Japan/AMJ

Introduction

We at Mozilla Japan have our own Firefox add-ons library (AMJ) instead of Firefox Add-ons (AMO). Here is some background information on the AMJ service.

Although AMO's interface is fully localizable, we have some problems:

AMO has no capability to search/browse add-ons by locale. (Bug 285850)
AMO has no capability to find authors by locale.
Some add-ons are localized with machine translation. Those qualities are bad for Japanese.
Some add-ons are partially localized. It's impossible to pick up really localized add-ons mechanically.
~~AMO's search engine doesn't support multibyte queries.~~ - partially fixed?
Most of localized add-ons don't have their localized summary and description on AMO.
- Therefore, we cannot search these add-ons by Japanese even if they're localized.
Most of the recommended add-ons are not localized.
- The requirements should have l10n for the Tier 1 and 2 locales.

The bottom line is, it's very difficult for us to find add-ons which can be used in our language.

To resolve these issues, we've started the AMJ project as an AMO proxy.

AMJ allows Japanese Firefox users to search/browse add-ons which are developed by Japanese companies/individuals or (almost) completely localized.
- As of February 2010, there are over 450 add-ons listed.
- The list has been maintained manually since October 2006.
AMJ combines AMO's data with our own data:
- Add-on meta data is imported through AMO's public API (description, screenshot, icon, etc.)
- AMJ showcases add-ons with completely localized summaries and numbers of weekly downloads. Those numbers are counted on the AMJ server and indicate which add-ons are popular for Japanese users.
- AMJ also shows numbers of bookmarks which are provided by Hatena Bookmark, Japan's most popular social bookmark service.
AMJ has own 20 categories. (Unfortunately AMO's categories are useless... Those are arbitrarily assigned by the add-on authors, not by the editors. Also, types of categories are not enough for every add-on.)
AMJ has own featured add-on list.
AMJ is fully integrated into Japanese Firefox builds (ja and ja-JP-mac locales), and the users can search/browse through the Add-ons Manager interface. (Bug 427323)

We are working on upgrading the AMJ service.

More than 150 experimental (sandboxed) add-ons made by Japanese authors will be added.
- Bug 433361 is a blocker - FINALLY fixed on the trunk!
Themes and Thunderbird add-ons will be added.
More useful add-on detail pages: user review, localized screenshots, etc.
Shopping Cart: Capability to install multiple add-ons at once.
Collections like AMO.
More features to come!