Mozilla Launches New Add-ons Site a Little Prematurely!
Mozilla just launched their new Add-ons site (as mentioned in our release calendar located in the sidebar), and the biggest improvements are all in the layout and design. You’ll notice that the search box is now at the top of the page to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for, and this is something I wanted ever since the last redesign they did. Here are the things that I have noticed thus far:
- There are only 153 extensions available and 82 themes, which is a huge reduction from almost 2,500 extensions that were previously available. So you should feel honored if one of the extensions you created are in the list of available ones.
- There is no advanced search like the one available prior to this design. Don’t worry though, the most important tools available in the advanced search was being able to choose how your results were sorted and picking how many results are displayed on a single page. At the top there are “Sort by” links which let you choose the sort order, and then all the way at the bottom you can pick how many results are shown.
- Nice breadcrumb navigation located near the top of the page so that you can easily get back to where you came from.
- The image preview page for any given extension (example) now shows thumbnails for all of the screenshots, and clicking on a thumbnail reveals a full-scale version of the image using a technique called Lightbox:
This thumbnail idea isn’t bad, but it does add an extra click to view the full size version and an extra click to close it. I prefer to have a minimal number of clicks.
- All extension pages have a “previous releases” link available that allow you to easily install old versions (example).
- You can now get RSS feeds for specific searches, such as this one for Google.
- No more comments…you can either submit a review, which is essentially the same as what a comment was, or you can start a discussion. The discussion reminds me more of a forum where people can respond to each other, which is especially nice for people looking for help on a specific extension. Before it was extremely hard for developers to stay in contact with users unless they had their own external site to manage the discussions.
- View the Add-ons site in multiple languages (French example) which only adjusts the text Mozilla created for right now (links, categories, etc…). I haven’t checked out the development center, but I’m guessing they would let developers upload descriptions in multiple languages so that someone viewing the French site doesn’t see the English description. That would require someone to translate the descriptions for the developer though.
So nothing sounds bad, right? So what’s their big mistake?
Mozilla is supposed to be making some sort of behind-the-scenes site for all of the extensions that did not make the final cut, such as one of my favorites GMarks. I looked all over and didn’t see any reference to this site at all, and as of right now clicking any hyperlinks for extensions/themes that got pulled will leave you with a page that says “Add-on not found,” and here is an example from the GMarks link. I am hoping this is a temporary thing while they get everything setup, but I thought they would have had this ready at the time the new site launched. If they needed some time to get everything implemented they should have just pulled the entire site down for maintenance.
Links to extensions that were not pulled still work, so it is just for the ones that did get pulled. They definitely need to get something fixed fast, because this breaks all of the links that search engines have to the existing extension pages, which could affect their placement in the results if not correct in the next few days. Not only that but it will probably frustrate many users who are searching for extensions.
Once they get all of the links fixed, and get everything else situated, the final result will be a great looking site with only the best extensions. I can’t wait to see how they setup the site for the extensions that got pulled, but from what they have said it is supposed to incorporate some voting mechanism to help new extensions make it to the main site. Sounds like it will kinda be like Digg, but hopefully they do it in a way that works well for their site.
My greatest fear with the new design is that developers will be less inclined to make new extensions if they are only available to a small amount of users that actually visit the behind-the-scenes site. At least new users looking for extensions won’t have to plow their way through hundreds of “junk” extensions that most people would consider to be spam.
Let us know if you see anything else that’s new!
Visit the Mozilla Add-ons site
UPDATE:
Thanks to ClausValca who pointed out how to get into the “Sandbox” to view non-published extensions:
- You’ll need to have a registered account and you need to login.
- Click on your email address which should be located next to the search box.
- Check the box that says Show Sandbox:
- Click the Sandbox link next to the search box:
- Now you can search for extensions in the Sandbox mode:
- All of the extensions viewed in Sandbox mode will have a pretty little pink box to download from instead of the typical green one:
This still doesn’t seem to solve the troubles that I was having with the links being broken to certain extensions, but I’m assuming that is just a small problem that they will be fixing soon. It is still a pain that users have to be logged in to search the Sandbox extensions.
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Tags: Firefox, Software, Web Sites, Firefox Extensions
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Ryan,
I was stumbling around for a while as well trying to figure out how to get into the “Sandbox” where the un-proven Add-ons are kept.
Finally puzzled it out:
It’s late so I’ve just clipped this bit from the bottom of my blogpost: [grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com]
Once registered and confirmed, log into the Add-on page with your credentials. You should see your email address in the right of the top bar. Click it to edit your profile. On the profile page you will now see a check-box to show the Sandbox. Tick the box and save your settings. It will reset and now at the top bar you will see to the left of the search field two links: Public and Sandbox. Click on the Sandbox link to get into the Sandboxed extensions.
According to Mozilla Add-on’s Sandbox page:
What is the Sandbox?
The sandbox contains untested add-ons submitted for publishing on the AMO site.
If you are not comfortable installing add-ons that may be extremely dangerous to your computer, you should click here to return to the public site.
Some things I’ve noticed in the Sandbox…instead of a safe “green” install box, they are a reddish install box…all the more to alert you I suppose. Also, the install files failed on a few I tried. I’m hoping they just haven’t sync’ed up the download links yet.
Overall I also like the site redesign and am supportive of their efforts to “clean house”. Like you, I just hope they clean up the mess of dead-link wreckage they’ve left around the Web and I hope that doesn’t frustrate the old and new users of Firefox alike too badly.
It’s great they left in a way to get to all the unchosen extensions out there. I like the updated interface and especially the universal search bar. One thing I would like is the ability to search both the sandbox and public page at once. At least for now, there are plenty of good extensions that didn’t make the cut, and I don’t want to wind up always doing two searches each time I look for something
@ClausValca: Thanks a ton for the tip, we have gone ahead and added it to the post!
@nester007x: I agree, there should definitely be a way to search both sites at once, but at least they implemented a way to view the Sandbox pages already.
Hey Ryan, I think you’ll have to update your update
“6. All of the extensions viewed in Sandbox mode will have a pretty little pink box to download from instead of the typical pink one”
Hmm.. for some odd reason I do not get the pink/red install box for ANY extensions while in sandbox mode.
Thanks guys, this is actually the only piece of info that makes sense of what happened (I author GTDInbox – aka GTDGmail). As a developer, the bit that really stung was the removal of all our existing user-reviews (my full developer perspective is summised at [bumblesearch.com]). Good motives, irritating way of doing it!
Oops.
That’s interesting, I just went and checked again and all of the boxes are pink.
I was a little upset that they removed all of the reviews as well. Maybe they just haven’t migrated everything over yet. *crosses fingers*
for some strange reason, i still get the old addon site.
clearing cache and using/not using proxy doesn’t help either.
i am guessing its some sort of load balancing or dns problem.
any1 knows why?
Same here (old site). May be once again they have pulled the new one. I’ll take a look this afternoon when I get home and plan to do a blog entry.
I think they’ve reverted to the old site temporarily. You can still get the new site at [preview.addons.mozilla.org]
you r right according [blog.mozilla.com]
but no official word yet.
Yep, they have reverted to the old site. No announcement on their blog but this is very weird since yesterday was the scheduled release date.
I’m guessing that they are fixing the problem that I noticed where the links to Sandboxed extensions are broken. That is a huge problem and I’m sure several people (like myself) tried to notify them of it.
I was annoyed as well at the deletion of all our comments. Right now while the old site is back I just copied my recent review for the excellent “All IN 1 Gestures” ext over to the new site.
I disagree with many of Mozilla’s choices for inclusion on the main addons site. For example, Myfirefox which (although oddly named) is an excellent theme that almost perfectly emulates IE7/vista, and is constantly updated with support all the way thru Fx3.0a3 somehow got stuck in the sandbox. On the other hand, Firefox vista does a far worse job of emulating IE7, has been discontinued, and only supports thru Fx1.5 made the public site. This is why there must be a way to search both public and sandbox simultaneously.
Also, what the heck is going on with Fx3???
I know that they had a bunch of people pick out the extensions that should make the cut, so I don’t think they really automated anything. There are many extensions that didn’t make it though that I also believe should have because they are some of the most downloaded ones.
I’m not quite what’s going on with Firefox 3 but I haven’t heard any info regarding Alpha 3. It was already supposed to be released but I’m thinking that they are going to start falling behind already.
Ryan,
More good and detailed nuggets of info on what’s going on with the Add-on switcheroo as well as a more “formal” presentation of the Sandbox concepts:
[blog.mozilla.com] -via Mozilla Webdev blog.
[blog.mozilla.com] -via Mozilla Webdev blog.
I guess this helps explain why it was so difficult to find out how to get into the Sandbox area to begin with during the final/not-so-fast/revert-back-quick! Add-ons rollout period Thurs/Fri.
Finally, the new Add-on/Sandbox concept and processes are well described in a detailed [preview.addons.mozilla.org]
Hopefully most Add-ons developers already know this stuff by now
but if not it would be good for them to review….as well as those of us baser-souls who hunt Add-ons.
Oh yeah, to confirm….
Firefox 3.0a3 has just been released: [mozilla.org]
Changes in this Development Milestone
Gecko 1.9 Alpha 3 introduces several new features which can be tested by using Gran Paradiso Alpha 3:
* Animated PNG (APNG) images are now supported.
* The DOM clientLeft and clientTop attributes are now supported.
* Introduced support for , which puts resources into the browser’s offline cache. This allows a web application to ensure that its resources are available in the cache when the browser goes into offline mode. See Marking Resources for Offline Use for further details on offline support.
* Improved precision of layout and scaling across a wide range of screen and printer resolutions.
* Implemented cycle collection in XPCOM, which detects cases where two released objects hold one another, but neither is held by anyone else. In this scenario, both objects can safely be purged. Previously, the holds each has on the other would have prevented them from being purged.
* Added support for the HttpOnly cookie attribute, which marks a cookie as readable only by the server and not by client-side scripts.
* Added a new preference, “Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page”, which notifies the user when the page specifies HTTP-EQUIV=refresh.
Some of the changes in Alpha versions of Gecko 1.9 affect the web and platform compatibiltity of Gran Paradiso Alpha 3:
* Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME are not supported for Gecko 1.9.
* OS X 10.2 is no longer supported, and OS X 10.3.9 or better is required.
* The non-standard JavaScript Script object is no longer supported.
* Moving DOM nodes between documents now requires a call to importNode or adoptNode as per the DOM specification.
It’s pretty stable, though I have run into some form-fields issues tonight (as well as the most recent Minefield nightly build) where I went to type in text in a login field and no input was created/displayed/entered. Doesn’t happen on every website, just a few.
I like playing with Minefield (nightlies) when I am just joy-surfing…I pick at Gran Paradiso just to see where it’s at, but I must confess to still rely on the latest release version of Firefox (now at 2. 0.0.3) for all my daily Web surfing/banking/shopping/etc. for stability and security reasons.
I just discovered the main difference between “comments” and “reviews.” = Writing a Review edits your old review, rather than creating a new one.
I was wondering the same thing! Thanks for clarifying that…I guess that is kinda a nice feature?