Moziversary #5

Today is my fifth1 Moziversary 🎂 I joined Mozilla as a full-time employee on May 1st, 2018. I previously blogged in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

I spent a good chunk of last year working on Manifest Version 3 (MV3) with the rest of my team (WebExtensions / Add-ons team). My most notable “H1 2022” contributions were probably the scripting namespace and a simpler versioning format.

The extensions button and its panel (with 3 extensions listed) in Firefox.

Next, I worked on a new primary User Interface (UI) for Firefox Desktop: the extensions button. This feature wasn’t unanimously well-received2 3 (like many other changes to the Firefox UI). Anyway, I addressed different (usability) issues since then, and I will continue to do so!

I also…

But wait, there is more!

When I was on the AMO team, we had to maintain a feature named “Return to AMO” (RTAMO). In short, this feature allows new users interested in an add-on on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) to download Firefox and install the add-on when Firefox starts for the first time (without having to go back to AMO). RTAMO was extended to more add-ons at the beginning of 2022 (and I was involved). I became very knowledgeable about how attribution worked and documented all of that.

This is one of the reasons why I became the main owner4 of the stub attribution service, an HTTP server that encodes attribution data in Firefox (for Windows) installers and – incidentally – one of the few critical services involved when users download Firefox. Coincidentally, this project is now at the center of different 2023 projects. Good thing I took the time to put this project back on track 😛

Phew. That was a good year! I am now involved in many cross-functional projects and I really enjoy it. Speaking of which, I am currently working on bringing more add-ons to Firefox for Android 🚀

That’s all for now. Many thanks to everyone I worked with over the last 12 months, it’s been great working with all of you!

  1. 5 years or… 5 months? I moved back to France and my current employment contract started on January 1st, heh. Still better than nothing, though. 

  2. In case you didn’t know, many engineers read Reddit and/or other social platforms. I’ve shared actionable feedback from public comments internally more than once. That said, writing that the extensions button is the “worst Mozilla idea of the decade” isn’t helpful. 

  3. If I may, I would add that reaching out to me personally to say that you hate the button is probably not OK. 

  4. I am (still) trying to build a small team around this project and another one. If you want to join the fun, please let me know! 

Feel free to fork and edit this post if you find a typo, thank you so much! This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Credits

Photo used on social media by Deva Williamson.

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