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In this issue…

• Extend Firefox 3: There’s Still Time!
• Status of AMO Editor Reviews
• Dangers of Using eval() on Downloaded JavaScript
• Add-on Statistics Since Firefox 3’s Release
• AMO 3.4.3 and 3.4.4 Pushed Live
• 1.9 SDK Now Available
• Firefox 3 for Theme Developers
• New CSS Features in Firefox 3.1
• New Documentation

Extend Firefox 3: There’s Still Time!
There’s still time to submit your new or updated extension to the Extend Firefox 3 contest ending on July 4. You can read the official rules and contest information at extendfirefox.com.

Status of AMO Editor Reviews
The AMO editors have been hard at work, reviewing 255 add-on updates and submissions in the 2 weeks before Firefox 3’s launch, and 238 updates/submissions between launch day (Tuesday) and Sunday. Please be patient as our editors work through this backlog. Thanks to all of the AMO editors for their hard work. You can read more about review and submission statistics at Justin Scott’s blog.

Dangers of Using eval() on Downloaded JavaScript
Many add-ons don’t make it past the review phase because a reviewer finds the add-on using eval() on downloaded JavaScript or JSON. A new MDC article talks about the dangers and how to avoid them.

Add-on Statistics Since Firefox 3’s Release
Over 16 million new add-ons have been downloaded from AMO (addons.mozilla.org) since Firefox 3 was released last Tuesday (June 17). You can read about add-on stats since the release of Firefox 3 at Justin Scott’s blog.

AMO 3.4.3 and 3.4.4 Pushed Live
addons.mozilla.org was updated recently with a number of bugfixes and new features, including a new theme browser, advanced search, and a beta of the new Developer Tools. You can read more about the new features on Basil Hashem’s blog and more about the Developer Tools beta on Justin Scott’s blog.

1.9 SDK Now Available
If you are building binary components for your add-on then the 1.9 SDK is the official way to build. It’s available for download in Linux, Windows and Mac flavours.

Firefox 3 for Theme Developers
Gavin Sharp has put together some of the highlights of new features in Firefox 3 for theme developers to use. Take a look and see how you an make your themes that much better.

New CSS Features in Firefox 3.1
The current development builds of Firefox 3.1 have more of the CSS 3 selectors implemented including nth-child, first-of-type and default. David Baron discusses the selectors and other new CSS features landing in Firefox 3.1 builds.

New Documentation
Some tricks with laying out XUL boxes are explained. A list of the parts of XUL that are now deprecated and replaced by better objects is now available. A new code snippet section on creating background processes using setTimeout and threads has been added.

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In this issue…

• Add-on Compatibility with Firefox 3.0.*
• The Future of Add-ons Management
• AMO 3.5 Developer Tool Changes
• Bundling Binary Components for Firefox 2 and 3
• Get Your Extensions Accessible
• Extend Firefox 3
• AMO 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 Released
• Songbird Add-on Site Redesign

Add-on Compatibility with Firefox 3.0.*
Firefox version strings 3.0 and 3.0.* have now been added to the addons.mozilla.org (AMO) list of allowed versions, so add-on authors can now specify compatibility with these versions. As a reminder, it is not necessary to upload a new version of your add-on if you are only bumping compatibility. See Basil Hashem’s post for more information.
If you haven’t yet got started updating your add-ons for Firefox 3 (shame on you!) check out the MDC for a crash course in what’s new in Firefox 3.

The Future for Add-ons Management
Dave Townsend is soliciting feedback on future enhancements to the Extension Manager. Here are some ideas he lists to start the ball rolling:

• Installing add-ons without restarts
• Presenting more detail in the install dialog
• Simplifying the UI
• Deprecating install.rdf and replacing with a simpler xml or json format
• Add-on dependencies with automatic resolution

Head over to his blog post and add your 2 cents.

AMO 3.5 Developer Tool Changes
Justin Scott has been posting details about the improvements coming in the next rollout of AMO (v3.5). The Developer Tools area has been rewritten to make the user interface more intuitive and provide a number of new features. Here are the areas Justin has covered:

• Improvements for managing authors
• Improvements to the translation box
• Cleaner category management
• Restructures property editor
• Improvements for managing add-on versions and files

Bundling Binary Components for Firefox 2 and 3
Significant changes required for updating binary components have some add-on developers finding the transition to Firefox 3 to be difficult. The changes can be large enough to require two sets of components, for Firefox 2 and 3 respectively. One way to make the process easier is to use a proxy stub to load the correct binary component at runtime. There is a new article on MDC with the details.

Get Your Extensions Accessible
Marco Zehe has an excellent post on making your extensions accessible to those using screenreaders and keyboards and includes some add-ons that have made the effort. Be sure to give his post and the guidelines he links to a read through if you want your extensions to be usable by as many people as possible.

Extend Firefox 3
Remember to get your submissions in for the Extend Firefox 3 contest which runs through July 4th, 2008. This edition of Extend Firefox is open to even more countries and we’re also opening up a special category to award prizes to existing Firefox Add-ons that are updated for Firefox 3 and that show significant improvements in performance and user experience.

AMO 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 Released
addons.mozilla.org is now releasing a new version about every two weeks. You can read more about version 3.4.1, released on May 1, and version 3.4.2, released on May 15.

Songbird Add-ons Site Redesign
The guys at Songbird have been working behind the scenes to bring a set of improvements to their add-ons site that should make it easier for users to find and install the add-ons they are most interested in. They boast better searching, categorizing and tagging as well has better handling of your add-ons metadata. Check out the sneak peek.

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