Mozilla’s efforts are so critical to the vibrancy of the Internet and it sits at the nexus of a million exciting developments. So, I remain a big fan and will do what I can to continue to participate.

Thank you for the tremendous feedback about add-ons and AMO. Working publicly, radically, openly has forever changed how I manage and run projects. The torch has been handed to Mike Morgan (Morgamic) who has kindly agreed to take on general responsibility for AMO. Meanwhile, Rey Bango, our AMO Community Mobilizer continues his excellent work with add-on developers and editor outreach.

Rock On! Add-ons.

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

Thanks.

• Add-on development questions should go to the extensions mailing list/newsgroup.
• User support for working with Firefox and add-ons should go to Mozilla Support or the Firefox Support list
• User support for particular add-ons, should go to add-on author’s support forums or email addresses

The software used to run AMO is open sourced under the Mozilla Public Licensed (MPL) and is maintained under the following SVN repository.

We welcome contribution to the AMO project in the form of discussions, enhancement requests, bug filings and patches.

You can receive the articles in one of three ways:

a) If you are interested in joining the mailing list and receiving email, you can visit https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo, click on dev-amo and subscribe yourself to the list.

b) If you wish to read/subscribe by reading articles on the web, you can use Google Groups at http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.amo.

c) If you wish to use a dedicated news reader, you can point your news reader to news.mozilla.org, look for new newsgroups and subscribe to mozilla.dev.amo.

Some of the bugs resolved include the dreaded “version bumped add-on will not install”, empty review pages (sometimes), and ability to see sandboxed versions of a public add-ons.

For localizers: You can now upload language packs for applications.

For Add-ons Authors: Previously, if you wanted to link to the XPI file hosted on AMO, you had to update your links for every version released. Now you can link to the latest downloadable revision of your add-on by using the following URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/latest/{Addon-ID}. This will redirect to the latest available XPI file for your add-on.

See the full fix list.

Theme Browser
Ever find it hard to see a bunch of Firefox themes at a glance? We did too and so we created the Theme Browser.

You will now be able to quickly see many theme previews at once, switch between categories and re-order to your heart’s content.

Advanced Search
Just click on the new “Advanced” tab at the bottom of the search panel and you’ll access the advanced search options where you can specify your search using all sorts of parameters.

You can limit your searches for add-ons to selected types, platforms, application version ranges, when it was last updated; then order the results by popularity or other orderings. One capability which may not be so evident is that leaving the search term field blank, will show you all the add-ons that meet the specified criteria, so you can easily find all Firefox 3-compatible themes (as depicted above) or the recently updated Firefox 3-compatible add-ons, etc…Of course, you can bookmark these custom searches to quickly get at your unique search results.

Developer Tools
The last area with new AJAXy flavor and lots of changes are the Developer Tools. A near complete rewrite, it is currently deployed alongside the older version until the full migration is complete. It has been described in detail in a five part series by Fligtar. With this release of AMO, you can try editing your add-on properties, authors, etc… and let us know if you find any problems. (The add-on submit process and the image preview manager are still under development.)

All the Rest
Besides that, the team has fixed a myriad of stuff including:

• Auto-approval of all users reviews. All user reviews are made public immediately. Users and add-on authors can flag questionable reviews for moderation by AMO editors.
• Optimized search performance and moved to a full text search module
• Changes in the search algorithm so that exact name matches show up first
• Ability to deliver add-on updates to language packs
• An updated site privacy policy
• Several new localizations, now at 27 total including: Catalan-Valencian & Hebrew
• The inclusion of experimental add-ons on user info pages

• New list views for Newest & Recently Updated add-ons
• Display of last modified date on add-on pages
• A revised version history page
• Ability for users to change their email address and many fixes related to the user signup process, email address and password handling
• Easy discovery of languages and dictionaries details pages
• Various search items: new search button, themes, dictionaries and language packs showing now up correctly

There were other fixes as well – full bugzilla fix list. We plan to revise AMO with another release in about 2 weeks.

Last week, Mitchell outlined a series of guiding principles for the Mozilla organization regarding web sites, data and privacy.

She proposed we use a web analytics tool from Omniture to help us understand how users interact with our web properties. After considering feedback and any commentary, we’ve updated the privacy policy to support the use of this web analytics tool. The new policy conforms to the commitments laid out in the earlier discussion.  Absent any major objections, we plan to update the policy as proposed and implement the web analytics tool immediately thereafter.Lest you think you are experiencing déjà vu, I indeed blogged about something similar back in February 2008 – the most notable difference this time around is that Google Analytics is not in the picture. Only Omniture is under consideration. So, here are the relevant docs.

• Current policy (dated Dec 2007)
• Revised Policy (dated Apr 2008)
  • Privacy Policy
  • Opt-Out Procedures
  • Third-Party Web Analytics Providers page

• An HTML diff between the Dec 2007 and the April 2008 versions

• A PDF diff between the Dec 2007 and the April 2008 versions
• A PDF diff between the Feb 2008 draft and the April 2008 version

Note that this policy change is only in effect for mozilla.com and associated web properties and does not change the existing Firefox privacy policy.

We encourage any questions, discussions and followups to the mozilla.governance mailing list and newsgroup.

Morgamic posted an explanation of the rationale and trade-offs that we were trying to make with the new design. It has been a challenge for us to cater to the various audiences that AMO has – from first-time user to seasoned expert users to add-on authors/publishers.

To summarize the top concerns that we’ve heard:

• “You removed valuable information that we had previously“- application compatibility information, add-on modication dates, download counts (in selected views). This was far and away, the most pressing problem.
• “The new Smart Install button is dumb!” – advanced users were frustrated by the limitation that AMO placed and its inability to allow downloads of any version for testing purposes, etc..  This combined with the above issue along with some nasty bugs exacerbated the issue.
• “You removed two important add-on lists” – Bring back the New Add-ons and Recently Updated add-ons views
• “You combined some views in a way that makes it impossible to find Themes & Search Engines“. In an attempt to simplify the navigation and put everything into categories, we combined Themes with Apperance-related add-ons and Search Engines with Search-related add-ons. This was probably an oversimplification that caused grief to many.
• “Restore the discussions“. We opted to remove add-on discussions from the site but it was hasty. We’ll be adding them back in a way that allows flexibility for authors who want to host their own forums.

The community also reiterated some previously mentioned feature requests:

• Add an advanced search that lets me search by app max/min version range, platform, add-on type, etc…
• How to deal with the use case of “Should I upgrade to Fx 3 now – are my favorite add-ons compatible?”

One of the common misperceptions is that the AMO site now requires users to login to be able to install and download add-ons. This is certainly not the case for public add-ons. With this design, we surfaced sandbox’ed or experimental add-ons – those are the only ones requiring login since they are meant for users who know what they are getting into.

Note: There is certainly more feedback and requests and they are all been tracked in Bugzilla.

To address these, we will be publishing some updates to AMO which you’ll be able to see shortly at our preview site. The next iteration (AMO v3.2.1) is a minor bug fix release that we’ll roll out next week addressing some of the most critical bugs as well as easier access to download any version of an add-on. It’ll look something like this:

We’ll be following this AMO v3.2.1 bug fix release with a set of smaller scoped, milestone releases that address the top issues on our AMO v3.4 bug backlog.

What’s New in AMO 3.2?

Visual Identity & Navigation

• An easy-on-the-eye visual identity (called “Eco” for its soothing color) with new menus, buttons, drop-down lists, and site header
• Add-on categories available from all pages for easier navigation
• Quick links to dictionaries, themes & search engines
• More add-ons can be viewed per page (configurable for up to 100/page)
• Indicator status such as “experimental” (aka sandbox) or “recommended” is displayed
• An “Application” drop down menu for easy access to Thunderbird, SeaMonkey & Sunbird add-ons
• Experimental/Sandbox addons are shown even when a user is not logged in but installation requires login. Removed option for “include sandbox items” from user preference.

Smart Install Buttons

• As we are in a transition time between Firefox 2 and preparing for the release of Firefox 3, we’ve added OS platform and Firefox version detection to the “Add to Firefox” buttons that appear. So, depending upon the version of Firefox that you are using and the compatibility of the add-on, you’ll see one of the following:
• When an add-on is compatible with your version of Firefox, you’ll see

• When an add-on is only compatible with an older version of Firefox, you’ll see

• When an add-on is only compatible with a newer version of Firefox, you’ll see

• If the add-on is in the sandbox, it’ll be marked “experimental”, and you’ll need to login to install it

• For Thunderbird, add-on buttons indicate “Download Now” instead of “Add” to more accurately reflect what happens

Add-on Search

• About 50% of users come to AMO to search for a particular add-on. It used to be exceedingly difficult to do that. So, we’ve given the search box in this new design significant prominence.
• Ability to limit searches within categories
• The search result page now has install buttons (no need to go to the details page any more)
• Experimental (sandbox’ed) add-ons are now shown in search results and clearly marked (no need to switch between public and sandbox search any more)

Site Content

• Add-on download counts are now visible publicly to help users discover popular add-ons
• A revised ratings form with a new 5-point rating scale. (All previous add-on ratings have been adjusted accordingly.)
• A revamped add-on version history page (without Smart install buttons so that you can download add-ons for any Firefox version or OS platform)
• A new viewer for add-on images
• Massively revised dictionaries & language pack page with support for more than 60 languages.

Featured & Recommended Add-ons

• We’ve revamped how recommended add-ons work. In the past there was a single list of recommended add-ons that was available. From that list, one was randomly selected and featured on the AMO front page. As this list grew, there was less “exposure time” for each add-on and no filtering whatsoever.
• This revision of AMO introduces two new capabilities: featured add-ons and locale-specific targeting.
• Now, when an add-on is marked as recommended it is done so for a single category. The revised category pages include 2 “slots” where recommended add-ons will appear. See the Social & Communications category for an example. We will be increasing the number of recommended add-ons to accommodate these extra slots.
• Featured add-ons are a selection of recommended add-ons that are shown in one of 3 slots on the front page of AMO. Caegory recommended add-ons will be rotated on a regular basis onto the front page.
• We’ve also added per locale featured and recommended lists – this allows AMO editors and the Mozilla community to tailor AMO for particular locales
• Themes can also be recommended

Search Engines

• Revised search engines page (and added OpenSearch support)
• Support for search engine categorization
• Firefox search field integration on the search engine details pages. You can easily add search engines using the Firefox Search Engines menu

Discussions…Frozen

• Feedback from many add-ons authors indicated that they were dissatisfied with the discussion system on AMO, mostly because most authors already maintained a separate support forum elsewhere. mozillaZine Forums, MozDev forums or other. So, we’ve frozen all existing add-on discussions. Users can no longer add new topics but existing topics can be read. We’ll maintain the content for a few months and then eventually remove them.
• As a replacement for discussions, we’ve added new support forum URL & support email links for each add-on. Add-on authors should edit their add-ons and point to either a support email or a support forum location and AMO will link to there.
• Required Actions for add-ons authors: Determine a location for your support discussions and update your add-on please.

Developer Tools

• The ever clever Justin Scott was the brains behind the reworking of this area of AMO. He’s blogged about this earlier during the beta cycle.
• A new add-on dashboard with summary information (along with an RSS feed that you can subscribe to)
• Authors will also find beautiful, functional charts that graph both add-on active daily users (ADU) as well as total downloads
• The entire data history of the add-on from July 2007
• Graph zoom in/out and expand graph capabilities
• For active users, you can filter and chart by the versions of the add-on, by versions of Firefox, by addon status or by users’ operating system
• Add-on authors may choose to make their detailed statistics public – you can visit this link to see which add-ons have opted to do this
• Finally, you can export the data as a CSV in order to perform your own analysis

An amazing 24 languages!

• That’s right. From Albanian to Ukrainian, we’ve got your locale. Special thanks go out to the Mozilla web localizer community who did an incredible job to help us simultaneously launch this site with 24 languages!
• The list includes: Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Spain) and Ukrainian

This has been an incredible effort and lots of long hours by many groups. Please help me congratulate the entire dev, QA, UX, product, IT/Operations, AMO Editors and localization teams for helping make this a great release.

Enjoy!

For those that love detail – here’s a full list of fixes as tracked in Bugzilla

Mozilla has selected Omniture and Google Analytics as additional web analytics solutions. The major difference between what Mozilla has today and these third-party solutions is that Omniture and Google Analytics are hosted web site services. In order to accommodate, we need to make some changes to our current website privacy policy, provide opt-out procedures and affect a minor change for SUMO’s Live Chat feature.

Below are the proposed changes to the mozilla.com privacy policy.

• Redlined markup of proposed changes (PDF format)
• Candidate new web site privacy policy & hosts file opt-out instructions
• Current web site privacy policy

Note that this policy change is only in effect for mozilla.com and associated web properties and does not change the existing Firefox privacy policy.

We encourage any questions, discussions and followups to the mozilla.governance mailing list and newsgroup.

Thanks.