Publish Firefox Extensions in AMO?

heubergen
heubergen
Community Member
in 1Password in the Browser

It seems like your Extensions is not yet published on AMO and I wondered why? It would be a great opportunity for you to advertise your app, it would help the user to keep it updated and it would make the usage of the Extensions more transparent.

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Comments

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hello @heubergen,

    Part of it is we've always had so much to do that we just never got around to the extra checks required to have it publicly visible. Since then though we've discovered that part of the automated process that we use is not allowed for visible extensions and we're trying to make it easier to release new versions rather than add extra steps (https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/issues/804 is an example).

    Given 1Password will/should be prompting the user to install the extension if it isn't present though I would hope a user is being guided to the right location to do so rather than needing to search the browsers gallery to find it. I've also seen reviews of the Chrome extension where people didn't realise the extension required the application, something we can better avoid by not being visible in AMO.

    If we find there is a compelling reason to be visible in AMO we would certainly consider it but there doesn't seem to be a great gain that offsets the reduction in automation that helps us have more time for support and development.

  • heubergen
    heubergen
    Community Member

    Hello @littlebobbytables,

    I understand your point with the extra needed Software and AMO has a option to give the user a warning about that.
    Just let me check that with Mozilla and the Community how that works so I can give a small demo :) I'll responds here later.

  • heubergen
    heubergen
    Community Member

    Okay, I just got a responds.

    You (or someone official in behalf of the company) can watch the progress and comment at this github issue. Mozilla have plans to expand the payment flag to the users (and not only to the reviewers as now). I hope you can share your ideas and Mozilla can build something that will convince you to publish your extensions on AMO :)

  • jxpx777
    jxpx777
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks for your passion for Firefox, @heubergen. While it's not the only obstacle to us being listed in the AMO gallery, the automation angle is indeed a very important aspect for us.

    As the team lead for our extensions, one of the things I have focused on in the last few months has been automating more of our processes. In that time, we have cut the process of building, testing, and deploying the desktop browser extension1 down from several minutes per browser to just a few minutes overall. The signing API from Mozilla is one of the key reasons we have been able to do that, and backtracking from that automated approach to one where we must manually upload files again is not something we're interested in.

    We are actually working toward even more automation of this whole process to make deploying the extension updates faster and more repeatable. The extensions team is tiny, and we split our time among customer support, development, and testing and releasing builds. So any manual steps for publishing are particularly encumbering for us and we strongly resist any path that would require manual intervention. We would much rather spend more time coding and talking to customers vs testing and deploying releases.

    I hope that helps make some more sense of where we're coming from and why for now, self-hosting our unlisted add-on is a much better fit for us and our users than submitting to AMO.

    --
    Jamie Phelps
    Code Wrangler @ AgileBits
    Fort Worth, Texas

    1. We test every beta and stable release on Safari for Mac plus Chrome and Firefox on Mac and Windows, which gives us five different environments to test each and every release on the desktop. The extension code for Safari, 1Browser, and the app extension is built from a subset of our desktop extension scripts, and is tested separately. ↩︎

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