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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Rock Your Firefox was a Facebook application we built two years ago to add a fun, social aspect to Firefox customization. As your friends selected their favorite add-ons, you could see what add-ons were popular with people you know, and get recommendations based on those favorites.
Last year I blogged that we were no longer actively developing or fixing bugs with the application behind Rock Your Firefox, a part of AMO’s codebase. Sadly, we’ll be ending support and disabling Rock Your Firefox this Friday. We may re-launch again in the future when we can rewrite the application to fix numerous bugs and make use of many new features on both AMO and the Facebook Platform.
As a way to remember the good times you had with Rock Your Firefox, make sure to grab a Rock Your Firefox Wallpaper before it’s too late.
It’s been 4 months since my last Rock Your Firefox post, and since I’m all about stats updates lately, here’s the latest:
- Over 7500 people have tried the application, with 4400 still using it and around 45 people interacting with it daily
- Average of 13-15 application adds every day although occasional spikes up to 35 per day, and about the same number of removes every day, although most of the removes are from people that added some time ago
- This chart shows the breakdown of how users found and added the application today.
- There were 12 application adds this week from someone accepting an invitation to RYF sent by a friend
- The application “About Page” has about 50 page views every day
- Over 24,000 favorites added, 8000 of which were added using the automatic import feature
So, what amazing features are planned now? None! The app doesn’t have any major bugs and does its job well for the number of users it serves. I don’t think there’s a need for me to continue active development, which is why that actually stopped a number of months ago. Of course, the app is open source and part of AMO’s codebase, so patches are welcome.
There are a couple other reasons I’m not too excited about working on Facebook Platform stuff anymore.
For one, while it’s pretty easy to get started developing an application for Facebook Platform, it’s now almost a full-time job trying to keep an application up to date utilizing all of the latest bugfixes and improvements, something that only companies dedicated to Facebook App development can handle. There are changes and new features constantly announced in the Platform Status Feed, Developer News Blog, and weekly push SVN commit log. Developers might also find themselves spending time in the platform Bugzilla, forum, or wiki. There are so many sources of information to follow if you want to feel like you’re on top of things.
There was a time when I complained about the lack of all of these tools (mainly the open bug tracking system), so I suppose I should be happy they’re here. Rock Your Firefox has been fortunate in that it hasn’t been broken by any of the changes so far — at least not any of the intentional changes.
Another reason I think putting RYF into maintenance mode a few months ago was the right decision is that Facebook apps seem to have gone from cool and trendy to just annoying lately. When someone sends me an application invitation these days, I just feel bothered. Especially because I’m obsessive enough that I have to immediately get rid of it. I’m one of those people that clears their Gmail spam every time they notice the number. (Note: to anyone who plans on sending me a bunch of application invitations now, I have anticipated this and determined that it will not be funny. Now you don’t have to do it!)
This is a bit longer than it was supposed to be. I’ll probably post another RYF update in 6 months or so. If you haven’t tried out Rock Your Firefox, you can check it out here.
Update of 2006 State of the Projects.
Free-time project status:
- Password Exporter – Finished version 1.1 this week and is currently awaiting localization to the 20 languages it’s now in. Should be released sometime the first week of January. More details on that version will be in an upcoming post. Password Exporter has now been download over 203,000 times and has about 70,000 active users every day.
- FavLoc – Haven’t had time to work on it. Will try to find time to update compatibility for Firefox 3 sometime soon, but doubt I’ll add any new features. 28,000 downloads and 6,000 active users.
- LSU Campus Map – I haven’t updated anything since I first made it a few years ago, but it’s still very popular with people just searching for an LSU campus map. It had especially high traffic following the recent shooting on campus.
- All other projects including arraise, Startup Authenticator, Degree Analyzer, elurt, and all other ideas in my head that I detail but never start – I haven’t had time to work on and are pretty much dead.
Work project status:
- addons.mozilla.org – Remora was launched in March and the AMO team is currently working on version 3.2 to be launched in mid-January. I’ve been working on a statistics dashboard for add-on developers, and after 3.2 will be continuing to work mainly on AMO stuff, probably including a Developer Control Panel revamp with lots of new features.
- Operation Firefox – Contest was a big success and winners were announced earlier this month. Site will probably stay the way it is.
- Extend Firefox – Contest ends tonight. Future plans to be announced later.
- Rock Your Firefox – 0.6 released. Work on other milestones is not currently scheduled, and the app is pretty much in maintenance mode right now.
- Personas – Site hasn’t officially launched yet, but has been finished for a few weeks.
- Misc. other projects popping up and going away just as quickly.
The last few days I’ve been cleaning up a lot of site stuff, as I was quite shocked to find I had over 50 subdomains on this site, many of which are no longer used. I think I’ll be removing the ribbon from my pages soon, as I don’t think it’s helping anything.
5500 people have tried Rock Your Firefox since it launched in August, and yesterday version 0.5 was released.
New things in 0.5:
- Invitation tool – easily invite your friends to add the application (if they haven’t already!)
- Preview viewer – clicking on an add-on’s preview image in the display page will now open a preview viewer to view all of the previews
- Friends that add the application will now appear in the add-on feed
- Misc. minor bug fixes – see the full list here
So, get started inviting all of your friends to Rock their Firefox!
