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I really really love Firefox as my personal browser, but I always find myself using Chrome to develop/debug my applications because it's dev tools outclasses th

by orf 11y ago

I really really love Firefox as my personal browser, but I always find myself using Chrome to develop/debug my applications because it's dev tools outclasses those in Firefox. I've tried the dev edition and firebug and neither comes close - the console is particularly bad. Sometimes expressions randomly don't show the evaluated results, stack traces don't use codemaps and the whole design makes me think of the python IDLE debugger. I've also spent ~2 days in total tracking down a reverse heisenbug, one that only appeared when the dev tools were open. Maddening. I eagerly check the release notes each time for some improvements, but I'm still waiting :( Edit: To be fair they do seem to add interesting developer features, but on the day-to-day usability front it's still pretty dire.

dhimes 11y ago
Interesting. Just a counterpoint: I also use FF as my main browser, but I have the happy circumstancing of far preferring to debug with FF than Chrome. Not sure when I last used Chrome, actually.
marricks 11y ago
I typically debug with chrome, but the if I want to hunt down an event attached to an element I pull out fire fox dev. It really seems great for developing I personally just have too much inertia to switch. What are your specific problems with it?
- dhimes 11y ago
  If you are asking me, it's probably mostly inertia as well. My workflow is easier in FF, and I know where things are. I used to use Firebug exclusively, but it got buggy and I started with the web dev stuff with FF. When I want to check the responsive stuff I use Chrome.
  - JoshMnem 11y ago
    For responsive view, use ctrl-shift-m in Firefox. (Cmd-opt-m on Mac) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_Design_View https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_De...
eterm 11y ago
I have almost the opposite, I use chrome for browsing but find FF's dev tools a lot more intuitive. Different mindsets I guess, and while I do find that some FF debugging features are confusing (the difference between the console, the scratchpad and the GCLI is just an annoying distinction), overall I find FF has better console highlighting and is easier to browse objects because it'll expand a logged object to a sidebar on click, but in chrome it stays in that console. There is a separate issue where Firefox can have much worse performance when the developer tools are open. This is something has been slowly being addressed but I think there's still a lot of work to get it to chrome levels.
- orf 11y ago
  > overall I find FF has better console highlighting and is easier to browse objects because it'll expand a logged object to a sidebar on click I do actually like that feature, but in my experience the console is a lot less intuitive than the one in Chrome. I've pasted the output from running "$('a')" on github.com here[1] using both Chrome and Firefox. Firefox gives you a massive chunk of output that can't be minimized, while Chrome gives you a condensed output that you can actually navigate through (with pagination). It's annoying that outputting a large-ish object instantly destroys the log with way too much output. Stack traces are another annoyance, in Chrome I get a trace that I can minimize and maximize, with all the line numbers resolved using sourcemaps and with hyperlinks to the debugger. My experience with Firefox has been an unresolved giant minimized stacktrace that is really no fun to look at. The debugger also often just takes me to my concatenated 100000 line app.js file rather than using the sourcemaps. I guess it does come down to different mindsets, I've been playing with Firebug while writing this and it seems a lot better than I remember. I've also found this[2] post about them integrating Firebug into FF itself, so good things are on the horizon :) 1. http://paste.pound-python.org/show/lUuq1bnMzOnSbcl5bhvC/ http://paste.pound-python.org/show/lUuq1bnMzOnSbcl5bhvC/ 2. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integrati...
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    On the github.com home page, $('a') gives me the following in Firefox, with a nice attribute navigator panel: Object { length: 33, prevObject: Object, context: HTMLDocument → github.com, selector: "a", 33 more… } Chrome just spews a screenful of HTML to the console.
dimgl 11y ago
I also prefer to debug on Chrome rather than Firefox. I'd use Firefox with Firebug whenever weird stuff would happen in the Chrome tools console, like error messages getting cut off and things like that, but it's been months since that's happened.
natmaster 11y ago
Firefox's design dev tools are waaaay better. CSS, animations, etc. For JavaScript it's better for Chrome in some ways and better for Firefox in others. I end up using both kind of randomly for dev even though I'm 100% Firefox for normal browsing.
yeukhon 11y ago
I debug network related stuff a lot, and in FireFox after a while the browser performance starts to degrade, while in Chrome the performance is still manageable.

by orf 11y ago

dhimes 11y ago

Interesting. Just a counterpoint: I also use FF as my main browser, but I have the happy circumstancing of far preferring to debug with FF than Chrome. Not sure when I last used Chrome, actually.

marricks 11y ago

I typically debug with chrome, but the if I want to hunt down an event attached to an element I pull out fire fox dev. It really seems great for developing I personally just have too much inertia to switch. What are your specific problems with it?

dhimes 11y ago
If you are asking me, it's probably mostly inertia as well. My workflow is easier in FF, and I know where things are. I used to use Firebug exclusively, but it got buggy and I started with the web dev stuff with FF. When I want to check the responsive stuff I use Chrome.
- JoshMnem 11y ago
  For responsive view, use ctrl-shift-m in Firefox. (Cmd-opt-m on Mac) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_Design_View https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_De...

eterm 11y ago

I have almost the opposite, I use chrome for browsing but find FF's dev tools a lot more intuitive. Different mindsets I guess, and while I do find that some FF debugging features are confusing (the difference between the console, the scratchpad and the GCLI is just an annoying distinction), overall I find FF has better console highlighting and is easier to browse objects because it'll expand a logged object to a sidebar on click, but in chrome it stays in that console. There is a separate issue where Firefox can have much worse performance when the developer tools are open. This is something has been slowly being addressed but I think there's still a lot of work to get it to chrome levels.

orf 11y ago
> overall I find FF has better console highlighting and is easier to browse objects because it'll expand a logged object to a sidebar on click I do actually like that feature, but in my experience the console is a lot less intuitive than the one in Chrome. I've pasted the output from running "$('a')" on github.com here[1] using both Chrome and Firefox. Firefox gives you a massive chunk of output that can't be minimized, while Chrome gives you a condensed output that you can actually navigate through (with pagination). It's annoying that outputting a large-ish object instantly destroys the log with way too much output. Stack traces are another annoyance, in Chrome I get a trace that I can minimize and maximize, with all the line numbers resolved using sourcemaps and with hyperlinks to the debugger. My experience with Firefox has been an unresolved giant minimized stacktrace that is really no fun to look at. The debugger also often just takes me to my concatenated 100000 line app.js file rather than using the sourcemaps. I guess it does come down to different mindsets, I've been playing with Firebug while writing this and it seems a lot better than I remember. I've also found this[2] post about them integrating Firebug into FF itself, so good things are on the horizon :) 1. http://paste.pound-python.org/show/lUuq1bnMzOnSbcl5bhvC/ http://paste.pound-python.org/show/lUuq1bnMzOnSbcl5bhvC/ 2. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integrati...
- cpeterso 11y ago
  On the github.com home page, $('a') gives me the following in Firefox, with a nice attribute navigator panel: Object { length: 33, prevObject: Object, context: HTMLDocument → github.com, selector: "a", 33 more… } Chrome just spews a screenful of HTML to the console.

dimgl 11y ago

I also prefer to debug on Chrome rather than Firefox. I'd use Firefox with Firebug whenever weird stuff would happen in the Chrome tools console, like error messages getting cut off and things like that, but it's been months since that's happened.

natmaster 11y ago

Firefox's design dev tools are waaaay better. CSS, animations, etc. For JavaScript it's better for Chrome in some ways and better for Firefox in others. I end up using both kind of randomly for dev even though I'm 100% Firefox for normal browsing.

yeukhon 11y ago

I debug network related stuff a lot, and in FireFox after a while the browser performance starts to degrade, while in Chrome the performance is still manageable.