Last thursday I received an e-mail from Mozilla. Of course, it was an automatic message. It just let me know that my add-on “Multi Bookmark Toolbars” had to go through some kind of review process that Mozilla have just put into practice, or it would be removed… forever.

It was the christmas of year 2007 and while half of the world welcomed the new year 2008, I spent my vacations (less than two weeks) developing an extension/addon for Mozilla’s “Extend Firefox 2″ contest. I can’t remember anything about those days but the weak light of my room and my mother providing me with some food from time to time. I really enjoyed those days, although, in retrospective, my family can’t probably say so.

Multi Bookmark Toolbars screenshot taken by softpedia.com

Nevertheless, at the time I submitted the extension I felt so happy, everything else, all the hours spent and the stress suffered, did not matter anymore. Receiving my t-shirt at home was the icing on the cake. I could not be more proud of myself, although I knew my extension wasn’t very exciting and, in fact, didn’t win any prize.

With Firefox 3, the bookmark service was modified and the core method, that had enabled me to develop the extension, had disappeared. I did some research but it was clear to me that a lot of effort had to be put in order to make it work again. I abandoned it in favour of other personal projects, although I have always supported Firefox (even after Google Chrome came to light).

Today, I have selected my addon for a light review process, called preliminary review. I hope that the addon does not disappear, just in case someone else decides to update it and make it compatible with Firefox 4 (the best Firefox, ever

It's great to realize that some people enjoy your work. I wonder what would have happened if the extension had ever left the sandbox and reached the general public?