Firefox gets a sexy new add-ons manager

Mozilla continues to plug away at Firefox.next, and one area they've been working at is the add-on system. Jetpack and Personas have already seen improvements, browser shutdown time has been reduced to almost nothing, and now there's been a major update to the Firefox Add-on Manager.

No longer does the manager open in a tiny, new window of its own -- it now opens in a new tab, and you can also access it by typing about:addons in the awesome bar. That's a big plus for me: now I can simply create a button on my bookmarks toolbar and sync it everywhere using Weave instead of having to mess around with downloading add-on to add one-button access to the Manager.

The icon set and overall look isn't finalized, but it's certainly a good first effort and looks nice with the new theme which arrived back in February. Search engines have also been added to the Manager, though it didn't recognize the Wolfram Alpha or (G)Mail:to search box addons I've got installed. Some add-ons also have a difficult time installing in the new drop -- Nightly Tester Tools took me three attempts -- but that's to be expected with a code addition like this says Mozilla's Dave Townsend.

One quick usage note: the new Manager utilizes javascript, so if you've got NoScript installed you'll need to whitelist the page or just authorize it permanently the first time you open it.

Want to take the new Add-on Manager for a spin? Download the latest trunk build for your platform!