Zotero add-on is no longer available at Mozilla's add-ons

Z-user
I noticed the Zotero add-on is no longer available at Mozilla's add-ons area
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zotero/?src=search
It notes "This add-on has been removed by its author".

Will it be available in the future from Mozilla?
Will we only be able to get the add-on at zotero.org from now on?

If I get the add-on from zotero.org, will it be able to check for updates?

If I get the add-on from zotero.org, can I install it over the old 3.0.11 that I got from Mozilla? Or do I have to remove the old add-on first?
  • adamsmith
    Will it be available in the future from Mozilla?
    Will we only be able to get the add-on at zotero.org from now on?
    for the time being at least. Mozilla took a long time reviewing add-ons and that caused a lot of problems - e.g. when FF 20 came out (which isn't compatible with Zotero versions before 4.0) and thousands of users had an incompatible Zotero version.
    If I get the add-on from zotero.org, will it be able to check for updates?
    yes, same as before, except you'll get them earlier.
    If I get the add-on from zotero.org, can I install it over the old 3.0.11 that I got from Mozilla? Or do I have to remove the old add-on first?
    The former - you can just install from zotero.org and it will update your current version.
  • DWL-SDCA
    How quickly does the automatic update from zotero.org happen? All of my Zotero installations have been downloaded from Zotero.org but I always need to go back to manually download each version after I read of the new version here in the forum.
  • dstillman
    edited April 13, 2013
    DWL: The delay we're talking about here is the approval delay on AMO. With zotero.org the update is available as soon as we release it. (When you're prompted for it is an issue for a separate thread.)
  • dstillman
    edited April 13, 2013
    And just to elaborate on what adamsmith said, it was 80K people who were stranded on an incompatible version. They're still stranded now until they come to zotero.org, but this way they won't waste time trying to reinstall a broken version from the Mozilla site. (We weren't able to block people from downloading 3.0.11 into Firefox 20, so they would just receive a startup error.)

    Ultimately, addons.mozilla.org just isn't designed to review add-ons of our size. A few months ago we had to start emailing the editors to manually upload the XPIs because their automated validator wasn't even able to finish checking all of Zotero's source code before timing out.

    The reviews and Featured status on AMO were nice, but we suspect only a small percentage of our AMO users actually discovered Zotero there. We think most probably found out about Zotero separately and just downloaded it from there because they saw it in search results or because they installed it directly from the Add-ons window in Firefox.
  • jane xphile
    Thank you for this information; I shall remember to update direct from Zotero in future.
  • cezerduor
    FYI - my fortune 50 employer no longer supports zotero on its customized firefox browser on its intranet because "... they are no longer hosting versions on AMO (addons.mozilla.org)." I have been working wonderfully using zotero for the past couple years, in both my work pc/environment and personal PC. Now I'm limited. Zotero is a powerful tool, hopefully the AMO issue can be relooked at and resolved.
  • adamsmith
    sorry, this isn't going to happen. If there is anything else Zotero can do to assure your employer, I'm sure they'd be happy to, but people reviewing add-ons at mozilla were also unhappy about the situation (because huge amounts of code needed to be reviewed regularly), so I think pretty much everyone involved agrees having the add-on separately is preferable. If they prefer, you can install the Standalone program and use it with the Chrome connector, which is in the play store.
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