At the moment the add-ons tools (e.g. Check for updates, Install Add-on From File…) are only available from the Gear-icon. This makes those tools harder to reach for keyboard users, because you now have to tab an x number of times to focus the Gear-icon, then press F4 to pop-up the list and only then you can choose the tool you want.
Also for support it is harder, because you have to explain to users to click the Gear-icon, instead of just being able to choose menu Tools.

It would be easier in both cases if the Tools menu would be different for different kinds of tabs, so if you have opened the Add-ons Manager, you see the menuitems from the Gear-icon.

I'm not sure though what would be the best way to represent this in a menu. Some of the possibilities are:

• Show an extra new menu for the Add-ons manager
• Add the menuitems to the Tools menu and disable them when the Add-Ons manager isn't active
• Add the menuitems to the Tools menu and only enable/show them when the Add-Ons manager is active
• Create a submenu under Tools for Add-ons Manager's Tools.

Maybe some UX'er can chime in and see if this feature would be good to implement for users and what's the best way to implement it?

This concept could be extended to e.g. about:preferences or about:support, so you can more easily switch to certain pane or Refresh Firefox, Restart in Safe-Mode, etc…

Something to keep in mind for the upcoming about:addons changes.

Are you referring to bug 1523406?

The changes would be blocking bug 1505924.

Are you suggesting we remove the gear menu and move the options into the Tools system menu? Or I guess duplicate them?

Putting them in the system menu doesn't seem very discoverable to me, and pulling them into the page seems like it would be worse. Are there any options specifically that you think should be treated with a higher priority?

I'm not sure what would be the best way. The Gear menu can probably stay, but instead of having the Add-ons Manager right under the Tools menu, create an Add-ons submenu from where you can start the Add-ons Manager, but also invoke the other functions and set/reset options that are now only under the Gear icon.

I'm not that fond of options in the page, but I suppose Firefox is going in that direction. The selectable items on a page have different accesskey combinations compared to menus and menuitems and you constantly have to think/switch between for instance Alt+A for the menu and Alt+Shift+Afor an item on a page.