end users « Mozilla Add-ons Blog

Archive for the ‘end users’ Category

Recommendations, Collections, and Contributions (oh my!)

Friday, August 28th, 2009

We’ve just released AMO 5.0.9 with a ton of new features and bugfixes out into the wild. There’s something for everyone in this release, so take a look!

Add-on Recommendations

Screenshot of recommendations Some things go great together: peanut butter and jelly, popcorn and movies, Firebug and YSlow. Starting today, when you’re looking at an add-on’s listing, you’ll see several other add-ons that are often used together. We base these recommendations on the add-ons our users have grouped together in collections.

Contributions

Last month we launched our Contributions pilot, a way for add-on authors to accept monetary donations from users of their add-ons. We’ve gotten great feedback from users and developers, and are now expanding the reach of contributions on AMO. Add-ons that have turned on Contributions will now have contribution boxes in search results and category browse listings, where many installations take place.

While these new boxes help surface the existence of contributions, some users aren’t likely to make a donation without first testing the add-on to ensure it’s useful to them. With this release, developers have a new way to accept donations after a user has tried the add-on by simply pointing users to their add-on’s new about page.

Collections

Since the launch of Collections in June, add-on fans have created almost 30,000 collections, resulting in more than 6.5 million add-on downloads. This release includes many new features to make Collections even more useful.

Logged-in users can now rate collections and sort by those ratings to help the best collections bubble to the top.

Screenshot of collection rating and usage stats link

To help determine the popularity of a collection, authors can now access a collection statistics dashboard that shows information on the number of subscribers, ratings, and downloads over time.

We’ve also added a treat for users of browsers that support localStorage (including Firefox 3.5): recently viewed collections. When browsing through the collection directory, users can now easily get back to a collection they saw, without having to log in.

Public Stats

In early 2008, we gave add-on developers their first look at the shiny new Statistics Dashboard for each add-on hosted on AMO. Currently some dashboards are public and some are private, but we’ve never offered an in-depth look at the aggregate statistics for all add-ons hosted on AMO.
Today we’ve launched a detailed view of AMO as a whole, with data on add-ons, downloads, active users, users, reviews, and collections. Go on, check it out!

Add-on Validation

Earlier this month, we announced the arrival of the new add-on verification suite on AMO. At the time it was an optional tool developers could choose to run for their files. With this release, the tool will automatically be run when uploading a new file, and the results of the tests will affect the submission process. Editors will see the test results and any flags when reviewing the add-on. We hope to help developers catch common problems before an editor’s review.

Screenshot of validation results

We’d like to extend a huge thanks to the Web developers and testers who have contributed their time and talent to this release.

Tags: releases
Posted in developers, end users, releases | 15 Comments »

Coming Up for AMO

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

We launched Collections in June, Contributions in July, and the response to both has been amazing. What’s next for AMO? Here are some summaries of our upcoming projects.

Collections Phase II

We’ve had over 27,000 collections created and 6.5 million add-on downloads from those collections since the launch on June 10. We want to add a number of new collection features to the website and Add-on Collector extension, including:

collection ratings
statistics dashboard for collection creators
add-on recommendations based on collection data
recently viewed collections
Thunderbird & Fennec support for the Add-on Collector

Check out this spec for all the details planned for this second phase. If you have feedback on this, please post it in this newsgroup thread. The website features above are included in AMO 5.0.9, which should be released at the end of next week.

Add-on Developer Hub

In May, we posted about our plans for a new one-stop-shop for add-on developers. Whether you’re someone new to Firefox and not sure if you want to write an extension, a long-time developer looking to stay up-to-date on add-on news and documentation, or an add-on author wanting to update your AMO listings, the Add-on Developer Hub at AMO will be the place to go.

Among the features of the new developer area are:

add-on case studies
AMO policies
how-to library/portal
API/Language reference links
add-on builder (extension skeletons with working UI components)
add-on validator

You can see some mock-ups of what the new site will look like here, or view the spec for all the details. Please post any feedback in this newsgroup thread. We’re planning this for AMO 5.1, which should be released in late September.

Disclosure of Add-on Practices

Many add-on authors, individuals and companies alike, invest large amounts of time and effort into their add-ons, and wish to be compensated for their work. Although we have launched the Contributions feature for authors to accept donations from users, some authors have partnered with companies to support the continued development of their add-on in exchange for the add-on making certain changes to Firefox. We enacted a No Surprises policy in an effort to protect user choice, but unfortunately continue to find surprises.

We feel it is necessary for users to know about certain add-on practices that an add-on employs prior to installation. These practices must be disclosed in a clear and consistent way across AMO. Our plan for this is described in this spec. Please post any feedback in this newsgroup thread.

Add-on Compatibility Reporter

New versions of Firefox are always in the works, and the lead-up to a final release can be hectic for both add-on developers and the AMO team as we try to encourage everyone to test and update their add-ons in the new version. We’ve come up with an idea for an Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension that would be bundled with alpha and beta builds of Firefox and facilitate add-on testing and reporting.

If you have add-ons installed that don’t work, you can report that to AMO. If you have incompatible add-ons installed that work fine, you can report that to us too. We’ll look at all the submitted reports and email developers when we think we know whether the add-on is compatible with that Firefox version, or if it’s not compatible and what problems users are having.

For all the details, you can read the spec. If you have feedback, please post in this newsgroup thread.

As you can see, we have a lot going on, including several projects not mentioned here. Stay tuned to the newsgroup and this blog for the latest on add-ons.

Tags: features, roadmap
Posted in compatibility, developers, documentation, end users, policy | 7 Comments »

Firefox Add-ons Contributions Pilot

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

The Firefox Add-ons community is an amazing source of creativity and innovation for Firefox users all over the world. Thousands of developers create add-ons that foreshadow the future of Web browsers, and until today, developers who wanted some sort of financial support for their development efforts had few options.

Today’s release includes a pilot of a feature we’re calling “Contributions”. This pilot allows developers to request an optional dollar amount for their Firefox Add-on. Along with requesting this amount, we’re helping developers tell their stories with our new “About the Developer” pages, which explain to prospective contributors the motivations for creating an add-on and its future road map. Since contributions are completely optional, users will have ample time to evaluate an add-on to determine whether or not they want to help a developer.

Since this is the first time we’re presenting this opportunity, we’re treating this initial launch as a pilot. Our aim with this pilot is to help support a growing ecosystem by providing our users with the opportunity to support their favorite add-on developers. We’re asking for feedback from our community to drive the future of this pilot and we look forward to learning as much as we can. We’ll be working with PayPal on this pilot to provide a secure and international solution for facilitating payments.

We’re incredibly excited about the potential of Contributions and hope it makes a meaningful difference in the lives of developers and users alike. As always, we’ll be evaluating this pilot as we receive feedback and making changes based on that feedback. Please let us know via the AMO newsgroup if you have ideas or thoughts to share. We’ve also put together this brief FAQ on Contributions:

How will payments work?

We are working with PayPal on this pilot to provide a secure and international solution for facilitating payments. Developers can optionally create a PayPal ID for each of their Firefox Add-ons. Users will be presented with a “Contribute” button that gives them the option of paying the suggested amount or a different amount.

Does Mozilla earn a percentage from Contributions?

For this pilot, Mozilla will not earn a percentage of any contributions made by users. Developers will receive all the proceeds from contributions minus the PayPal transaction fee.

How do I set this up for my Add-on?

In the Developer Tools for your add-on, you will see two new sections for setting up Contributions and your Developer Profile.

I plan on requesting a small amount, what can I do about the transaction fees?

PayPal supports a micropayments fee structure which reduces the transaction fees for payments under $12. You can create a separate PayPal account for any add-ons where the requested amount is under $12. For more, visit PayPal’s Micropayments site.

Are Contributions optional?

Contributions are always optional. Developers have a variety of ways to present the contribution, some of which do include an interstitial page before downloading, but at no point are payments required for a download.

Why did you create multiple options for presenting the “Contribute” button?

Based on feedback from our developer community, we wanted to use this pilot to give developers a choice of ways to present this option to their users. Based on what we learn, we may change or remove some options.

Why did you call this “Contributions” and not “Donations”?

At Mozilla, we use the word “Contributor” for community members who contribute time and energy to our mission of promoting choice and innovation on the Internet. Our goal is that users who contribute money to developers are supporting the future of a particular add-on, as opposed to donating for something already received.

Will international currencies be supported?

For the pilot, all contribution amounts will be specified in USD. However, users worldwide will be able to contribute in local currency via PayPal.

Posted in developers, end users, general, releases | 30 Comments »

Removing the Sandbox

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

The “Sandbox Model” addons.mozilla.org uses to organize and review add-ons was first announced almost 3 years ago. Since then, we’ve made a number of changes based on user feedback that, in my opinion, have greatly improve the experience of finding and installing add-ons that haven’t been officially reviewed yet.

Today, the main feedback concerning the review and distribution process of add-ons is:

developers feel it takes too long for add-ons to be reviewed, and
users and developers want to receive updates to add-ons that they have installed that haven’t been reviewed yet

It’s important for us to balance our desire for all add-ons to be discoverable and easy to install with the need for security measures for add-ons that haven’t been reviewed yet.

After taking many of these issues into account, I’ve come up with a proposal for removing the public and sandbox classifications on the site and moving to a more flexible, comprehensive trust system based on everything we know about an add-on. If you’re interested in the review process and distribution of add-ons, please read the proposal and give us your feedback, preferably in this newsgroup thread.

Tags: policy, roadmap
Posted in developers, end users, policy | 5 Comments »

A week of collections

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

It’s been a week since we launched the new collections feature on addons.mozilla.org, and the response has been amazing! Above the Fold has details on press coverage, and we’re happy to see so many bloggers and news sites creating their own collections. Reading the articles, it was very exciting to see that people really understood collections and their potential.

The first week of collections blew away our goals for the launch, so I’d like to share some statistics from the last week. Add-on users have created more than 11,000 collections, comprising 140,000 instances of 3500 different add-ons. Of those collections, 6200 are listed publicly in the Collection Directory, while the others are private. We’ve served over 245,000 add-on downloads from collection view pages, not including downloads served from other pages accessed through collections.

The Add-on Collector has been very successful as well, with 46,000 downloads and about 19,000 Collectors in use. Users of the extension have created 2500 auto-publisher collections, which are collections automatically kept in sync with the add-ons that user has installed in Firefox. And hundreds of add-ons have been shared with friends through the Collector’s email sharing feature.

But the most rewarding measure of success so far has been hearing people say collections have helped them discover new add-ons, which was the primary goal of the project.

Because the response to collections has been so great, we’re going to keep adding new collections-related features and improvements over the next few months. We have a number of ideas for what features to implement, but need help from the community to identify which cool new collection features are most wanted. So, if you’re interested in the future of collections, head over to the newsgroup and let us know which of the proposed features you want to see.

Tags: collections, features, roadmap
Posted in developers, end users | 12 Comments »

Introducing Add-on Collections

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

The ability to completely customize your browser with thousands of add-ons is one of the best features of Firefox, and highlights the talent, dedication, and innovation of our great community. With thousands of add-ons and close to 1.5 billion downloads, Mozilla has been working hard this year to provide a great experience for both add-on users and developers.

Today, we’re excited to introduce a new feature to our website that will expose the niche add-ons that can be hard to find, and gives users a more active role in helping outstanding add-ons bubble to the top. One thing we’ve learned as add-ons have grown in popularity over the years is that once a user finds an add-on they love, they become a fan for life. We see this all the time as people recommend add-ons to their friends and write great reviews. And we’re very happy to see so many bloggers writing about lists of their favorite add-ons.

We’ve created a short video demonstration to introduce this new feature:

Add-on Collections

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.

Starting today, visitors to the add-ons website will see a brand new look with collections of add-ons front and center. We’ve integrated collections throughout the site, and created a Collection Directory that showcases all of the add-on lists created by our users. There are a number of Mozilla-created collections that are featured throughout the site, but we hope to replace these with useful community-created collections in the near future. If you find a collection you like, logged-in users can mark it as a favorite to easily get back to it later.

Creating a collection of your own is as easy as giving it a name, like “Ken’s Favorite Data Analysis Extensions” or “Halloween Themes”, and choosing what add-ons you’d like in the collection. It will then show up in the directory, and can be sent to your friends or linked in your blog. The more people add it as a favorite, the higher it will be ranked.

Staying up-to-date

There are a lot of add-ons out there, so finding a collection related to a topic you’re interested in will be a huge time-saver. But what if you want to subscribe to that collection so that you find out when new add-ons are published to it? You can subscribe to a collection via RSS, or you can install the Add-on Collector extension for Firefox. The Collector turns your favorite collections into subscriptions in your browser, where you’ll be notified as soon as new add-ons are published to one of your collections. The extension has a number of other features, including the ability to share an add-on you have installed with a friend by e-mail, publish an add-on to one of your collections, and set up a collection that is automatically kept up to date with your installed add-ons.

We’ve made video demos of creating a collection and setting up an auto-publisher collection to show how easy it is dive in to collections.

We hope that collections will make add-ons more social and encourage add-on users to be involved in the community. So, head on over to the Collection Directory to get started with collections and fashion Firefox the way you want it.

Note: There are currently some issues with logging in via the Add-on Collector extension. We hope to have these fixed Wednesday morning. Update: The Collector is now fixed and login should be working properly in version 1.0.2 of the extension.

Tags: features, releases
Posted in end users, releases | 43 Comments »

Welcoming Jetpack

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

In our add-on developer survey several months ago, we received a number of responses as to what improvements could be made with the current add-ons platform and ecosystem. Among them were:

not requiring browser restart for installation
better debugging tools
better packaging
easier way to write extensions
code generation/IDE

Today, Mozilla Labs announced Jetpack, a new experiment in extending and personalizing the Web. The Jetpack API addresses all of the issues mentioned above, and makes it super easy for anyone with basic web development skills (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) to create a Firefox extension. Jetpack features don’t require restart, have a backwards-compatible API, only get the permissions they request, can be debugged using web development tools like Firebug, and can be extended themselves.

Today’s launch is a first step in exploring the future of add-on development, and we’re extremely excited to see where the community takes it. This is still a very early prototype of a possible direction for Mozilla-based add-ons, so rest assured that the current add-ons model is still alive and well.

Head on over to the Jetpack website for information on Jetpack and to get the prototype.

And don’t forget that the Labs team will be presenting on Jetpack at the Add-ons Meet-up next Tuesday, so be sure to RSVP if you’d like to attend.

Tags: jetpack
Posted in developers, end users | 2 Comments »

A peek at our Contributions pilot

Monday, May 11th, 2009

As promised, we’re showing you how things will look after we launch Contributions at the end of June. Our goal with this project was to help developers tell their stories about add-ons, and the first thing we did was redesign the add-ons listing page. Our goal with the page was to give developers a better way of showcasing themselves next to their add-ons.

Our eagle-eyed readers will notice a few things about this mockup:

The look and feel of AMO has evolved. We’re currently working on a redesign of the site to make it more user friendly and a better reflection of how add-ons are an essential part of the lives of many Firefox users.
There’s a “Meet the Developer” section which takes users into a page where they can learn about why a developer created an add-on and where they plan on going next.
Tags will be introduced in the near future, which will help our users and developers explore and classify add-ons.
And last but not least, the suggested contribution is present on the add-on page.

The Meet the Developer link goes to the following page, which should help developers explain the work they’ve put into their add-on and what features the contributions will help drive. Also, when users make contributions, they will be able to suggest additional features that they’d like to see. The information on this page, including bits like the average rating, will help users make an appropriate decision around contributing without feeling obligated to do so.

These updates will be available to all developers, not just ones who ask for financial support. Developers will also have a variety of ways to present contributions, and we’ll use developer and user feedback to determine which ones remain available after the pilot- so view this as a first step in a long evolution towards the best solution.

A big thanks to the fine folks at Clearleft for helping us with the redesign as well to the many developers who gave us advice and feedback on this feature. As always, please let us know what you think in the AMO Newsgroup or by posting a comment.

If you’re interested in participating in our pilot, please sign up.

Tags: features, roadmap
Posted in developers, end users, general | 9 Comments »

Contributing to a healthy ecosystem

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Over the past year, there’s been a growing debate around how add-on developers can receive compensation for the work they put into their add-ons.

That’s why we’re looking to launch a contributions pilot by the end of June. This pilot will allow participating developers to request voluntary contributions from users in a way that helps explain how those financial contributions help with the development of an add-on. We know that there are great stories about add-ons, and we want to help developers tell them by explaining why they created an add-on and where they plan on going next.

For users, contributions will be optional — they can choose to contribute nothing, or even increase their contribution to an amount they feel appropriately reflects the value they get from the add-on. We think this is a way for members of our community to participate in the ongoing development of the add-ons they enjoy using.

More details will come soon, but for now please fill out this form if you’re an add-on developer and want to participate in our pilot.

Add-ons Contributions Pilot Form

Tags: features, roadmap
Posted in developers, end users, general | 4 Comments »

New Category Pages and More

Friday, May 1st, 2009

New Category Pages

Today we launched our category page redesign, which we plan on being the first of many meaningful improvements to AMO this quarter. The goals of the new page are to better showcase both recommended add-ons and regular add-ons, and make it easier to discover a wide variety of add-ons with a minimum of browsing.

Simple User Profiles

We also launched simple profiles in AMO, so you can now write the autobiography of your dreams, as long as it’s less than 500 characters and doesn’t include any images. This is the first step in enhancing user profiles, and we hope you’ll find it useful.

Updated Developer Agreement

In a separate blog post, we discussed the new developer agreement that launched today.

For a complete list of everything we fixed in this release, visit bugzilla.

Tags: features, releases
Posted in end users, releases | 4 Comments »

Mozilla Add-ons Blog