[Downtime] and [Announcement] Project Phoebus Version 1.5

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Greetings, your favorite free agent here!

I would like to announce that there will be downtime for the Pale Moon Add-ons Site on FRIDAY, MARCH 31st, 2017 for server maintenance and most importantly, the landing of Phoebus 1.5. The expected downtime is going to be intermittent throughout the day.

This release of the Pale Moon Add-ons Site software has many new features that add-on developers should be made aware of and can take advantage of.

Visual and Usage Changes:

• Enhanced Visual Site Design - In order to advance and evolve the base Pale Moon website house design and the new features of the Add-ons Site the width has been increased and many lingering design issues have been resolved and/or made consistent.
• URL Changes - All hosted add-ons (extensions and themes) have had their URLs unified under /addon/[slug]. As well as categories returning to their pre-Phoebus locations. The server and software have redirects to accommodate old links.
• Search Plugins - All Search Plugins now have icons
• Language Packs - The Langpacks page has been moved to the Add-ons Site and will be the central location for them in the future. Additionally, they now have flag icons!
• Add-on Pages - The Add-ons Pages have gotten use of a sidebar which contains many optional and additional metadata elements including Compatibility, License, Resource Links, and Old Versions
• Extensions Categories - Separate category pages have been deemphasized but still accessible now from the sidebar of any Extensions Category page.
• All Extensions Page - All Extensions Page is now just Extensions and is front and center when you select Extensions from the menu bar.

Add-on Developer Changes:
phoebus.manifest

• Optional Metadata keys - in the [metadata] section the following keys are now completely optional but available: homepageURL, supportURL, supportEmail, repository, and license. If you have these keys and they ="none" you can safely remove them. These will be fully documented on the wiki soon.
• Old versions - You can now offer previous releases of your add-ons by adding additional [filename-version.xpi] sections in newer to older order with the proper keys and they will be displayed on your page in the sidebar
• Add-on Icons and Previews - They are now optional with hassle free fallbacks to generic assets where needed. You are allowed one preview.png file not exceeding 700px wide for an extension or theme.
• License - As mentioned above you may now specify the license your add-on is released under. This is optional and we have support for the most common (which will be documented on the wiki soon) or you can simply supply a UTF-8 encoded text file named 'phoebus.license' no manifest entry required.

phoebus.content

• The [image] tag has been removed to address potential privacy concerns please use preview.png as mentioned above
• Note: This file is completely optional. If your shortDescription will suffice for you then it will be used if this file is non-existent.

[back2themoon]

Great news - many thanks

[New Tobin Paradigm]

You can peak at it via http://dev.addons.palemoon.org/ but a few small things are on-going so..

[Gandalfdjh]

Looking good and thanks for all the hard work.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Phoebus 1.5.0 has landed on http://addons.palemoon.org/ and is fully operational.

However, I am in the middle of rewriting the FTP Administration Tool the Add-ons Team uses to deal with the FTP accounts so FTP will remain down until that is finished.. I am still targeting the end of today for that to come back online..

Stay tuned for more status reports and updates!

[New Tobin Paradigm]

FTP should now be back up on the line. Thank you for your continued understanding and dedication, add-on developers!

[Skaendo]

I don't want to come off sounding like a jerk, but I don't like the new addon pages. Specifically the extensions page. To me it seems like it just went back in time how everything is mashed together and there is no categories for anything. It was easier to browse through the extensions before if I was looking for say something security related, it would be in a category with similar addons. Now everything is just thrown together with everything else and unless you know exactly what you are looking for you pretty much have to read through everything.

Just my opinion.

[ron_1]

Skaendo wrote:
I don't want to come off sounding like a jerk, but I don't like the new addon pages. Specifically the extensions page. To me it seems like it just went back in time how everything is mashed together and there is no categories for anything.

There are categories . . .

[Skaendo]

There are categories . . .

Yea, I seen that. I just thought that it was easier to browse the addons the way it was. When they were separated into categories on the main page. There is not 10,000 addons that (IMO) would require a separate page for each category, And if you're going to put the separate categories on their own page why even have a landing page that has all of them on one page just mashed together?

I don't mind the new look, I just thought it was easier before. Now you have to click to get to the "addons site" then you have to click to get to the extensions page, then you have to click to get to one category, click, click, click, click......

I myself will deal with it, since I have no say over the design of the website. Just putting my worthless opinion out there.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I was wondering when complaining would happen...

So, I did a brief usage study and found that almost no one used the separate category pages and even before that the "All Extensions" page was the most popular so it was decided that All Extensions would just become Extensions (for which you can use the browser findbar to search (until 2.0 when site search will become possible again) and the categories were de-emphasised but obviously not removed since they are still important.

The reason it is not separated into categories on the big list is because it seemed redundant. Either you want to see them all.. Or you want to do categories.. And not separating them simplified the logic needed to generate the page.

Well, no one is gonna get everything they want... regardless.. Though, I was hoping that all the improvements would have been appreciated outside of one person on the forums and those active on IRC who watched it progress. They had a lot of input where as people on the forum could do nothing but complain and try and discredit me personally or simply ignore anything that was happening.. So if you feel your input may have been disregarded or not given enough weight.. One can blame their peers on the forum for that. Meanwhile, things continue to progress and if suggestions are actually good (for which many concepts did come from what was being requested on the forums) they will be evaluated and acted upon in one way or another.

In any event, most regulars do know what they are looking for so a quick findbar search will do nicely.. Otherwise, an extra click isn't too much to ask for something that wasn't exactly being used anyway.

[Skaendo]

Hey, I'm not really complaining. I just thought it was easier the other way. It looks good, I just think that it is a little counter productive having everything just thrown into one big list like that that is not categorized.

Just me, I only use things out of maybe 2, 3 categories, so now I just have to *sort of* hunt down the things that I use. But I suppose that I can just bookmark all the ones I use and if I end up having to reinstall I can find them easy that way.

Just a suggestion,

What if the extensions landing page had the categories like they were but only had like 3, 4 or 5 of the most popular addons listed on the landing page but you can click on the category title to go to the full section? I know this is the opposite of what you said the majority of people use, but you can also just have a page with everything on it like it is.

Another thing that I would just suggest is that the addons dropdown menu on the Pale Moon homepage had the addon categories them selves in it like "themes" is. Just add extensions and whatever other main categories there are.

Take 'em or leave them, it's your baby. I still appreciate everything the Pale Moon team does!

[superA]

Matt ,
I think this one is missing, viewtopic.php?f=46&t=15054 , (link to AMO https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... shdisable/).

[New Tobin Paradigm]

What do you want me to do about it? I write software.. I don't administrate anymore that is the job of the Add-ons Team.. The developer has to ask the Add-ons Team for it to be added...

[Moonchild]

What if the extensions landing page had the categories like they were but only had like 3, 4 or 5 of the most popular addons listed on the landing page but you can click on the category title to go to the full section?

And how, exactly would you:

• Determine this popularity without telemetry?
• Prevent favoritism when you do this?

Personally, I think this whole "list of all add-ons" can go away when there's a functional search. It'll only be used by people who know what extension they are looking for already. As more extensions are added, this will quickly become an unmanageable pool. People who are looking to discover new extensions would be looking through categories that match what they want.

[Lootyhoof]

Matt ,
I think this one is missing, viewtopic.php?f=46&t=15054 , (link to AMO https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... shdisable/).

It's not missing.

I've had to take a stance on PMkit add-ons on AMO. If we link to them, AMO will say they're incompatible due to the higher Firefox version than us. They might be fully supported on the developer side, but only those that actually know it's compatible regardless of the redundant AMO warning would install it, and even then it wouldn't be able to update as AMO wouldn't give us it due to the higher Firefox version.

Such add-ons need to either host with us or self host.

[gracious1]

Skaendo wrote:
I don't want to come off sounding like a jerk, but I don't like the new addon pages. Specifically the extensions page. To me it seems like it just went back in time how everything is mashed together and there is no categories for anything.

There are categories . . .

Untitled.jpg

I keep my windows much narrower than this except at certain sites. It is now really awkward to have to slide the horizontal scroll to get to the categories, or to have to widen my window. Could you please put the selections menu-style at the top of the page the way they were before? It was much easier to work with. What I mean is, in addition to the panel at the side? (I am not suggesting you completely undo all your work. Just add back the menu-type selection so that you can use either one.)

[gracious1]

There are categories . . .

Yea, I seen that. [...]
I don't mind the new look, I just thought it was easier before. Now you have to click to get to the "addons site" then you have to click to get to the extensions page, then you have to click to get to one category, click, click, click, click......

I myself will deal with it, since I have no say over the design of the website. Just putting my worthless opinion out there.

I don't think your opinion is worthless. And I am sure that the PM developers don't thinks so, either. Regarding the the themes page, it is also frustrating that the content of the window doesn't resize when I have my window narrower. I have to scroll horizontally to see the preview, or nearly maximize my window. Same with each add-on's individual page. The words go off the margins so to speak instead of resizing to the size of the window. I have to increase the window size or scroll horizontally.

I appreciate the time you have put into this design, but it would be nice to at least have the content resize according to the width of the window.