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I'm surprised there aren't more people on here who moved to chome for the dev tools. That is what moved me over there. Firebug was great in it's day but at some

I'm surprised there aren't more people on here who moved to chome for the dev tools. That is what moved me over there. Firebug was great in it's day but at some point Chrome's dev tools just became too much better to make staying on Firefox possible.

kaiby 8y ago
Firebug was awesome, then 2011 happened and Firebug’s lead dev joined the Google Chrome team to work on their dev tools [1]. [1] https://news.softpedia.com/news/Lead-Firebug-Developer-Joins-Google-Chrome-Team-212278.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Lead-Firebug-Developer-Joins...
yesco 8y ago
Even to this day Firefox doesn't have websocket frame inspection. Its very frustrating to me that dev tools aren't a higher priority for Firefox. As they are now, they are only slightly worse than Chromes which is unacceptable considering more and more websites are being developed with only Chrome in mind.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  That is frustrating, but the good news is that this is being picked up as part of (somewhat ironically) Google Summer of Code: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c49 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c49
  - yesco 8y ago
    I find it ironic that they kept lowering the priority since an extension already added the ability, yet that very same extension no longer works thanks to their recent API changes. Perhaps lowering the priority several times wasn't that best idea after all?
    - Laforet 8y ago
      The decision to revamp their extensions API also cost a lot of goodwill from the community. FF today may be faster and more secure than two years ago, but from my perspective it has permanently lost some of its utility and appeal.
      - AsyncAwait 8y ago
        It could never deploy multi-process with XUL cruft. Then the argument would be that Firefox is too far behind. You can never win everybody.
        kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Taking away XUL is not the problem. Leaving users with a crippled replacement is.
        gnomewascool 8y ago
        "e10s compatible" add-ons were as fully-featured as the "original" XUL add-ons and did not interfere with multi-process at all. For instance, VimFx was e10s compatible and could even run with Firefox Nightly (which allowed "legacy" add-ons), without disabling multi-process, until about Firefox 65(!), without major changes.
      - bad_user 8y ago
        As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it. Chrome’s extensions were isolated, easy to develop and had a permissions system in place. To this day Firefox is still lagging behind in its isolation. For example Chrome can disable extensions in Incognito, but Firefox does not. Also if you’re not paying attention, Chrome won and it’s nearly a monopoly. This means browser extensions get developed for Chrome first. Having similar APIs helps with migration. I view the change as a good thing because I can finally develop my own extensions without headaches.
        JohnFen 8y ago
  - mrtweetyhack 8y ago
    Wow, maybe it'll be available in 2020. Too little too late don't you think?
j0nathanB 8y ago
I thought Firefox’s Developer Edition had decent dev tools.
Aser 8y ago
I'm not a professional web developer, but in the experience I've had building a couple of JS heavy sites, I've actually found the Edge developer tools to be the best. If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools.
- groestl 8y ago
  > If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools. This is probably very subjective, but I can absolutely not relate to that.
  - ambicapter 8y ago
    It seems like people consistently love or hate Visual Studio , and a lot of people seem to like VSCode.
  - davnicwil 8y ago
    Me neither. It may or may not be true in Edge, I've never tried, but it absolutely wasn't true in any IE so I wouldn't naturally expect it to be true in Edge. I certainly see where GP is coming from, Microsoft do have an awesome legacy in dev tooling that lives on to this day with products like VSCode, but browser tooling might be the glaring exception to this - perhaps since Microsoft never really was or became an 'internet' company.
- furicane 8y ago
  I've been in frontend for a long time, since 1999. The dev console is my workplace. I have to use and be familiar with all popular browsers. Chrome's dev tools are far better in my opinion.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools. I think that's a debatable assertion.
gwbas1c 8y ago
Back when Chrome was new, I'd occasionally open Firefox for the debugging tools.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  When I was a QA I’d use Firefox’s network inspector to edit and replay network requests easily, changing different parameters while being in an environment that stores all the necessary auth and cookies to use the APIs. I’ve had a lot of fun with that trying to reverse engineer websites without too much effort. Chrome still doesn’t do that.
digibo 8y ago
I vaguely remember all of those things as separate phases. - Moving away from IE, I fell in love with Opera (lots of built-in features), most others with Firefox - Chrome comes in, it's Google, it's lightweight, people try it and like it - Chrome gets really fast, it appeals to even more people - Meanwhile, Firefox has enough extension power to replace Opera for me (who can live with the tabs BELOW address bar or without mouse gestures?) - Chrome implements the aforementioned technical stuff (separate processes, etc.), appealing to power users (this may have happened before speed improvements or at the same time) - Chrome finally gets extensions and I start using it personally, but it's impossible to be a web dev without Firefox+Firebug. (IE6 still sucks, but combined with Visual Studio, feels superb for JS debugging) - Chrome's dev tools gradually get better at everything. I start living in Chrome. ... years later ... - A year ago I often used Firefox for its great Canvas debugger. They broke it. I've since forgotten about Firefox. ... 2019 ... - Microsoft is trying to drive people away from IE, hoping for Edge adoption. I don't care for Firefox. Opera is almost Chrome with extensions. Edge sounds like it wants to be Chrome. Chrome won on most battlefronts. I don't like that fact, because of the "free from corporate greed" reasons mentioned, but it's going to be hard to change the status quo.
- joecool1029 8y ago
  > Microsoft is trying to drive people away from IE, hoping for Edge adoption. Lolno, they gave up and are ditching Edge to use Chrome because Electron. https://9to5google.com/2018/12/03/microsoft-chrome-based-browser/ https://9to5google.com/2018/12/03/microsoft-chrome-based-bro...
  - austincheney 8y ago
    That is not correct. MS is ditching Trident for Blink but Edge and Chakra are still remaining technologies. This is unfortunate because Chrome is super slow on large CSS animations
- galfarragem 8y ago
  > It's going to be hard to change the status quo. There's plenty of room to improve on privacy. Non technical people don't care too much about privacy issues yet, but they will.
chrisweekly 8y ago
Yes. DevTools's superiority was the catalyst for me (and many other devs I worked with at the time).
- dandigangi 8y ago
  Same here. Firebug started to feel "limited" to what I could do in DevTools and they finally got me to switch. I honestly feel like I need to get Firefox another shot since Chrome's perf tools are heavily focused around the V8 engine. (Even though there is a lot of cross over with general JS perf)
mnm1 8y ago
That was true back then, but the FF dev tools are much superior now. Chrome lags behind severely. Last I checked, clicking an XHR link in the console just took me to the network tab instead of actually showing that request. FF shows it inline in the console. Not to mention code caching bugs in Chrome even with the cache turned off. This is the primary reason I switched back to FF.
- deadcat 8y ago
  Sadly I find that the Firefox debugger is more likely to stall and flail about. I keep trying to change to Firefox, but bring dragged back to Chrome. I mostly work on stupidly big Single Page Apps, which may be part of the issue.
irrational 8y ago
The problem was I was so used to Firebug after using it for so many years that I just kept using it out of inertia up until the day Mozilla dropped it from Firefox entirely. Then I just moved over to Firefox's developer tools (still out of inertia).

kaiby 8y ago

Firebug was awesome, then 2011 happened and Firebug’s lead dev joined the Google Chrome team to work on their dev tools [1]. [1] https://news.softpedia.com/news/Lead-Firebug-Developer-Joins-Google-Chrome-Team-212278.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Lead-Firebug-Developer-Joins...

yesco 8y ago

Even to this day Firefox doesn't have websocket frame inspection. Its very frustrating to me that dev tools aren't a higher priority for Firefox. As they are now, they are only slightly worse than Chromes which is unacceptable considering more and more websites are being developed with only Chrome in mind.

Vinnl 8y ago
That is frustrating, but the good news is that this is being picked up as part of (somewhat ironically) Google Summer of Code: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c49 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c49
- yesco 8y ago
  I find it ironic that they kept lowering the priority since an extension already added the ability, yet that very same extension no longer works thanks to their recent API changes. Perhaps lowering the priority several times wasn't that best idea after all?
  - Laforet 8y ago
    The decision to revamp their extensions API also cost a lot of goodwill from the community. FF today may be faster and more secure than two years ago, but from my perspective it has permanently lost some of its utility and appeal.
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      It could never deploy multi-process with XUL cruft. Then the argument would be that Firefox is too far behind. You can never win everybody.
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Taking away XUL is not the problem. Leaving users with a crippled replacement is.
      - gnomewascool 8y ago
        "e10s compatible" add-ons were as fully-featured as the "original" XUL add-ons and did not interfere with multi-process at all. For instance, VimFx was e10s compatible and could even run with Firefox Nightly (which allowed "legacy" add-ons), without disabling multi-process, until about Firefox 65(!), without major changes.
    - bad_user 8y ago
      As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it. Chrome’s extensions were isolated, easy to develop and had a permissions system in place. To this day Firefox is still lagging behind in its isolation. For example Chrome can disable extensions in Incognito, but Firefox does not. Also if you’re not paying attention, Chrome won and it’s nearly a monopoly. This means browser extensions get developed for Chrome first. Having similar APIs helps with migration. I view the change as a good thing because I can finally develop my own extensions without headaches.
      - JohnFen 8y ago
- mrtweetyhack 8y ago
  Wow, maybe it'll be available in 2020. Too little too late don't you think?

j0nathanB 8y ago

I thought Firefox’s Developer Edition had decent dev tools.

Aser 8y ago

I'm not a professional web developer, but in the experience I've had building a couple of JS heavy sites, I've actually found the Edge developer tools to be the best. If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools.

groestl 8y ago
> If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools. This is probably very subjective, but I can absolutely not relate to that.
- ambicapter 8y ago
  It seems like people consistently love or hate Visual Studio , and a lot of people seem to like VSCode.
- davnicwil 8y ago
  Me neither. It may or may not be true in Edge, I've never tried, but it absolutely wasn't true in any IE so I wouldn't naturally expect it to be true in Edge. I certainly see where GP is coming from, Microsoft do have an awesome legacy in dev tooling that lives on to this day with products like VSCode, but browser tooling might be the glaring exception to this - perhaps since Microsoft never really was or became an 'internet' company.
furicane 8y ago
I've been in frontend for a long time, since 1999. The dev console is my workplace. I have to use and be familiar with all popular browsers. Chrome's dev tools are far better in my opinion.
JohnFen 8y ago
> If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools. I think that's a debatable assertion.

gwbas1c 8y ago

Back when Chrome was new, I'd occasionally open Firefox for the debugging tools.

ilikehurdles 8y ago
When I was a QA I’d use Firefox’s network inspector to edit and replay network requests easily, changing different parameters while being in an environment that stores all the necessary auth and cookies to use the APIs. I’ve had a lot of fun with that trying to reverse engineer websites without too much effort. Chrome still doesn’t do that.

digibo 8y ago

I vaguely remember all of those things as separate phases. - Moving away from IE, I fell in love with Opera (lots of built-in features), most others with Firefox - Chrome comes in, it's Google, it's lightweight, people try it and like it - Chrome gets really fast, it appeals to even more people - Meanwhile, Firefox has enough extension power to replace Opera for me (who can live with the tabs BELOW address bar or without mouse gestures?) - Chrome implements the aforementioned technical stuff (separate processes, etc.), appealing to power users (this may have happened before speed improvements or at the same time) - Chrome finally gets extensions and I start using it personally, but it's impossible to be a web dev without Firefox+Firebug. (IE6 still sucks, but combined with Visual Studio, feels superb for JS debugging) - Chrome's dev tools gradually get better at everything. I start living in Chrome. ... years later ... - A year ago I often used Firefox for its great Canvas debugger. They broke it. I've since forgotten about Firefox. ... 2019 ... - Microsoft is trying to drive people away from IE, hoping for Edge adoption. I don't care for Firefox. Opera is almost Chrome with extensions. Edge sounds like it wants to be Chrome. Chrome won on most battlefronts. I don't like that fact, because of the "free from corporate greed" reasons mentioned, but it's going to be hard to change the status quo.

joecool1029 8y ago
> Microsoft is trying to drive people away from IE, hoping for Edge adoption. Lolno, they gave up and are ditching Edge to use Chrome because Electron. https://9to5google.com/2018/12/03/microsoft-chrome-based-browser/ https://9to5google.com/2018/12/03/microsoft-chrome-based-bro...
- austincheney 8y ago
  That is not correct. MS is ditching Trident for Blink but Edge and Chakra are still remaining technologies. This is unfortunate because Chrome is super slow on large CSS animations
galfarragem 8y ago
> It's going to be hard to change the status quo. There's plenty of room to improve on privacy. Non technical people don't care too much about privacy issues yet, but they will.

chrisweekly 8y ago

Yes. DevTools's superiority was the catalyst for me (and many other devs I worked with at the time).

dandigangi 8y ago
Same here. Firebug started to feel "limited" to what I could do in DevTools and they finally got me to switch. I honestly feel like I need to get Firefox another shot since Chrome's perf tools are heavily focused around the V8 engine. (Even though there is a lot of cross over with general JS perf)

mnm1 8y ago

That was true back then, but the FF dev tools are much superior now. Chrome lags behind severely. Last I checked, clicking an XHR link in the console just took me to the network tab instead of actually showing that request. FF shows it inline in the console. Not to mention code caching bugs in Chrome even with the cache turned off. This is the primary reason I switched back to FF.

deadcat 8y ago
Sadly I find that the Firefox debugger is more likely to stall and flail about. I keep trying to change to Firefox, but bring dragged back to Chrome. I mostly work on stupidly big Single Page Apps, which may be part of the issue.

irrational 8y ago

The problem was I was so used to Firebug after using it for so many years that I just kept using it out of inertia up until the day Mozilla dropped it from Firefox entirely. Then I just moved over to Firefox's developer tools (still out of inertia).