated to the non-extension add-ons like the old AMO site did.

    The new AMO site is not easier to use, it is way more complicated and requires a lot more clicks to get to accomplish the primary objective. Like GoDaddy’s domain purchasing check out process the new AMO site throws up lots of distracting “you might also want this” detritus that totally interferes with accomplishing the main objective.

    One of the greatest failings of the new AMO site, is that almost every task the user intends to accomplish requires more clicks than it used to require under the old site and the process is loaded with extraneous distractions. The whole object of website design is SUPPOSED to be about reducing the number of clicks that is required for a user to accomplish their given task. The more clicks it takes to accomplish something, the less likely users will stick around long enough to actually accomplish THEIR desired task. This should have been taught in web design 101.

    Another failing of the new site is that too much real estate is wasted on large white noise graphics and fluff.

  24. JDPower wrote on

    You didn’t seriously use the terms “easy-on-the-eye” and “easier navigation” to describe the new AMO?!?! The only way I’d consider describing it that way would be if I was being sarcastic!

  25. Steve wrote on

    I think it could be nice to add a search button next to the search box because now the search can only be done by hitting enter inside the search box.

  26. Ozzie wrote on

    Overall, I like it, though the search engine category is very confusing.

    When I select it it shows me recommend addons from the searchtools category and only on the bottom of the page can I find the search engine categories.
    I wanted to look for search engines, so why is it so unprominently on this page and why are the recommend search tools addons showed at all? They don’t interest me!

    By the way, is there actually a possibility to search for a search engine? I haven’t found one, and of course it’s very uncomfortable and unusable without one.

  27. Ozzie wrote on

    Okay, I see now that there aren’t many search engines on the page at this moment, but I guess this will change.

  28. Robin McHood wrote on

    Improvement? What improvement? Before I could add search engines eg different versions of Google for my users in three or four clicks. It loaded rapidly and was simple to use. Now, an hour in I still haven’t located the list of Google engines. The pages take an age to load over a slow connection (yes there are people in the world still not on broadband) and what does load is pages of irrelevant nonsense to my original request which was ‘Manage Search Engines’.

    This has turned a fast simple easy to use system into another bloated nightmare.

  29. Georgi Gochev wrote on

    Hi, I have registered and logged in to download an experimental extension. But it was not possible, instead Mikogo Add-on, it downloads a html file with this content:

    The add-on you’re looking for is in the sandbox, which you do not have enabled in your user preferences.

    The add-on you’re looking for is in the sandbox, which you do not have enabled in your user preferences.
    This is a bug, because there is no checkbox “Show Sandbox” in My Account. Please fix.

  30. Jon wrote on

    “This add-on is for older versions of Firefox”

    WTF? Did you think providing information about what exact versions an add-on supports would make peoples head explode? Why remove that vital information otherwise? This, and many other changes reeks of harmful paternalistic oversimplification. Not good.

  31. Lars wrote on

    Why do we have to register now to download extensions and themes? That sucks, and will probably hurt firefox addoption as it will be more difficult to get to the extensions. And why is there a dump version check instead of simply writing which version it works with? The new site looks nice but it’s a step backward in functionality.

  32. Zak Greant wrote on

    I took a quick spin through the MozillaZine forum topic that DavidONE mentions (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=642440) and was curious how many people were participating.

    A tiny bit of vimming later …

    There are 210 messages in the topic written by 59 participants.

    More than 50% of the messages come from the 10 most active thread participants.

  33. Mike S wrote on

    For at least the last five years I checked each day for “New” extensions. Why you got rid of “New” is beyond me.

    As many have already pointed out the new design is “pretty Useless”…

  34. DavidONE wrote on

    Zak,

    The mozillazine thread I referenced is not the only one expressing great displeasure at the AMO makeover – there are many others.

    Regardless, it doesn’t negate the numerous arguments for why the redesign is a resounding failure, and the more I’ve used it the more I mumble ‘stupid, stupid’ as I attempt to achieve basic tasks.

    Also, a response to the criticism from those involved is conspicuous by its absence – which was predicted by the regulars at mozillazine. It all smacks of ‘ivory tower’ development.

  35. brownbunny wrote on

    * Why do I have to register to add a review? Can’t you use some spam filter/captcha for anonymous reviews? I think the most valuable feedback comes not from fellow developers (more likely to have a mozilla.org account) but end users.

    * The new UI is bad for beta testers. It usually takes weeks for extension developers to even bump their extension, if they care at all. There’s no info about what version an extension is compatible with. If I’m using fx3b5 an extension for fx3b5pre might just work. An extension for fx1.5 probably won’t. The worst thing is that with the new UI I can’t even download the extension to bump it myself if my firefox is a higher version. (Funnily the install links in version history aren’t disabled, as if an older version were more likely to work with my newer browser.)

  36. Steven Lloyd wrote on

    “The compatibility information is missing, shame on you.

    Can no longer see stuff like this:
    “Works with: Firefox: 2.0.0.8 – 3.0b4″ next to the download/install button:”

    I agree with he above poster, please, please, please bring this back.

    I am not planning on upgrading to ffx 3.0 until I know that all my major extensions are compatible. I need to know what versions are acceptable for any given extension.

    Please, please, please, bring this back!

  37. confused.brit wrote on

    There is an oversight in the design too – there is no link to the Plugins page listing things like Shockwave and Flash and the Firefox Windows Media plugin, (which is near impossible to find by googling.)

    Luckily, google was able to find the plgins page for me.

  38. Arthur W wrote on

    I have tried to search addons and themes at their site to figure out if I want to upgrade to the next beta version. Besides the “search” not being reliable as it can’t find the darn thing when I know the name (great for a search engine) it then won’t let me log in to download the darn thing… I get login after I’m logged in and it just puts me in an endless do loop… why the heck do I need to log in anyway… try posting to their forum, same loop.

    It is unbelievable that the two most fundamental pieces of information that anyone would want to know; Version Number & Date, are two tiers down… But, it looks good.

    With the recent issues with AMO, and the lack of reliability of the new FF versions, the apparent bureaucracy creep, and segregation from their users community I spent the weekend setting up Opera. If Opera gets a decent AdBlock or I figure it out better… I’m gone.

    Sad to see an organization succumb to the very attributes of the competitors that allowed it be born.

    Regards

  39. Zak Greant wrote on

    DavidONE,

    I didn’t make any value judgement about the the stats or the criticisms – I measured and reported on the only link cited. Don’t be so defensive – you aren’t the poor devil getting flamed on your own blog by an angry mob (and neither am I this time.)

    For my part, I’m happy that Basil and crew are publicly posting the rationale for their changes. Regardless of whether or not they did great work, royally screwed up or some of both, the information (and the capturing of people’s reactions) is still useful within Mozilla and for other FLOSS projects.

  40. DavidONE wrote on

    Zak,

    Just for the record, I’m not being defensive. Let’s stick to the issues and try not to introduce emotive language, OK?

    Your original reply to me appeared to be attempting to reduce the weight of my argument by demonstrating that far fewer people were dissatisfied than I suggested, while not addressing the issues raised. That’s all I was responding to.

    Posting rationales and, to my eye, a round of self congratulations doesn’t amount to much when so many people are clearly unhappy and pointing out the reasons why.

    It’s been two weeks since the AMO team announced the release and have remained silent to the wide-ranging criticism since then. That’s poor PR, at best.

    We all screw up at times – it’s how you respond that’s critical.

  41. Chris wrote on

    I do like the look of the new add-ons page; but one key piece of information is missing: a date — whether submitted or updated — a date should be present with the name of the add-on, right on the main page.

    I check the add-ons page every week (cuz, yes I *am* that anal-retentive), and, with a date, I know how far I need to go, until I’m looking at stuff I saw the previous week. Without a date, there’s no way to tell.

    I would imagine it wouldn’t be that hard to place a date field on the main page, so that each entry had a date — then, sorting would be more meaningful, as well.

  42. Tsu Do Nym wrote on

    Mandatory registration just to install an extension is bad enough, but requiring your email address is totally unjustifiable. The only possible reason they would need to collect the address of people who just download extensions would be to later spam them or sell them. It looks like Mozilla is looking for some new “revenue models”.

  43. Amic0 wrote on

    Am I dumb or is it still not possible to add search engines beyond those miserable 23 (including experimental engines a whopping 24!) search engines that aren’t even listed right away but through a link at the bottom of the page? Right now the whole thing looks very corporate, meaning closed, boxed in, with blinders on. The moment I realized the search engine feature had not only changed but made worthless, along with wrongly ending up on the “search tools” page was the first time I felt like leaving Firefox which I’ve been happily using since its early 0.x stages when it still ran under the old name.

    Is the old “search engine” page still around somewhere?

  44. Amic0 wrote on

    Oh, well, through backlinks I just found out the old mycroft search engine page is still around at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/index.html and it’s working, too. Too bad it probably won’t get updated anymore. Too bad that less persistent types and newbies won’t even get to to know the wealth of what had been around search engine wise. What a waste…