Firefox 3 and SearchStatus

With the release of Firefox 3 earlier this week, there was some anticipation around the QuirkStation that the SearchStatus download page (and thus www.quirk.biz) would see some increased traffic as users updated their extensions to be compatible with the new browser version.

Firefox changes quite a bit with each new major release and so must its extensions. SearchStatus was no exception. I needed to make a number of code changes several months ago to adjust to the new environment. The browser also employs a strict system of versioning with which extensions developed for it must comply.

As the third incarnation of the ‘Fox was being built, new version numbers were regularly published (see the complete list here) and extensions needed to update their metadata to indicate they were compatible, even if no actual code changes were necessary. And so, I received many polite emails from users requesting that I update SearchStatus to be compatible with alpha 3, alpha 4, alpha 5 … beta 1, beta 2 … and so forth as development of the browser progressed. After several releases for the purpose of bumping maxVersion metadata, I jumped the gun (in the name of the user, of course :)) and put up SearchStatus 1.25 to comply with the final version (3.0.*) before it was even released.

Of course, the Great Download Day has now come and gone. Right now, Firefox 3 is heading for 14-million downloads! Our stats aren’t so impressive, although there has been a marked increase in activity on the SearchStatus pages. I was a little disappointed at first, before I realised that, for the most part, people have upgraded to a compatible version already, through the excellent Firefox extension update system. Not so good for the stats, but great for the user who hopefully experienced a painless upgrade.

For the record, however, in the last week we’ve had about 10 000 downloads on Quirk.biz and about 6 300 reported on Addons.mozilla.org. Not bad for a project started one rainy weekend!