let’s do this!!
It’s on! We had or first Firefox Party last weekend at the Traverse City FragFest in Michigan!
Over here at Mozilla, we’re getting ready to ship out party packs (firefox buttons, stickers, tattoos, shirt, etc) to many of the registered of parties. If you want in, be sure to register your party over a Mozilla Party.
If you have any questions, or want advice throwing a party – please sign-up and send email to our party planner mailing list.
With RC2 out, it is now or never for add-on compatibility. We have had 207 add-ons updated in the last week with Firefox 3 support. This week we’ll cover 5 add-ons that are now compatible, 5 that are not yet (with status), and a new section: Google Watch.
5 top add-ons updated in the last week on AMO
iMacros for Firefox – Automate Firefox. Record and replay repetitious work.
Screengrab! – Screengrab saves entire webpages as images.
Dictionary Switcher – Toggles between the installed dictionaries and displays the currently selected dictionary in the status bar
Cooliris Previews – Gives you the power to browse and share Web links and rich media faster.
Firefox Google Bookmarks – Creates a menu to access google bookmarks from any computer.
5 top add-ons not yet compatible with Firefox 3
Firebug – 2.0.0.* (bug) (beta) – going to roll out a 1.2 beta 2. Get it here!
Tab Mix Plus – 3.0a5 (beta) (bug)(beta) – developer updated the bug, saying “I hope to post a new version during next month.”
FoxyTunes – 2.0.0.* (bug) – The new add-on will only be Firefox 3 compatible, thus it has to wait until the release.
Update Notifier – 2.0.0.* – No word from the developer when this add-on will be ready. See forum discussions. [update] 3.0.* version on AMO!!
Delicious Bookmarks – 2.0.0.* (bug) (beta) – Beta available (although, I’m not sure if it works with RC2). An update to AMO should happen any time now…
Google Watch
Google Toolbar – Not (currently) supported. The team is working on it, keep your fingers crossed for support by the time Firefox 3 is ready.
Google Browser Sync – Not supported with Firefox 3. No official word on status, but here is one adventure trying to find out details.
Google Notebook – Updated to Firefox 3 RC. Thanks Notebook team!
Google Gears – Beta out in the wild, not public yet. Seeing as it is an open source project, you should be able to build it on your own.
Whew! Till next week…
This is *exciting*!
Gina over at Lifehacker has started working with us to get the word out about Firefox 3 add-on compatibility. Lifehacker plans to report the weekly “State of the Add-ons” every Friday on their site. This is awesome for a couple of reasons.
The first of these posts, which references yesterdays report, can be found here.
Thank you Lifehacker!
There are currently 800+ add-ons compatible with Firefox 3 (3.0+, not including betas) on addons.mozilla.org (AMO). This accounts for roughly 60% of the total usage of add-ons.
Going to mix things up a bit this week. First, I’m going to list the top 5 add-ons that became available in the last week. After that, I’ll list the top 5 add-ons we are still waiting on. Finally, I’ll pick a “communities wish”, which is the add-on the folks who comment on my blog seem to care about the most.
Top 5 add-ons now available for Firefox 3 on AMO
Note, this are the top add-ons that are hosted on AMO, does not include things like Google Gears.
ForecastFox – Weather, now available directly from Firefox 3.
FoxMarks – Start syncing your bookmarks now!
Firefox Companion for eBay – for all the power eBayers.
Gmail Manager – Manage multiple gmail accounts, receive notifications, generally be happy.
translator – translate any webpage with a single click!
Top 5 add-ons not available for Firefox 3 on AMO
Mouse Gestures (bug) – This was updated, but was reverted because of crasher bugs on Windows. The developer has many things on his plate, so we might not see an update for awhile.
Greasemonkey (bug) – Some progress has been made, as it is updated to beta 5. We have had limited contact with the developer, so I cannot give you an ETA at this time. If you know something I don’t, I’m all ears. Update: the development community is asking too, check out this thread.
Tab Mix Plus (bug) – This add-on has made the list pretty much every week. The problem is that we have not been able to get an update from anyone. The development forums seem to be really active, and there are development builds available, but no word on an ETA for landing on AMO.
FoxyTunes (bug) – Betas available, test it out (xpi)! They will need to ship right when Fx3 ships, because their new version is not compatible with Firefox 2.
ColorfulTabs (bug) – Development builds available (xpi). Looks like it will land on AMO once the developer gets back from vacation!
In summary, ColorfulTabs, FoxyTunes, are pretty much ready. Work has been done on Greasemonkey and Tab Mix Plus, but keep your fingers cross. Finally, best wishes goes out to the developer of MouseGestures as he recovers from hardship.
Now for the Community Wish!
From the comments I’ve been receiving, I would say that the most desired add-on to be updated is… drum roll…. Google Toolbar! Good news, the Google Toolbar team has been working really hard to get it updated. It is going to cut very close to the Firefox 3 release — so keep your fingers crossed!
Here we are again. Since we last spoke, RC1 has been released and add-ons can claim full compatibility with 3.0.*. Time to update status on some of the popular add-ons that are not yet compatible.
Firebug – 2.0.0.* (bug) – 1.2 version should be pretty set for Firefox 3. Not on AMO yet — but will be before Fx3 ships!
MinimizeToTray – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Not going to be updated without help. If you are an add-on developer, and are willing to mess around with some pretty scary add-ons code, please step-up and try to help get MinimizeToTray (and their 500,000 users) ready for Fx3.
Tab Mix Plus – 3.0a5 (bug) – Beta available here. Please test and comment on this thread.
Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Getting a little nervous about this one. I’ve heard rumors it is being worked on — but no communication with the developer, and no updates in the bug.
FireFTP – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Should be ready for Fx3!
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer – 2.0.0.* (bug) – not available yet on addons.mozilla.org, but I’m confident it will land before Firefox 3.
RedShift V2 RC1 – 2.0.0.* (bug) – after last weeks plea for help, no results. Cameron, the developer, still needs help getting updated to Firefox 3. See the bug and sources.
That’s it for now. MinimizeToTray extension and RedShift theme needs help!
The favicoop (my site running 16×16) has completely exceeded my expectations. With only ~75 add-on users, we are quickly approaching 10,000 hashably unique favicons in the collection. I think this is the largest favicon collection on the internet.
While this project has a lot to do with collecting favicons, I was mainly motivated to build it to learn about various technologies. It’s built with many Google services (AppEngine, code hosting, groups, hosted apps, analytics, etc). I’m pretty sure it is the only tool on AppEngine app that integrates with a Firefox add-on — even serving add-on updates. It is a great tool if you want to learn about AppEngine, Firefox add-on integration, and all the free Google services. To top things off, it can all be ran locally with the AppEngine SDK — so you can learn about these tools too!
With that, if you’re interested in collecting favicons you browse AND learning about how to run an AppEngine app — continue reading!
I assume you know how to install things on your computer, including add-ons, handle a few basic shell commands, and use SVN.
You will need to grab three things, the Google AppEngine SDK, the 16×16 sources, and the packaged add-on. To grab the SDK, visit http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/. Note: it requires python2.5. On OSX 10.4, I had to install that manually.
After you download/install the SDK, grab my sources from here:
svn checkout http://16x16.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ 16x16-read-only
Last, you need to install the add-on. Do this by dragging this link to the URL bar (Firefox 3 only).
If you did all that, you should have everything you need to get started.
You will need to do some house-keeping to get things working on localhost. First, lets update the add-on upload-uri pref. This will cause the add-on to send your favicons to localhost. Hit about:config and modify the extensions.favicon.upload-uri pref. The pref should be changed to:
http://localhost:8080/send/
Next, cd into the app/ directory (of the svn repo) and copy the settings.py.dist to settings.py.
cd app/
cp settings.py.dist settings.py
Now we need to modify the app slightly to display images off of localhost — and not the production favicoop. In templates/index.html, find the line that reads:
// for running locally
// var domains = ['localhost:8080'];
Uncomment the var domains line, so it reads:
// for running locally
var domains = ['localhost:8080'];
This will cause the javascript to load the images locally.
To launch the development environment, run the following command from the app/ directory.
python2.5 /usr/local/bin/dev_appserver.py ../app/ # you may have to modify this a bit for your SDK install
Now try hitting http://localhost:8080/. If you see “(error)”, browse to a few different websites (non-https) to load up some favicons into the collection. A good way to test is to bounce back and forth between tabs with favicons, as the add-on will send the favicon every time.
dev_appserver.py should spit out some debugging information. For instance, when a favicon is sent from the add-on to the server, you should see a request like this:
INFO 2008-05-19 04:05:48,967 dev_appserver.py] "POST /send/ HTTP/1.1" 200 -
Note the 200 status code, that means it worked! If it is returning 500, that means something is messed up. The dev_appserver.py should spit out the errors to help with debugging.
Refresh localhost a few times to see the new favicons being added to the collection as you browse. If you’re able to get it up and running locally, please let me know!
If you have any questions/comments, feel free to mail the shiny new discussion list. If you encounter any bugs, please let me know here, and if you are really interested — commits are here, and bugmail is here.
Last week Slater and I (+aza spoke) attended SF MusicTech.
The goal being to see what is going on in the modern music industry, particularly in tech. It definitely helped me realize that the music industry is not dead — just the “selling round plastic at a store” part is.
There were a couple re-occurring themes that I picked up on.
1) Artists seem to be gaining more control as everything moves on to this internet. That is, the internet is slowly cutting out the labels and artists are able to self promote.
2) There are various efforts to help bands “do good” while they have an audience. For example, one of pkim‘s old friends, Erin Potts, runs a company called Air Traffic Control. They are pretty much dedicated to the idea of an artists ability to cause social change. I think this aligns pretty well with our ideas around “doing good AND promoting Firefox”.
3) The term “band-analytics” came up a few times. That is, the internet is helping bands understand their fan base — in ways never possible with-out it.
It was a very interesting conference, with many cool people. Slater had a nice conversation with folks from Pandora, and I got to meet Elise from Indie Pop Rocks! We are continuing to work on potential campaigns that promote artists along with Firefox. Hopefully we will have more to share more in the next couple weeks.
State of the add-ons report is coming a little late this week — because we are on the verge of RC1. Once RC1 is out, it is time to test and update to 3.0.* on AMO. Right now, a lot of our major add-ons are not considered ready for Firefox 3, because they are not marked as compatible with 3.0 or 3.0.*.
I’ve updated our compatibility chart to reflect this move. We will give those developers a few days to update, before publishing the next state of the add-ons report.
If you were one of those developers that told me, “I’ll update when 3.0 is available on AMO”, now is the time! Go go go!
After the wildly popular April 30th report, we have much to report. Here is the current update of the top add-ons NOT yet compatible with Firefox 3. Be sure to check-out the RedShift V2 theme report!
Skype Toolbar for Firefox – 2.0.0.* (bug) – beta shipping in their builds. They are not going to be hosted on AMO — so removing from the list.
Now for the most used add-on that is not yet on AMO…
Firebug – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Still waiting on Firebug performance issues that will be resolved in the Firebug 1.2 b1 release. No updates from last week.
Tab Mix Plus – 3.0a5 (bug) – development builds available over here. Still no direct contact with the developers. Any help here appreciated!
Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) – 2.0.0.* (bug) – No new news, just an indication that it will land with Firefox 3. No direct communication with the developer — help appreciated.
FireFTP – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Will be shipped with Firefox 3. Minimal contact with developer.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer – 2.0.0.* (bug) – got an email from Foxmarks, it has over 10k beta users — and is right around the corner. There is one blocking bug, once it is resolved they will be ready to ship.
FoxyTunes – 2.0.0.* (bug) – beta available here. Will be shipped with Firefox 3.
Blue Ice – 2.0.0.* (bug) – development homepage says “coming soon”. Need help figuring out status. Any details appreciated!
RedShift V2 RC1 – 2.0.0.* (bug) – this developer gets a gold star. He is having trouble getting updated to Firefox 3, so he opened his code. You can find the project over at google code. Redshift is the second most popular theme on AMO — and you have the opportunity to contribute. Please help make one of the most popular add-ons on AMO compatible with Firefox 3!
Note: Piclens was on last weeks list, but is now updated to 3.0pre. Thanks Cooliris team!
ColorfulTabs – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Updated to beta 3 at one point, no longer updated. If anyone knows what is going on with the add-on, help is appreciated!
MinimizeToTray – 2.0.0.* (bug) – This add-on is blocked on a bug that will not be updated before Firefox 3. Decent contact with the developer, but no action or known intentions to updating to Firefox 3. Could really use help testing / updating for Firefox 3.
That’s this weeks update. RedShift needs development help, check out the google code project if you can. MinimizeToTray needs a work around, and has not started development. PicLens got updated. The rest seem like they are on their way!
UPDATE: this post is available in Japanese. Thank you Amigomr!
Based on feedback from last weeks report, I’m going to change how we do this. I’m going to go through the status of the top 10 add-ons that are not yet on addons.mozilla.org with Firefox 3 compatibility.
Skype Toolbar for Firefox – 2.0.0.* (bug) – beta available over on skype’s website, not sure when it will land on AMO.
Firebug – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Platform/Firefox issues resolved, now blocked on Firebug performance issues that will be resolved in the Firebug 1.2 b1 release.
Tab Mix Plus – 3.0a5 (bug) – still no direct contact with the developer. On the development forums, there are working releases. However, if you know anyone in the TMP community updates, help is appreciated! We really want TMP to be ready for Firefox 3.
Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) – 2.0.0.* (bug) – Our status indicates that this will land with Firefox 3. Any further information would be appreciated.
FireFTP – 2.0.0.* (bug) – compatible on the development website, but no direct contact with the developer. Looks ready, but still not on AMO, and we have no idea why not.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer – 2.0.0.* (bug) – beta on dev website. No direct contact with developers.
FoxyTunes – 2.0.0.* (bug) – beta in the works, but have not seen it. We have had direct contact with the developer, but still have not seen the .xpi on AMO.
Blue Ice – 2.0.0.* (bug) – development homepage says “coming soon”. Limited contact with developer. No known available betas.
RedShift V2 RC1 – 2.0.0.* (bug) – comments on AMO indicate it is in the works, limited contact with the developer. Help appreciated finding out the current status!
PicLens – 2.0.0.* (bug) – beta available on the beta site. Not sure when it will be on AMO.
In summary, all of the top 10 not-yet-compatible add-ons have some sort of hint that a Firefox 3 compatible release is on its way. If you have any updates about RedShift, Blue Ice, TMP, or FireFTP, please let me know!
