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I’ve recently been playing around with Firefox’s Add-on Collector, and I have to say it could be really useful but currently it fails to deliver on its potential.

Here’s how Mozilla describes the Add-on Collector:

Discover more of the best add-ons and organize your favorites in easy-to-manage collections. Subscribe to see how the collections you admire grow, and fans follow when you manage and update your own collections.

At first, I assumed this meant I could subscribe to lists (aka collections) of Firefox add-ons and have changes to those collections pushed to me. The truth is that it only half works like that.

Yes you can subscribe to collections of add-ons. And yes you will be notified when those collections change. So far so good. But the Add-On Collector provides no way for you to easily install all the add-ons from a collection. You still have to install each add-on one by one, manually. It even asks you to restart after each one (hint: you can wait until you’ve installed all of them before restarting).

I assume Mozilla didn’t think installing add-ons automatically was a good idea for security reasons. Imagine if the publisher of a popular collection quietly added a “Steal all your info” add-on to the list and then cackled as all his subscribers’ browsers auto-installed it. So it makes sense that the Add-On Collector doesn’t auto-install add-ons. But there’s not even a button to “Install All” when you subscribe to a collection (or “Remove All” when unsubscribing). Subscribing to a collection just shows you the list of add-ons and it’s up to you to go install them or not.

In addition, you have to register for a Mozilla account in order to add or manage subscriptions. Your subscriptions are stored on Mozilla’s servers. There’s no option to keep everything local on your machine. This isn’t a big deal, but it’s kind of a pain. Ideally after installing the Add-On Collector I could just start using it immediately without jumping through more hoops.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed in the Add-On Collector but it’s still better than nothing. It’s not an end-to-end solution for add-on installation and management. But once you have a Mozilla account (and remember to log in), it’s great for add-on discovery and for organizing your favorite add-ons.

You can install the Add-on Collector (which is itself a Firefox Add-on) from this page.

Once it’s installed, check out my “Can’t Browse Without” collection of add-ons. Or browse other popular collections.

This is a little late, but in case you haven’t been counting, Eli turned 11-months old this month.  It’s been a pretty great month for all of us.  Eli practically learned something new every day and we were able to spend a lot of quality family time together over the holidays. We survived being trapped in the house for a few days by the Snowpocolypse and we even got outside to enjoy some of fluffy white stuff.

Eli has been cruising all over the place (standing and walking sideways while holding on to things) and he has even started climbing and standing on things (like toys, boxes, etc.).  Last month he would play peekaboo or hide and seek if we hid from him, but now he now will hide and wait for us to find him (usually behind a toy or ducking behind the coffee table).  He recently started waving, “giving five”, and he can push his train around the floor.  He climbed up stairs for the first time this month and he’s also started dancing and bouncing to music or when we sing or clap.  He has so much energy, at least until nap time.

Eli is starting to eat more table foods now.  Cheese is still his favorite by far, in fact we give it to him as dessert.  He also eats ham and turkey lunch meat as well as a little bit of meatballs and chicken.  He isn’t too keen on feeding himself fruit and veggies but loves them as a puree.  He will feed himself sweet potato fries, banana, prunes, and small pieces of dried fruits.  Just yesterday he started eating cheddar pasta with veggies, but if the veggie pieces are too big or not stuck to the pasta he’ll spit them out (baby steps, baby steps). We’re still trying to teach him how to use a sippy cup on his own but he’s getting better at it every day.  

I don’t want to jinx us, but Eli was a great sleeper last month.  He has been sleeping through the night again (for the last 5-6 weeks) and the week before Christmas he started sleeping even longer.  He now goes to bed between 7p and 7:30p and he sleeps until around 7am.  And best of all, he puts himself to sleep at bedtime and for naps with minimal fussing. While we’re a little sad that he doesn’t want to be rocked to sleep anymore, it’s made a world of difference stress-wise.

Nicole and I have also recently been abandoning entrusting Eli to a babysitter which has allowed us to get some adult time in with our friends.  We put Eli to bed and go out after he is asleep while paying the babysitter to basically just listen to the monitor. At some point soon we’d like to try leaving him with a sitter (non-relative) when he’s awake but I’m not sure if he or we are ready for that yet.

Eli now has two sharp little teeth! Seriously, they’re like razor blades, and only slightly crooked.

You can find our pictures from December and more elephant pictures on Nicole’s SmugMug site