This has probably been said, but I don’t think the advanced users are the problem. The average user or even the slightly more tech savvy user using Firefox 2 is what I’m concerned with.

Extension developers are feeling the pressure, and rightly so, to upgrade their extensions/themes for FF3. For extensions, and especially themes that are not backwards compatible with FF2 it leaves the user in a state of confusion.

Take the example of IE Tab, which recently upgraded to be FF3 only ( https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/1419 ). Browsing the reviews you’ll see a lot of similar complaints. For example, cindler2000 writes:

“im trying to download the IE tab for firefox but the IE tab is not clickable to download all i see that you can download is uprade firefox which I already have the latest version.this is so frustrating not being able to download a link when you cant even click on it…….HELP PLEASE”

My extension FireFTP has been FF3 ready since December and with FF3 not being released until June-ish, I don’t dare release the new version on AMO for fear of this.

So, in conclusion, you guys have a bit of a conflict of interest. There’s a big push to authors to update their extensions but if you do it’ll screw your users, at least until June… From what I see on the new mocks on this blog post, the revised button could help alleviate these issues. But I think if you’re going to lead users to the Version History page like this then the versions on that page should say their FF compatibility somewhere and the warning at the top should be reworked to mention something about browser compatibility – instead of basically trying to scare the users off back to the main page. I feel that you’re going to literally get a flood of updates the day of the actual FF3 release and it won’t be good for anyone. It’s certainly what I will be doing.

As a postscript, I know this is probably unlikely to happen but what would be really awesome was if the Smart Install button really was smart and grabbed the appropriate version of an extension depending on the version of Firefox I’m using but also made a note of telling me this was an older version but that “that’s ok” b/c the new version of Firefox isn’t out anyway. Whereas a Firefox 1 user would get a message saying “please upgrade”. There’s no use in asking a FF2 user to upgrade to something that does not exist yet.

Whoa, long post – really got me goin
I hope you can hear me out. Feel free to email me ( mimecuvalo at gmail ) if I’m missing some aspects of this. Cheers, and great work, nonetheless, guys

Hope you can figure out a good way of handling the add-on discussions on AMO. FWIW, they are an element I didn’t think was much good before, and I found a lot of stuff posted there was unhelpful or irrelevant, and just cluttering things up…

For those interested, in AMO 3.2, I found out how to display all new/modified modules and all new/modified themes by modifying the URL and bookmarking them.

NEW/MODIFIED THEMES
https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/browse/type:2/cat:all?show=10&exp=on&sort=updated

NEW/MODIFIED MODULES
https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:all?exp=on&sort=updated

I’m sure alternative URL can be derived from the UI, like removing the “exp=on” part, etc.

Now I found the “You removed two important add-on lists” complaint rather interesting, not something that I really use. I suppose I might use the ‘new’ add-ons one, but not the recently updated since I would get an automatic update on the add-on.

Again, I’ll add my voice/vote for getting an advanced search feature, sure would make things easier for the end-user but I suppose it would be a pain for the programmers.

Thank you for this post. It is very good to see that the issues introduced by the new AMO are getting addressed. It has been a rough couple of weeks, but I think what we are starting to see now is promising.