Simplify the Firefox API's. The J2EE-like APIs in Firefox are complicated and a big turn off. Make debugging background pages easier. Make logging easier. We've built several extensions on Chrome, Firefox and IE. NOBODY volunteers to do Firefox or IE tasks. Chrome is fun.
Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
301–310 of 360 posts
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#302I'd like to see a way to compare the CSS values on two different elements, like two buttons that should look the same, but aren't. I do a lot of manually flipping between the two elements, and trying to spot the differences in the property list. But it's pretty clumsy that way. :)
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#303I have to be honest - I find the developer tools a pain: They aren't even close to replacing Firebug, yet they're more obtrusive. So I can't stop using Firebug, and I can't remove the unwanted built-in menu options. So for me personally, what I'd really like to see is either one of: - Match Firebug feature for feature - Allow for the dev tools to be completely removed from the interface Sorry, but it really does come…
> They aren't even close to replacing Firebug That's why we still work on Firebug :) > yet they're more obtrusive It should be better in Firefox 21. > I can't remove the unwanted built-in menu options. Firebug allows you to do that. But seeing the number of comments about this specific issue, I think we can do something smarter. > Sorry it's not more constructive It's actually a great comment :)
> > I can't remove the unwanted built-in menu options.
> Firebug allows you to do that.
Please please tell me how to do this. I want the "Web Developer" menu gone. I want Firebug as a first-class entry in the Tools menu again. And while you're at it, it would be really nice to have "View Source" and "View Page Info" in the View menu again.
Perhaps I'm a little bitter, considering I saw the DOM Inspector ripped out of Firefox, relegated to Firebug, kicked around, and now that Firebug is awesome, I see weird versions of a Firebug subset getting in the way. Why couldn't it be part of the browser, and why not just put Firebug in the browser if you want it back in?
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#304I believe all the current development tools do it wrong, and the right place for a tool is outside the browser, as a custom shell around the main browser component. This is how I tend to work: I load up an app. I set up my credentials (by logging in or setting a particular cookie manually, for example). I debug using Firebug, mainly using the DOM view, the console and the JavaScript REPL. Then I might change my crede…
Prism used to be kind of cool but Mozilla abandoned it. There also used to be more focus on being able to build arbitrary tools around Gecko but Mozilla abandoned them (except for specialized OSes?).
Gecko is my favorite layout engine and Mozilla makes my favorite browser environments. Firefox gets weirder and weirder sadly.
The multiproject browser environment thing sounds really cool. Multifox does some of that but its interface strikes me as a bit awkward.
Just so you know, Firefox does allow you to run multiple profiles simultaneously in different instances. I do this all the time. Just "firefox -a blark -P profile_name" (or -ProfileManager) and there you go. Don't know if it will work on OS X though.
It's also possible to preload plugins, config settings, and extensions so that you don't have to set them up each time. Let me know if you'd like some pointers. This was a big part of my work at a previous job.
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#305> improve the user interface (better theme)
Oh no.
No offense, but every time Firefox gets on an improvement kick, especially when it comes to interfaces, it seems to just be a euphemism for "removing functionality".
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#306This is a big request: Improve "design in the browser" capabilities. i.e. pushing CSS/HTML and maybe JS changes made in Dev Tools back to the source files without manual shenanigans in the middle. I probably waste more time copying CSS / HTML tweak diffs from the browser back into the related source files than anything else with in browser dev tools. Due to the nature of 'losing changes' if I happen to hit refresh or…
Yeah, I think it would really set Firefox above everyone else is if it had its own web IDE (live WYSIWYG and code editing) built right in. It'd have to be a good one and you shouldn't try to force people to use it who don't want to. But I agree with other folks here: We all would kind of like the option to use something like that right in the browser.
aaaaaaand then we'd be back to SeaMonkey.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#307What drove me away from Firefox to begin with was the crashing, memory usage, and (lack of) speed. Mostly the crashing -- I was willing to put up with the other stuff.
I'm a backend/systems developer. One thing that would be awesome for me would be a fully featured web debugging proxy ala Charles/Fiddler. This is where I spend most of my time debugging/testing.
I watched your video with the new webconsole (jsterm.v2). Looks pretty slick -- but I'd request code completion. It was hard to tell if you had it or not from the video.
Another comment in this thread mentions you are working on Firebug AND dev tools? Firebug functionality must be part of Firefox by default.
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#308Honestly, the absolute best thing you could do for any dev, is lighten the footprint FF currently has on my ram, and continue to improve the api for add-ons/plugins. The more stable, extensible and fast FireFox is, the more useful I will find it for development. But if more kludge is added to it, and it continues to get slower/bigger, the less likely I am to continue to use it, regardless of what amazing plugins are…
This and tabs on the left. It feels like using Tree Style Tab is not really fully optimized. I don't think you need to add a more things for developers. The tools already present are good enough, I saw someone suggesting a built-in sFTP. That's just too much.
Yeah it's not a developer feature but I'd love this too. It's just a good way of managing lots of tabs and developers do have lots of tabs open.
Tree tabs are the more conventional way of understanding lots of items (and tabs are hierarchical -- parent tabs are where you opened the current tab from).
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1. I can't even add an element directly in the Chrome dev tools - you can only edit an existing elements HTML and append something after it. My kingdom for a '+' button.
You can, sort of. Right click on an element and choose "edit as HTML" and you can add whatever you want, granted it offers no reasonable formatting, its just a wall of text, not even tabs / line breaks. It is also broken in that when you do this Chrome rebuilds all the sub elements of what your editing so if there were event hooks or anything like that on the elements they will be gone.
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?
#310I'm glad you asked! This is a good time for me to bring up something I wrote two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2024164 I really wish browser makers would do this! Mozilla can lead the way. I am going to post it here for ease of reference: 1) I propose a simple mechanism to guarantee that a resource located at a certain URL is always the same. Similar to how we have https:// blabla, and the user agent…
Why not just sign the file with GPG or openssl or something?
If you need to deal with clients that aren't aware of the mechanism, you could just put the GPG signature in a custom HTTP header.
If you need to use cloud hosting or the like, and you can't return custom headers, just put the signature in a file with the same name with .sig attached. In fact, I just downloaded a kernel tarball the other day, and kernel.org does exactly this [1].
I also found a few related articles and RFC's [2] [3] [4].
[1] https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_link