Featured add-ons are top-quality extensions and themes highlighted on AMO, Firefox's Add-ons Manager, and across other Mozilla websites. These add-ons showcase the power of Firefox customization and are useful to a wide audience.
Featured add-ons are chosen by the Featured Add-ons Advisory Board, a small group of add-on developers and fans from the Mozilla community who have volunteered to review and vote on nominations.
Featured extensions are chosen every month, and featured complete themes are chosen every quarter.
Criteria for Featured Add-ons
Before nominating an add-on to be featured, please ensure it meets the following criteria:
- The add-on must have a complete and informative listing on AMO. This means:
- a 64-pixel custom icon
- a clear and concise name (no lengthy keywords)
- a clear and concise summary of the add-on's functionality
- detailed description and privacy policy, if applicable
- updated screenshots of the add-on's functionality
- The add-on must have excellent user reviews and any problems or support requests must be promptly addressed by the developer.
- The add-on must have a minimum of 2,000 users.
- The add-on must be multiprocess (e10s) compatible.
- The add-on must be compatible with the latest release of Firefox and must be compatible with beta versions 4 weeks before their final release.
- Most importantly, the add-on must have wide consumer appeal to Firefox's users and be outstanding in nearly every way: user experience, performance, security, and usefulness or entertainment value. Featured complete themes must also be visually appealing.
Discovery Pane
The Get Add-ons section (also referred to as the Discovery Pane) in about:addons serves a distinct editorial function: it is a tightly curated list of add-ons and themes selected by Mozilla staff to address an array of the most common user needs (e.g. ad blockers, screenshot tools, etc.). The Discovery Pane is primarily intended to introduce add-ons to Firefox users who have limited experience with browser customization. As such, we only select add-ons that meet the highest standards of functionality, user experience, and Firefox compatibility.
Only content that is part of AMO’s Featured Extensions collection will be considered for the Discovery Pane; please note that featured content must meet certain criteria.
Discovery Pane content is updated monthly, though some highly popular add-ons may remain on the page for an indefinite period of time.
If you’d like to nominate a great add-on for consideration in the Discovery Pane, please send us a link to the add-on on AMO to [email protected] and we’ll add your nomination to the editorial review queue. There’s no need to mention you’re nominating add-ons specifically for the Discovery Pane, but feel free to note that if you like.
Nominating an Add-on
If you wish to nominate an add-on to be featured and it meets the criteria above, send an email to [email protected] with:
- the add-on name, URL, and whether you are its developer
- a short explanation of why the add-on has wide appeal and should be featured
- optionally, links to any external reviews or articles mentioning the add-on
Add-on nominations are reviewed by the Advisory Board once a month (once every 3 months for complete theme nominations). Common reasons for rejection include lacking wide appeal to consumers, a suboptimal user experience, quality or security issues, incompatibility, and similarity to another featured add-on. Rejected add-ons cannot be re-nominated within 3 months.
Rotating Featured Add-ons
Mozilla and the Featured Add-ons Advisory Board regularly evaluate and rotate out featured add-ons. Some of the most common reasons for add-ons being removed from the featured list are:
- Lack of growth — Add-ons that are featured typically experience a substantial gain in both downloads and active users. If an add-on is not demonstrating growth in any substantial way, that's a good indicator the add-on may not be very useful to our users.
- Negative reviews — Featured add-ons should have a great experience and very few bugs, so add-ons with many negative reviews may be reconsidered.
- Incompatibility with upcoming Firefox versions — Featured add-ons are expected to be compatible with stable and beta versions of Firefox. Add-ons not yet compatible with a Beta version of Firefox four weeks before its expected release will lose their featured status.
Joining the Featured Add-ons Advisory Board
Every six months a new Advisory Board is chosen based on applications from the add-ons community. Members must:
- be active members of the add-ons community, whether as a developer, evangelist, or fan
- commit to trying all the nominations submitted, giving their feedback, and casting their votes every month
- abstain from voting on add-ons that they have any business or personal affiliations with, as well as direct competitors of any such add-ons
Members of the Mozilla Add-ons team may veto any add-on's selection because of security, privacy, compatibility, or any other reason, but in general it is up to the Board to select add-ons to feature.
This featured policy only applies to the addons.mozilla.org global list of featured add-ons. Add-ons featured in other locations are often pulled from this list, but Mozilla may feature any add-on in other locations without the Board's consent. Additionally, locale-specific features override the global defaults, so if a locale has opted to select its own features, some or all of the global features may not appear in that locale.
Follow the Add-ons Blog or @mozamo on Twitter to learn when the next application period opens.
Last updated: January 31, 2013
How up-and-coming add-ons become featured and what's involved in the process.