Ways to expedite (I think app developers would even donate to the foundation).

that’s great, keep it up

regards,

Tester

PS: Does this comment work?!?

why not finally improve the add-ons certification system or code it from the scratch!

I’m, as a user, hate those “(Author not verified)” message in the extension installation popup warning window!

Why I get exclamation mark warning, even from extension from mozilla devs?

Here is something very wrong the user friendly GUI.

If I download and install an extension from AMO, which is reviewed, NOT experimental AND digitally signed with an certify/certificate, I should get a better and more user friendly add-on installation permit window..!

Like a green checkmark (instead of the yellow exclamation mark!),
besides the info/warning text says for example, “it’s safe to install this extension, it is reviewed by Mozilla, verified and digitally signed.
But still beware what you install and use!”

This is a long standing issue and should be improves very soon (e.g. with the release of Fx 3.7), rework is overdue!

AND finally I get back to the topic, with that new authentification system, you can accept small code changes/bugfixes faster, for e.g. add-on authors which developes the submitted and changed extension already for some years, like two or three.

regards,

iNsuRRecTiON from Germany

Anyway if you are really interested in cutting down the review queue I would ask to also look at Fx’s little brother Thunderbird, it seems the review queue there suffers because of the new Fx Release.

My personal viewpoint on releasing is “release early and often” which leaves my extension with 4 (!) updates that have not yet been reviewed, the latest one offering an ever increasing feature set and lots of desirable bug fixes – and just today I have released the 5th one [which now includes support for 2 more hosts and 3 more locales, compared to the last published version]; I do not know whether this actually has again reset the waiting time for my queue – but in general it seems to boil down to a publishing cycle of roughly 1 published update / month (usually I integrate several bugfixes during that time, so it is not exclusively negative).

- all thanks to the diligence of the users who constantly come up with ideas, requests and bug reports. There is an highly interesting article “the cathedral and the bazaar” by Eric Stephen Raymond (see catb.org) which points out the difference between commercial and open source software release cycles, which comes to the conclusion that a higher release frequency is indeed a good warranty for high software quality standards – obviously it also generates a lot more administrative work; I think one of the methods to cut down on the amount of work would be fairly obvious – people who have reviewed an extension before (and wish to do so) should be preferred as reviewers for updates of this.

In my case I have a fairly complex extension with a lot of added value for long term users, but this is not obvious at first glance to a casual user – the more you use this extension the more useful features you will discover; for reviewers, testing this functionality can of course be a daunting task – you need to set up test folders, do drag / copy operations on emails, customize the extension’s interface and so on and so on…

How much easier is it if you already use the extension and you might even be interested in what’s new – wouldn’t it be great if the reviewers would be notified of updates of any extension they have installed on their system and have reviewed previously – surely somebody who uses a piece of software daily is somewhat of an expert.

I would propose a “mentoring system” where AMO reviewers could voluntarily take some of their favorite extensions and be contactable by the authors about important updates?

In emergencies (such as showstopper bug fixes) I have done so before, using more oblique methods such as preoject owners mailing lists and ICQ, but it would be great if there was an official method openly available to developers of extensions that have already been published.

The other thing that would surely diminish the problem of “stale” updates would be a more obvious presentation of newer versions on the AMO pages. I must say that it was slightly better in an earlier incarnation of the AMO web site, now the link to the latest versions hides shamefully at the bottom of the page, and its labeled misguidingly “View Older Versions”. This is not obvious to the end users. IMHO there is probably more chance of the users looking at the top 3 reviews and finding that their host version is supported or a certain bug is fixed and then telling them where to download the unreviewed version than them preiodically “poking” the versions page to see whether there was a new version available. But you know this already, as you’re trying to cut down the queue – it is just not obvious how it can be done without increasing manpower…

Also, there is a link for getting the latest published version for each extension, would it be possible (and desirable) to craft one for the latest “experimental” version as well? Or do you think that it would open the door for all sorts of security risks?

For example, I submitted an update for Pearl Crescent Page Saver Basic 6 weeks ago and it has not been approved.