The Review Queues

• Most nominations for full review are taking less than 5 days to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 3 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 days.

These stats are taken from last week’s queue report:

• 21 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 25 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 9 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Our New Years Challenge has really paid off and add-ons are now reviewed almost immediately after they are submitted. Most add-ons waiting in the queue are waiting for actions from admin reviewers or their developers.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Test Your Add-ons for Memory Leaks!

The MemShrink team was assembled some time ago to work on reducing Firefox’s memory footprint. Many memory bugs have been filed and fixed for Firefox, but add-ons are also a significant factor in how much memory is being used.

There is an ongoing effort to track and stomp memory leaks in add-ons. Here’s where you can help, either by testing the add-ons you created, or testing the add-ons you use. Please read the article on Zombie Compartments, particularly the add-ons section. It should give you some pointers on how to find leaks and how to avoid them. The short version is don’t hold any references to DOM objects after the document is closed.

The AMO review team is already aware of this, and we have added memory leaks to our testing policies. Add-on versions that leaks may not get full review.

If you have any questions about this, post them in the comments.

Firefox 11

The Firefox 11 compatibility blog post is up now.

The compatibility bump will be run very soon, but it will be run differently than last time. Since Firefox 10 an above have add-on compatibility turned on by default, there’s no longer a need to do maxVersion bumping. So, we’re going to do run the usual compatibility checks, but only email developers if their add-ons don’t pass some of the checks. These add-ons that don’t will also be added to the compatibility override list so users know they are incompatible, provided that the compatibility bug really causes problems in the way the add-on works.

Firefox 12

Firefox 12 already hit the Aurora channel, so the compatibility updates should be coming soon.

A few notes regarding Firefox 10

If everything goes according to plan, Firefox 10 will be pushed to the public in less than a week. There are a couple of points that are worth mentioning:

• Starting with Firefox 10, add-ons will default to compatible. All add-on versions that have compatibility up to Firefox 4 or higher will automatically work in Firefox 10 and all future releases. This excludes add-ons that are not extensions (themes, dictionaries, language packs) and add-ons with binary components. We will also keep an override list that we will fill with all add-on versions that are known to break due to compatibility problems. This is what has kept me busy for the past weeks. We need your help to keep the override list up to date.
  
• Rename omni.jar to omni.ja. If your add-on references omni.jar directly, it will break now that it has been renamed. We recommend that you find more flexible ways to reference these files, since most should be accessible through chrome URLs.

For more information about Firefox 10 compatibility, please read the full compatibility update.

Firefox 11

• Remove the no-argument form of requestAnimationFrame. This function now takes one mandatory argument.
• Remove nsIDOMNSElement. This affects many SDK-based (Jetpack) add-ons using old versions of the SDK. We encourage you to update to the latest stable version as soon as possible.
• Remove the crazy navigator preservation behavior. If your add-on sets expando properties to the navigator object in web pages and relies on them keeping their state while navigating within the same domain, this concerns you.
• Remove ‘countryCode’ from nsIDOMGeoPositionAddress.idl. The non-standard countryCode property was removed.
• Kill dynamic containers. This is an obscure feature that was added to the bookmarks code but it was rarely used.
• Remove nsICharsetResolver.

Other important changes are noted in Firefox 11 for developers.

New stuff in 11!

• Support HTML parsing in XMLHttpRequest. The documentation page for this feature is being written at the moment, but it already has useful info.
• Sync add-ons. It seems Firefox Sync will be able to sync installed add-ons across devices. I doubt it will be able to sync all of your add-on configuration if your add-on writes custom files in the profile or elsewhere, though.
• Add a scriptable way to set a dock badge text. For Mac OS add-ons that want to write to the dock icon.

Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything missing or incorrect on these lists. If your add-on breaks on Firefox 10 or 11, I’d like to know.

Because of the Default to Compatible feature, we are no longer doing compatibility bumps like we did before. We will still run the validation but only send you a message if your add-on is identified as incompatible. There will be no more automatic version upgrades, given that there’s no point anymore.

The Review Queues

• Most nominations for full review are taking less than 10 days to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 5 days.

These stats are taken from last week’s queue report:

• 39 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 50 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 49 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Our New Years Challenge has really paid off and add-ons are now reviewed almost immediately after they are submitted. Most add-ons waiting in the queue are waiting for actions from admin reviewers or their developers.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Firefox 10

The Firefox 10 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 10 was run last week, so any add-ons with compatibility under 10.* 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.

The Add-ons Default to Compatible feature is progressing, and we expect to land on Firefox 10. Once this is in place, your compatibility worries will be minimized, and we’ll be taking a more active role in letting developers know if their add-ons are incompatible with a new version of Firefox. This feature will be a big win for both developers and Firefox users, so we’re very excited about it.

Firefox 11

A compatibility blog post for Firefox 11 is coming up. I apologize for the delay.

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking less than 4 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within one week.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 2 weeks.

These stats are taken from last week’s queue report:

• 74 new nominations that week. 153 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 115 new updates that week. 120 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 97 new preliminary review submissions that week. 160 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Waiting times are rapidly dropping and will continue to drop in the following weeks thanks to our New Years Challenge. There’s still plenty of time to participate and win great prizes, including tablets and a laptop.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Firefox 10

The Firefox 10 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 10 was run last week, so any add-ons with compatibility under 10.* 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.

The Add-ons Default to Compatible feature is progressing, and we expect to land on Firefox 10 or 11. Once this is in place, your compatibility worries will be minimized, and we’ll be taking a more active role in letting developers know if their add-ons are incompatible with a new version of Firefox. This feature will be a big win for both developers and Firefox users, so we’re very excited about it.

Firefox 11

A compatibility blog post for Firefox 11 is coming up.

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!

AMO Outage

We had a significant outage on our site (and others) earlier this week, which affected some add-on operations such as compatibility checks. AMO is back to normal now and we’re looking into ways of avoiding this from happening again.

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking less than 5 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 10 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 67 new nominations that week. 224 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 101 new updates that week. 135 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 78 new preliminary review submissions that week. 115 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Firefox 10

The Firefox 10 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 10 was run last week, so any add-ons with compatibility under 10.* 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.

The Add-ons Default to Compatible feature is progressing, and we expect to land for Firefox 10 or 11. Once this is in place, your compatibility worries will be minimized, and we’ll be taking a more active role in letting developers know if their add-ons are incompatible with a new version of Firefox. This feature will be a big win for both developers and Firefox users, so we’re very excited about it.

As usual, you should check Firefox 10 for Developers for additional information.

DOM Changes

• Remove isSameNode. This is the change that has the greatest impact by far, since it is used in many add-ons and web sites. To compare nodes you can use the === operator instead.
• Remove isElementContentWhitespace.
• Remove replaceWholeText().
• Remove Document.xmlEncoding.
• Remove Document.xmlStandalone.
• Remove Document.xmlVersion.

XPCOM Changes

• Remove support for browser.startup.page == 2. This setting wasn’t in use, but a consequence of this change is that the lastPageVisited property in nsIBrowserHistory was removed.
• Remove nsIDOMNSHTMLFrameElement. Use nsIDOMHTMLFrameElement instead.
• Remove nsIDOMNSHTMLElement. Use nsIDOMHTMLElement instead.
• Switch from PRBool to bool. The PRBool type was cleaned up all around in favor of bool.
• Remove nsIDocumentViewer.
•  Implement IndexedDB setVersion API changes. This changes several DB interfaces, but they are meant for internal usage.
• Remove nsNavHistory nsICharsetResolver implementation.

Other Changes

• fastload XBL methods and properties. If you use XBL, make sure you test it thoroughly. If you run into bugs that can’t be reproduced in Firefox 9, please let us know!
• Different regular expression result since Firefox 7. A small RegExp fix, but it can change the result of certain expressions.
• Mandatory ASLR on Windows. Binary components should work with ASLR, otherwise there will be a performance penalty when loading them in Firefox. We’re also considering adding detection for non-NX and non-ASLR binaries on AMO, possibly rejecting them.

New stuff!

• Support taskbar icon overlay in Windows 7. This allows extensions to add icons to the taskbar icon on Windows 7. There’s a sample linked in the bug in case you’re interested.
• Load/unload chrome.manifest files for bootstrapped addons dynamically. Chrome in bootstrapped add-ons, whoo! Well, it has been possible since before, but now it’s real easy.
• Add support for mouseenter and mouseleave events.

Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything missing or incorrect on these lists. If your add-on breaks on Firefox 10, I’d like to know.

The compatibility bump to Firefox 10 will happen very soon. If you want your add-on to qualify for this, it should be compatible with 9.*. Versions awaiting review also qualify.

The Review Queues

• Nominations for full review at the moment are being processed slower than usual. Most nominations are taking about 6 weeks to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 2 weeks.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 weeks.

These stats are taken from the last queue report:

• 82 new nominations that week. 247 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 116 new updates that week. 149 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 66 new preliminary review submissions that week. 104 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

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

There’s a bug that affects themes in Firefox 8, in Mac OS X Lion. Please read this blog post if you’re a theme developer.

Firefox 9

The Firefox 9 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 9 was run weeks ago, 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. 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.

Firefox 10

Compatibility update coming soon!

override chrome://browser/skin/Toolbar.png chrome://browser/skin/lion/Toolbar.png os=Darwin osversion>=10

This breaks themes that try to reference Toolbar.png, since Firefox will look in the different location (in the lion subdirectory). Possible workarounds include using a different file name for the toolbar sprite and change all references in the theme, or adding a duplicate or similar file in the location Firefox expects to find it.

We haven’t decided on any solutions for this problem, but you can follow this bug if you’re interested in the outcome.

And since we’re talking themes, theme developers should read Wladimir’s post about making themes more like overlays and less like overrides. It’s a very interesting topic that was brought up at MozCamp and that I’d like to discuss it more in the future. Having feedback from theme developers is very important to give this idea some traction.

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.