That means it’s easy to subscribe to collections, manage your collections, share add-ons with friends, and automatically sync add-ons using an auto-publisher from within Thunderbird and SeaMonkey.

Today’s release also adds prototype support for syncing the add-ons in a collection with Firefox on your mobile device. Just create a collection with your favorite mobile add-ons, install the Add-on Collector on mobile, choose your collection, and hit Sync.

You can grab the latest version of the Add-on Collector from Mozilla Add-ons.

A full list of bugs fixed in this release is available here. A huge thanks goes to Brian King and David McNamara for their work on this release.

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Firefox 3.6 added a new parameter to the update check that tells us the type of check. This allows us to start counting only the daily background checks instead of all checks, leading to more accurate user counts and less volatility.

We plan to switch over to this new counting method on Monday, March 1. If an update ping has the update type information, we will only count that ping if it is a daily background check. There will still be some inflation, as update pings that don’t have the type information (versions before Firefox 3.6) will continue to be counted. Starting Monday night, add-on developers should expect active user counts to drop up to 20%, depending on how many of the add-on’s users are on Firefox 3.6.

We hope this will help developers be more confident in these statistics going forward, and look forward to users continuing to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 so that we can eliminate inflation entirely.

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That’s right, you heard correctly, there are now over 57,000 personas on getpersonas.com. The past three weeks have been a blur for the Personas team and its contributors. We’ve seen millions of new users join our community and enjoy theming their Firefox. Thousands of designers created over 19,000 personas!

Just to give you an idea of how many new personas have been submitted, here’s a graph of personas submitted per day:

Other fun stats:

• 5,000,000 pageviews on average per day
• 500,000 unique users a day on average
• 700 new personas created/day

The Personas community is going strong, if you want to help you can join our Google Group, answer questions on support.mozilla.com or become an approver by emailing personas@mozilla.com. We have some exciting ideas for the future of Personas, stay tuned for more details!

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We introduced a refreshed first run page with the launch of Firefox 3.6, which looks and feels more tightly integrated into the overall Firefox experience. As part of this page, we created a section which highlights the benefits of Firefox add-ons and directs users to the Add-ons for Firefox Web site.

In our continued effort to offer the best possible user experience and promote the discoverability of add-ons, we are running a pilot program to experiment with a new format: In addition to the broad add-ons promotion on the new first run page, we will display certain Recommended Add-ons.

These recommendations will run in a rotation – there will be four promotions in total during the pilot (including two add-ons, the current general promotion for add-ons and a Thunderbird promotion). The two add-ons in the pilot were selected from a list of recommended add-ons and contain one commercial (StumbleUpon) and one non-commercial add-on (ReminderFox).

Here’s more information about the first run page pilot experiment:

What is promoted on the first run page during the pilot?

For this pilot we will rotate two internal promotions (addons.mozilla.org and Thunderbird) as well as promotions for two recommended add-ons (StumbleUpon and ReminderFox).

How were pilot partners selected?

The add-ons for the pilot were selected from the list of recommended add-ons based on popularity and user feedback and then asked to participate.

Will other recommended add-ons be promoted on the first run page?

That depends on the results of this test. Look out for more information soon; we’ll be publishing the results of the pilot and our plans to move forward.

Is this paid-for-display advertising?

No. In terms of money, if the add-on is of a commercial nature and the promotion drives revenue for the add-on developer, we ask the developer to contribute back to the Mozilla project under a partnership agreement. However, placement on the first run page cannot be bought – we will only promote recommended add-ons.

How do add-ons become recommended?

The recommended lists are an important part of exposing visitors to useful and compelling add-ons with a small, focused list. The list features add-ons that offer a unique or exciting enhancement to Mozilla software and increases awareness of the thousands of add-ons hosted here. Read more about the recommended add-ons list here.

When will results from the pilot be provided?

The pilot will run for 6-12 weeks. When results have been gathered and examined following the pilot we will release the data. Depending on the success of the pilot, we may decide to continue promoting recommended add-ons on the first run page — at this point in time, we’ll provide more information on process and criteria.

Where does the revenue go?

All proceeds contribute to Mozilla’s public benefit mission. This includes covering the operational costs of hosting and distributing thousands of free add-ons, as well as community programs to encourage innovation in add-on development worldwide.

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In July, we asked developers to take a survey about how they use the Statistics Dashboard, and as part of our AMO rewrite currently underway, we’ll be revamping the dashboard.

Here’s a mockup from our designer, Chris Howse, of the overview page of the new dashboard:

A few comments on the new design:

• Our main goal was to simplify the dashboard and present the most common things developers are looking for up front, answering questions like “which application versions is my add-on used with?” and “how many people use my add-on on Mac?”
• Each of the breakdown pages will have its own URL and be linked to directly, eliminating the annoying dropdown menu currently used
• We’ll be replacing the Timeplot graphs with nicer, less buggy graphs using Highcharts
• Most of the features of the new dashboard exist in the current dashboard, but this will create a much better platform and layout for us to add additional features after the rewrite. We already have some great ideas to implement at that time.

You can see the rest of the mockups and design discussion in bug 540885 and implementation in bug 543548.

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• Best Overall Add-on (non-security)
• Best Privacy/Security Add-on
• Best Browser Theme
• Best User Script

While you’re there, be sure to nominate Firefox in the Best Browser categories as well! We’ll let everyone know when voting is open.

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We’re always looking for feedback on what improvements can be made to pages such as these, so please let us know your ideas!

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Project Jetpack explores an additional way of creating add-ons for Firefox, and no plans have been made for it to completely replace XUL-based add-ons. If you’re interested in learning more about Jetpack or helping to shape its future, you can read more on the Jetpack blog.

We hope this clears up any confusion, and look forward to 2010 as the best year for Firefox add-ons yet.

- the Firefox Add-ons team

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When: Next Thursday, December 10, 2009
Time: 6-9pm
Where: Mozilla Headquarters
What: Join us for food, drinks, pool and add-on fun!

For more information and to RSVP, please visit our Meetup page.

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