If you could get a report when problems occur. For example, a crash manager report that includes installed adons when crashes occur. Possibly a report triggered by other non-crash events?

Then apply bayesian statistics similar to the way that thunderbird automatically hunts for spam. You would search for patterns in the installed sets of extensions that are present when crashes occur. It could tell you what extensions are most crash prone, as well as particular combinations of extensions that cause problems.

Of course, you would have to weight the algorithm by the number of downloads of a given extension. Otherwise, a popular extension would show up in many crashes even thought it is not a problem.

Michael

I am likely in the wrong place but you can pass this along to the correct people/developers.

Install without restart would be sweet as would auto-dependency resolution. For the latter, I’d also like to see an option to upload some base software to the addons site which could be shared by other extensions (e.g., especially if it were a large and not frequently or independently changing download), but which wasn’t itself an extension.

Last time I checked the Addon site didn’t provide the developer’s version notes to show up when More Info was selected during an update, which would of course be a nice interaction, though I presume someone might be on top of that already.

The install.rdf is still a bit prohibitive I think (though depends and bounds better than the requirements before) and a simpler XML format (just one namespace please) would be great to encourage newbies, allowing people to easily try it out, is the first step to getting new developers. I’d also suggest merging the chrome.manifest data into the install.rdf file, avoiding emphasizing the JAR capabilities (make clear to newbies that they can avoid at least one zip hassle, esp. for debugging), and ideally even foregoing the need for the manifest data in the first place, at least if the user followed the typical content/locale/etc. directory structure. Seriously, unnecessary installation/packaging hassles really are a big deterrent to a lot of us in getting going initially on the platform, even if they might not seem too bad to others who’ve been through that hazing already. Installation is like filling out school worksheets, while programming is creative expression.

For live editing/debugging, can there be a clear way of consistently refreshing the JavaScript and XUL without the need for a restart (no restart feature and addon to do so has not been updated). The extension manager extension used to do that but it’s not installing in FF3 and it causes all windows (chrome or non-chrome) to be lost rather than just refreshed. Quick feedback loop is very important (something winning me over to Mozilla development over PHP). Maybe you could even release a developer’s build of Firefox which included an updated “Extension Developer’s Extension” because that has some critical development tools.

And thank you! Great to see these ideas being out there for real consideration….

Date of add-ons install/update, in order to control changes and troubles by defective add-ons.

Exportable add-ons list (like Extension List Dumper or Infolister).

Uninstalling history.

Multiple selection for uninstalling and deactivation of several add-ons.