User:Bhashem/AddOns-AMO-Principles

This short document outlines a few principles and top level thoughts around Add-Ons, the Add-Ons ecology and addons.mozilla.org (AMO)

Add-Ons

• To create the most comprehensive AddOns directory
  • Create nodes for non-AMO hosted stuff
  • AMO search results should include non-AMO hosted stuff
  • Write a crawler that collects xpi's and metadata and populates AMO. (e.g. Mahalo just launched something. Stuff is in private beta, perhaps you add it to the sandbox or a non-AMO portion of the site)
  • Create a manual index of individual locations (Google, Yahoo,Skype,selected user blogs, etc...)
  • Allow publishing from mozdev and other extension project development sites
  • Suck in from other AMO-like sites

• Help various user types find and discover addons
  • Create a theme browser to quickly discover themes
  • Improve search so that results and keyword yield good results
  • Developer an AddOns Recommendation Wizard that is task based
  • Allow for searching by Firefox architecture (plugin, toolbar, sidebar, etc…) – perhaps by clicking on an image of the Firefox areas?
  • Recommendation Lists
    • Enable publishing and sharing of recommendation lists from third-parties (RecoList Builder)
    • Create recommendations based on browser data (e.g. search or browse history - we see you visited facebook, do you want the Facebook addon?)
    • Create recommendations based on psychographics (e.g. love social networking ,photography, etc…)
  • % of users who use this extension also found Addon X to be useful
  • “You might also like” recommendations
  • Allow users to self-identify (e.g. new user, advanced user, web developer, extension author) to provide recommendations

• Ensure the highest quality for what gets published
  • Safe from a integrity of software, user experience, security, performance, privacy, etc..
  • In cases where AMO can't vouch for an addon, provide additional details/info so user can make an informed decision (e.g. this is why it's sandboxed, it's non-AMO hosted, etc...)
  • Ensure users get a "safe" experience
  • Security signature of extensions/SSL site
  • Create a reliability rating system
  • Enforce security reviews for extensions to prevent malware attacks (esp. upon previously approved extensions) – Not just new stuff coming in, but all updates
  • Share a talos/performance/memory impact assessment (increase in startup time, page load and/or mem usage)
  • Create tiers of review (e.g. Random AddOn, Basic Review, Security Checked, Privacy Checked, Spyware Free, etc...)

• Create an ecosystem that extension developers, editors/reviewers are satisfied with
  • Consider all the steps from learning to author an extension to writing it to deploy to supporting - dev tools, docs, tracking & stats, etc...
  • Provide better stats/analytics tools
    • Historical view graphs - # of users, growth rates, growth trends (bunch of time periods)
    • RSS feeds that be subscribed to
    • CSV that can be downloaded
    • Funnel visualization (a la Google Analytics) - download, first run, active users
  • Build value proposition of why it's good to host on AMO
    • What you get for free? hosting, distributed worldwide, uptime, whitelist, a site with traffic, marketing?, real-time instrumentation, etc...
  • For self-hosters, provide a set of tools for publishing success
    • Here's an <object> or iframe that features your stuff integrated into your site - no AMO branding, etc...
    • Here's a way to private label your stuff on the AMO site - e.g. upload you header/footer/etc... hosted on AMO