has an undiagnosed addiction to steamed pork buns
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posts categorized as “mozilla”

Installing multiple add-ons from a collection

Since the launch of collections last year, one of the most common feature requests AMO gets is the ability to install all or some of the add-ons in a collection at the same time. There’s really only one thing that has held us back from offering this functionality, but unfortunately it’s not something easily overcome: conflicting first-run experiences.

These days, almost every add-on has some sort of first-run experience, whether it’s a new tab that’s opened, a sidebar, a wizard, or (worst of all) a modal dialog. When several add-ons are installed at the same time, these elements all fight for attention, often in confusing and unexpected ways. I wrote a post on this some time ago that showed an example of what havoc can be wreaked with only 3-4 add-ons, as well as some suggestions on how developers can improve this area.

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Rock Your Firefox Redux

Just a few hours ago we launched a new website for Firefox add-ons to help folks looking to customize their browser discover new add-ons they might like. Whether you’re just starting to try out add-ons or have been using them for years, Rock Your Firefox will feature several top add-on reviews each week to help you find your next favorite.

The Firefox Add-ons site has thousands of add-ons, which is great when you already have an idea of what you’re looking for. But for a user just trying add-ons for the first time who wants to find a top-notch, safe, useful add-on and not be overwhelmed with tons of choices, Rock Your Firefox steps in to highlight great add-ons in small doses.

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Revamping the AMO Statistics Dashboard

Developers got their first glimpse at detailed statistics for their add-ons in early 2008 when we launched the Developer Statistics Dashboard for every add-on hosted on AMO. Since then, we’ve made incremental improvements to this tool, such as adding grouping and comparison options, data tables, locale usage stats, contributions, and most recently download sources.

In July, we asked developers to take a survey about how they use the Statistics Dashboard, and as part of our AMO rewrite currently underway, we’ll be revamping the dashboard.

Here’s a mockup from our designer, Chris Howse, of the overview page of the new dashboard:

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AMO Download Sources Update

We announced download source tracking for add-ons hosted on AMO in November, and since then have made a few improvements across the site. We reduced the number of unknown sources by half, from 22% to 11%, by scouring the site to find edge cases where tracking codes weren’t being applied. Now, every install button on the site should have a tracking code.

We’ve also added several new codes, such as on mozilla.com’s Firefox Customization page. It’s exciting to see that many add-ons have adopted the external source tracking feature to track downloads from their websites and marketing campaigns, and those downloads now make up 2% of the total.

Here’s an updated pie chart showing the source distribution of the 2.1 million downloads last Friday, the day after Firefox 3.6′s launch.

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MySQL Output Converter

While I’m at work I pretty much always have a terminal window open with a MySQL prompt. Whether it’s helping someone troubleshoot an account problem, looking up stats, or gathering data for reports, I run a lot of queries throughout the day.

Oftentimes I want to make a chart with that data, which requires me switching database servers, looking up the MySQL CSV syntax on morgamic’s blog, and scp’ing the CSVs to my laptop.

I’ve grown tired of doing that, and tonight I finally did something about it: MySQL Output Converter

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