Successfully Getting your Addon Reviewed

As the addon review queue grows beyond 600 nominated and updated addons, it is more important than ever to make sure your extension passes review the first time around. Editors have a review guide, and a well hidden but publicly viewable set of policies. But here is a quick list of the most cited reasons for addon refusal :

1. Addon should have at least 3 user reviews before being nominated. External reviews count too, but you have to mention them in your nomination message. Softpedia reviews do not count.
2. Wrap your loose variables. All objects, variables, and anything that your addon makes global should be wrapped to avoid conflicts with other addons.
3. Look at the error console. Is your extension throwing up javascript errors? Fix it. There are some options you can set in about:config to help you with this.
4. You break functionality in the host application (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.).
5. Your extension doesn’t work properly, or showing unexpected results. This is what user reviews are expected to catch, but you really should get someone who wasn’t involved to test and report bugs.

There are other less common things that can get you busted too. I’ll just list them here for completeness sake :

5. Including remote javascript/css or other files, anywhere. Include them in your xpi file instead.
6. CSS warnings on the error console if your submitting a theme.

If you have any doubts, check the public policies page linked above.

And don’t ask when your extension will be reviewed in the comments. Because every answer will be the same : When someone gets around to it. It could be sooner if you’d help!