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Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

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Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#321

Post by apavlov »

nc wrote: post #230
mbell wrote: post #73

This 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…

It's not always possible to push changes back to LESS or SASS due to ambiguity at which level changes should be applied - if you're editing CSS values. The browser would have to display SASS or LESS in the inspector for what you're suggesting to work.

Chrome Canary (perhaps, the Dev channel, too) supports navigation to CSS selectors, property names and values (Ctrl-click them) in the corresponding Sass resources (the Sources panel). You can edit Sass and save it to disk (right-click the editor, "Save as...").

Now, if you have the "Support for Sass" experiment enabled, you'll see the "Auto-reload CSS upon Sass save" timeout setting to reload re-generated CSS files after "sass --watch in:out --sourcemap" (or equivalent) has updated them on the local disk.

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#322

Post by joecorcoran »

joecorcoran wrote: post #274
oneandoneis2 wrote: post #47

I 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…

I couldn't agree with this more. I work primarily in Chrome and find it very frustrating nowadays when I have to switch to Firefox to debug. Back in the days when Firebug was the only show in town, I loved working in Firefox. Dev Tools gets in the way. I appreciate the flashy experiments like Firefox Command Line but there's little chance of them entering into my everyday workflow unless I have the chance to learn th…

Just wanted to follow up this comment by saying that I've been playing with the latest Firefox nightly this morning and it's much more inline with what I want out of a browser's inbuilt dev environment. I'm really impressed.

Two things that still stand out as lacking when compared to Chrome are the JS console output and the Net panel output (really hate those popup windows).

But these things can be ironed out. Well done for getting Firefox moving in the right direction.

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#323

Post by dmitris »

Tainted mode for Javascript and tools for identifying DOM XSS (similar to DOMinator) would be really useful for security testing and audits of the modern complex sites. There is a bug open https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=811877 - hopefully it can be given sufficiently high attention and priority!

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#324

Post by Gmo »

vsync wrote: post #304
lobster_johnson wrote: post #228

I 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…

you can also set MOZ_NO_REMOTE on the command-line and you can start Firefox with another profile (I use that for dev, with a special dev profile)

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#325

Post by rschmitty »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #3

Honestly, 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…

When is the last time you compared memory use?

I have this thread, HN home, espn, and techcrunch open in both FF and Chrome right now

Chrome 454,920K Firefox 487,156K

a 30 meg difference is really _not_ a big deal.

Anywho I find myself using chrome for dev while FF is for browsing. The AngularJS and Speed Tracer addons are nice for Chrome. I browse with FF because they support tags with bookmarks, which I'm addicted to

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#326

Post by coldarchon »

Can you make websites PAUSE COMPLETELY when the tab is not active? So except maybe for youtube videos when I'm listening to music, but the memory usage when tabbed browsing as a developer is just out of bounds. I swapped to Opera because it only uses 500mb of my RAM when FireFox uses 1.500mb.

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#327

Post by jbackus »

* Expose APIs for developer to hook into firefox and reload pages or parts of pages (i.e. reload changed JS/CSS file)

* Intuitive system for playing, changing, rewinding, and replaying JS files for more rapid feedback (see: https://vimeo.com/36579366)

* Let me alter CSS / JS live (like I can with firebug) and then save it to the file if its local

* Implement some sort of system that shows link between JS events and the HTML they are bound to

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#329

Post by kenshi »

This is a big request and probably outside the scope you are thinking (but it shouldn't be): a WYSIWYG layout and editing mode.

Think something like [divshot](http://www.divshot.com) but more powerful, and built right into the browser.

Authoring web content should be a lot easier than it currently is.

Re: Ask HN: Webdevs, designers: what devtools should we (Mozilla) build in Firefox?

#330

Post by gkanai »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #3

Honestly, 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…

Mozilla is working hard to manage memory/RAM in the most efficient manner. In many 3rd party tests, Chrome uses more RAM than Firefox for the same set of tabs. Mozilla is tracking this here: https://areweslimyet.com/faq.htm
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