Bogomil Shopov – Бого

… and thanks for the Firefox 6, but, please make this happen. (Addons)

Several months ago I started a mini-discussion (read the comments also) on Addons troubles and communication breakdown.

The situation is more critical after every new update (because they are on every 3-4 months). Right now after my update one of most important tools for my work – Selenium (because I am into QA tasks now) is not working and my Firebug is disabled, because there is no version suitable for this new release.

If you give yourself time to read this discussion, maybe you will like my idea for shared privileges GIT or something else so everyone can EDIT and BUILD on EVERY Addon.

Right now is a holiday season in Europe, no body doesn’t care about editing Addons or changing something. Event is someone has time and knowledge to “fix” an addon it’s mission impossible to do that if you are not the author of that piece of code.

This is an idea how we can partially solve the problem (on the technical side) with Addons and new Firefox versions. Other is just marketing and engagement.

Love to read your comments!

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Bogomil Shopov

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17 responses to “… and thanks for the Firefox 6, but, please make this happen. (Addons)”

  1. Henrik Gemal Avatar
    Henrik Gemal

    there are Firebug releases available for all versions of Firefox.
    Check http://getfirebug.com/downloads

    Reply
    1. Bogo Avatar
      Bogo

      Henrik, My Firefox tells me – no version for your Firefox 6

      Reply
      1. Axel Hecht Avatar
        Axel Hecht

        Whether firebug updates or not is slightly black magic, as the version you get from the download on getfirebug.com updates differently than the one on AMO.

        I suggest you uninstall firebug and get a new one from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/.

        I heard talk about the firebug team being on the hook to make those stories compatible, but I haven’t seen that materialize in my profiles.

        I don’t have an answer for selenium, but it’s compat story is pretty sad, given that we have at least one prominent contributor of that on payroll, and I’d picture selenium being crucial in automating internal verification process in enterprises. Sad faces.

        Reply
        1. Bogo Avatar
          Bogo

          The smaller problem is with current addons, the bigger is to create a shared space for working on addons.

          Reply
  2. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    Users around the globe are extremely frustrated and are already complaining. This and the dropping version naming scheme got fused together. ( Because people need to know which version they have in order to find Add on )

    I am not against dropping Version numbers. The problem is Add on that are programmed for a specific version of Firefox. And since Add on is the soul of Firefox, having majority of Add on not working when a new version comes out just destroy the core value of Firefox.

    We need a way for Addon to be compatible most of time.

    Reply
  3. Insano Avatar
    Insano

    I find it very worrying that Firefox is getting so many negative comments on basically every major website announcing the new release. With major websites I mean sites like Enadget, Ars Technica, the register etc.

    Reply
    1. Bogo Avatar
      Bogo

      In our Twittersphere also.

      Reply
    2. zuh Avatar
      zuh

      Unfortunately Firefox has become the easy target for this.
      You know, like when MS gets some product out, and everyone bashes it “cause its MS”

      Well Google taught people to do this with Firefox.

      Mozilla PR has to fix this, and Mozilla devs have to fix it too.

      Addons should become FLAWLESS for updates, and there should be little intervention or UI warnings which annoy everyone for example. Firefox isn’t allowed to do away with small inconveniences anymore

      Reply
      1. Bogo Avatar
        Bogo

        So you are talking about a new update mechanism, right?

        Reply
  4. Alina Mierlus Avatar
    Alina Mierlus

    I have Firefox 6 (Mac version) and all my add-ons works perfectly (including Firebug).

    Reply
    1. Bogo Avatar
      Bogo

      Maybe it’s an OS problem, but Selenium is disabled also, but this is
      not the question :)

      Reply
      1. Simon Avatar
        Simon

        Yeah, but you can’t entirely blame Firefox for some of those. The better plugins tend to ensure compatibility with new Firefox versions *before* those versions are released, so their users get the plugin update first. And that’s good, because anyone doing plugin development should be testing on pre-releases – it’s just good practice.

        Unfortunately, others seem to wait for the Firefox releases before they even start looking at compatibility, so their users have to suffer the breaks. Selenium is a great project, but unfortunately they do seem to lag when it comes to plugin compatibility…

        Reply
  5. Stephen Avatar
    Stephen

    While it isn’t an optimal solution – using the following addon, you can make Firefox not check version numbers for addons.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

    Reply
  6. Chrsitian Avatar
    Chrsitian

    We made sure Firebug was compatible everywhere (AMO and getfirebug.com) before the Firefox 6 release. If you are seeing it incompatible, please file a bug.

    Reply
  7. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    I thought I saw an article similar to this on RWW, but found something even more descriptive of problems with developing extensions or addons for things like Chrome, etc.

    http://blog.smartbear.com/post/11-08-03/google-chrome-plus-extensions-plus-or-minus/

    Reply
  8. scofield Avatar
    scofield

    Agree with you. The Chrome add-on API is much more limited and as such doesn’t need to change as frequently or as drastically. How Firefox thinks they’re going to succeed by becoming a crappier version of Chrome is beyond me. Seems it’s time to change a browser. Which one should I use? I would like to choose one from chrome,Avant browser and Opera.

    Reply
  9. Brian King Avatar
    Brian King

    There is a plan in the works to make compatibility on upgrade smoother. See:

    https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible

    Reply

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