4 ms·

Compared to current Chromium based browsers (I'm using Edge/ium), how does this Firefox release's DevTools compare?

oehpr 7y ago
I feel like the websocket inspector was the last thing I was missing, and now that I have it, I only need chrome for compatibility checks.
ivankolev 7y ago
Day to day tasks like browsing the DOM, debug, networking, are top notch in both Chrome and FF, haven't found anything infuriating in FF devtools, they are very serious in having snappy and useful experience.
- KuiN 7y ago
  Recently switched my work (full stack web) Macbook to Firefox and I'm pleasantly surprised by how capable FF's dev-tools are compared to Chrome. I was expecting it to be a much more difficult transition. Still running Chrome on an iMac at home (we use a lot of Chromecast there, so I imagine switching will be a bit more painful) but would like to divest from Google where reasonable.
leevlad 7y ago
I do a moderate amount of ReactJS dev, and FF has been excellent. I barely noticed the transition from Chrome to FF when it came to my workflows.
eyegor 7y ago
Does anyone know of what useful/killer features chrome dev tools have that ff doesn't? I switched to ff full time a few years ago and only open chrome for testing sites. The only thing I notice is that they have slightly different habits as to where they jump in the html when you are using the inspect feature. The only killer Firefox "feature" I can think of is an extension which is much more recent -- eval villain (https://www.hurricanelabs.com/blog/making-easy-dom-xss-actually-easy-with-eval-villain https://www.hurricanelabs.com/blog/making-easy-dom-xss-actua...).
- abyssin 7y ago
  One feature that FF has and Chrome doesn't, is the abiliy to edit and reset an http request.
idoubtit 7y ago
My experience is that Chromium DevTools are much more polished than Firefox's. For instance, the network tab is a pain to use with FF on a small screen because the columns have a large default width, so the Method column ("GET") is as large as the URL path column. And you can't resize them. Chromium has a better default, and I can resize them. If I view the detail of a request, pressing Esc will close the details view in Chromium, while it will toggle the console in FF. Even with the mouse, at first I struggled to find how to close the details with FF (the toggling icon is not part of the toggled window, it's next to the filter field!).
- Vinnl 7y ago
  > And you can't resize them. You can resize them nowadays.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Some of those updates are to catch up to Chrome's developer tools. If I were in charge of Firefox, I would honestly have them hire a developer or two to focus solely on the Developer Tools. I'm sure there's many things that browser developer tools could do that we have not even scratched the surface of. I prefer Firefox overall, only use Chrome due to manager only looking at my work on Chrome (it will be deployed in a WebKit container). The DOM Breakpoint feature is one I found out this week about in Chrome, glad it's now in Firefox.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  Firefox has an entire team dedicated to developer tools, fwiw. I'm not sure whether your suggestion was "one or two more, in addition to the 7 or 8 already working on it", or "one or two more, instead of the 0 working on it now"...
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I'd happily add more people to the mix yeah, had no concept of how many were working on it currently though, I assumed some people worked on it but not dedicated. As I wrote my comment I realized that kind of tooling is not necessarily easy to work on potentially.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  They spent the past few years rewriting them to allow them to build on it more quickly and encourage outside contributions. They finished that a while ago and have been ramping up new features quickly, and some exciting things are coming. For example: https://gist.github.com/jasonLaster/1e220992c294a571dd9b59abd084ccf2 https://gist.github.com/jasonLaster/1e220992c294a571dd9b59ab...
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Woah! Awesome! If I remember correctly the formal name for this is "Event Sourcing."
symlinkk 7y ago
It has the features that Chrome has but the UI and performance is worse.

I feel like the websocket inspector was the last thing I was missing, and now that I have it, I only need chrome for compatibility checks.

ivankolev 7y ago

Day to day tasks like browsing the DOM, debug, networking, are top notch in both Chrome and FF, haven't found anything infuriating in FF devtools, they are very serious in having snappy and useful experience.

KuiN 7y ago
Recently switched my work (full stack web) Macbook to Firefox and I'm pleasantly surprised by how capable FF's dev-tools are compared to Chrome. I was expecting it to be a much more difficult transition. Still running Chrome on an iMac at home (we use a lot of Chromecast there, so I imagine switching will be a bit more painful) but would like to divest from Google where reasonable.

leevlad 7y ago

I do a moderate amount of ReactJS dev, and FF has been excellent. I barely noticed the transition from Chrome to FF when it came to my workflows.

eyegor 7y ago

Does anyone know of what useful/killer features chrome dev tools have that ff doesn't? I switched to ff full time a few years ago and only open chrome for testing sites. The only thing I notice is that they have slightly different habits as to where they jump in the html when you are using the inspect feature. The only killer Firefox "feature" I can think of is an extension which is much more recent -- eval villain (https://www.hurricanelabs.com/blog/making-easy-dom-xss-actually-easy-with-eval-villain https://www.hurricanelabs.com/blog/making-easy-dom-xss-actua...).

abyssin 7y ago
One feature that FF has and Chrome doesn't, is the abiliy to edit and reset an http request.

idoubtit 7y ago

My experience is that Chromium DevTools are much more polished than Firefox's. For instance, the network tab is a pain to use with FF on a small screen because the columns have a large default width, so the Method column ("GET") is as large as the URL path column. And you can't resize them. Chromium has a better default, and I can resize them. If I view the detail of a request, pressing Esc will close the details view in Chromium, while it will toggle the console in FF. Even with the mouse, at first I struggled to find how to close the details with FF (the toggling icon is not part of the toggled window, it's next to the filter field!).

Vinnl 7y ago
> And you can't resize them. You can resize them nowadays.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Some of those updates are to catch up to Chrome's developer tools. If I were in charge of Firefox, I would honestly have them hire a developer or two to focus solely on the Developer Tools. I'm sure there's many things that browser developer tools could do that we have not even scratched the surface of. I prefer Firefox overall, only use Chrome due to manager only looking at my work on Chrome (it will be deployed in a WebKit container). The DOM Breakpoint feature is one I found out this week about in Chrome, glad it's now in Firefox.

bzbarsky 7y ago
Firefox has an entire team dedicated to developer tools, fwiw. I'm not sure whether your suggestion was "one or two more, in addition to the 7 or 8 already working on it", or "one or two more, instead of the 0 working on it now"...
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I'd happily add more people to the mix yeah, had no concept of how many were working on it currently though, I assumed some people worked on it but not dedicated. As I wrote my comment I realized that kind of tooling is not necessarily easy to work on potentially.
Vinnl 7y ago
They spent the past few years rewriting them to allow them to build on it more quickly and encourage outside contributions. They finished that a while ago and have been ramping up new features quickly, and some exciting things are coming. For example: https://gist.github.com/jasonLaster/1e220992c294a571dd9b59abd084ccf2 https://gist.github.com/jasonLaster/1e220992c294a571dd9b59ab...
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Woah! Awesome! If I remember correctly the formal name for this is "Event Sourcing."

symlinkk 7y ago

It has the features that Chrome has but the UI and performance is worse.