Bandwagon (Collections) Phase II
Justin Scott
extremely well. I'm happy to announce that we'll be going ahead with
additional collections-related features and improvements in the coming
months, as part of Bandwagon Phase II.
I've been working on a list of ideas for several months, but we probably
won't be able to fit all of them in for Phase II. That's why I'd like to
post them here and solicit feedback from the community on what features
they'd like to see added most.
If you have an interest in collections, please reply to the newsgroup
with your thoughts on the features below, and feel free to add your own
ideas not listed here.
* Add-on Recommendations (based on opt-in auto-publisher data)
* Collection Recommendations (based on favorite collections)
* Fennec support for Add-on Collector (possibly with desktop -> mobile
add-on installation)
* Thunderbird support for Add-on Collector
* Collection Stats Dashboard for collection creators to see how well
their add-ons are performing with downloads generated by their collection
* Collection stats added to Add-on Developer stats dashboard, to see
which collections are referring downloads of their add-on
* Blog badges and widgets to display collection information on another
website. (example: someone has a widget that shows the add-ons of their
auto-publisher on their blog)
* Recently viewed collections in Directory sidebar to easily get back to
collections you saw recently
* Collection comments, with ability to suggest an add-on for a collection
* Ability to add add-ons not hosted on AMO to a collection
* Installation of multiple add-ons from a collection at same time
As you can see, there's no shortage of potential new features for
collections, so your feedback on what would be most useful to you will
help greatly in prioritization.
And of course, AMO is open source, so if you'd like to help out with the
development of any of these features, please let me know.
Thanks!
Justin
Ken Saunders
providing support for Fennec is awesome and may actually encourage
participation in testing through the desktop emulator.
"Thunderbird support for Add-on Collector"
Yes please!! Pretty please!!!
Collection comments, with ability to suggest an add-on for a
collection.
Perhaps not a good idea. I would rather not have someone tell me that
a certain add-on should or needs to be in my collection because it's a
better one than one that I have listed. For example, there are a lot
of zooming extensions, a whole lot, but the ones that are in my
collection are ones that I have found to perform consistently well
under different circumstances, play well with other extensions,
provide a particular feature over other ones, or they may just be ones
that I simply prefer over others.
A persons preference for add-ons can be very subjective just as much
as a persons choice for a theme. It could also encourage a type of
spamming from developers and their friends to get their add-ons not
only listed in popular collections, but also mentioned in the
collection's comments which could be enough.
I'm a huge advocate and supporter of add-on developers, they face an
uphill battle from day one, but I'd like to see other doors opened for
them, especially for new developers.
Perhaps just implementing the same ratings system would be a good idea
instead of comments?
Ability to add add-ons not hosted on AMO to a collection
Very, very cool and fair idea. Please do.
Installation of multiple add-ons from a collection at same time
Someone recently commented on this (perhaps it was you?) about how
difficult and impractical this is considering the different licenses
that may have to be accepted, potential compatibility issues between
add-ons and product versions, the probability of 14+ firstrun pages
being loaded, etc.
I'd personally like to see this feature implemented, but it doesn't
seem to be realistic. Firefox itself and AMO would be blamed for any
problems that would arise from multiple add-ons being installed at
once.
In addition to what you've listed here, having a Collections
management console (type) like Developers Tools would be very helpful.
It's currently a hassle and a lot of scrolling and page loading to do
anything with a collection that I've created without having to create
extra bookmarks.
Should I file a bug?
Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback.
Ken
--------------------------
Brian King
> In addition to what you've listed here, having a Collections
> management console (type) like Developers Tools would be very helpful.
> It's currently a hassle and a lot of scrolling and page loading to do
> anything with a collection that I've created without having to create
> extra bookmarks.
Can you elaborate a bit on this one? Do you mean having links and/or
buttons in the extension to quickly access certain pages on AMO to
manage collections? This sounds like a good idea, if we can find the
right unobtrusive UI for it.
--
Brian King
Need free Mozilla project hosting?
http://mozdev.org
Ken Saunders
one has to first find the Collections link, select My Collections >
choose a collection > manage collection.
That's a lot of page scrolling and page loading just to manage a
collection. Bookmarking the manage collections link for each
collection isn't practical so what I'm suggesting is direct access to
My Collections and direct access to manage each of my collections.
Perhaps a drop down menu from My Account with those links?
It would also be very cool to have the same access via the Add-ons
Collector but I would think that there would be more collections
created than users of the Add-ons Collector in these early days so it
should be a priority on the site first IMO.
Ken
-------------
Brian King
> ... so what I'm suggesting is direct access to
> My Collections and direct access to manage each of my collections.
> Perhaps a drop down menu from My Account with those links?
I like that idea. You should file a bug on it.