With the recent upgrade to the Mozilla Addon’s site, there is now a sandbox. What’s a sandbox you ask? Well it’s where all new addons go before they go live to the public.

The great thing about the sandbox is that once you are in, you can view and install any theme or extension that has been uploaded. There is no waiting for approval which is good news to developers. One can upload their item right away and send users to it.

There are a couple of downsides though. First is that you have to create a free account, be logged into your account and click on the ’sandbox’ link to see any sandboxed items. If you’re not logged in, you can’t see them. The second is that a developer could create an extension (knowingly or not) that did harmful things to your browser or computer. The sandboxed items have not been tested in any way. That doesn’t mean they are bad, just proceed with caution if you don’t know the developer.

All sandboxed items should eventually make it to the light of day. Once they’ve been looked over, tested and approved, then they will be made public. So if you are nervous about a sandboxed item, just wait until it gets approved and goes public before installing.

The sandbox is a great addition to the Mozilla Addon’s site and one that will hopefully help get themes and extensions out a bit faster.

Tags: addon, extension, mozilla, sandbox