New Firefox Add-ons Site Goes Live

I shared a preview of it with you a few weeks back, and it looks like the Mozilla team has flipped the switch on the new Firefox add-ons web site. All your old favorite features are still there, the categories the search and the recommended extensions. They are all just displayed in an updated and prettier fashion.

At first glance, it didn’t really give me any shock and awe feeling or emotion but after navigating around it for a while it is an improvement over the older styled web site.

So What is New to Love?

reviews-for-firefox-addons They have made the "review and rate" box easier to reach when checking out add-ons one by one, which will encourage more feedback to be given. Also there are a few more related links on each add-on’s web page to give you that, "Well, if you like this then go check out that!" sort of feeling.

The larger search box at the top of all the pages is a welcome addition too. Not only does it give it that Web 2.0 feeling but it is handy to have it bold and in my face when looking where to search for more extensions.

Also when you are doing a search, you now have the option to "Add to Firefox" right from the search results. You no longer have to search, pull up the addon’s profile, and then add it to your browser. There are a lot of little things that just make this a really welcomed update I think for many Firefox users out there.

To get some more inside information about the back end of things be sure to check out Basil’s Bodacious Blog.

For more help, check these out...

Tags: addons, extentions, launch, mozilla, new site, preview, review

Posted on March 27, 2008 in News

Comments and Feedback

Tonino said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

I like the design, but I sometimes feel a little lost.
What I think it’s a mistake it to remove the version compatibility.
I hope that at least there was some way to filter addons for a certain version or current version (autodetection would be nice)

Basil Hashem said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

@Tonino: Actually, the new AMO design does have autodetection. You can read more about how the it works on the site announcement on my blog referenced in the above article.

Mitch said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

Yep, I can confirm that too - had it tell me that one a few add-ons I was checking out. Also thanks for dropping by Basil, and congrats on a great roll out and release.

xpgeek said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

I don’t like it really. It won’t let me download “incompatible” addons AT ALL now, unless I manually change my useragent. Should be a away around that for people who know what they’re doing (example being I KNOW that addon works in latest Minefield nightly and I know how to use it, but can’t download it now). Doesn’t tell you what the compatible versions are anymore either so I just have to take a wild guess as to what to change my useragent too.

And its kind of hard to find themes now. Its now ‘themes and appearance’ and it throws a bunch of themes AND extensions together in the same category. So much for just browsing newly added. Kind of hard to find anything on it now without searching.

Mitch said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

The themes section will more than likely change in the post-Firefox 3 era. Since there are a lot of basic format changes current themes will need to make to be compatible.

Win Norf said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

I like the design better, but it lacks a version compatibility check or “What’s New” section. I went to the new page and them registered thinking it would allow me to communicate with them. However, I do not know what benefit registration has for me and wished I had not done it.

Morbus said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

Bad thing: no sort=date button. I only use that one… Less functional, prettier. Can’t complain much, as it’s probably less functional only to me, but I think they should add a link to sort extensions by date.

Morbus said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

I take back what I said, it’s just one more click away. Fine by me. What I don’t like is the less control we have, not being able to install “incompatible” extensions, which not only sucks, but is bad too. Very bad.

Morbus said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

Then again, and sorry for the flood (someone merge my posts?), NoScript, as the MUST HAVE extension it is, is our friend. By simply blocking the site’s javascript, you are able to download whatever extension you like. There you go stupid bad handholding web designers!!! Dumbing down everything huh? You didn’t count on us being smarter than you!!!

Mwhahahaha! :runs away laughing in a weird deranged way:

Basil Hashem said on March 27, 2008 (permalink)

@Morbus: Our designers are definitely not smarter than you but we did decide to optimize the primary use case to make sure that end users only install compatible add-ons. But we didn’t take away the capability to download any version of any add-on you want, you simply need to visit the “Advanced Details” section and take a look at the Complete Version History link - it includes all available versions and doesn’t do the smart detection so that testers, developers and others can download any version of an add-on (for whatever OS platform and edition of Firefox) you want without the hassle.

Here is an example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/1865

Hope this helps.

@xpgeek: We have big plans for the themes area that I think you’ll like what’s in store - the pages today are what I consider to be “interim”. We want to do a large format themes browser that lets you quickly browser thru a whole selection. Unfortunately, we needed to punt on it for this revision.

Morbus said on March 28, 2008 (permalink)

@ Basil Hashem
I hope you didn’t miss my sarcastic tone ;) Anyway, about the tip: yes, it does help, of course. Thank you.

Mitch said on March 28, 2008 (permalink)

Thanks @Basil for stopping in again! :)

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