Extend Firefox Contest Highlights the Catch-22 of Browser Add-ons

Mozilla has launched Extend Firefox 3, a new contest for developers building add-ons for the upcoming final release of Firefox 3. There are two main categories - new add-ons that take advantage of capabilities introduced in Firefox 3, and also prizes for those existing add-ons that are ported to Firefox 3.

The Extend Firefox 3 website says that the entries will be judged "by a panel of experts," though the names of the judges have not been released.

There's no question that add-ons are one of Firefox's killer features. The ability to extend and customize the browser means that everyone can make Firefox behave exactly the way they want - provided you know that Firefox has extensions and are willing to take the time to install them.

And that has long been the dilemma of extensions - what should be included in the browser and what should be left as an add-on?

As blogger Jeff Atwood puts it:

when I hear, as I often do, how someone couldn't possibly imagine using Firefox without the three or four extensions that they absolutely must have. I'm torn. How many of those nifty extensions are specialized functionality - and how many are crude spackle over missing features that really should have shipped in the box?

Mozilla has long been caught between a rock and hard place when it comes to deciding which features should be part of Firefox and which should be left as extensions. Roll too many add-ons into Firefox itself and it starts to get bloated; roll in too few and other browsers are more powerful out of the box.

This creates a problem for new users, many of whom aren't even aware that Firefox has extensions. After all, their last browser probably didn't have anything like extensions; its functionality was simply whatever happen to be available when the window opened.

When users feel Firefox is missing something and the community responds by saying "just install add-on X," it turns off a lot of people who will naturally feel that it's just as easy to install a browser that has the functionality they want right out of the box.

Of course when it comes to making the decisions about what should included and what shouldn't, everyone has their pet features they can't live without. Popular extensions like Firebug or Down Them All might be indispensable to some, but utterly useless bloat to others.

What are your must have Firefox add-ons? And which, if any, do you think should be rolled into Firefox itself?

While you can submit as many add-ons as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.

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