This weekend I deactivated my Facebook account after six years of near-daily use. I was surprised that Facebook showed such disregard for their users’ privacy by making their new Instant Personalization features opt-out so soon after the Google Buzz backlash a few months ago and their own adventures with Beacon a couple years ago. My surprise turned to shock when, after I disabled these new features, I went to CNN.com and discovered it knew who I was.
posts categorized as “mozilla”
Building A Better Button
4 comments
history of add-on install buttonsIf you’ve ever installed an add-on from Mozilla’s add-ons website, you’ve probably clicked on one of the cute, innocent-looking buttons that stand between you and the add-on you want. They’re really important, but also really complicated little devils.
Originally, the job of this button was just to link to the add-on file, and the only complication occurred if the add-on was platform-specific. Things have gotten quite a bit more complex over the years, and the role of the button changed to be a guide as to what the user should and shouldn’t install with the introduction of “smart install buttons” two years ago. Today, buttons are more complicated than ever, taking into account:
- which application’s part of the website you’re browsing in
- which browser you’re using
- whether the browser add-on is incompatible due to not having compatibility bumped after your browser version’s release
- whether the browser add-on is incompatible because your browser is outdated and requires a newer version
- whether the browser add-on is incompatible because it requires an alpha/beta version that has not yet been released
- whether you have JavaScript enabled
- what type of add-on it is
- whether the add-on is compatible with your operating system
- whether the add-on is featured
- whether the add-on has been reviewed
- whether the add-on is self-hosted
- whether the add-on has a EULA
- whether the add-on has a contributions roadblock or post-download page
- whether the button’s context requires it to be large or small
- whether you’re logged in
A New Front Door
27 commentsAdd-ons are one of Firefox’s best features, and no matter which of the thousands you’ve tried, there’s one thing they all share: the Add-ons Manager. You know, this thing:
It’s where add-ons can be installed, disabled, removed, searched, and oftentimes tweaked. It’s used quite a lot, and is how many Firefox users discover the existence of add-ons. It has largely remained the same for a number of years, with the addition of the “Get Add-ons” pane in Firefox 3 that shows several recommended add-ons and allows for searching the Firefox Add-ons gallery for new add-ons. Approximately 20% of add-on downloads come directly from the Add-ons Manager, mostly from the recommended add-ons.
Sandboxing the Sandbox
26 commentsWith almost 2 billion downloads, add-ons have proven to be a huge part of Firefox’s growth and popularity over the last 5 years. As Firefox continues to be adopted by non-technical, mainstream users, the security and consumer experience of installing third party add-ons becomes increasingly more important. It’s with these users in mind that I propose some major changes to the way add-ons are submitted and distributed through Mozilla’s official add-ons gallery.
First, some background
This month marks the three year anniversary of the “sandbox” review model being introduced on addons.mozilla.org. Veteran Mozilla contributors and add-on fans may remember what the process was like prior to the sandbox: add-ons were inaccessible until they were reviewed, new add-ons and updates were listed together in the same queue, and the quality of some of the reviewed add-ons was questionable.
The current add-on submission and review process was designed to surface unreviewed add-ons in a “sandbox” to testers who wanted to try them out and write reviews, while still keeping them far away from casual Firefox users just looking to customize their browser. We hoped this would alleviate developer frustration over long review times and raise the quality bar, as not every add-on would have to be “public” and reviewed in order to be distributed on the site. In its original incarnation, the sandbox excelled at keeping untested add-ons from everyday users, but was found lacking in usability for advanced users: no one could figure out the process of signing up for an account and then opting in to sandbox access in order to see the unreviewed add-ons.
On Surprises & Business Models
3 commentsA little over four years ago I created my first Firefox add-on. Things were different back then: there were only around 2,000 extensions (we didn’t call them add-ons), addons.mozilla.org was update.mozilla.org, and add-on developers always seemed to respect their users’ privacy and choices without the need for Mozilla to get involved in telling developers what they can and can’t do.
Times have changed, and last April, the add-ons team came up with a policy statement about respecting the choices a user has made, not changing defaults unless the user would expect that change, and not interfering with other add-ons. We hadn’t named the policy, so when it came time to blog about it, I read through it trying to think of a name that summarized our position. The result was the oft-cited “No Surprises” policy, now officially adopted after some slight modifications.
Frankly, I am still surprised on a weekly basis by the behavior of some add-ons and companies targeting add-ons. This recent flurry of issues we’re dealing with has left me wondering, “what’s so different between add-ons just a few years ago and now?” Money, of course.