Are we ignoring the new AMO?
Posted by Nanci Barthelmess on 28 March 2008
Mozilla unveiled a new version of their add-ons site the other day, and yet neither Peng nor I have written anything about it. Is it an inadvertent slip due to the demands of Real Life or so we have something against the update?
Yes, real life has had the both of us busy, but in all honesty we’ve both seen the new site and we’re in agreement that once again Mozilla is rolling out an update that makes things harder on the user, rather than easier.
Add-on developers are being asked to provide a link to a support forum because users have complained for too long that some extensions have little support and the discussion area available on AMO seems to be ignored by developers. (In all fairness to the add-on devs some specifically state that support requests should go to a their support forum because they don’t keep up with the comments on AMO. But it seems AMO didn’t have a way to pass along comments to the devs, so who’s fault was it?)
As a user I went to AMO to find out if an extension I used on Firefox 2 has been updated to possibly work with Firefox 3 nightlies, and not only are the versions of Firefox/Thunderbird/etc. the add-ons are compatible with not shown any more, but you have to go through additional pages just to get a link to the developer’s site. This may be because the URIs provided for add-ons on the old site don’t seem to have been migrated to the new site very well, but I know the information was a lot easier to get than it is now. Plus the main page has been redone in what I can only describe as an attempt to be “hip”, but part of what was done was to remove the ability to see the latest updates quickly, instead providing information on “Recommended” add-ons, without much info on who’s doing the recommending. Once again, more flash, less real info. That’s never been something I’ve been really thrilled with.
I spoke with Peng earlier today and he was telling me that he tried to remove a development version of a theme he was working on but after spending ten minutes trying to see how to delete the theme (including spending several minutes trying to find out how to get into his developer’s information area) he ended up changing the description to state that it should be ignored unless the person has the ability to take it out of the database. Needless to say Peng has been pushed past the point of frustration with the new AMO to be pretty pissed off. I’ve heard people in the past talk about how hard AMO was to work with and it looks like they’ve taken steps to encourage even more people to simply not use AMO at all from a developer’s standpoint. And now it seems they’re trying to turn away users as well.
But enough of our opinions. If you want to find out what’s on the new AMO I’ll refer you to Planet Mozilla posts by Basil Hashem, Mike Morgan and Madhava Enros. But I’ll warn you that some of it may be pure Mozilla shills. I didn’t see a single real negative report in any of the posts, yet comments aren’t all positive and if you go to Mozillazine Forums you’ll find a number of people unhappy with the update. (I won’t give a link to a specific forum topic because there are complaints in several areas of the forums today.) Someone in the forums even states that a blog comment of his pointing out problems with the update was deleted. Go figure. Yes, there are a number of good things about the update, but I was left very unhappy with it and wish I could go back to the older version.
29 March 2008 at 11:53 am
Amen…
As a user not a developer, I can’t find a darn thing now…
I posted complaints at the referenced site that were deleted…
31 March 2008 at 10:01 pm
I’ve intentionally not commented here sooner. Every time I read the thread about it on Mozillazine I get pissed off all over again. It’s bad enough that so many people are pissed off about the new Abomination.Mozilla.Org that the mods have to keep reminding us to try to keep things civil and productive. The bottom line is that the new site (aside from looking a hell of a lot like the PriceGrabber website) looks that it was designed by a bunch of idiotic 20somethings who love MySpace, Facebook and all the Web 2.0 sites simply because “they’re Web 2.0 so how can there be anything wrong with them?” (No offense intended to the 20somethings who give a damn about usability and realize that so many of these damned sites that are supposed to be so “cool” are actually some of the most useless bits of code ever cobbled together by a bunch of semi-trained monkeys.)
I have to say one thing for sure. The new AMO could be the one thing that keeps me using Firefox 3.0 when it comes out. The new Get Add-ons tab in the Addons Manager is about the only thing that can shield me from having to use AMO. If an addon isn’t available via the new tab and I don’t have a developer’s website to get it from I honestly don’t need to use the addon. I am leaning heavily to roll back to Fx2 once Fx3 is out and I write a final review of it. Of course one added benefit is that I have just about everything I want for Firefox 2 (so much is still unavailable for fx3, like OSX-look themes for Linux users) that I may never need AMO again if I stay with Fx2. God knows there’s so much info that I can no longer get from the site since the redesign.
Now I understand why CatThief and other addon devs refuse to have their addons listed on AMO. They’ve managed to avoid the spike in their blood pressure without even trying.
Why don’t I file or vote for bugs about Abomination.Mozilla.org? Because I doubt that the best solution will ever be used, no matter how much sense it makes. The solution? To admit that their fresh out of college “designers” have well and truly screwed the pooch on this one, to eat the money they paid for the upgrade, and to roll back to the old interface. Or at the very least give us the option of using the “old school” AMO interface and not the crap that got rolled out with so little warning to anyone. I’ve wasted enough bandwidth trying to point out that if Mozilla says betas of Fx3 are not for everyone than it has no business being the default browser for Ubuntu Hardy. I’m not wasting any of Bugzilla’s bandwidth even addressing the new abomination or mine dealing with bugs that might as well get flagged WONTFIX. My doctor’s pretty glad, too. My blood pressure got way too fraking high since the upgrade.
@Nanc:
It’s too bad you’ve closed your SL store. I wonder how a “Frak AMO” tee would sell. I know I’d want to buy one, and I’m almost never on SL anymore.
1 April 2008 at 12:58 am
I posted comments that were critical (but constructive) to Basil Hashem’s blog and they were deleted. It would seem that they are trying to whitewash things to make it seem that everyone loves the new AMO site. I guess they figure if they tell everyone how great the new AMO site is everyone will believe them.
1 April 2008 at 2:26 am
Thanks for reposting your comments, KLB. That Askimet page can get confusing sometimes. :p
I’m noticing that it’s hard to find negative comments about it on “official” sites. You can post them on Mozillazine, but it looks like it’s the only place the dissenters have to post comments without getting treated like you missed a serving of Kooliad. Please let your friends know Peng and I want any kind of comments, both positive and negative, to our posts. I only delete posts that are clearly spam or outright flames. Dissension is good, treating someone like they’re a moron for not agreeing with someone else is bad. Although if you do something really stupid like redesign a community website that is so much less usable than the old version we’ll call you on it. Just like if you set up blog comments that insist on identifying a commenter by their email addy. (I’m looking at you, Major League Baseball.)
8 April 2008 at 9:38 pm
@KLB: Just to clear the air, I was so overwhelmed with comments and feedback, etc… that I didn’t get a chance to moderate my blog. I don’t delete comments only spam. You can see all the comments in all their glory on my blog. Thanks.