State of the add-ons report: April 21st
April 21st, 2008Preface: There is a lot of tracking going on with regards to what add-ons are up to date. I’m going to try to keep a regular discussion going about the current status, hang-ups, and wish list of add-ons compatible with Firefox 3. With that, here goes the first edition of the “State of the add-ons report”.
AMO add-on compatibility
Addons.mozilla.org is currently allowing developers to mark their add-ons compatible with 3.0pre. 3.0 will be available in when RC1 is released, which is expected late April, or early May.
Top 95% compatibility
We are currently at 60% compatibility (by usage, of the top 95% of addons), 80% if we count add-ons that we know are in the works. See our compatibility chart for latest info.
Top add-on we wish was available
PicLens. PicLens has roughly 500,000 daily users, but is only compatible with 2.0.0.*. Help by sending feedback, or updating the bug, encouraging the PicLens development team to update to 3.0.
[UPDATE: the tracking bug says there is a beta in the works! no word on ETA yet]
Feel free to nominate next week’s in the comments.
Top add-on we are worried about
Tab Mix Plus. We’ve seen traffic on TMP development forums, but no word of when it will be released on addons.mozilla.org. Please comment on any news in the tracking bug.
Feel free to nominate next week’s in the comments.
Top add-on that is on its way
Firebug. Yes, that’s right, Firebug is getting close to compatibility. Find out and help at the tracking bug. In fact, Firebug is currently blocking the Firefox 3 release — meaning we will not release Firefox 3 without it up to date.
Feel free to nominate next week’s in the comments.
Other news
Adblock (not Adblock Plus, which is ready for prime time), is not going to be updated to Firefox 3. In the tracking bug, we’re trying to figure out if we should update all the Adblock users to Adblock Plus. Should we? Or should we just let the add-on die? Weigh in to a solution after reading the tracking bug.
That concludes this state of the add-ons report. I would really appreciate feedback into format, content, and overall message. Thanks!
April 21st, 2008 at 12:56 pm
The Firebug 1.1 beta works perfectly with FF3, and seems just as usable as the previous version was on FF2. That’s compatible enough for me…
April 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Good to see this work happening.
With regard to format and content… you’ve picked out a few here, but rather than having completely open nominations, why not pick up a few more popular ones yourself and update them each week.
I’ve been looking at your complete list of bars (wasn’t it boxes before?) occasionally, and following links to the bugs. If other people are doing the same, then what would be good would be something “top 10 addons not yet available”, and then a 1 line comment giving the status as far it’s known. So…
Skype Toolbar - [bug link] - beta available from developer’s site
Firebug - [bug link] - updated version on the way
Noia - developer will release for firefox 3
Tab mix plus - no info yet, but there’s activity on developer forums
FireFTP - development version available on developers site
Foxmarks - closed beta on developer’s site
etc
Or… maybe you could leave this out of the report, and add a one-line status in the big bars report along with the bug link? Or, maybe even scrape the status whiteboard out of the bug? Or maybe I’m taking this too far :)
April 21st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
@michael: yeah, I agree — I picked the particular ones we need help with, and will continue to due so. I wanted to leave it open for nominations just in case I missed something. The format you posted is great, and I’ll try to incorporate it next week.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I will ship the following as soon as Firefox 3RCs ship and AMO allows 3.0.* maxVersion:
Context Search
Foobar Controls
Image Toolbar
New Tab Homepage
Paste Quote
Context Highlight will follow shortly after. Please consider these “in the works”, for your statistics.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I had an idea: Make a place or method by which extension users can “make noise” in a civil or controlled manner.
This could be a way that extension developers could see the need for their extension to be compatible with Firefox 3.0.
This is, of course, with the underlying assumption that the main problem is a lack of motivation (and that seeing the usage and need of their extension would encourage them to update them).
Perhaps it would be as simple as voting.
Maybe put a link next to the disabled download link on each incompatible page that says “I wish this addon was compatible with Firefox 3.0: Vote!” and make the vote a seperate button. Then say, “your vote has been counted”
Something to that effect.
You’d probably need to required users to log in of course.
Just a thought.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Update all them Adblock users to Adblock Plus. It’s the simplest method to keep people w/o ads (less they move back to fx2) and let Adblock die.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 am
Pragmatism isn’t the only consideration regarding the Adblock issue. When a user installs an extension they are explicitly authorising AMO to neutrally serve them updates to that extension. They are not consenting to other extensions they may also find useful to be installed. Apple’s serving of new software through an update channel has been rightly excoriated both in this community and across the wider web. Simply pushing out Adblock Plus to Adblock users shouldn’t be countenanced.
What needs to happen is that users be presented with a choice similar to that suggested by Ngamer01 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=363471#c11). Users should be provided with a very brief description of the problem, a link to further detail and an abnormally large button marked “Install”, rather than a fait accompli.
Furthermore, even popular extensions are mortal. We should look at providing mechanisms within the extensions manager to handle this situation in the future.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:02 am
Absolutely update the AdBlock users to AdBlock Plus!
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:04 am
Nobody uses Sage. ??? thts strange
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:28 am
Off: I wonder what Java Console extension is doing at the top of your list. I can not imagine it having that many users.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 am
@Wladimir, it is bundled with java somewhere — few downloads, but many users.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:05 am
Sage
& (most worried about:)
Scrollbar Anywhere (works fine in Ff3pre, but hasn’t updated.)