20 ms·

The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

618 points by flardinois 12y ago

Zolomon 12y ago
The video and article is full of hype, made me laugh however.
jblok 12y ago
This is like one of those startup websites/videos that tells you absolutely nothing about what they are doing.
- deleted 12y ago
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- shangxiao 12y ago
  It's pretty much text out of the article shoved into a video with some random background images & graphics accompanied by some epic LoTR music.
  - wmeredith 12y ago
    It's like a trailer for a trailer. Annoying.
- cowabunga 12y ago
  The canonical example: http://www.zombo.com/ http://www.zombo.com/
  - tjdetwiler 12y ago
    Even better, here's what I get: http://i.imgur.com/QCyCMDH.png http://i.imgur.com/QCyCMDH.png
    - Nyubis 12y ago
      http://html5zombo.com/ http://html5zombo.com/ Welcome to the future!
      - Gmo 12y ago
        Wow, I am both happy and sad. Happy because I always wished for an html 5 version, sad because I wish I had done it myself
      - pimlottc 12y ago
        That's awesome, although I'm a little sad they didn't make a custom font for the text.
  - canuckistani 12y ago
    I'm glad you got the reference.
- adamman 12y ago
  Mozilla has been developing a web browser that will make web development easier for web developers. They are going to be sharing it with world on November 10. Not a lot of info, but I'm excited.
- a3n 12y ago
  I didn't watch the video (atwork), and I don't even know what the name of this new thing is.
- gpmcadam 12y ago
  It did seem odd to me that Mozilla would create a "trailer" for a web development debugging app. I didn't see the point. Then I looked back at the comment thread and can see it has 400+ karma right now. So I suppose it worked.
userbinator 12y ago
As interesting as the concept is, I can't help but think it'll only make the already widening divide between "developers" and "ordinary users" even bigger... or maybe everyone will jump over to the "developer" version once they realise what they're missing, which would be the ideal situation. No information there about what exactly it is, however. It could be not much more than regular Firefox with their WebIDE thing bundled and some UI changes.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  It's going to lower the barrier to entry for young people who want to get into more than just the kiddie stuff. I know when I was a kid, I was smart enough for BASIC and Pascal but C++ just looked weird and complex and hard. HTML, CSS and Javascript were awesome and I jumped into that instead. Neat integrated tools are great for beginners. What drives a divide is when you go build an entire ecosystem and hand it off to a cloistered priesthood. Then you make the toolchain so long and complex that you need 5 years before you even gain the first feeling of accomplishment.
  - vitoralmeida 12y ago
    Lower the barrier? The barrier IS lower enough even for kids... Javascript is the basic of this generation. There aren´t any barriers for new programmers to just sit and learn programming. The tools are already available in the browser. You can learn web programming with your PC, mobile, chromebook, macbook, "any"book. But yes, I would really like to have more mature and integrated developer tools.
    - davb 12y ago
      I think the big difference today is that the runtime (often cloud) and toolchain are much more involved. Nothing is self-contained any more. Dependencies are out of control. Web apps make it easy for the user to access almost any service from almost any device. Unfortunately, this puts the burden on the developer to handle ongoing delivery, hosting, cross-platform compatibility. This can be intimidating, even insurmountable, for young developers in training. It's a complicated world, these days.
hakanderyal 12y ago
Good intentions, but content and video leaves much to be desired. The idea is awesome tho, using lots of different tools which doesn't communicate/integrate with each other is a huge blow to productivity.
Dirlewanger 12y ago
Yeah...we'll see. If the current state of Firefox's Dev Tools is any indicator of what they have to show, I'm not optimistic.
- jeltz 12y ago
  Firefox's developer tools are good an improving at a fast pace. I would argue that they in most aspects have surpassed Firebug and the Chrome developer tools.
  - fournm 12y ago
    I've never liked Chrome's, but I've been trying to go with native dev tools only on this machine and so far it's gone really well.
- soapdog 12y ago
  Can you provide better info on what you think are the shortcomings? The DevTools team is really interested in that type of feedback...
doe88 12y ago
Of course, if this dedicated browser happened to be based on Servo then this teasing would largely be worth the wait ;)
- Yoric 12y ago
  Waiting 7 days for Servo? Sign me up :)
deleted 12y ago
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dbcooper 12y ago
Well, I hope that the following two profiler bugs land before then: Bug 1008435 - [e10s] Port the built-in Gecko profiler to e10s https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1008435 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1008435 Bug 974832 - WebGL EXT_disjoint_timer_query may now be implemented https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=974832 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=974832
amelius 12y ago
> Mozilla: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming But we need markup and scripting languages dedicated to developers...
bdg 12y ago
Mozilla is competing with Google Wave now?
lachgr 12y ago
I think this is a logical development. Firefox gets more and more Developer tools by default, but most users will never touch them. So it sounds logical to exclude Developer tools from the default package and instead offer an Developer version of Firefox. Firefox is my default browser for a long time (switched briefly to Opera, but when they came with the new Chromium-version I switched back because I didn't like it) and I'm very satisfied with it. The developer tools are getting better and better, and I almost never touch Firebug anymore. Also I like Firefoxs tools more than those of Chrome, but that is a question of taste. I think there is one thing Firefox can really make better for developers and that is addon development. I personally never developed an addon but looked briefly into it and from what I heard was that in comparison to Chrome, developing for Firefox is difficult. I hope there will be progress on this level too.
- tuxone 12y ago
  Why a different browser and not just an extension? I feel like different browsers leads to different versions of engines, languages etc. aka a lot of headaches. As a web developer, I want to see what my users see, not what "developers" see..
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    Well that's how developer tools for Firefox started out as (Firebug), however that was also dependent on a plugin API that gave access to all of those things; by building it in natively, the dev tools have access to all of the APIs, not just the ones exposed by the plugin APIs.
    - codefisher 12y ago
      That is not really very relevant when building a Firefox add-on. Firefox add-ons get incredible access privileges to the browser internals. That is part of what makes it hard, but also powerful. An example of what I mean, it was not overly complex for Sunbird (the calender app) to be turned into a add-on. There is no reason also for example that Thunderbird could not be turned into an add-on for Firefox. Except then you would have SeaMonkey... But my 2c, is that even if the project does not work out as hoped, what ever they are doing can put turned into ad add-on.
xtrumanx 12y ago
Apparently, WebIDE is part of Firefox proper not just nightly. You'll have to toggle a pref in about:config (devtools.webide.enabled) to make it visible in the developer menu. It's pretty cool.
- callahad 12y ago
  Looks like it's enabled by default on Beta (34), so it should come to release Firefox very soon.
stevo111 12y ago
winter is coming
daigoba66 12y ago
So I'm actually a fan of leaving dev tools installed and available in a normal user's web browser; whether it's IE, Chrome, FireFox, or whatever. If a user is reporting some bug or issue that's difficult to reproduce, I like being able to just hit F12 _on their computer_ and diagnose and debug. Sometimes I can guide the user, sometimes I do it remotely. Having the ability to debug software like that is phenomenal.
- coldtea 12y ago
  It's not like anyone has taken that away from you. And as for the new tool, since it also shares the Mozilla engine, it's as if you're using Firefox (+ some plugins) with regards to web behavior.
  - snlacks 12y ago
    This would probably start the trend of the dev features being reduced in regular browsers, I'd guess. But you're right no one is taking it away yet.
    - callahad 12y ago
      Why would any browser vendor have an incentive to remove or restrict developer features in released browsers?
      - snlacks 12y ago
        Funny story came to mind: You ever have a client accidentally hit F12, then tell your boss that your product was broken because there was a weird thing taking up half the screen? Seriously: My guess would be download size, performance, maintenance. Especially with Moz aiming to target super cheap hardware with their OS.
      - PavlovsCat 12y ago
        It's not about already released browsers, but possibly future versions.
billpg 12y ago
One part of the Firefox dev tools I find useful in every-day browsing is the ability to delete a DIV (or similar) element whenever something causes a bad layout or otherwise gets in the way.
fdomig 12y ago
This is like a landing page for a startup - or idea. They first test the assumption that developers need/want this. If they are proven right, they will build it. In the next seven days. ;-)
andrewstuart2 12y ago
I can see where a dedicated browser for development could be a little more helpful during the 80% phase of development. My main concern however is that some of that remaining 20% is cross-platform stuff that you can't get right in a single browser. Unless they incorporate tiled views from different rendering engines. That would be awesome.
- giiduh 12y ago
  ^Tiled views would be really awesome!
cageface 12y ago
At Mozilla we know that developers are the cornerstone of the Web, that’s why we actively push standards and continue to build great tools to make it easier for you to create awesome Web content and apps. Like canning WebSQL for spurious reasons and forcing people to use a half-baked spec like IndexedDB instead? As much as I applaud most of what Mozilla has done to further the interests of the open web it's hard to forget how profoundly they sabotaged the development of the browser as an application platform with this particular piece of political NIH grandstanding.
- untog 12y ago
  It's hardly grandstanding when it's the standard everyone agreed on. I agree that IndexedDB is awful and WebSQL was much better, but go shout at the W3C, not Mozilla.
  - cageface 12y ago
    It was Mozilla's insistence on IndexedDB that tipped the balance. WebSQL was already well supported in Chrome and Safari and if Mozilla hadn't inexplicably come down on Microsoft's side we would have a reasonable client-side database solution today. Lest this particular piece of villainy be forgotten: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond-html5-database-apis-and-the-road-to-indexeddb/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond-html5-database-apis...
    - froaway 12y ago
      It takes a special kind of myopia to call a decision inexplicable, and then to link to a very explicit description of their reasons for that decision.
      - cageface 12y ago
        Refuted by almost every single comment on the post, yes.
        12y ago
maresca 12y ago
Is there a firefox plugin that lets me edit CSS in the developer tools AND lets me save the edits back to the actual CSS stylesheet on my machine? I'd love to see that functionality.
- swalsh 12y ago
  That would be cool actually...
- soapdog 12y ago
  You don't need a plugin for that. In Firefox Nightly that is already enabled. You can check this article that shows editing LESS and SASS inside the browser and saving it to the original location on your HD: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/live-editing-sass-and-less-in-the-firefox-developer-tools/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/live-editing-sass-and-less... Firefox has lots of awesome devtools but people still think in terms of Firebug and haven't noticed all the new goodies.
- callahad 12y ago
  This is already built into all supported versions of Firefox, including the Extended Support Release. Hooray! Menu -> Developer -> Style Editor, edit a stylesheet (or add / import a new one), then click "save" in the left panel. Done! More info: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Style_Editor https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Style_Editor
Joyfield 12y ago
"We can't wait telling you about it, so wait until the 10th please." Zzz.
blackoil 12y ago
I would like a strict mode in js and rendering engine, which shows syntax error like a compiler instead of eating them and failing later at random places. Ffat fingers and typos take disproportionate time while development.
- Yoric 12y ago
  That sounds like a good idea for a dev version. Do you want to file a bug?
- joshuacc 12y ago
  You might be interested in looking at TypeScript: http://www.typescriptlang.org/ http://www.typescriptlang.org/ It does something very similar to what you're suggesting, adding in static type information for JavaScript and giving you compiler errors if you mess things up.
- ianbicking 12y ago
  When developing Firefox Addons they have logging that is kind of like what you describe – doesn't break running but problematic code, but does complain. I found the result unusable. Normal development involves using libraries like jQuery, Google Analytics, or whatever other framework that sometimes acts weird, or makes seemingly odd choices for compatibility reasons, or has code that is effectively dead for everyone but IE6 but does get loaded. And since I didn't write jQuery or whatever other library, I don't care about those warnings. It could be useful if there was a way of indicating what scripts are actually under development, and therefore only complaining about things the developer can fix.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Beyond ES5 Strict Mode ("use strict";), Firefox has a "javascript.options.strict" about:config pref that will log extra warnings (such as accessing undefined object properties) to the JS console. These warnings are not enabled by default because they are non-standard and can report false positives.
deleted 12y ago
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neillyons 12y ago
Is this really needed? I feel like Mozilla are inventing problems to solve.
panzi 12y ago
Sounds cool. Shame that Mozilla's developer tools are in some respects that are important to me still inferior to Chrome.
- Yoric 12y ago
  How so? I'm asking because two Firefox devtools people sit in my office, so if you have feedback, I can forward it.
  - Touche 12y ago
    This is my issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8551692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8551692
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    * Handles large scripts very slow (try loading up 4-6M of script) * Issue mentioned of dealing with alternative script loaders * WebWorker debugging * SourceMap support seems brittle * Profiling tools (compared to Chrome)
  - Yoric 12y ago
    Actually, callahad has suggested a much better interface for sending feedback to the devtools team: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com
  - panzi 12y ago
    It's starts with GUI issues where you can't resize certain things (e.g. columns in the network tab) or only in a very limited way (it got better). Not being able to inspect objects inline in the console is very annoying. Is there no "clear network log" button? No option to retain/not retain the network log on page loads? I want a way to view an element that got logged to the console in the DOM inspector (Chrome has: context menu -> show in DOM inspector). I want an auto-completion menu in the style editor in the DOM editor. And there seems to be no way to search in a script as shown in the debugger. That's such a basic function, it really makes me wonder. I want a reload menu like in Chrome, where with open inspector I can choose between "normal reload", "hard reload" and "clear cache and reload". In Chrome's console I like that I simply can write the function name and press enter to see it's source. In Firefox I have to write "String(functionname)". That's only a minor thing. The best thing would be to get the function source expandable inline similar to what you can do with objects in Chrome's console. There should also be a link that lets you jump to the definition of the function in the JavaScript source. There is no resource tab in Firefox. Basically I want exactly the resource tab from Chrome, with a list of all loaded images, scripts, styles etc., grouped by their origin. I want to see and be able to edit/remove all cookies, local storage, session storage etc. You can't select a certain iframe as the context of the console, which makes it completely useless when you have to debug iframe based widgets. I just had the case where the debugger statement starts the debugger but it did not focus on the source line where it occurs, because the debugger request the script again instead of showing the already loaded resource and the script was generated as a response to a POST request. I don't use Firefox for debugging anymore (unless it's a Firefox specific bug I have to fix) so I don't quite remember the next bit: There where some kind of big annoyances concerning debugging and exceptions which are caught anyway. I could not get it to "halt on exception" but not on those that are caught. That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure I forgot something. But granted, it is always getting better. Maybe some day it is as good as the Chrome Inspector. There is one point where it (or Firefox) is better: Error messages. They are much less cryptic and show the source line of the error. It says things along the lines of "in foo.bar foo has no method bar" instead of "undefined is not a function". Also a rethrown exception retains the original source line, which is very useful. Firefox's font inspector is nice. I hadn't had a use for it yet, but I can imagine to have one some day. In course of writing this comment I looked at the Firefox development tools again and a lot of things got indeed much better since the last time I looked. OT: There are also a lot of things that annoy me about Chrome: Since many month now Linux integration got extremely worse. They dropped gtk for their own thing and screwed up big time in doing so. Context menus look totally alien and have no shadow, tooltips (title attribute) look alien and are no real windows (they get cropped, which makes them useless in certain contexts), there are lots of graphical glitches, e.g. when dragging stuff (white bg of the dragged image/text and for the drop marker arrow in the tab bar) and the scrollbars got the brain dead Windows behavior that not even IE uses anymore. IE implemented it's own scrollbars, apparently. Other scrollbars in Windows (and in Chrome) jump around and stop working when you drag the scrollbar and move the mouse an unknown invisible distance from the scrollbar. Oh and dragging tabs got unusable bad in Chrome. It's a complete disaster. The tabs aren't transparent but full sized when you drag them and you can't drag them down so the bottom border of the window gets outside of the screen, which makes it impossible to drag a tab to a different window that is located down in relation to the window you ripped the tab out of. And sometimes tabs move at an offset form where you grabbed them. WTF? There was a time where Chrome looked less of an alien under Linux than Firefox. Not anymore. Firefox didn't get any better, Chrome got much worse. At least you can use the mouse wheel on the tabs. That is something it does better than Firefox. And the tab size handling when closing tabs one after another. But enough of that.
StevePerkins 12y ago
I'm getting a bit weary of announcements that don't really announce whatever it is that they're announcing. It's easier to wait until a de-hyped Wikipedia entry has been written, and just read that instead.
- mVChr 12y ago
  Hold on to your hats and glasses folks! We're totally stoked to announce the coming announcement of a browser we'll be releasing shortly after that announcement! Stay tuned for the follow up announcement letting you know when we'll announce the release date! We can't wait for you to help us bug test it!
asgard1024 12y ago
They should fix the URL bar. When I used a webserver on local network, the URLs got constantly mangled.
pearjuice 12y ago
Meanwhile Chromium is a perfect hybrid offering the best of both worlds and doesn't need _another_ browser 'dedicated to developers'. Mozilla is more than ever feeling the slippery slope of market share under its shoes and this feels like yet another attempt to recapture a market (web developers) which was once theirs.
esro360 12y ago
Why dont yu simply accept existance of FireBug ?
- psykovsky 12y ago
  Sure. Firebug is awesome to hang/freeze Firefox, even in modern computers.
OhHeyItsE 12y ago
This sounds great, but what's with the SV wantrepreneur vaporware video trailer?
resca79 12y ago
I like the idea of a full browser for developers, but at the some time I fear the granularity of browsers differences increases also. Currently developers cannot stay focused on new features of web App itself but they need to check the compliant with all browsers IMHO that's is one of the major issues why the web technology is going slow especially in the mobile environment.
justcommenting 12y ago
This seems to reinforce the mindset that the web should be experienced and built using different tools for users vs. developers, and aside from thinking that's fundamentally condescending, I don't see why new tools couldn't simply be extended from FF's 'web developer' menu into a different mode of operation or even extensions. I think we're better off in a world where kids don't have to install ScaryFox on their tablets to start teaching themselves how to debug web applications, and deal with all of the various forms of other-ing that tend to alienate people away from starting to learn how to understand and help build the web. I think it's actually quite important for Mozilla to assume that of course every user deserves built-in access to a high-quality suite of tools for debugging by default.
- callahad 12y ago
  I'm not sure I see condescension here. Everyone does deserve access to built-in, high-quality tools. And everyone already gets that, with all major browsers. No one is taking away the built in developer tools in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, or Opera. The problem is that they're always just a little bit older than the tip of the current development branch. And that's fine for folks who are starting to teach themselves how to debug web applications. Hell, that's fine for most people, developers included. But there's a lot of development happening in this space, and sometimes you need access to tools or features that aren't yet stable enough for wide release. So you download Firefox Nightly or Chrome Canary. And you flip on something in about:config or enable experimental web platform features in chrome://flags. And you're off to the races. That's not dividing the web, and it's not giving different tools to developers versus users. It's trading stability for slightly faster access to new, shiny things.
  - justcommenting 12y ago
    The announcement promises 'Soon, we’re going to bring you more, a lot more, in a package that you deserve as a builder for an independent Web.' My argument is basically that users deserve these things, too. With huge respect for the work that you and Mozilla have been doing in this and other areas, I can understand that there are practical reasons why this may make sense for Mozilla (and even developers) internally. But at least from the announcement, it still sounds like Mozilla is other-ing celebrated 'builders' like us from everyday users and segmenting our means of accessing the 'new, shiny things' you mention.
Touche 12y ago
If you use a module loader that uses eval to load modules, those modules will not be shown in the Debugger's Sources in Firefox. It works fine in Chrome. This is absolutely killer for me, I can't use Firefox for development until it is fixed.
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vegabook 12y ago
First of all this is analogous to the irritating tendency of car manufacturers to "tease" models ahead of time. This may cut it for the average consumer, but here you are targeting the developers, and a straightforward, honest approach to launch would be more effective, in my view. Developers are blasé to any of the mind-tricks which marketing will dream up. Second, please do some moonshot stuff. Please just don't give me tweaks on javascript. Yes I know js is fine for the front end guys, but more and more, deep data guys like me are having to interact with this language which leaves a lot to be desired. While I appreciate the casual, almost refreshing functional aspects of js, the rest is clearly inferior to almost everything else (not least forcing multidimensionality into this hierarchical JSON strait jacket). Here's an idea: put python numpy native into the browser, and give us expressive power for things other than dom manipulation. Or put Haskell in there. Do something meaningful. I don't want a spit-and-polished js debugger. Chance to shine here, Mozilla, to regain the long-lost initiative. No chrome-catchup again please.
- callahad 12y ago
  I'm likewise pretty surprised that this made it to the top of HN. If you want straightforward, technical announcements, watch https://hacks.mozilla.org/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/ instead of https://blog.mozilla.org https://blog.mozilla.org. The latter is predominantly press releases and less-technical announcements. Not that those things are bad, they're just meant for a different audience. If you want more moonshot-y stuff, emscripten, asm.js, rust, and servo are all pretty worthy of your attention. :)
  - deleted 12y ago
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phazmatis 12y ago
Considering all the "helpful" features in chrome that get in the way of development (copying the url prepends "http://" http://", even for IPs, for example), this is an important change.
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  What's wrong with prepending the protocol? And why should IP addresses by any different?
tiffanyricks 12y ago
This is marketing at its best. Create a browser that developers like to use so they can build Mozilla compatible products for consumers. Then more the consumers will adopt this browser as their default browser.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  The developer browser also includes Firefox Tools Adaptor which supports remote device debugging of mobile browsers like Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/firefox-tools-adapter/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/firefox-tools-adapter/
jawerty 12y ago
I'm still on the fence about having separate browsers for developers. It sounds nice as a concept but when I think about it more it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. For instance, when I want to debug my website I go to the dev tools within the browser I'm viewing because I know that my users are viewing the same browser (typically). Having an entirely different developer browsers makes the debugging experience less realistic. It puts you in a position where you don't truly experience what the user does but what you feel more comfortable experiencing.
- ksk 12y ago
  This speaks to the general low quality of web specifications and/or inability of browser developers to create robust implementations of those specs. In the vast majority of scenarios we don't think about using the same processor to experience the same thing a user does. (Certainly driver developers and other low level h/w people will occasionally run into h/w bugs but they're in a very niche field).
  - swift 12y ago
    The web platform is a lot more complicated than any ISA. The right comparison is having the same operating system version as the user, and anyone that develops native apps does have to care about that.
    - ksk 12y ago
      >The web platform is a lot more complicated than any ISA. Talk to intel engineers and you'll soon be disabused of that notion ;)
- lojack 12y ago
  I completely agree that we want to view what our users are seeing, but as a counterpoint, that isn't even necessarily possible in any mainstream browser. We still have to do the majority of our development in our primary browser of choice and then load up Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, etc to see what the rest of the world sees. I think it would be a mistake to completely remove the developer tools from the non-developer version of Firefox, but I'd also be fine using a different developer-centric browser for the majority of my development understanding that there may be small differences and edge cases that need to be tested on numerous other browsers.
dombili 12y ago
I wonder if they'll remove (or at least most of it) developer tools from the main browser and try to get developers to use this version. Common criticism of Firefox these days is it feels (and in most cases is) slower and more bloated than Chrome. This move could help Mozilla make FF faster, no?
- driverdan 12y ago
  Developer tools don't add any overhead unless you enable them.
- Yoric 12y ago
  Well, the main advantage that Chrome has vs Firefox is not speed (these days, Firefox is faster than Chrome on most benchmarks I have seen), but smoothness, which is largely due to the multi-process architecture of Chrome. Developer tools have strictly no influence on this, and the multi-process version of Firefox is currently being tested. I don't remember whether there is an ETA.
  - agapos 12y ago
    Last ETA was Firefox 36: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/07/12/mozilla-plans-release-electrolysis-multi-process-architecture-firefox-36/ http://www.ghacks.net/2014/07/12/mozilla-plans-release-elect...
  - panzi 12y ago
    To me it looks like speed is one of the major advantages. JavaScript speed is only one thing. There is also render speed. E.g. this runs totally smoothly (with a bit of flickering (z order problems?)) in Chrome: http://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/nojs/ http://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/nojs/ In Firefox it seems to have something between 1 and 5 fps and is totally glitched out. JavaScript speed is not what needs to be worked on currently. Render speed is.
dzhiurgis 12y ago
SQL queries in address bar to manage your bookmarks or manipulate data from the websites would be nice.
gmcabrita 12y ago
This appears to be a simple rebrand of Aurora with some extra features[1]. [1] - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076914
- hackuser 12y ago
  The linked bug's access rights are limited; Mozilla won't show it to me. Is that the right bug?
  - gmcabrita 12y ago
    They seem to have made the bug report private overnight.
sbensu 12y ago
The ultimate feature for hackers is how hackable something is. That means it is easier to develop the version for hackers first, and then package a specific version for end-users. Therefore, if they do develop a hackable browser and allow everybody to innovate on it, they may well be in their way to create the next best browser. This paradox is similar to creating a new microcomputer only for hackers (Apple I/II) which in turns allows them to develop cool stuff on it (Visicalc) which in turn makes it the standard for all users.
nimbosa 12y ago
just what are addons for? an extra special Xtraordinary XPI could deal with this..
cturhan 12y ago
I don't like google because of privacy concerns but chrome developer tools is a bit ahead of firefox DT. I hope this new one will give me a good reasons to switch from chrome to firefox
- EpicDavi 12y ago
  The recent developer tools improvements/additions to FireFox in the nightly (and maybe aurora) have, in my opinion, surpassed Chrome's.
  - cturhan 12y ago
    That's great news. Thanks
jonnyscholes 12y ago
This is the first time I've ever found a roadblock when looking at the inner workings of FF/Mozilla - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1054353 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1054353 Even their etherpads/sprint sheets/team chat logs are public. Not necessarily saying the bug SHOULD be public, just thought it was intriguing. Makes me wonder what other - if any - bugs are private (excluding security ones of course).
EpicDavi 12y ago
I remember people arguing in a thread a while ago about the financial longevity and user-base sustenance of FireFox. Many were arguing that FireFox needed something fresh and different and also needed to identify their target audience. When Mozilla releases this, which is at least remotely intriguing, many are quick to find small deleterious criticisms. The fact of the matter is that they are not removing the earlier dev-tools and nobody is forcing anybody to migrate to it. They are just trying to make another tool to help people. Honestly, if you put these arguments in any other context, either software or real life, they sound absolutely ridiculous.
andy_ppp 12y ago
It really would be a godsend if editing your CSS in the browser could make changes to the underlying files (probably SASS these days). Difficult but would shave so much time off the make a few changes and rewrite them in an editor process that so many of us follow these days.

618 points by flardinois 12y ago

Zolomon 12y ago

The video and article is full of hype, made me laugh however.

jblok 12y ago

This is like one of those startup websites/videos that tells you absolutely nothing about what they are doing.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
shangxiao 12y ago
It's pretty much text out of the article shoved into a video with some random background images & graphics accompanied by some epic LoTR music.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  It's like a trailer for a trailer. Annoying.
cowabunga 12y ago
The canonical example: http://www.zombo.com/ http://www.zombo.com/
- tjdetwiler 12y ago
  Even better, here's what I get: http://i.imgur.com/QCyCMDH.png http://i.imgur.com/QCyCMDH.png
  - Nyubis 12y ago
    http://html5zombo.com/ http://html5zombo.com/ Welcome to the future!
    - Gmo 12y ago
      Wow, I am both happy and sad. Happy because I always wished for an html 5 version, sad because I wish I had done it myself
    - pimlottc 12y ago
      That's awesome, although I'm a little sad they didn't make a custom font for the text.
- canuckistani 12y ago
  I'm glad you got the reference.
adamman 12y ago
Mozilla has been developing a web browser that will make web development easier for web developers. They are going to be sharing it with world on November 10. Not a lot of info, but I'm excited.
a3n 12y ago
I didn't watch the video (atwork), and I don't even know what the name of this new thing is.
gpmcadam 12y ago
It did seem odd to me that Mozilla would create a "trailer" for a web development debugging app. I didn't see the point. Then I looked back at the comment thread and can see it has 400+ karma right now. So I suppose it worked.

userbinator 12y ago

As interesting as the concept is, I can't help but think it'll only make the already widening divide between "developers" and "ordinary users" even bigger... or maybe everyone will jump over to the "developer" version once they realise what they're missing, which would be the ideal situation. No information there about what exactly it is, however. It could be not much more than regular Firefox with their WebIDE thing bundled and some UI changes.

vinceguidry 12y ago
It's going to lower the barrier to entry for young people who want to get into more than just the kiddie stuff. I know when I was a kid, I was smart enough for BASIC and Pascal but C++ just looked weird and complex and hard. HTML, CSS and Javascript were awesome and I jumped into that instead. Neat integrated tools are great for beginners. What drives a divide is when you go build an entire ecosystem and hand it off to a cloistered priesthood. Then you make the toolchain so long and complex that you need 5 years before you even gain the first feeling of accomplishment.
- vitoralmeida 12y ago
  Lower the barrier? The barrier IS lower enough even for kids... Javascript is the basic of this generation. There aren´t any barriers for new programmers to just sit and learn programming. The tools are already available in the browser. You can learn web programming with your PC, mobile, chromebook, macbook, "any"book. But yes, I would really like to have more mature and integrated developer tools.
  - davb 12y ago
    I think the big difference today is that the runtime (often cloud) and toolchain are much more involved. Nothing is self-contained any more. Dependencies are out of control. Web apps make it easy for the user to access almost any service from almost any device. Unfortunately, this puts the burden on the developer to handle ongoing delivery, hosting, cross-platform compatibility. This can be intimidating, even insurmountable, for young developers in training. It's a complicated world, these days.

hakanderyal 12y ago

Good intentions, but content and video leaves much to be desired. The idea is awesome tho, using lots of different tools which doesn't communicate/integrate with each other is a huge blow to productivity.

Dirlewanger 12y ago

Yeah...we'll see. If the current state of Firefox's Dev Tools is any indicator of what they have to show, I'm not optimistic.

jeltz 12y ago
Firefox's developer tools are good an improving at a fast pace. I would argue that they in most aspects have surpassed Firebug and the Chrome developer tools.
- fournm 12y ago
  I've never liked Chrome's, but I've been trying to go with native dev tools only on this machine and so far it's gone really well.
soapdog 12y ago
Can you provide better info on what you think are the shortcomings? The DevTools team is really interested in that type of feedback...

doe88 12y ago

Of course, if this dedicated browser happened to be based on Servo then this teasing would largely be worth the wait ;)

Yoric 12y ago
Waiting 7 days for Servo? Sign me up :)

deleted 12y ago

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dbcooper 12y ago

Well, I hope that the following two profiler bugs land before then: Bug 1008435 - [e10s] Port the built-in Gecko profiler to e10s https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1008435 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1008435 Bug 974832 - WebGL EXT_disjoint_timer_query may now be implemented https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=974832 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=974832

amelius 12y ago

> Mozilla: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming But we need markup and scripting languages dedicated to developers...

bdg 12y ago

Mozilla is competing with Google Wave now?

lachgr 12y ago

I think this is a logical development. Firefox gets more and more Developer tools by default, but most users will never touch them. So it sounds logical to exclude Developer tools from the default package and instead offer an Developer version of Firefox. Firefox is my default browser for a long time (switched briefly to Opera, but when they came with the new Chromium-version I switched back because I didn't like it) and I'm very satisfied with it. The developer tools are getting better and better, and I almost never touch Firebug anymore. Also I like Firefoxs tools more than those of Chrome, but that is a question of taste. I think there is one thing Firefox can really make better for developers and that is addon development. I personally never developed an addon but looked briefly into it and from what I heard was that in comparison to Chrome, developing for Firefox is difficult. I hope there will be progress on this level too.

tuxone 12y ago
Why a different browser and not just an extension? I feel like different browsers leads to different versions of engines, languages etc. aka a lot of headaches. As a web developer, I want to see what my users see, not what "developers" see..
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Well that's how developer tools for Firefox started out as (Firebug), however that was also dependent on a plugin API that gave access to all of those things; by building it in natively, the dev tools have access to all of the APIs, not just the ones exposed by the plugin APIs.
  - codefisher 12y ago
    That is not really very relevant when building a Firefox add-on. Firefox add-ons get incredible access privileges to the browser internals. That is part of what makes it hard, but also powerful. An example of what I mean, it was not overly complex for Sunbird (the calender app) to be turned into a add-on. There is no reason also for example that Thunderbird could not be turned into an add-on for Firefox. Except then you would have SeaMonkey... But my 2c, is that even if the project does not work out as hoped, what ever they are doing can put turned into ad add-on.

xtrumanx 12y ago

Apparently, WebIDE is part of Firefox proper not just nightly. You'll have to toggle a pref in about:config (devtools.webide.enabled) to make it visible in the developer menu. It's pretty cool.

callahad 12y ago
Looks like it's enabled by default on Beta (34), so it should come to release Firefox very soon.

stevo111 12y ago

winter is coming

daigoba66 12y ago

So I'm actually a fan of leaving dev tools installed and available in a normal user's web browser; whether it's IE, Chrome, FireFox, or whatever. If a user is reporting some bug or issue that's difficult to reproduce, I like being able to just hit F12 _on their computer_ and diagnose and debug. Sometimes I can guide the user, sometimes I do it remotely. Having the ability to debug software like that is phenomenal.

coldtea 12y ago
It's not like anyone has taken that away from you. And as for the new tool, since it also shares the Mozilla engine, it's as if you're using Firefox (+ some plugins) with regards to web behavior.
- snlacks 12y ago
  This would probably start the trend of the dev features being reduced in regular browsers, I'd guess. But you're right no one is taking it away yet.
  - callahad 12y ago
    Why would any browser vendor have an incentive to remove or restrict developer features in released browsers?
    - snlacks 12y ago
      Funny story came to mind: You ever have a client accidentally hit F12, then tell your boss that your product was broken because there was a weird thing taking up half the screen? Seriously: My guess would be download size, performance, maintenance. Especially with Moz aiming to target super cheap hardware with their OS.
    - PavlovsCat 12y ago
      It's not about already released browsers, but possibly future versions.

billpg 12y ago

One part of the Firefox dev tools I find useful in every-day browsing is the ability to delete a DIV (or similar) element whenever something causes a bad layout or otherwise gets in the way.

fdomig 12y ago

This is like a landing page for a startup - or idea. They first test the assumption that developers need/want this. If they are proven right, they will build it. In the next seven days. ;-)

andrewstuart2 12y ago

I can see where a dedicated browser for development could be a little more helpful during the 80% phase of development. My main concern however is that some of that remaining 20% is cross-platform stuff that you can't get right in a single browser. Unless they incorporate tiled views from different rendering engines. That would be awesome.

giiduh 12y ago
^Tiled views would be really awesome!

cageface 12y ago

At Mozilla we know that developers are the cornerstone of the Web, that’s why we actively push standards and continue to build great tools to make it easier for you to create awesome Web content and apps. Like canning WebSQL for spurious reasons and forcing people to use a half-baked spec like IndexedDB instead? As much as I applaud most of what Mozilla has done to further the interests of the open web it's hard to forget how profoundly they sabotaged the development of the browser as an application platform with this particular piece of political NIH grandstanding.

untog 12y ago
It's hardly grandstanding when it's the standard everyone agreed on. I agree that IndexedDB is awful and WebSQL was much better, but go shout at the W3C, not Mozilla.
- cageface 12y ago
  It was Mozilla's insistence on IndexedDB that tipped the balance. WebSQL was already well supported in Chrome and Safari and if Mozilla hadn't inexplicably come down on Microsoft's side we would have a reasonable client-side database solution today. Lest this particular piece of villainy be forgotten: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond-html5-database-apis-and-the-road-to-indexeddb/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond-html5-database-apis...
  - froaway 12y ago
    It takes a special kind of myopia to call a decision inexplicable, and then to link to a very explicit description of their reasons for that decision.
    - cageface 12y ago
      Refuted by almost every single comment on the post, yes.
      - 12y ago

maresca 12y ago

Is there a firefox plugin that lets me edit CSS in the developer tools AND lets me save the edits back to the actual CSS stylesheet on my machine? I'd love to see that functionality.

swalsh 12y ago
That would be cool actually...
soapdog 12y ago
You don't need a plugin for that. In Firefox Nightly that is already enabled. You can check this article that shows editing LESS and SASS inside the browser and saving it to the original location on your HD: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/live-editing-sass-and-less-in-the-firefox-developer-tools/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/live-editing-sass-and-less... Firefox has lots of awesome devtools but people still think in terms of Firebug and haven't noticed all the new goodies.
callahad 12y ago
This is already built into all supported versions of Firefox, including the Extended Support Release. Hooray! Menu -> Developer -> Style Editor, edit a stylesheet (or add / import a new one), then click "save" in the left panel. Done! More info: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Style_Editor https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Style_Editor

Joyfield 12y ago

"We can't wait telling you about it, so wait until the 10th please." Zzz.

blackoil 12y ago

I would like a strict mode in js and rendering engine, which shows syntax error like a compiler instead of eating them and failing later at random places. Ffat fingers and typos take disproportionate time while development.

Yoric 12y ago
That sounds like a good idea for a dev version. Do you want to file a bug?
joshuacc 12y ago
You might be interested in looking at TypeScript: http://www.typescriptlang.org/ http://www.typescriptlang.org/ It does something very similar to what you're suggesting, adding in static type information for JavaScript and giving you compiler errors if you mess things up.
ianbicking 12y ago
When developing Firefox Addons they have logging that is kind of like what you describe – doesn't break running but problematic code, but does complain. I found the result unusable. Normal development involves using libraries like jQuery, Google Analytics, or whatever other framework that sometimes acts weird, or makes seemingly odd choices for compatibility reasons, or has code that is effectively dead for everyone but IE6 but does get loaded. And since I didn't write jQuery or whatever other library, I don't care about those warnings. It could be useful if there was a way of indicating what scripts are actually under development, and therefore only complaining about things the developer can fix.
cpeterso 12y ago
Beyond ES5 Strict Mode ("use strict";), Firefox has a "javascript.options.strict" about:config pref that will log extra warnings (such as accessing undefined object properties) to the JS console. These warnings are not enabled by default because they are non-standard and can report false positives.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

neillyons 12y ago

Is this really needed? I feel like Mozilla are inventing problems to solve.

panzi 12y ago

Sounds cool. Shame that Mozilla's developer tools are in some respects that are important to me still inferior to Chrome.

Yoric 12y ago
How so? I'm asking because two Firefox devtools people sit in my office, so if you have feedback, I can forward it.
- Touche 12y ago
  This is my issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8551692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8551692
- cromwellian 12y ago
  * Handles large scripts very slow (try loading up 4-6M of script) * Issue mentioned of dealing with alternative script loaders * WebWorker debugging * SourceMap support seems brittle * Profiling tools (compared to Chrome)
- Yoric 12y ago
  Actually, callahad has suggested a much better interface for sending feedback to the devtools team: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com
- panzi 12y ago
  It's starts with GUI issues where you can't resize certain things (e.g. columns in the network tab) or only in a very limited way (it got better). Not being able to inspect objects inline in the console is very annoying. Is there no "clear network log" button? No option to retain/not retain the network log on page loads? I want a way to view an element that got logged to the console in the DOM inspector (Chrome has: context menu -> show in DOM inspector). I want an auto-completion menu in the style editor in the DOM editor. And there seems to be no way to search in a script as shown in the debugger. That's such a basic function, it really makes me wonder. I want a reload menu like in Chrome, where with open inspector I can choose between "normal reload", "hard reload" and "clear cache and reload". In Chrome's console I like that I simply can write the function name and press enter to see it's source. In Firefox I have to write "String(functionname)". That's only a minor thing. The best thing would be to get the function source expandable inline similar to what you can do with objects in Chrome's console. There should also be a link that lets you jump to the definition of the function in the JavaScript source. There is no resource tab in Firefox. Basically I want exactly the resource tab from Chrome, with a list of all loaded images, scripts, styles etc., grouped by their origin. I want to see and be able to edit/remove all cookies, local storage, session storage etc. You can't select a certain iframe as the context of the console, which makes it completely useless when you have to debug iframe based widgets. I just had the case where the debugger statement starts the debugger but it did not focus on the source line where it occurs, because the debugger request the script again instead of showing the already loaded resource and the script was generated as a response to a POST request. I don't use Firefox for debugging anymore (unless it's a Firefox specific bug I have to fix) so I don't quite remember the next bit: There where some kind of big annoyances concerning debugging and exceptions which are caught anyway. I could not get it to "halt on exception" but not on those that are caught. That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure I forgot something. But granted, it is always getting better. Maybe some day it is as good as the Chrome Inspector. There is one point where it (or Firefox) is better: Error messages. They are much less cryptic and show the source line of the error. It says things along the lines of "in foo.bar foo has no method bar" instead of "undefined is not a function". Also a rethrown exception retains the original source line, which is very useful. Firefox's font inspector is nice. I hadn't had a use for it yet, but I can imagine to have one some day. In course of writing this comment I looked at the Firefox development tools again and a lot of things got indeed much better since the last time I looked. OT: There are also a lot of things that annoy me about Chrome: Since many month now Linux integration got extremely worse. They dropped gtk for their own thing and screwed up big time in doing so. Context menus look totally alien and have no shadow, tooltips (title attribute) look alien and are no real windows (they get cropped, which makes them useless in certain contexts), there are lots of graphical glitches, e.g. when dragging stuff (white bg of the dragged image/text and for the drop marker arrow in the tab bar) and the scrollbars got the brain dead Windows behavior that not even IE uses anymore. IE implemented it's own scrollbars, apparently. Other scrollbars in Windows (and in Chrome) jump around and stop working when you drag the scrollbar and move the mouse an unknown invisible distance from the scrollbar. Oh and dragging tabs got unusable bad in Chrome. It's a complete disaster. The tabs aren't transparent but full sized when you drag them and you can't drag them down so the bottom border of the window gets outside of the screen, which makes it impossible to drag a tab to a different window that is located down in relation to the window you ripped the tab out of. And sometimes tabs move at an offset form where you grabbed them. WTF? There was a time where Chrome looked less of an alien under Linux than Firefox. Not anymore. Firefox didn't get any better, Chrome got much worse. At least you can use the mouse wheel on the tabs. That is something it does better than Firefox. And the tab size handling when closing tabs one after another. But enough of that.

StevePerkins 12y ago

I'm getting a bit weary of announcements that don't really announce whatever it is that they're announcing. It's easier to wait until a de-hyped Wikipedia entry has been written, and just read that instead.

mVChr 12y ago
Hold on to your hats and glasses folks! We're totally stoked to announce the coming announcement of a browser we'll be releasing shortly after that announcement! Stay tuned for the follow up announcement letting you know when we'll announce the release date! We can't wait for you to help us bug test it!

asgard1024 12y ago

They should fix the URL bar. When I used a webserver on local network, the URLs got constantly mangled.

pearjuice 12y ago

Meanwhile Chromium is a perfect hybrid offering the best of both worlds and doesn't need _another_ browser 'dedicated to developers'. Mozilla is more than ever feeling the slippery slope of market share under its shoes and this feels like yet another attempt to recapture a market (web developers) which was once theirs.

esro360 12y ago

Why dont yu simply accept existance of FireBug ?

psykovsky 12y ago
Sure. Firebug is awesome to hang/freeze Firefox, even in modern computers.

OhHeyItsE 12y ago

This sounds great, but what's with the SV wantrepreneur vaporware video trailer?

resca79 12y ago

I like the idea of a full browser for developers, but at the some time I fear the granularity of browsers differences increases also. Currently developers cannot stay focused on new features of web App itself but they need to check the compliant with all browsers IMHO that's is one of the major issues why the web technology is going slow especially in the mobile environment.

justcommenting 12y ago

This seems to reinforce the mindset that the web should be experienced and built using different tools for users vs. developers, and aside from thinking that's fundamentally condescending, I don't see why new tools couldn't simply be extended from FF's 'web developer' menu into a different mode of operation or even extensions. I think we're better off in a world where kids don't have to install ScaryFox on their tablets to start teaching themselves how to debug web applications, and deal with all of the various forms of other-ing that tend to alienate people away from starting to learn how to understand and help build the web. I think it's actually quite important for Mozilla to assume that of course every user deserves built-in access to a high-quality suite of tools for debugging by default.

callahad 12y ago
I'm not sure I see condescension here. Everyone does deserve access to built-in, high-quality tools. And everyone already gets that, with all major browsers. No one is taking away the built in developer tools in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, or Opera. The problem is that they're always just a little bit older than the tip of the current development branch. And that's fine for folks who are starting to teach themselves how to debug web applications. Hell, that's fine for most people, developers included. But there's a lot of development happening in this space, and sometimes you need access to tools or features that aren't yet stable enough for wide release. So you download Firefox Nightly or Chrome Canary. And you flip on something in about:config or enable experimental web platform features in chrome://flags. And you're off to the races. That's not dividing the web, and it's not giving different tools to developers versus users. It's trading stability for slightly faster access to new, shiny things.
- justcommenting 12y ago
  The announcement promises 'Soon, we’re going to bring you more, a lot more, in a package that you deserve as a builder for an independent Web.' My argument is basically that users deserve these things, too. With huge respect for the work that you and Mozilla have been doing in this and other areas, I can understand that there are practical reasons why this may make sense for Mozilla (and even developers) internally. But at least from the announcement, it still sounds like Mozilla is other-ing celebrated 'builders' like us from everyday users and segmenting our means of accessing the 'new, shiny things' you mention.

Touche 12y ago

If you use a module loader that uses eval to load modules, those modules will not be shown in the Debugger's Sources in Firefox. It works fine in Chrome. This is absolutely killer for me, I can't use Firefox for development until it is fixed.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vegabook 12y ago

First of all this is analogous to the irritating tendency of car manufacturers to "tease" models ahead of time. This may cut it for the average consumer, but here you are targeting the developers, and a straightforward, honest approach to launch would be more effective, in my view. Developers are blasé to any of the mind-tricks which marketing will dream up. Second, please do some moonshot stuff. Please just don't give me tweaks on javascript. Yes I know js is fine for the front end guys, but more and more, deep data guys like me are having to interact with this language which leaves a lot to be desired. While I appreciate the casual, almost refreshing functional aspects of js, the rest is clearly inferior to almost everything else (not least forcing multidimensionality into this hierarchical JSON strait jacket). Here's an idea: put python numpy native into the browser, and give us expressive power for things other than dom manipulation. Or put Haskell in there. Do something meaningful. I don't want a spit-and-polished js debugger. Chance to shine here, Mozilla, to regain the long-lost initiative. No chrome-catchup again please.

callahad 12y ago
I'm likewise pretty surprised that this made it to the top of HN. If you want straightforward, technical announcements, watch https://hacks.mozilla.org/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/ instead of https://blog.mozilla.org https://blog.mozilla.org. The latter is predominantly press releases and less-technical announcements. Not that those things are bad, they're just meant for a different audience. If you want more moonshot-y stuff, emscripten, asm.js, rust, and servo are all pretty worthy of your attention. :)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

phazmatis 12y ago

Considering all the "helpful" features in chrome that get in the way of development (copying the url prepends "http://" http://", even for IPs, for example), this is an important change.

chrisseaton 12y ago
What's wrong with prepending the protocol? And why should IP addresses by any different?

tiffanyricks 12y ago

This is marketing at its best. Create a browser that developers like to use so they can build Mozilla compatible products for consumers. Then more the consumers will adopt this browser as their default browser.

cpeterso 12y ago
The developer browser also includes Firefox Tools Adaptor which supports remote device debugging of mobile browsers like Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/firefox-tools-adapter/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/firefox-tools-adapter/

jawerty 12y ago

I'm still on the fence about having separate browsers for developers. It sounds nice as a concept but when I think about it more it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. For instance, when I want to debug my website I go to the dev tools within the browser I'm viewing because I know that my users are viewing the same browser (typically). Having an entirely different developer browsers makes the debugging experience less realistic. It puts you in a position where you don't truly experience what the user does but what you feel more comfortable experiencing.

ksk 12y ago
This speaks to the general low quality of web specifications and/or inability of browser developers to create robust implementations of those specs. In the vast majority of scenarios we don't think about using the same processor to experience the same thing a user does. (Certainly driver developers and other low level h/w people will occasionally run into h/w bugs but they're in a very niche field).
- swift 12y ago
  The web platform is a lot more complicated than any ISA. The right comparison is having the same operating system version as the user, and anyone that develops native apps does have to care about that.
  - ksk 12y ago
    >The web platform is a lot more complicated than any ISA. Talk to intel engineers and you'll soon be disabused of that notion ;)
lojack 12y ago
I completely agree that we want to view what our users are seeing, but as a counterpoint, that isn't even necessarily possible in any mainstream browser. We still have to do the majority of our development in our primary browser of choice and then load up Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, etc to see what the rest of the world sees. I think it would be a mistake to completely remove the developer tools from the non-developer version of Firefox, but I'd also be fine using a different developer-centric browser for the majority of my development understanding that there may be small differences and edge cases that need to be tested on numerous other browsers.

dombili 12y ago

I wonder if they'll remove (or at least most of it) developer tools from the main browser and try to get developers to use this version. Common criticism of Firefox these days is it feels (and in most cases is) slower and more bloated than Chrome. This move could help Mozilla make FF faster, no?

driverdan 12y ago
Developer tools don't add any overhead unless you enable them.
Yoric 12y ago
Well, the main advantage that Chrome has vs Firefox is not speed (these days, Firefox is faster than Chrome on most benchmarks I have seen), but smoothness, which is largely due to the multi-process architecture of Chrome. Developer tools have strictly no influence on this, and the multi-process version of Firefox is currently being tested. I don't remember whether there is an ETA.
- agapos 12y ago
  Last ETA was Firefox 36: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/07/12/mozilla-plans-release-electrolysis-multi-process-architecture-firefox-36/ http://www.ghacks.net/2014/07/12/mozilla-plans-release-elect...
- panzi 12y ago
  To me it looks like speed is one of the major advantages. JavaScript speed is only one thing. There is also render speed. E.g. this runs totally smoothly (with a bit of flickering (z order problems?)) in Chrome: http://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/nojs/ http://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/nojs/ In Firefox it seems to have something between 1 and 5 fps and is totally glitched out. JavaScript speed is not what needs to be worked on currently. Render speed is.

dzhiurgis 12y ago

SQL queries in address bar to manage your bookmarks or manipulate data from the websites would be nice.

gmcabrita 12y ago

This appears to be a simple rebrand of Aurora with some extra features[1]. [1] - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076914

hackuser 12y ago
The linked bug's access rights are limited; Mozilla won't show it to me. Is that the right bug?
- gmcabrita 12y ago
  They seem to have made the bug report private overnight.

sbensu 12y ago

The ultimate feature for hackers is how hackable something is. That means it is easier to develop the version for hackers first, and then package a specific version for end-users. Therefore, if they do develop a hackable browser and allow everybody to innovate on it, they may well be in their way to create the next best browser. This paradox is similar to creating a new microcomputer only for hackers (Apple I/II) which in turns allows them to develop cool stuff on it (Visicalc) which in turn makes it the standard for all users.

nimbosa 12y ago

just what are addons for? an extra special Xtraordinary XPI could deal with this..

cturhan 12y ago

I don't like google because of privacy concerns but chrome developer tools is a bit ahead of firefox DT. I hope this new one will give me a good reasons to switch from chrome to firefox

EpicDavi 12y ago
The recent developer tools improvements/additions to FireFox in the nightly (and maybe aurora) have, in my opinion, surpassed Chrome's.
- cturhan 12y ago
  That's great news. Thanks

jonnyscholes 12y ago

This is the first time I've ever found a roadblock when looking at the inner workings of FF/Mozilla - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1054353 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1054353 Even their etherpads/sprint sheets/team chat logs are public. Not necessarily saying the bug SHOULD be public, just thought it was intriguing. Makes me wonder what other - if any - bugs are private (excluding security ones of course).

EpicDavi 12y ago

I remember people arguing in a thread a while ago about the financial longevity and user-base sustenance of FireFox. Many were arguing that FireFox needed something fresh and different and also needed to identify their target audience. When Mozilla releases this, which is at least remotely intriguing, many are quick to find small deleterious criticisms. The fact of the matter is that they are not removing the earlier dev-tools and nobody is forcing anybody to migrate to it. They are just trying to make another tool to help people. Honestly, if you put these arguments in any other context, either software or real life, they sound absolutely ridiculous.

andy_ppp 12y ago

It really would be a godsend if editing your CSS in the browser could make changes to the underlying files (probably SASS these days). Difficult but would shave so much time off the make a few changes and rewrite them in an editor process that so many of us follow these days.