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Jetpack Project: weekly update for January 31st, 2012

Jeff Griffiths — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:12:48 +0000

Project News

We released two point releases, 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 to address issues related to deploying SDk 1.4 on the Add-on Builder site.
Jorge pointed out an important compatibility issue with SDK 1.3 and the upcoming Firefox 11 release in his compatibility post. We will be re-packing add-ons built with 1.3 and lower prior to the release of Firefox 11, but in the meantime you should base all current and new releases on SDK 1.4.
There were a couple of community-developed modules discussed on the google group this week, including madarche’s OrderedMap implementation and Ben Buksch’s collections module. This is exciting to see, particularly because they are now collaborating on a single implementation.
Looking forward to participating at FOSDEM this weekend!

Quick Stats

Total open bugs: 244
Bugs created last week: 13
Bugs fixed last week: 6
Total SDK-based Addons on AMO: 385
Open pull requests on Github: 25

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2012-01-31 11:30:03 PST

Meeting Brief

Add-on Builder: continuing to prepare for 1.0 release, next steps include refreshing vide content on AMO and bug fix releases over the next 2 weeks.
SDK: released 1.4.1 & 1.4.2 to address Builder integration issues, 1.5b3 is being spun this afternoon.
Round table: need to discuss and clarify 3rd party module integration path into core, in particular where to publish proposals.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-1-31#Minutes

Add-on SDK Version 1.4.2 Released

Jeff Griffiths — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:55:22 +0000

Following hot on the heels of yesterday’s release of 1.4.1, we identified an issue in the SDK where console logging was not happening correctly. Through discussions with the Add-on Builder team, this issue was identified as a Priority 1 blocker for the Builder team given the recent addition of 1.4 support earlier this week. If you’re curious, the tracking bug for this issue is here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=718230

While this issue primarily affects the Builder, it will also affect any addons packaged using 1.4.0 & 1.4.1 that print debug statements to Firefox’s console window using console.log. Using console.log to print debug statements to the terminal when running an addon using the cfx tool is not affected by this issue.

If you have any questions or issues with this hotfix release, please ask in any of the following areas:

For more information on the Jetpack Project check out our wiki

SDK 1.4: known issue with hard-coding resource URIs

Jeff Griffiths — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:45:20 +0000

The Jetpack project released Addon SDK version 1.4 yesterday; this release is likely the most significant release of the SDK since 1.0 in June, and includes a number of improvements. One of the improvements was a change to simplify the internal file & folder structure of the xpi packages the SDK creates. This work was tracked in bug 660629.

One side-effect of this change is that the resource urls for files in the data folder of an add-on have changed. If you have created an add-on and for some reason hard-coded a resource url into your code, you will need to change your code in order for your add-on to work when packaged with SDK version 1.4.

While the release notes go into this issue in detail, I would like to highlight here the two main examples we are seeing in the wild of hard coded resource uris, with strategies for working around each.

1. Hard coded resource uris in main.js

Addon authors occasionally reference html and javascript files in the addon’s data directory directly via a hard-coded string:

var myPanel = require("panel").Panel({
  contentURL: "resource://jid1-294x0ji6mesjag-at-jetpack-example-data/my-file.html",
  contentScriptFile: "resource://jid1-294x0ji6mesjag-at-jetpack-example-data/my-script.js"
});

You should always use the method self.data.url instead:

var data = require("self").data;
var myPanel = require("panel").Panel({
  contentURL: data.url("my-file.html"),
  contentScriptFile: data.url("my-script.js")
});

2. Hard coded resource uris in html or css files inside the data directory.

Referencing a css or image file from an html or css file in the addon’s data directory does not require the entire resource uri path because these resources can be referenced with relative paths. Instead of doing this:

…all you need to do is this:

If you have created an SDK-based addon and have included some hard-coded resource uris in your code, you will only need to make changes to address this issue if you re-package your addon with 1.4. As we are not re-packing addons on AMO automatically for this release, there is no immediate need to update your code.

It is possible 6 weeks from now that we will re-pack all addons to use SDK 1.5, and at this point any remaining addons using hard-coded resource uris will stop working. To mitigate this we are working with the AMO team to identify all affected addons and contact addon authors directly to encourage them to update and use the best practices I demonstrated above.

Jetpack Project: weekly update for January 10th, 2012

Jeff Griffiths — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:13:39 +0000

Project News

We released SDK 1.4 today which includes important new features including a new module loader implementation, as well as the simple-prefs module.
Wladimir Palant blogged about measuring memory usage of SDK-based addons using some of the new memory reporter features.

Quick Stats

Total open bugs: 235
Bugs created last week: 17
Bugs fixed last week: 11
Total SDK-based Addons on AMO: 401
Open pull requests on Github: 24

Meeting Brief

Builder: release tomorrow fixes AMO account ids, looking for feedbackon Builder helper addon
SDK: releasing 1.4 today, working to co-ordinate messaging resource uri value changes
Apps: consult with labs to see which api-utils modules they would like frozen
Talos testing: Jeff Hammel stopped by, kicking off project to get automated testing

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-1-10#Minutes

Announcing Add-on SDK 1.4!

Dave Mason — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:38:20 +0000

The Jetpack team is proud to announce the release of Add-on SDK 1.4! This version of the SDK has the most new features of all the releases we have made since the 1.0 release. Some of the new features include:

- Thanks to community members Hernan Colmeiro and Erik Vold, we have a new Simple Prefs API allowing you to easily create preferences for your add-on. Please see the documentation to learn how to use this new API.

- We have a brand new loader which is simplified and should give us even better performance.

- We have a new layout to the XPI files generated by the SDK. *Please note this if you have hard-coded any resource://URL links!! You should fix those links as specified in the release notes!*

For more new features and known issues,please see the Release Notes.

To get started building add-ons with the Add-on SDK, download it, then check out the documentation!

As always, we’d love to hear from you about your experiences with this release. You can contact us in a variety of ways:

post to our discussion group
chat with us on irc.mozilla.org #jetpack
report a bug
check out the source and contribute bug fixes, enhancements, or documentation

For more information on the Jetpack Project check out our wiki

Default Compatibility is Coming and Your Help is Needed!

Amy Tsay — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:31:58 +0000

All add-ons will be made compatible by default in the upcoming Firefox 10 release, so it’s crunch time for testing them in Beta, Aurora, and Nightly. With default compatibility, you can expect to see less of the incompatible add-ons dialog, and more of your add-ons should just work.

If you are a Firefox developer, support professional, or contributor, your help is critical—if you think there might be a compatibility issue in any of the release channels, please file a bug here so we can take action right away if needed.

In general, it would be super helpful for everyone to install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter and let us know through the reporter if your add-ons are working properly.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

Help Test Default Compatibility for Add-ons on Aurora

Amy Tsay — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:00:18 +0000

The latest phase of our add-on compatibility plan has arrived in Aurora, and we need your help to test it! Since Firefox 4, we have been automatically making add-ons hosted on AMO compatible with new Firefox releases. Now, we have extended automatic compatibility to non-hosted add-ons, which account for 75% of all add-ons in use (currently in the hundreds of millions). This means you should see less of the incompatible add-ons dialog, and more of your add-ons should just work.

You can read more about the plan, including how we determine eligibility for automatic compatibility here. For additional background reading, check out this blog post.

Once you have Aurora installed, all add-ons that are compatible with Firefox 4 or later can be installed without extra steps. Firefox will install them even if they are declared incompatible in the manifest file.

If you don’t already have Aurora installed, you can get it here. With Aurora, you’ll see our newest features before they go beta, and have a chance to send us feedback before the final release.

Please send us feedback or file bugs on the new default to compatible feature here. We look forward to hearing from you!

Announcing Add-on SDK 1.3!

Dave Mason — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:20:47 +0000

The Jetpack team is proud to announce the release of Add-on SDK 1.3! This version of the SDK has some bugfixes, and some new features. Highlights of this release are:

- Fixed a bug where panel-based content scripts don’t work after reloading or changing location
- We now officially support Python 2.7
- Loads of changes and additions to the Add-on SDK documentation

For more details about these and other new features and fixes, please see the Release Notes.

To get started building add-ons with the Add-on SDK, download it, then check out the documentation!

As always, we’d love to hear from you about your experiences with this release. You can contact us in a variety of ways:

post to our discussion group
chat with us on irc.mozilla.org #jetpack
report a bug
check out the source and contribute bug fixes, enhancements, or documentation

For more information on the Jetpack Project check out our wiki.

Firefox 8 is Coming!

Amy Tsay — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:15:40 +0000

Firefox 8 is scheduled to be released next Tuesday, November 8, so we wanted to remind those of you who need to bump the compatibility of your add-on to do so soon! If you fall into this group, please be sure to read our update on Firefox 8 compatibility here. Also, this blog post has more information on the new features that will affect add-on developers.

As you may know already, one of the things we’re doing to make rapid releases smoother is automatic compatibility bumps. We run these about a week after a new release, but you need to submit a version compatible with the Aurora channel (Firefox 10), or upgrade your existing version on AMO in order to be eligible for an automatic bump. Your new version doesn’t need to be approved by the editor team, but it does need to be on the site. We will run Firefox 10 compatibility tests in a couple of weeks, and email you with information on whether your add-on passed. If it passes you won’t have anything more to do for another 6 weeks.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Improved Stats Dashboard and Ajax Search Results

Amy Tsay — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:04:04 +0000

Hello everyone! My name is Amy and this is my second week on the AMO team as an Add-ons Community Manager. I’m here to make sure you have a great experience on AMO, so feel free to send me feedback or ask questions. If I don’t have the answer, I will try to track down someone who does!

It’s push day, and there are two new features we’d like to highlight:

Improved Stats Dashboard

The dashboard is now faster, easier to use, and better looking:

More data at a glance: we added three charts displaying popular stats that used to require multiple clicks to reach—most-used applications, most-used languages, and most-used OSes.
Better performance: we migrated the dashboard from PHP to Python as part of a larger AMO initiative, and the move has improved load times. We focused on moving the major features, and may migrate more features in upcoming releases. If there is a feature in the old dashboard that you think is critical and it isn’t available in the new dashboard, please let us know.
Redesigned interface: we updated the look and feel of the dashboard to make it more visually pleasing and easier to read.

See the improvements in action here.

Ajax Search Results

We’ve made it faster and easier to page through search results using Ajax. Rather than load new pages as you browse through results, new results are shown in-line.

Auto-detect filtering: we automatically detect your Firefox version and operating system and show you the filtered results.
Collapsible sidebar facets: choose additional filtering parameters in the sidebar and see new results in-line.
Shortcut keys: on any search results page, simply use your left and right arrow keys to toggle between pages.

See the search results page in action here.

Please give the new features a spin and let us know what you think!