AddonUpdate

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Observations and Insights About Updating Addons for Major Releases of Firefox

We shipped fx 1.5 with compatibility around the 70% level, I think, and got hammered in the press.

Since then things have been better and more work has been applied to working with addon developers to get compatible with the major release while it's still in the beta period. More work has been done to define metrics for addon updates, and track them, and make them part of the shipping decision.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility is a current incarnation of the tracking tool.

In many ways this is a chicken and egg problem. Users won't update to the new release if addons are ready. Addon developers are not incented to update addons or spend much time looking at compatibility issues for new release until looks of users start making noise. Chicken and egg strategies apply. Push more users to try betas, and pull adddon developers into looking at, and marking addons compatible.

Tools

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility metrics/visibility into current compatibility rates

Tracking bugs. These have been set up to engage the entire mozilla community in work to help identify compatibility problems in the top 50-100 addons, track down missing or absentee addon developers, and track status of compatibility issues, and generally provide a place where many people can get involved and view current status.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466186 and the dependency list under that bug... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=466186&hide_resolved=1


Devloper Doc's. Stuff like https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Updating_extensions_for_Firefox_3.1 and https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Updating_themes_for_Firefox_3.6 is needed to tell addon developer's what has changed Firefox and might have impact on Addons.


Fligtar and Nick are also trying a new crowd source system to gather info from beta testers as input to the addon developers. See https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/15003

Update Rates

3.5 took about 7 weeks to go from 56% compatibility to 83%, then 1 more week to get over 90% and 4 more to get over 94%

3.0 Timeline and Milestones

  • 2008-06-16 ~75% of add-on usage ready for Firefox 3 ref
  • I think a few big ones landed in the last 2 days to put us over 80% at ship time- chofmann
  • Firefox 3.0 6/17

3.5.5 Timeline and Milestones

  • 56% t-7wks 5/11 56% up 5% from last week. ref
    • Compatibility mailer going out this afternoon
  • 60% t-6wks 5/18 60% reference
  • 67% t-4wks 6/1 67% reference
    • Only major add-ons who haven't moved are Java Console and Firebug
    • Firebug with 3.5.* compatibility in alpha
  • 72% t-3wks 6/8 72% https://wiki.mozilla.org/WeeklyUpdates/2009-06-08#Add-ons*
    • Sun updating the Java Console should be up another 3-4% once they complete testing
  • 80% t-2wks 6/15 80% reference
    • Most of the remaining add-ons are in the long tail -now approaching developers directly to see if they'll upgrade
  • 81% t-1wk 6/22 81% ref
  • 83% t-1day 83% ref
  • 3.5 ship date 2009-06-30
  • 90% t+1wk 7/6 90% ref
  • 92% t+2wks 7/13 92% ref
  • 94% t+4wks 7/25 94% ref

3.6 Timeline and Milestones

  • 34% t-10wks 2009-11-02 compatibility with 3.6.* and above ref
    • Firefox 3.6 Beta1 start page links to Add-on Compatibility Reporter.
    • 3600 active users.
    • 363 reports of incompatible add-ons needing fixes
    • 857 reports of compatibilty on 528 add-ons,
    • of these 857, 422 need the 3.6.*. bit flipped
    • If these flip the compatibility bit, total compatibility would be around 68%
  • 45% t-9wks 2009-11-09 45% with 3.6.* (up from 34% last week) ref
  • 47% 2009-11-14 47% compatible with the latest builds of Firefox 3.6.
  • 49% t-8wks 2009-11-16 49% ref
    • Add-on compatibility reporter emails going out this week
    • 24,000 reports covering 2200 addons
  • 56% 2009-11-22 56% compatible with the latest builds of Firefox 3.6
  • 58% t-7wks 2009-11-23 58% ref
  • 59% 2009-11-30 59% ref
  • 59% t-6wks 2009-12-02 59%
    • recommended addons need to be compat with 3.6 starting next week. message to developers sent this week.
  • 68% t-5wks 2009-12-11 68% -- addon con today.
  • 69% 2009-12-16 69%
  • 71% t-4wks 2009-12-20 71%
  • 72% t-3wks 2009-12-29 72%
  • 74% t-2wks 2010-01-04 74% ref
  • 81% t-1wks 2010-01-13 81% ref
  • 83% t-1day 2010-01-20 83% ref
    • one top addon missing compat IETab. Shows black content area for pages.
  • 88% t+6days 2010-01-26
  • 90% t+14days 2010-02-01

4.0 Timeline and Milestsones

  • 37% 08-17-10 25% compatible with beta3 + 12% more witn any 4.0beta
  • 40% 08-25-10 21% compatible with beta4 at release + 19% more with any 4.0 beta
  • 54% 09-02-10 14% compat with latest beta (4?) 31% more with any 4.0b
  • 46% 09-08-10 26% compat with latest beta 20% with any beta
  • 45% 09-15-10 16% latest beta 29% any beta
    • 62 of 68 featured addons not compat with b6
  • 47% 09-21-10 26% latest beta 21% compat with b6
    • 54 of 68 featured addons not compat with b6
  • 48% 10-05-10 28% latest beta 20% comp with any beta
  • 49% 10-12-10 31% latest beta 18% with any beta
  • 11-24-10 Upgrading your add-ons for Firefox 4 E-mail Sent To Addon Developers
  • 57% 11-29-10 50% latest beta 7% with any beta
  • 59% 01-04-11 24% latest beta 35% any beta
  • 65% 01-14-11 45% latest beta 20% any beta
    • 27 of featured addons not compat
  • 68% 01-25-11 56% latest beta 12% any beta
  • 69% 02-15-11 62% latest beta 9% any beta
    • 20 featured addons on compat
    • 16 of top 40 most popular addons not compat
  • 72% 3-2-11 65% latest beta 7% any beta -- first RC spun
    • 18 featured addons not compat
    • 14 of top 40 addons not compat
  • 3-11-11
    • 0.571 460 "maxversion compat-latest">4.0.*
    • 0.001 1 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b12pre
    • 0.001 1 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b11
    • 0.007 6 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b12
    • 0.004 3 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b9
    • 0.012 10 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b9pre
    • 0.030 24 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b8pre
    • 0.006 5 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b7
    • 0.001 1 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b7pre
    • 0.001 1 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b6
    • 0.006 5 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b6pre
    • 0.002 2 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b4pre
    • 0.006 5 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b3pre
    • 0.009 7 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b2pre
    • 0.005 4 "maxversion compat-beta">4.0b1
    • 0.005 4 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a6pre
    • 0.016 13 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a5pre
    • 0.004 3 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a4pre
    • 0.007 6 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a3pre
    • 0.001 1 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a2
    • 0.020 16 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a2pre
    • 0.061 49 "maxversion compat-alpha">3.7a1pre
    • 0.222 179 "maxversion compat-other">3.6.*
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