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The new Edit Properties page of the AMO Developer Tools area is where the main settings of an add-on can be configured. The available fields on this new page are: Add-on Name, Default Locale, Add-on Icon, Homepage, Support Email Address and Website, and other add-on flags such as viewing the source online. These fields were previously mixed in the single edit add-on page.

Some screenshots of the new layout:

The only new field for this page is a flag for add-ons that contain binary components. The localizable Add-on Name, homepage, and support fields were previously on the Edit Descriptions page, but were moved here where they make more sense. One of the biggest wins of the new layout is the explanation of what each field does, consistent with the rest of the revamp.

If you have any feedback, please comment here or in the bug.

Previous post: Part 3, Manage Add-on Categories
Next post: Part 5, Manage Versions and Files

Last week, Facebook launched a new tool called Lexicon that measures the number of times a term is mentioned on user, event, and group walls. This is what the results look like for Firefox:

That huge spike at the beginning of April is when Firefox 3 Beta 5 was released. The gaps in the graph are when the term wasn’t mentioned enough to be recorded. Comparing the results of other browsers isn’t too helpful as Safari and Opera are common nouns, and most people would abbreviate Internet Explorer as IE.

Although no actual numbers are given, it’s still cool to be able to visualize a part of the biggest way Firefox is adopted around the world: telling your friends about it.

In last week’s part 2 preview of the upcoming changes to AMO’s Developer Tools area, I posted some screenshots of the new Edit Descriptions page. Before getting to the preview of the next page, I wanted to give some more information on AMO milestone 3.5’s schedule. After all of the sections of the new Edit Add-on area are finished, they’ll be pushed live to AMO where developers will have the option to try out the new edit pages rather than use the current one. This will give the new pages enough testing to make sure they’re ready to take over, while providing an alternative in case any major bugs are found. The current edit page will remain the default until 3.5 is officially launched after various other revamp pages and finished, localized, and tested.

Now, on to part 3: the Manage Add-on Categories page. This is what the Edit Categories experience currently is:

And this is the new version:

Notable changes include:

• Instead of one multi-select box with all categories for all supported applications, each supported application has its own box with a separate selection box for up to 3 categories.
• Validation was based on all categories and inconsistent, whereas now there is a hard limit of 3 categories per application.
• The Other/Miscellaneous category for each application was unregulated and many add-ons were in several normal categories in addition to the “Other” or “Miscellaneous” category. Now, an add-on can either be in 1-3 real categories or only the Other/Miscellaneous category.

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment here. Thanks for reading!

Next, part 4: Edit Add-on Properties

Last week I blogged Part 1 of the previews of upcoming changes to the Developer Tools area of addons.mozilla.org. This week we’ll look at another new page in the revamp, now known as AMO milestone 3.5.

One UI element present on a number of pages in the Developer Tools area is the Translation Box. Anytime there’s a field that can be localized, this box appears to allow developers to switch text fields between locales. This is what the Translation Box currently looks like on the Edit Add-on page:

This is what the new Edit Add-on Descriptions page looks like:

The new Translation Box has a bunch of improvements:

• Documentation! The site currently has very little documentation about where fields are displayed and doesn’t have any explanation of what the Translation Box actually is. In the new site, every field has a description of what it is and where it is displayed, and a help section explains how translations work:
  
• Clearer understanding of translations with the idea of “adding” and “removing” translations rather than leaving untranslated fields blank.
   
• Sleek appearance. The translation boxes match the rest of the site, although some of the fields pictured may move to the Edit Add-on Properties page.
• Complete rewrite of backend code for retrieving and saving translations that will dramatically reduce the number of queries and processing required.
• Validation and errors - In the current site, localized fields can’t be properly validated, for example, limiting the summary to 250 characters. The new translation box handles maximum length detection nicely:
  

Closer to 3.5 we’ll have a staging area setup for testing these new tools, but until then, please post any feedback you have as comments here. Thanks!

Next, part 3: Manage Add-on Categories

As I neglected to announce 2 weeks ago, AMO 3.2 launched very smoothly (technically anyway - the cluster stayed up this time!)

For a few weeks before 3.2 launched, I’ve been working on a big project for an upcoming release of AMO: a rewrite of the Developer Tools area to make the user interface more intuitive and provide a number of new features to give developers greater control over many aspects of their add-on listings. I don’t have the work done so far on a staging server, but I’ll be blogging with screenshots as I finish various sections and asking for community feedback.

There are a number of big changes to the overall structure of how add-ons will be submitted, updated, and modified. The first few posts will focus on the new editing tools. Managing add-ons will be really simple and easy to figure out in the new design because the tools have been separated out into 6 different sections rather than one long, confusing page.

The first section I’d like to introduce and get feedback on is the Manage Add-on Authors page. It currently looks like this at the top of the Edit Add-on page:

The new page:

New features:

• Authors can now have 3 different roles: Owner, Developer, and Viewer
• Someone can be an author but not show up as one on the public page. For example, if a company has multiple people working on an add-on but only wants one to show up as the company name, the others can be hidden.
• The display order of authors can now be specified, so a developer who does 90% of the work can be listed first rather than by name or user id. (bug 291629)

If you’re an add-on developer, please take a look at the screenshot and comment with any feedback.

Thanks!

Next, Part 2: Edit Add-on Descriptions