Categories: end users

Add-on Jockey

Since moving to California, I’ve found myself listening to the radio a lot more than in previous years. I think this is largely because my favorite station here plays a lot more of the music I like and has a lot of new artists and songs that I haven’t heard before. Music and Firefox add-ons have a lot in common. Both are ways of expressing yourself and customizing your lifestyle. Both are made by professionals, but also by students, hobbyists, and anyone with a passion for their idea. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way for me to discover relevant new add-ons as easily as I discover new music?

In November, we launched Fashion Your Firefox, which was a collection of add-ons that we felt were great for a novice user just getting started with customizing their browser. Now, we’d like to take it a step further and let anyone create their own collection of add-ons that can be shared with their friends, posted on blogs, and featured on the Firefox Add-ons website.

Just as a DJ selects which songs to play and comment on, we want to let anyone create a list of add-ons on any topic — whether it’s “Justin’s Must-have Firefox Extensions”, “David’s Favorite Travel Add-ons”, or “Nicole’s St. Patrick’s Day Themes”. These user-created collections would appear in a directory alongside collections created by Mozilla. We’re interested in what sorts of collections people would create, and what collections you’d like to see in the directory. Please share your ideas with us in the comments.

We’re very excited about this idea and hope that it will improve add-on discovery, increase user involvement with add-ons, improve the stickiness of the add-ons website, and make add-ons more social. If you’re interested in learning more about the project, you can visit our project wiki.

4 comments on “Add-on Jockey”

  1. Chuck Baker wrote on

    Great idea! Don’t mean to toot my own horn, but my CLEO (Compact Library Extension Organizer) extension would be a great tool to facilitate the installation of the extension packs. It combines any number of extensions/themes into a single, installable xpi file. It also creates a description file that lists information about each add-on (author, homepage, compatibility, etc.).

  2. Dominique De Vito wrote on

    Your position is close to my post to mozilla.dev.apps.firefox.

    I talk too about an installation process alternative in my post.

    See :
    “about core/extension line and multiple distributions Options”
    http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/c567b20aaca28cba#

  3. Dominique De Vito wrote on

    Take a look at:
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=484585

  4. macadda wrote on

    Hi.
    I work as consultant for Orange, in a long mission. We use a lot of add-on to emulate phones. I spend a lot of time to explain to product manager, new devs how to install those add-on.
    Your idea is brillant. Well, If I can pack “user agent switcher, screen grab, and files too…” all together, I will save tons of hours 😉
    Thx
    Johan