AMO Add-on Review Status

June 24th, 2008

The AMO editors have been hard at work, reviewing 255 add-on updates and submissions in the 2 weeks before Firefox 3’s launch, and 238 updates/submissions between launch day (Tuesday) and Sunday.

There are currently 228 updates in the queue and 373 new nominated add-ons. There are normally about 10 new add-ons submitted to AMO every day, but since the release there have been 20-40 every day. Similarly, there are normally about 60-70 updates to existing add-ons every day, but since the launch there have been 100 - 150 every day.

Below is a graph of submission and update rates since 2004, hitting a peak of 235 updates on the day after release and 42 new submissions 2 days after release. You can also see a zoomed-in version of the graph. Astute observers will also notice a large increase in submissions in November 2006, when Firefox 2 was released.

Graph of Add-on Submissions per Day

Please be patient as our editors work through this backlog. You can read more about volunteering if you’d like to help.

A huge thanks to all of the editors who have donated their time and effort to make sure Firefox 3’s add-ons experience is great. Below is the list of editors with the number of reviews they’ve done since March 2007.

Editor Reviews since March 2007 June 2008 Reviews
Mel Reyes 2026 199
Oliver Saier 1663 26
Pavel Cvrcek 1102 64
Archaeopteryx 560 58
Andrew Williamson 335 43
Lukas Blakk 223 0
Michael Z 186 29
Shawn Wilsher 162 0
Cesar Oliveira 146 61
Anthony Hughes 118 0
Basil Hashem 115 44
Sid Kalra 112 0
Brian King 88 27
Mike Shaver 35 0
Thomas McMahon 26 0
Wil Clouser 25 0
Jeremy Morton 23 11
Justin Scott 22 9
Alex Polvi 16 0
John Ford 13 0
Aronnax G. 11 0
Kohei Yoshino 9 2
Gijs Kruitbosch 9 0
mcdavis941 8 0
Prasad Sunkari 6 0
Naoyuki ASANO 5 0
Frederic Wenzel 3 0
Ryan Jackson 2 0
Majken Connor 2 0
Pascal Beyeler 2 0
Andrei Hajdukewycz 1 0

A note on add-on stats this week

June 20th, 2008

Add-on developers who log in to AMO and check their stats dashboard may be very happy to find that their active daily users have increased quite a bit this week (my own add-on reports a 46% increase since last week). I wanted to remind developers how we determine ADU and why it is slightly skewed this week.

By default, Firefox will check an add-on’s updateURL every 24 hours to look for an update. Add-ons that don’t have an updateURL specified default to AMO, which is how we determine how many “active daily users” an add-on has. The number of times an add-on’s GUID was pinged on AMO is approximately how many people were using that add-on that day.

In addition to the 24 hour checks, the same URL is pinged for several other reasons such as manually checking for updates, Firefox installations and upgrades, and installed add-on detection for Rock Your Firefox. Unfortunately, there’s not currently a way to differentiate these types of pings, so they are all counted as active daily users instead of only the scheduled pings. (see bug 392180)

So, this week’s large increase can be attributed to a couple things:

  • Downloads - Most add-ons also had a huge increase in the number of downloads this week. My own add-on went from 3,000 downloads per day to hitting 16,000 on Wednesday. If your add-on’s install.rdf doesn’t say it’s compatible with the Firefox version installed, Firefox will ping AMO to see if there’s a new version or if this version actually is compatible. (This is how you can update your compatibility on AMO without uploading a new version.)
  • Firefox 3 installations - When users upgrade Firefox to a new version of Firefox 2 or to Firefox 3, it will ping AMO for every extension installed to see if there’s a new maxVersion. After that, it displays a list of incompatible add-ons and offers the ability to check for new versions. (Thanks to Dave Townsend for researching this.)

Both of these will result in one or more additional update pings, as the compatibility will still be checked every 24 hours as usual.

And now, some aggregate statistics for your enjoyment:

Total downloads from AMO last Tuesday (6/10) and Wednesday (6/11): 932,072 + 985,229 = 1,917,301
Total downloads from AMO this Tuesday (6/17) and Wednesday (6/18): 2,454,024 + 4,472,336 = 6,926,360

Update pings to AMO from hosted add-ons last Wednesday (6/11): 115,375,160
Update pings to AMO from hosted add-ons this Wednesday (6/18): 141,233,285
(I expect Thursday’s ADU count is a good bit higher than Wednesday’s.)

Firefox 3 Released

June 17th, 2008

Firefox 3 has been released! Check out all the new features (or see the field guide) and then go download it!

We’re aiming to set a world record with the most software downloads in 24 hours, so if you’re already using a Firefox 3 beta, make sure to download the full version from mozilla.com. Keep in mind that if you’re using Firefox 2, you will not automatically be prompted to upgrade to Firefox 3 yet, so you’ll have to download it yourself.

Preview of New AMO Developer Tools

June 14th, 2008

With the release of AMO 3.4.3 tonight, there’s now a way to try out the new Developer Tools that I’ve been blogging about.

From the en-US Developer Tools, click on “Edit Add-on” next to one of your hosted add-ons. At the top of the edit page, you’ll see a box that offers a try-out of the new edit tools.

The following new tools are available:

The tools are accessible on preview.addons.mozilla.org as well, if you don’t want your changes to affect the production database.

If you find any bugs or have any feedback, please file a bug or add it to the wiki.