fligtar.com

Ever since I started working with AMO in 2006, in addition to primarily working on the development of the site and Developer Tools, I’ve been interested and involved in the direction and administration of AMO and Firefox Add-ons in general. As of today, I’ve switched roles to follow my interests, and will be working with Basil on Add-ons Product Management instead of being a part of Mozilla Web Development. I’ll be working on a number of new projects and continuing to help AMO from a different perspective. I’ll also be helping out with community management until the AMO Community Manager position is filled.

I’ll be finishing up development of the AMO 3.5 Developer Tools Revamp milestone before I make myself forget CakePHP, but I’ve already started working on a couple of exciting new projects that I hope to share with everyone soon.

I’m looking forward to working with everyone in the coming months in my new role.

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.

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.

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 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.

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:

• Edit Add-on: Manage Add-on Authors
• Edit Add-on: Manage Add-on Categories
• Edit Add-on: Edit Add-on Descriptions
• Edit Add-on: Edit Add-on Properties
• Manage Versions and Files

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.

Mark Finkle, Dave Townsend, and I have been working on the first issue of about:addons, the new monthly newsletter for add-on developers, collectors, enthusiasts, and Ken Kovash. We’ll be highlighting stories about AMO, important changes for developers in the API and platform, community news, and more! Don’t miss the Opposing Viewpoints column of the Opinion section, in which Mark and I battle over what would win in a cage match: extensions versus the team of themes+search plugins+language packs.

The first issue is scheduled to go out this Thursday, but be sure to subscribe via email before then so someone doesn’t spoil the ending for you: Subscribe now!

The next area of AMO Developer Tools being revamped is managing add-on versions and files. Here are some screenshots of the new look:

Listing of all versions:

Editing a specific version:

Changes/new features:

• Ability to delete “empty” versions that have no files
• Ability to add files to a specific version, not just the latest version
• Ability to add and remove target applications, where previously you could only change the minVersion and maxVersions of existing target applications.
• Documentation explaining what all the fields do
• Cleaner/better interface, allowing for future enhancements around versions and files

Feedback/Comments/Suggestions? Comment on this post or in the bug.

Previous post: Edit Add-on Properties

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