The Mozilla crew, always looking to extend and improve its community outreach efforts, is relaunching the Firefox add-ons site on Monday, February 12. I met with Firefox technology strategist Mike Shaver yesterday, and he explained the reason for the relaunch.
"The site has organically grown since 2000 when it was set up for a couple dozen add-ons," Mike says. "When we launched Firefox 2, we had 2,500 or so add-ons. There were some issues of scale and performance that we needed to address, but the relaunch will mainly improve navigation and help the users find the add-ons they want."
Shaver says the usability enhancements are becoming more and more important as Firefox's user base grows – not only in size, but also in range. The more popular the browser becomes, the less geeky the Firefox install base becomes, so making the site easier to use is a must at this point.
Check out the new site on mid-day Monday at addons.mozilla.org. Also check out the Firefox team's list of recommended add-ons. We'll have a full interview with Mike Shaver on Wired News soon.
In other browser add-ons website news, Microsoft has updated its Internet Explorer 7 add-ons site, as well. The IE7 team has incorporated the browser add-ons center into the Windows Marketplace, Microsoft's main depot for software downloads and hardware purchases. Surfing to the old ieaddons.com site automatically redirects to the Windows Marketplace. Tony Chor of the IE7 team has the rundown on the official IE7 Blog.
