Comments on: How many Firefox users use add-ons?

By: Dresandreal Sprinklehorn

Dresandreal Sprinklehorn — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:15:51 +0000

Qurious Orange says:
August 11, 2009 at 5:25 pm

And how many users wish you just gave them the functionality they wanted in the first place, instead of having to install stupid add-ons?

Well, don’t you think Firefox would move very slowly if at all if all of the current addons abilities were incorporated into Firefox by default.

I personally love how you can add the ones you want and ignore the others.

But to each his own.

By: amin

amin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:31:51 +0000

I always receive errors like this:

Firefox could not install the file at

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/latest/3362/addon-3362-latest.xpi

because: Download error
-228

By: brotha

brotha — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:50:45 +0000

IS IT JUST ME OR DOES firefox SUCK ALMOST AS BAD AS safari?? OH GOD JUST GIVE US A GOOD F**KING WEB BROWSER I BEG YOU. NOT ONE OF MY ADD-ONS HAS WORKED SMOOTHLY BUT HEY I DIDNT REALLY EXPECT THEM TO ANYWAY… ((((((((((

By: bluebird

bluebird — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:34:09 +0000

I’d like to tell something about an add-on from Firefox. I know I am in the wrong place but I have unsuccessfully tried to register to Firefox to leave my comment. So I’m coming here. The name of the add-on is Weather Channel. I am very angry because it leaves on my computer a malware I cannot take off. The malware is called “Trace.Directory.Desktop Weather!A2″. Its risk level is medium. I have uninstall this add-on for a long time but its crap is still in my machine ! I have tried to contact the Weather Channel site but, strangely, they have no e-mail adress nor a way to write to them. Just a stupid FAQ with stupid answers. Tell everyone what happened to me, to prevent Firefox users for them to don’t download this add-on. Thank you.

By: Brent Hopkins

Brent Hopkins — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:56:43 +0000

One third leaves a lot of room for improvement! I have a suggestion which I think would seriously help with add-on adoption. You see, a lot of Firefox users don’t even know about add-ons at all, or if they have heard about them they don’t really “get it.” I think that if you put a ShareThis (or similar, I just like ShareThis) button on every Add-on page, then you will see greater adoption. Give users an easy way to tweet, Facebook, email it. Also give that option when someone does a review.

Also, you should expand the Accounts in the Add-ons web site. Make those accounts more social so that I can look at an add-on reviewer’s profile and see what add-ons that person uses and reviews. Let people plug some of their networks into their profile. This will literally increase the “network effect” and will get the word out faster. You could pull way ahead of the pack if you do it right.

I for one would be very interested to subscribe to the Add-on profiles of a number of people. This would be a great way for me to discover new add-ons.

By: Gingerbread Guy

Gingerbread Guy — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:19:43 +0000

If there’s anyone who works on the add-ons site reading this, please fix these giant annoyances:

1. Searching for themes yields a list with no previews.

2. Very often, add-ons show as incompatible with your version of Firefox, e.g. LinkedIn Compainion for Firefox (add-on #1512). Even when you go to the add-on’s details page, there’s no indication of a newer version being available. You have to scroll all the way down to the bottom — and get this — click “View OLDER Versions” to see the newest version! I’ve had a great time explaining that nonsensical bit of information to all the people who complain that the Firefox upgrade broke their add-ons and there’s no update available.

By: Chuck Baker

Chuck Baker — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:26:07 +0000

What surprises most is that *only* one third use add-ons. I would have thought this number to be much higher. In fact, I don’t know of a singe Firefox user that does not have at least a few add-ons.

By: Wombat

Wombat — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:23:22 +0000

@shamanphenix

“The choice is a force of the free software. Go install Opera if you don’t want to be free to choice.”

Extensions have got NOTHING to do with free (open source) software. Extensions use an API, and an API can be provided in closed source applications as well.

Not only that, but you are free to choose with Opera as well. Most popular Firefox extensions can be done in Opera in some way. Opera has many ways to add functionality, including User JS, custom buttons, custom menus, custom toolbars, panels, etc. Someone even wrote a toolbar API for Opera.

Firefox is great, but I sometimes feel embarrassed as a Firefox user because of some of the fans out there…

By: Seth Wagoner

Seth Wagoner — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:55:45 +0000

Fascinating stuff, cheers for that. I was asked the other day how many Firefox add-on users there were and I explained that it was really hard to answer that question. My guess at the time was 100m, and I’d say I was pretty close because even though half the Firefox ADU use addons, the monthly count would include more of the less sophisticated users who are less likely to use addons, so it’s probably closer to a third.

I don’t suppose you know how fast the addons userbase is growing, and whether the growth is accelerating, decelerating, or constant?

And to answer “Qurious Orange”, I’d say there are at least as many people who wish Firefox would stop adding more “features” to Firefox as there are who wish it had the “functionality they wanted”. The problem is, *everyone wants different stuff* and if you put it *all* in, you become bloatware. The only good answer to this problem is to write a decent add-on/plugin architecture, as Mozilla have done.

By: fearphage

fearphage — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:05:54 +0000

It’s really great to finally put some numbers to this. Thanks for the information.