We had a total of 265 surveys completed. Note that some questions were mandatory, others were allowed to be left blank or unanswered and others allowed multiple answers. When multiple answers were permitted, the total number of responses for that question is shown.

The general summary is that most respondents were individual developers with 2 or more years of add-on development experience. Natually, they felt comfortable with JavaScript and XUL. They primarily built add-ons for Firefox and hosted them on their own (possibly, in additional to AMO).

These are simply the raw results, we’ll be applying some correlation analysis to draw out more interesting findings and conclusions.

Q1: Which of these best describes your status?

Q2. When did you write your first add-on? (for Firefox or other applications)

Q3. Select the applications (or devices) for which you have created add-ons, 3rd party applications, or plugins.

Q4. How many distinct add-ons have you created? (for Firefox or other applications)

Q5. Was the functionality of your Firefox add-on similar to your add-on for other applications?

Q6. If you have ever started to develop an add-on and then aborted the project, what were the primary factors in your decision to stop development?

Q7. What tool(s) did you use to develop your add-on(s) (for Firefox or other applications) ?

Q8. What tools would help you develop more efficiently?

Q9. How would you rate the ease of development of Firefox add-ons?

Q10. How would you rate Mozilla’s developer documentation?

Q11. How familiar are you with JavaScript and XUL?

Q12-Q14. What were the top three challenging aspects of building your add-on?

Q15. Where do you host your add-on?

So, if you are an add-on author or themer, please fill out the survey. We’ll be summarizing the results in a few weeks.

(Colophon: We have attempted to use Google Docs “Form Fill” feature to collect this data into a spreadsheet – will let you know how that goes for us.)

Some of the new entrants to the recommended list include a few of the Extend Firefox 3 contest winners such as: Pencil, Tagmarks, Read It Later and Fire.fm.

Check out the AMO featured add-on list for the end of August 2008.

(Also, uploaded the slides from the AMO Editor’s session).

Thanks.

This rotation removed 17 add-ons and added 18. Some of the new entrants included: Ctrl-Tab, TokBox Voice and Video Call, Fast Video Download, TimeTracker & GMail Notifier.

Check out the resulting list for End of July 2008.

Some add-on authors have erroneously used “3.0″ as their maxVersion so when users with these add-ons upgrade from Firefox 3.0 to Firefox 3.0.1, the add-on gets disabled. We encourage these add-on authors to use “3.0.*” as their maxVersion.

We have verified that the majority of add-ons hosted on AMO with Firefox 3 support have “3.0.*” in their compatibility range but there are many sites from where add-ons can be acquired.

First some facts and figures to help set the context and scale for Firefox add-ons.

• There are more than 180 million active monthly Firefox users (more than 60 million daily)
• There have been more than 800 million add-on downloads since the inception of AMO
• There are about 150 million active daily add-ons (Each add-on downloaded from AMO pings once a day)
• AMO hosts about 5600 add-ons and 800 themes
• We believe that there is a sizable number of add-ons not hosted on AMO (more than 1000?)
• The AMO site has about 4-5 million page views and more than 750,000 user sessions daily
• Every day 10-20 blog/news articles are published reviewing or mentioning some Firefox add-ons

Basically, there is a TON of user and developer activity here.

Why are add-ons important?

• They are core to the Mozilla’s mission to offer “choice & innovation”
• Customization is a key differentiator for Firefox. Huge momentum versus Internet Explorer, Safari (no official site), and Opera
• Add-ons have become a platform for innovation and experimentation and it’s relatively easy to get started
• Many startups have made their bet with the Firefox user base as the entry point
• Major web properties invest in building & distributing add-ons
• We believe that Firefox users who have installed add-ons tend to be more loyal

AMO’s Core Principles

Given the above, the AMO site’s function is to present end users with add-ons, keep them up to date and support the developers who publish these add-ons. The AMO development team focuses its efforts around four main guiding principles:

• Help users find and discover add‑ons in their local language
• Ensure the highest quality for what gets published
• Create a satisfied ecosystem of add-on developers, editors and translators
• Create the most comprehensive add-ons directory on the web

In my next posts, we’ll explore the various constituents (End Users, Developers, Translators & AMO Editors) that make up the add-ons ecosystem and their unique needs.

(Note: we should recognize that even though the AMO site only supports official Mozilla products: Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Sunbird. To look at the entire ecosystem, we need to examine the many XUL-based applications and their support for add-ons. Many applications have their own dedicated add-on site such as the ones for Flock, Songbird, eMusic, and Komodo.)