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Ooooh wow. This might be enough to get me to use Firefox to develop with. This could be huge for its market share, a big part of the reason chrome was able to b

Ooooh wow. This might be enough to get me to use Firefox to develop with. This could be huge for its market share, a big part of the reason chrome was able to become so popular was because of how good its devtools were (compared to the competition at the time). Firefox definitely managed to catch up but not before lots of devs switched to chrome and stopped checking for compatibility with Firefox.

aspaviento 7y ago
There are still a lot of QoL features that Firefox DevTools misses. For example autocomplete for CSS classes, a tab for handling Service Workers, commands to perform actions (like disabling JavaScript), etc. I find myself switching between browsers just to take advantage of the different features each one provides which is slighly annoying. I would sincerely love some kind of unified DevTools.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  Yeah, and vice versa as well, of course - for example, I don't think the Chrome DevTools tell you why certain CSS declarations do not apply. That said, the Firefox DevTools have been progressing really fast since the rewrite to React was completed, so I'm hopeful that it'll practically be the unified DevTools soon.
  - ivanovb 7y ago
    One reason that I use Firefox DevTools mostly is because in the inspector it shows you what events are attached to a DOM element. It's really helpful for debugging legacy applications. Sure, Chrome has something similar but it's a bit more hidden.
- chabad360 7y ago
  Firefox sure has CSS auto-complete (at least in the inspector).
paulintrognon 7y ago
Do you really think the web developpers that use advanced dev tools can make a real difference in their market share? (real question)
- albertgoeswoof 7y ago
  It happens because applications will stop working on chrome if developers never test on it. The recommendation when a user hits a bug will be to check it in Firefox and slowly Firefox will become the reliable/advanced/working option. It’s happened with IE, Chrome before and will swing back away from Chrome eventually.
  - laumars 7y ago
    IE was stagnant and shit, Chrome isn't. I may not like the Chrome monoculture happening at the moment but that doesn't mean Chrome is the same dumpster fire that was IE. And Google are hardly going to let Chrome stagnate when Chrome is the perfect vehicle to local users into Google's non-free ecosystem (I say "non-free" because you pay with your privacy)
    - wizzwizz4 7y ago
      You don't just pay with your privacy. It's not a one-way street. Google's knowledge about you feeds back to you, as they attempt to manipulate you in the way that best increases the money they receive from their advertisers. But if we want people to stop being locked into Chrome, the best way is to cease to support it. If stuff works in Chrome, that'll be because Chrome supports web standards properly, and not because there's some proprietary random Google standard-they-just-came-up-with that it relies on. (I'm looking at you, <portal>.) Don't contribute code to Chromium; instead, contribute it to a popular fork (like ungoogled-chromium), or a different browser altogether. Until Chromium is a less-centralised project, you're pretty much just giving a competitive edge to Chrome, and hence Google's near-monopoly on the web, without Google having to put in the resources to do it themselves. You're working for Google for nothing.
- realusername 7y ago

aspaviento 7y ago

There are still a lot of QoL features that Firefox DevTools misses. For example autocomplete for CSS classes, a tab for handling Service Workers, commands to perform actions (like disabling JavaScript), etc. I find myself switching between browsers just to take advantage of the different features each one provides which is slighly annoying. I would sincerely love some kind of unified DevTools.

Vinnl 7y ago
Yeah, and vice versa as well, of course - for example, I don't think the Chrome DevTools tell you why certain CSS declarations do not apply. That said, the Firefox DevTools have been progressing really fast since the rewrite to React was completed, so I'm hopeful that it'll practically be the unified DevTools soon.
- ivanovb 7y ago
  One reason that I use Firefox DevTools mostly is because in the inspector it shows you what events are attached to a DOM element. It's really helpful for debugging legacy applications. Sure, Chrome has something similar but it's a bit more hidden.
chabad360 7y ago
Firefox sure has CSS auto-complete (at least in the inspector).

paulintrognon 7y ago

Do you really think the web developpers that use advanced dev tools can make a real difference in their market share? (real question)

albertgoeswoof 7y ago
It happens because applications will stop working on chrome if developers never test on it. The recommendation when a user hits a bug will be to check it in Firefox and slowly Firefox will become the reliable/advanced/working option. It’s happened with IE, Chrome before and will swing back away from Chrome eventually.
- laumars 7y ago
  IE was stagnant and shit, Chrome isn't. I may not like the Chrome monoculture happening at the moment but that doesn't mean Chrome is the same dumpster fire that was IE. And Google are hardly going to let Chrome stagnate when Chrome is the perfect vehicle to local users into Google's non-free ecosystem (I say "non-free" because you pay with your privacy)
  - wizzwizz4 7y ago
    You don't just pay with your privacy. It's not a one-way street. Google's knowledge about you feeds back to you, as they attempt to manipulate you in the way that best increases the money they receive from their advertisers. But if we want people to stop being locked into Chrome, the best way is to cease to support it. If stuff works in Chrome, that'll be because Chrome supports web standards properly, and not because there's some proprietary random Google standard-they-just-came-up-with that it relies on. (I'm looking at you, <portal>.) Don't contribute code to Chromium; instead, contribute it to a popular fork (like ungoogled-chromium), or a different browser altogether. Until Chromium is a less-centralised project, you're pretty much just giving a competitive edge to Chrome, and hence Google's near-monopoly on the web, without Google having to put in the resources to do it themselves. You're working for Google for nothing.
realusername 7y ago