Add-ons Update – Week of 2011/10/26

I post these updates every 3 weeks to inform add-on developers about the status of the review queues, add-on compatibility, and other happenings in the add-ons world.

The Review Queues

  • Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking about 5 weeks to review.
  • Most updates are being reviewed within 10 days.
  • Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 4 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

  • 67 new nominations that week. 243 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
  • 111 new updates that week. 126 updates in the queue awaiting review.
  • 44 new preliminary review submissions that week. 267 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

If you compare these numbers to the last report, you’ll see we’re improving on most fronts. We continue to ramp up our efforts, and we’re in the process of introducing new editors from the Jetpack team, who should be able to help reviewing SDK-based add-ons.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please read the page on How to Apply.

Firefox 8

The Firefox 8 compatibility post is here.

You should note that there are a couple of possible reversals coming into Firefox 8 that affect add-on developers, mostly in good ways:

  • Bring back ISO8601DateUtils.jsm. Since the Date object isn’t exactly equivalent to this module and some significant add-on breakage was expected from its removal, it will be brought back for the time being. You should still change your add-ons so that it isn’t used anymore, but it’ll be at least one more release before it is completely removed.
  • Back out bug 455694 (tab drag/detach animations). There is no final decision on this yet. The backout patch has been checked in for testing and you should track this bug if it affects your add-on.
  • 3rd party add-on check doesn’t disable add-ons that were installed into the profile or application folder. The third party add-on check is being extended to include add-ons installed directly in the application folder or in the profile. This doesn’t affect any add-ons installed through the regular add-on installation process, or if they are installed manually from a local file. This should only affect add-ons that are automatically installed from an external package and copied into these other locations. It can affect add-on developers who have automatic installation processes to test their new code. You should read this comment for information on how to bypass this check and avoid the dialog at startup.

Firefox 9

The Firefox 9 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 9 was run last week, so any add-ons with compatibility under 9.* should be tested and manually upgraded in the Developer Hub, if possible.

You can run the standalone compatibility tool if you want to test your add-on yourself or if it isn’t hosted on AMO.

We strongly recommend that you aim to make your add-on compatible with the Firefox version in the Aurora channel, Firefox 9 at this moment. Making your add-on compatible with Aurora qualifies it for our automatic compatibility upgrades, saving you lots of time. If you need more information about this, don’t hesitate to ask.

5 comments on “Add-ons Update – Week of 2011/10/26”

  1. Mike wrote on

    This is disconcerting to hear. We heard about the restartless add-on competition no more than 3 weeks ago, and the competition deadline is in less than 2 weeks. I would have been lucky to have my add-on reviewed by the time the deadline comes even if I started the day the competition was announced. This is despairing news to me because I’ve been slaving away making my add-on and it won’t be reviewed in nearly soon enough time for the deadline. I think the purpose of competition is defeated if the entries that make it were in before the competition was even conceived.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Mike,

      Was it a requirement to have your add-on approved on AMO in order to qualify? I doubt that, really. And if there is such a restriction, it should probably be lifted since it doesn’t make sense these days.

      Also, if one of your add-ons happened to win, I’m sure I’ll be contacted by the contest organizers in order to get it reviewed before the final announcement. We wouldn’t want to promote unreviewed add-ons, now would we? 🙂

      1. Mike wrote on

        Thanks for your reply Jorge. The contest rules state:

        “the Entry must be uploaded to the Mozilla Add-ons gallery prior to entering it into the Contest”

        Does this mean it doesn’t necessarily need to be reviewed before the contest deadline? If yes, this alleviates my previous concern.

        1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

          “Uploaded” doesn’t mean it needs to be reviewed. You should be fine.

  2. Ionut Pop wrote on

    Really should have a minversion for compatibility as otherwise users may try to get their favorite old extension from Firefox 2.0 working and then wonder why Firefox is not working right or such.