Mozilla Labs

Extend Firefox 3 has wrapped up and we’re very excited to announce the winners! We received well over 100 entries, representing hundreds of hours of hard work from people around the world.

This contest had an extraordinary group of judges of which we would like to thank, including Dr. Jun Murai, Toby Padilla, Gina Trapani, Brendan Eich, Mike Connor, Mike Beltzner and our sponsors, including Last.fm, ActiveState, and VMWare.

Many of these extensions are in their early stages of experimental development, however we have seen some powerful new tools and prototypes that we are excited to share. It was hard to determine the winners, but at last, here they are.

Best New Add-on

Grand Prize Winners (3)

Pencil by Dương Thành An

GUI prototyping and diagramming that everyone can use.

The Pencil Project’s unique mission is to extend Firefox 3 to an opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use. Pencil makes uses of the SVG support in Firefox 3 to implement all the shape rendering and scripting.

Tagmarks by Felipe Tassario Gomes

One click bookmark tagging

This add-ons adds a set of icons to the quick bookmarks, allowing you to quickly add tags to your bookmarks by clicking on each icon.

HandyTag by Rémi Szymkowiak

Automatic bookmark tagging

HandyTag simply providing a complete set of most relevant keywords in the bookmark’s edition panel. These keywords are retrieved from many different sources.

Runners up (6)

• Webchunks by Daniel Glazman - Firefox implementation of the Internet Explorer Webslices feature, plus more!
• Badges on Favicons by Pau Tomàs - Add informational badges to the tab favicons
• Devo by Abimanyu Raja - A command launcher for Firefox
• Close ‘N Forget by Benoit Bailleux - close the current tab and forget about the visit
• Callout by László Bácsi - Makes the notification services of the Operating System available for web pages and Greasemonkey scripts
• Reasy by Robert Hinchliff - An RSVP reader

Best Updated Add-on

Grand Prize Winners (3)

Read it Later by Nate Weiner

Save pages of interest for later reading

Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest. Features include offline reading, sync between computers, and RSS feed creation.

TagSifter by Chiisai Tsu

Browse your bookmarks by their tags

Firefox 3 lets you tag your bookmarks, but it doesn’t give you a great way to browse your bookmarks by their tags. TagSifter tries to. Select a group of tags in the sidebar or menu, and TagSifter shows you all the related tags and bookmarks.

Bookmark Previews by John Marshall

Adds an album view and thumbnail view to the bookmarks manager

Along with an album view (like cover flow) and a thumbnail view (with drag and drop), this extension also adds previews to the tooltips in the bookmarks sidebar. Just hover over a bookmark in the sidebar to see the previews.

Best Music Add-on

Grand Prize Winner (1)

Fire.fm by Jorge Villalobos and Jose Enrique Bolaños

Direct access to the extensive music library on Last.fm

Listen to music related to your favorite artist, and discover new artists and music in the process. Listen to your friends’ favorite music. Find Last.fm users with musical taste similar to your own. Quickly access your favorite stations by just typing a few letters into the location bar.

We truly appreciate the efforts of all the participants and their support of the Mozilla Community! Thanks again for such a great contest!

Just a quick update. Most of our judging is nearing completetion. We will be making announcements soon, but in the mean time, hold tight!

We would like to cordially announce the judges for Extend Firefox 3. These are some very amazing people, and we are honored that they are participating in the contest!

• Jun Murai, Ph.D. - Vice-President and Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University
• Toby Padilla - VP Desktop & Client Software, Last.fm
• Brendan Eich - CTO of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript
• Gina Trapani - Lead Editor, Lifehacker.com
• Mike Connor - Lead Developer, Firefox
• Mike Beltzner - User Experience Director, Mozilla

Read their full biographies on the contest judges page. Thanks, again, to our amazing panel of experts!

Just one day left to get your entries in front of these industry leaders. Submit your entry now!

The submission deadline for Extend Firefox 3 is right around the corner. Next Friday, July 4th @ 11:59pm PDT, is your last chance to enter your add-on into the contest.  Remember, there are three ways you can enter (full details):

• Best New Add-on: Have something you have been working on for Firefox 3 that is ready for some major attention? The winner of this category will walk away with a Macbook Air and some free global travel.
• Best Updated Add-on: You got your add-on compatible with Firefox 3, might as well get rewarded for it! If you utilized some of the new Firefox 3 features in your most recent release, you have the chance to take home a Macbook Pro.
• Best Music Add-on: If your submission is music related, you are entered into a special category sponsored by last.fm. Once you win it, you will be whisked off to London to attend a Last.fm/Presents live event.

Overall, there are 13 chances of winning something, so your odds are pretty good. Be sure to submit before July 4th!

Handy links:

• Contest details
• Submission form
• FAQ

The submissions form is now live for Extend Firefox 3!  You can now submit your entries online now using the Extend Firefox submission form.

Deadline for entries is July 4, 2008.

See the official contest rules for complete details on this developer contest.

Last.fm sponsors Best Music Add-on for Firefox Developer Contest

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve partnered with Last.fm as part of Extend Firefox 3 to offer up a prize package for the best new music-related Firefox Add-on that demonstrates excellence in user experience, innovativeness, and use of open standards.

Prize package includes a trip to London and VIP tickets to a Last.fm/Presents live event along with a Logitech Squeezebox network music player.

Toby Padilla, Last.fm VP Desktop and Client Software will also be joining our panel of judges — to be announced later this week.

Official rules and details on this new addition to Extend Firefox are available at www.extendfirefox.com.

Are you ready to take the first hill? Now is your chance. The next edition of Extend Firefox is here!

Extend Firefox 3 is a global developer contest with prizes awarded for developing new Firefox Add-ons for the upcoming production release of Firefox 3.

All entries will be judged by a panel of experts, with Grand Prize and Runner’s Up prize packages awarded for add-ons that take advantage of the new capabilities being introduced in Firefox 3 and that demonstrate excellence in user experience, innovativeness, and use of open standards.

You can check out the winners from the last edition of this contest over on the Mozilla Labs blog.

This edition of Extend Firefox is open to even more countries and we’re also opening up a special category to award prizes to existing Firefox Add-ons that are updated for Firefox 3 and that show significant improvements in performance and user experience.

Special thanks to our sponsors, ActiveState and VMware, for offering up some cool prizes and for helping to promote and get the word out to the wider development community!

So what are you waiting for?  Start creating!

Extend Firefox 3 is open now and runs through July 4th, 2008.

Official contest rules and information are available at http://www.extendfirefox.com/.

Extend Firefox 2 has wrapped up and we’re super excited to announce the winners! We received well over 100 entries, representing hundreds of hours of hard work from people around the world.

A big thanks to all who participated! And special thanks to our panel of judges, including Garrett Camp (StumbleUpon), Brendan Eich (Mozilla), Jesse James Garrett (Adaptive Path), Tariq Krim (NetVibes), and Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us) and our sponsors, including ActiveState, O’Reilly, and VMware.

Although many of these extensions are in their early stages of experimental development, we’re blown away by what their authors were able to achieve within the time constraints of the contest, and we’re really looking forward to where they take their extensions from here. It was hard to pick our winners from among the many excellent entries, but we’ve now selected three Grand Prize winners who will each receive an Ultimate Firefox Developer Kit, including:

• travel and accommodation to a Mozilla Developer Day of the winner’s choice anywhere in the world;
• development gear, including a brand new 15″ Macbook Pro with VMware Fusion and ActiveState Komodo;
• One-Year Unlimited Access subscription to O’Reilly’s Safari Library;
• a Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag stuffed with t-shirts, books, stickers, mugs, and more.

And, twelve Runner-Up Prize winners who will each receive a Firefox Pack, including:

• a Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag stuffed with t-shirts, books, stickers, and more;
• ActiveState Komodo, mug, and t-shirt;
• a $200 Gift Certificate for O’Reilly Books.

Congratulations to our awesome fifteen! And thanks again to all who contributed add-ons and ideas. Stay tuned for details of Extend Firefox 3, which will kick off within the next month.

Grand Prize Winners

1. Minimap Sidebar Extension by Tony Farndon (UK)
   Tired of managing multiple tabs while searching for directions? Well Minimap Sidebar Extension has your solution! By integrating maps into your current Firefox window, Minimap allows you to search for and save directions on the fly.
   • Create and save a sidebar map using the addresses or address links you find on web pages (highlight then drag and drop), or by manually adding locations.
   • View traffic Info, drag and drop or manually add KML file links, local search, directions, and view satellite imagery.
   • Easily access microformatted addresses when the Operator extension is installed.

   

2. SamePlace by Massimiliano Mirra (Italy)
   Looking for a way to manage all of your instant messenger conversations? Why not look to the browser? SamePlace is an extensible, multi-network instant messenger. It allows you to keep all of your conversations in one place - much of our time online is spent in the browser, so what better place to keep an eye on our contacts than the sidebar?
   • Chat with your contacts from GMail, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, and AIM.
   • Share what you find quickly by dragging web page snippets (photos, animated emoticons, text selections, etc) into chats.
   • Play board games, sketch, give presentations, and more with support for shared applications.

   

3. Shareaholic by Jay Meattle (USA)
   Found something awesome online and can’t wait to pass it on? Tired of copying and pasting endless URLs? Shareaholic allows you to bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser.
   • Submit any web page to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, magnolia, mixx, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr and twitter.
   • E-mail pages directly to your friends.
   • Quickly out how many times a web page has been dugg or saved to del.icio.us.

   
   

Runners Up

1. All in One Sidebar
   - Ingo Wennemaring
2. Boox
   - Nicolas Martin
3. del.icio.us IncSearch
   - Hirokazu Onozato
4. Fast Dial
   - Sergey Suhoruchkin
5. FireGestures
   - Taiga Gomibuchi
6. FootieFox
   - Boris Ruf
7. qtl
   - Gilad Kutiel
8. Shrinkify
   - Mark Muday
9. Table2Clipboard
   - Davide Ficano
10. TwitterFox
    - Kazuho Okui
11. Update Scanner
    - Pete Burgers
12. URL Fixer
    - Christopher Finke

Thanks again to everyone who participated, and stay tuned for Extend Firefox 3, launching in early March.

While we are busy evaluating all of the awesome Extend Firefox 2 entries, we are in the midst of planning for Extend Firefox 3! We’re hoping to launch the new contest next month. Stay tuned for further details..

So what about prizes?? Our prizes for this round were great, how do we top them? What are your dream prizes? If you could assure yourself a spot in the winner’s circle, what would you want as a reward? We need your help to make this round of Extend Firefox even more memorable, send us your great ideas!

If you submitted an entry to Extend Firefox 2, it’s time to upload your work to AMO. If you don’t already have an AMO ID, please go create one now. Then, upload your contest submission to AMO. I know some of you have already taken this step, thank you. Also, I know some of your submissions were updated versions of extensions already hosted on AMO. In that case, please make sure the update is uploaded.

Please contact me with any questions about this process. I would like to have everyone’s work uploaded by midnight PST on Friday 1/18.

Thanks and good luck!