My addon Stop-it is BLOCKED BY MOZILLA!

I started asking for a review of my extension to be in the Recommended Extensions program in 2018… now it’s dead !
so the only thing i can do is…wait…but wait ??
Wait how many years more ??
This is fu…killing my work !

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Hi stop_it_be

You seem to misunderstand something here. You extension is not blocked. The “This is not monitored for security …" message is just a standard message shown on most extension installation pages, including installation pages of my extensions.

Mozilla selects a few extensions for the “Mozilla’s Recommended Extensions”. But that programme is not just about an extension being thoroughly reviewed, it is a selection of extensions chosen because there are considered to be good and useful for most/many users, and among the best of its kind.

I agree the message on installation page can be confusing, but it has been much worse than now. Your extension is not blocked and Mozilla does not directly discourage people to install your extension, they just warn you should trust the developer because only basic security scanning or review has been done by Mozilla.

Well i know for sure because i tried, & tested under android device, my add-on is NOT downloadable NOW for android devices, before it was allways the case !!!

I asked so many times to do a FULL review of my extensions during years, i only got normal reviews & code corrections help from Erosman !

For me & users who come to download & discover my add-on, that Yellow alert, tells to users “attention danger” ! that’s what people see, so i loose a lot of potential users & reviews of my add-on !

So now i’m stuck don’t know what to do !

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Okay, I was referring to desktop browsers and extensions.
Android is a special case. I’m not using extensions on Android myself, so I’m not the expert here. But as I understand the latest versions of Mozilla’s Android browser only have limited support for extensions, and Mozilla is currently only gradually opening op for a selected numbers of extension. So your extension is not “blocked”. It is just not among the first few they have selected to “test” the new extension support with.

Also I think Mozilla has multiple kinds of browsers for Android. It might vary by which of their Android browsers you try with? But again - I’m not the expert on extension on Android (or Mozilla’s various browsers for Android).

Well under android i’m using the “classic” firefox mobile version, latest update of course, not the nightly version for android !

Firefox for Android had been silence replaced with new Firefox this month (Code name is Fenix, which was called “Firefox Preview” for more than a year).

Unfortunately it seems that Mozilla just don’t have the ability to fully support all add-ons when it’s release to release channel, and can’t wait longer due to continue decrease of marketshare on Android. We need to get this out to public as soon as possible to get most user had best experience on performance and latest UX, and fully add-on support is something we can fix later.

So your add-on is not “blocked”, nor it’s related to review. It just not support by latest Firefox “yet”.

But is that a good idea?
I can imagine many people in Mozilla have iPhones where addons doesn’t exist at all so for them it may sound totally fine to release new faster Android version without addons.

But for Android users that were using addons on their phones for years and got used to them and now lost them, it’s not fine at all.
I don’t care that my browser is now XX% faster if it doesn’t have features I need.

I really don’t see how is this a good idea, there is no way this will make more people happy than angry. For me this is a huge let down :frowning:

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Consider the percentage of the user who had add-on is definitely much lower than who don’t have any add-ons (I don’t have precise number) , and the fact that if we don’t get it out, it probably won’t out forever (check the latest “news”), I can understand why Mozilla decide to push it out to market like this.

I can understand your disappointment (I’m also an add-on writer for some years), but I don’t think there is something we can do for now. Let’s wait for a couple of weeks to see if add-on team had stabilized, and can provide us more info on future plans to support even more add-ons.

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OK, fair points. I can understand that.

Yet at the same time what I hear is that “We will now focus 100% on ‘average Joe’ users and we don’t care about smart and power users.”.
And that’s just wrong. If I was a programmer at Mozilla, I would refuse to commit and push something that will hurt power users like myself.

It’s ok to target majority of the market but you should keep the advanced options for advanced users.
It can’t be that hard to add one boolean switch to the about:config that would enable all addons.

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This is the END for Firefox mozilla extensions developers !!!

The death for firefox !

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Hi @Leonardo_Sedevcic, I understand your frustration but I would ask that you take a deep breath before further engaging in this conversation. As we have said earlier in this thread, we are currently discussing how to support more extensions on the new Firefox for Android experience. This includes giving developers the ability to load their extensions on Firefox for Android Nightly for testing purposes.

That is literally insane.

Nobody cares about the UX/performance if you’re going to destroy custom addons for god knows how long.

Do you guys understand that the only reason many people use Firefox Android is for the add-ons? Chrome Android doesn’t offer addons and all the other browsers are too small for developers to consider.

Fix add-ons ASAP.

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Why only for testing purposes and why not permanently like how the old add-ons worked?

What happens to our add-on users who just wants to click “add add-on” from the add-ons store and be done? It’s unbelievable this feature was taken away and everyone was forced to update to the new Firefox Android version today without add-on support. I was expecting better from Mozilla.

Without free access to all extensions, including obscure ones and new ones, Firefox’s potential market share moves from its current level to essentially zero. When the full range of extensions isn’t easily available, or if the extension framework’s future looks uncertain, there isn’t even a compelling reason for people to try Firefox, let alone make it their browser.

updated on the add-on plan of Firefox forAndroid

also shared here

It’s really quite an underrated skill, for a person to be able to write an entire blog post on a topic while carefully avoiding saying anything relevant or helpful.

In ordinary conversation, answers that aren’t relevant or helpful are usually taken as a sort of meta-message, a signal like “I’m answering you this way because the real message is very bad news. Please fill in the blanks, guided by the kind of bad news you might expect.”

Am I wrong?

I found many info in this announcement.

As I previously commented, with limited resources we will need to make the tough decisions. If we want more from the dev team, we probably need to think about how can we help to ease the restriction.

This means continuing to build support for add-ons. In order to get the new browser to users as soon as possible—which was necessary to iterate quickly on user feedback and limit resources needed to maintain two different Firefox for Android applications—we made some tough decisions about our minimum criteria for launch. We looked at add-on usage on Android, and made the decision to start by building support for add-ons in the Recommended Extensions program that were commonly installed by our mobile users. Enabling a small number of extensions in the initial rollout also enabled us to ensure a good first experience with add-ons in the new browser that are both mobile-friendly and security-reviewed.

More Recommended Extensions will be enabled on release in the coming weeks as they are tested and optimized. We are also working on enabling support for persistent loading of all extensions listed on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) on Firefox for Android Nightly. This should make it easier for mobile developers to test for compatibility, and for interested users to access add-ons that are not yet available on release. You can follow our progress by subscribing to this issue. We expect to have this enabled later this month.

Our plans for add-on support on release have not been solidified beyond what is outlined above. However, we are continuously working on increasing support, taking into account usage and feedback to ensure we are making the most of our available resources. We will post updates to this blog as plans solidify each quarter.

There’s a significant difference between “info” and “helpful, relevant info”.

If I go into a shop and ask if they can fix my car, and their response is “We have an exciting selection of new and used cars at excellent prices, including this popular Toyota Corolla for $5000”, they have certainly given me info - but they have also not answered my question. I am left to think “Why did they avoid my question?” and I become suspicious that they are withholding important facts.

Hi folks, we’ve got a thread going about add-on support in Fenix. I’m closing this thread and redirecting comments there.