🦊 helloyanis 1d ago

I'm making a #browser #extension for #firefox is pretty cool!

But something that isn't listed anywhere, is how when you reach 10k users, all of the updates you make have to be manually reviewed by the #Mozilla #addon team.

Usually, I'd be fine with this, but how long do you think it took for an update that was just approved today?

Well, it took a little bit over 3 weeks for this one! With no position in queue whatsoever in the developer dashboard. It's quite a long timeframe, if there's a critical bug for example you need to be able to update fast!

Apparently itns because there's a huge amount of malicious vibe-coded #AI submissions. I wonder what could be done to improve the review times? (Because ranting is useless unless you have a solution in mind!)

Maybe increase team size? But that will cost lots of money. Use an AI to filter malicious submissions? But then you'd have people tricking it, and false positives. I don't really see a way...

#dev #devlog #foss #opensource

Show threadZuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET23h ago

@helloyanis If you still believe in Mozilla being the good ones instead of a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, and you can: donate. This will help Mozilla compete with Alphabet and employ people. Will this be enough? I don't know. Will they use it for extensions? Not sure either.

If you have a website/webserver, you could host patch releases there and notify users about them, but for that, you need to build trust and whether it makes sense, to have a separate release channel …

Show thread🦊 helloyanis 23h ago
@shaedrich Actually, you can't have a separate release channel, as the browser will by default refuse to install any unsigned add-ons, unless you do a change in a config page thar's only available on the Canary and dev editions of Firefox. I think you can make a new extension from scratch and get auto verified if you don't put it on the store as it won't be able to track if you have 10k users, but that's not a good solution for me since it's on the store already.
Show threadZuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET20h ago
@helloyanis So, about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox doesn't work anymore, I assume? :/
Show thread🦊 helloyanis 9h ago
@shaedrich It does, but the extension is uninstalled when you close the browser which is super inconvenient (and also it doesn't work on Android)
Show threadZuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET
@helloyanis yeah, there needs to be a workaround—maybe, I can find something 🤔
12:01pmWeb
Show thread🦊 helloyanis 5h ago

@shaedrich Well, the workaround is either to have your own distribution channel and use that for updates, so the mozilla team doesn't know how many users the add-on has, so it does the automatic check that only takes a few minutes, but then, you have way less users because you have to do SEO on the side and the add-on is not on the store.
Another way it to do all the updates before reaching 10k users, but since websites evolve, just leaving an extension as-is often breaks it after a while.

Or, just wait around a month and get approved. I think it's still the easiest to do.