Firefox has a ton of users, and a growing proportion of them are in Europe.  Since we have so many excited add-ons developers there, we held the Mozilla Add-ons Workshop in London this year.  It was, all in all, a fantastic time.  I gave a talk about Firefox Add-ons, and how our commitment to new ideas and browser customization allows us to provide a deeply personal experience for the myriad needs of hundreds of millions of internet users worldwide.  Five browsers make up over 98% of worldwide usage, and it seems like a foregone conclusion that there are more than 5 different kinds of users out there.

Of course, I have a point to make- which is that Firefox is much more than a single browser with a single experience.  Our commitment to add-ons and personalization is a reflection of our commitment to choice and innovation on the web.  We spend an enormous amount of effort on our platform because we believe that great ideas for the web come from everyone, and not just from our core development team. Since we know that there are great ideas out there, we’ll continue to make the most powerful platform for browser customization on the planet.  With Jetpack, it will also be the easiest and most fun- because innovation isn’t about struggling to make an idea a reality.

I also talked about about our plans to launch an Add-ons Marketplace this year- one that really focuses on building good relationships between developers and their users.  We know from our Contributions Pilot that add-on developers are interested in earning money from their add-ons, and we also know that this isn’t an idea that users take offense with.  Ultimately, we’d like to create opportunities for our developers to succeed with an add-on marketplace that is built on trustworthy relationships, and DRM will never be a part of that.

The best way to fight piracy is with good products for fair prices, and we want to create a Farmer’s Market, not a supermarket, one that is optimized to create opportunities for individual developers to succeed by creating unique experiences that users are willing to pay for.  There are few things which are truly free on the internet, and a small financial transaction between a user and a developer is an honest one without any invisible strings.  We are also committed to our free ecosystem of add-ons, and we expect that paid add-ons must be able to succeed while also competing with free alternatives.  This is what we believe- and we plan to show people that a store for add-ons can be built on the principles of the open web, where good ideas can be supported by the people who enjoy and benefit from them.

All in all, the response from the community was fantastic and positive , and plenty of food for my thought as we progress through this year much more quickly than I anticipated.  Huge thanks to everyone involved, from William, Julie, and Irina who handled logistics, Justin, Myk, Tristan, and Paul who graciously spent time putting together great talks, and to all the attendees and lightning talk presenters as well.

]]> http://osunick.com/2010/07/16/london-add-ons-workshop/feed/ 1 http://osunick.com/2010/04/13/rocking-your-firefox/ http://osunick.com/2010/04/13/rocking-your-firefox/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:35:09 +0000 osunick http://osunick.com/?p=287

AMO is a great site for finding and sharing your favorite Firefox add-ons, but as we like to say, one size definitely doesn’t fit all.  While we made meaningful improvements for the millions of loyal add-ons fanatics out there, it was clear that the tens of thousands of available add-ons were overwhelming for many users new to add-ons.  Enter Rock Your Firefox- a blog we launched last month that tells folks about the great add-ons out there.

Some of you may know Rock Your Firefox as a Facebook application, originaly created by Justin Scott to help add-ons users share their add-ons on Facebook.  While the original Rock Your Firefox has been retired with fond memories, we decided to resurrect and reinvigorate the brand for the new Rock Your Firefox- where we shine the spotlight on a single add-on while telling a compelling story about how an add-on can make your life better.  We’ve made an effort to try and make these stories fun as well; and we’re actively looking for new guest bloggers to help us tell the story of great add-ons.

If you’re reading this, chance are you’re a big add-ons fan, and some of you have wondered about the reason for a new site.  Rest assured that AMO will continue to evolve in useful and delightful ways, and Rock Your Firefox is intended to complement AMO by offering a low impact and easy way to discover add-ons, whether you’re a new user or a seasoned veteran.  Also- since it’s a catchy URL- we hope that you’ll tell interested strangers to check it out, we’ll do the rest with our witty prose and slickly produced videos.

Editor’s note: Patricia Clausnitzer has translated this post into Belorussian!

I’ve had the good fortune of meeting fellow nerds from all over the world, and I’ve noticed the ones who don’t come from Silicon Valley remain enchanted by technology and its promise to make the world better.  They’re the ones hacking away on Twitter and Firefox and really pushing the envelope on the future for those products.  Many of  top Firefox add-on developers come from Europe and Asia, and Brazil’s wholesale adoption of open source and social software is a phenomenon to behold.  Korea’s obsession with Starcraft shows no signs of waning eleven years after that game’s release.

While our short attention spans compel us to keep creating and trying new things, does our eagerness to invent prevent us from honing our craft?  Does great software evolve through people who lose their otaku sense of wonder?  Seesmic relocated to San Francisco in an attempt to secure respect in the startup world, but I wonder if Silicon Valley, with its populace of short-attention-span inhabitants, will continue to be the epicenter of technology moving forward.

I’m not terribly worried about America- I still see that twinkle in the eyes of my friends and colleagues from other parts of the country, but I do think that we should get over ourselves and try to remember that technology that makes the lives of people better is something that we want in the hands of as many folks as possible.

Lots of late night coding, testing, pondering and pushing has resulted in the birth of a healthy baby-blue AMO!  Lots of people worked hard on this release and I’m incredibly proud of what we launched.

Beauty, in this case, is much more than skin deep as we’ve also released Collections, a new feature that allows our users to share their favorite add-ons with the entire Mozilla community- because you don’t have to be a developer to be a valuable part of our ecosystem.  Next up- add-on contributions and tagging.  This train isn’t stopping anywhere…

A big thanks to the AMO team (you know who you are) and the design team at Clearleft for their hard work!

WIth “Change” coming to Washington in 2009, we also felt that we could take advantage of the goodwill that this word generates in the hearts and minds of Firefox users everywhere.

So rejoice and Change Around your life on the internet with Firefox Change-Arounds!

Seriously.  Think about this- addons.mozilla.org has over 6,000 add-ons and add-on developers.  Our add-ons are created by large corporations as well as people with day jobs.  Our number 1 add-on was created by a hobbyist in his spare time and has been downloaded 40 million times.  Our add-ons can turn Firefox into a kid-friendly browser or a Twitter application.  Like the Renegade Craft Fair, we’ve got an amazing array of stuff but we fall short in one key way- we’re not as fun.  We want to change that- we want to replicate the excitement of finding the unexpected so that our visitors always something they want, even if it’s not something they expect.  We want to make “serendipitous discovery” the way most people interact with AMO.  Any ideas?

Come to air.mozilla.com tomorrow at 12:30 PM PST and watch it live.  You’ll also be able to ask questions live via the website.

In a nutshell, our thesis is that AMO is an incubator for innovation, and our goal is to help developers on our platforms succeed. We can provide the audience, support, and data that can help users and developers get the best possible experience.

We have the technology, we can rebuild AMO.

Thoughts?

-Nick