Our web development workflow is completely broken
blog.kenneth.io
Our web development workflow is completely broken
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Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#2LightTable has some pretty interesting features in this direction: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/04/28/light-table-040/
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#3I feel like this sentiment has been bubbling under the surface of my thought process every time I open up my editor. I've never taken the time to scrutinize that feeling though, too busy stressing over the details of whatever I'm making.
Perhaps only tangentially related, but our workflows are significantly related to the technologies we use, right? Ian Hickson in an interview [0]
"The Web technology stack is a complete mess. The problem is: what would you replace it with?"
[0]http://html5doctor.com/interview-with-ian-hickson-html-edito...
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#4A small nitpick: the article lists the "IE Developer Toolbar" for IE6 first, and suggests that everybody else's development tools followed that model. In fact, the earliest reference I can find to the IE Developer Toolbar suggests[1] that it was released in early 2007, while the Firebug version history[2] shows Firebug v0.2 released in January 2006, so it's about a year older than IE's developer tools.
Even if Firebug itself is no longer head-and-shoulders better than other tools, the fact that the basic model was copied and polished by Microsoft, Apple, Opera and later Mozilla themselves shows that Joe Hewitt had a pretty great idea back in early 2006.
[1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/01/09/ie-developer-t...
[2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/versi...
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#5LightTable has some pretty interesting features in this direction: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/04/28/light-table-040/
Trying it out now, thanks for the link!
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#6It seems workflow isn't the only thing broken.
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#7A small nitpick: the article lists the "IE Developer Toolbar" for IE6 first, and suggests that everybody else's development tools followed that model. In fact, the earliest reference I can find to the IE Developer Toolbar suggests[1] that it was released in early 2007, while the Firebug version history[2] shows Firebug v0.2 released in January 2006, so it's about a year older than IE's developer tools. Even if Firebu…
Yes, before Firebug, we were using MS Script Debugger/Script Editor in IE. It wasn't great, but it was more reliable for script debugging than Firebug for a long time.
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#8Why are we doing this backwards compared to everyone else? Integrating debugging tools into the runtime (browser) is great, but everyone else tends to integrate them into the IDE. Wouldn't that make more sense?
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#9A small nitpick: the article lists the "IE Developer Toolbar" for IE6 first, and suggests that everybody else's development tools followed that model. In fact, the earliest reference I can find to the IE Developer Toolbar suggests[1] that it was released in early 2007, while the Firebug version history[2] shows Firebug v0.2 released in January 2006, so it's about a year older than IE's developer tools. Even if Firebu…
The Mozilla DOM inspector is even older, it was even bundled in the Firefox installer in 2003. If the IE toolbar DOM inspector which was the reason some devs used IE 6 like the article suggests, I would bet that they had never even tried Firefox.
Re: Our web development workflow is completely broken
#10The workflow might need polishing, but tools like SublimeInspector are not the answer. They are miles behind the Chrome Inspector. Try it if you're not convinced.
The Chrome team has shown that they are very interested in moving the Inspector forward and have succeeded in integrating local files access via the editor, SASS support, Source Maps support, and a lot more. It is to the point where it would not be crazy to consider building a site entirely within the inspector. While the editor is not as good as others, you do gain simplicity and the ability to patch running code. The workflow is getting better.
Writing a great inspector is the hard part. Comparatively, writing an editor should not be as difficult. Chrome built the inspector first and is circling around.
The only integration I would really care to see (perhaps via ST2 Package Control) is the ability to directly pipe into the Inspector and patch running code. For large projects, especially in development mode, it can be a drag to ajax in >200 source files (even from localhost) and refresh every time you make a change.