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WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

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Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#31

Post by gdulli »

thegeomaster wrote: post #15

This should be a separate tool. An add-on, or whatever, but it shouldn't be bundled with the browser. If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? No, because you wanted to play your Black Sabbath .mp3, or read a .pdf scientific paper. If you wanted to re…

I agree. I'd be happy with launching firefox in a more lightweight non-web-dev mode for everyday browsing and then web-dev mode with all the extra tools and UI elements. The cool thing about that would be that the developer tools could be more tightly integrated with the UI because they wouldn't have to be hidden from the majority of people who would never need them.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#32

Post by rimantas »

fidotron wrote: post #9

Is this itself entirely a webapp? As an aside, I'm amazed the way Mozilla have co-opted the term "Web" to mean whatever they want it to. The way they've branded all sorts of non-standard APIs in FFOS "Web" APIs to confuse people into thinking these are somehow more open than anything else is impressive.

Mozilla lost their focus long ago. They are now mostly political organisation with side busines of making software and financed by a competitor. I loved them so much since the days of the Phoenix (I think it was 0.6 which I made my default browser), I admired Blake Ross. They had a great goal: to make the best browser. Now? I couldn't care less. I don't know who the leader is, or do they even have one. I know they are good I writing manifestos and have some evangelists not too shy to lie. Will those political games help anyone? I doubt so. But if once great organisation is determined to become irrelevant, how can you forbid that? MDN is good, though.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#33

Post by thegeomaster »

phkahler wrote: post #29
thegeomaster wrote: post #15

This should be a separate tool. An add-on, or whatever, but it shouldn't be bundled with the browser. If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? No, because you wanted to play your Black Sabbath .mp3, or read a .pdf scientific paper. If you wanted to re…

"Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? " No, and that's a problem. Do you see programming languages shipped with every computer? No, but that's how it used to be. Most shipped with BASIC while Unix shipped with C. I guess Macs come with Python, but just CLI no IDE - not even idle. Is there some rea…

The curious won't be perplexed by such a simple barrier. They'd find this Web IDE, had it been an add-on, and happily continue exploring. Is that little convenience enough to justify bloating an executable millions of people use daily with a lot of code that only 5% of them (a very generous estimate) will ever use?

We should be splitting software into smaller components, and let the user choose what they need. There's no need to pander to lazy or unwilling-to-learn users by barfing up all they need into a single binary, thereby adding stuff most of the people won't ever use.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#34

Post by colinramsay »

kibwen wrote: post #24

> We’re working on a protocol adapter that will allow > clients using the Firefox Remote Debugging Protocol – > including the Developer Tools and WebIDE – talk to all > mobile browsers, regardless of rendering engine or > runtime. Our first targets are Chrome for Android and > Safari on iOS. My company expects all of our internal web applications to function on the executives' iPads, but they refuse to purchase Macs…

I've never tried it, but how about this?

http://developer.telerik.com/featured/a-concise-guide-to-rem...

Or, run OSX in a Windows virtual machine? You could us Safari remote debugging then.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#35

Post by sigzero »

applecore wrote: post #18
thegeomaster wrote: post #15

This should be a separate tool. An add-on, or whatever, but it shouldn't be bundled with the browser. If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? No, because you wanted to play your Black Sabbath .mp3, or read a .pdf scientific paper. If you wanted to re…

The democratization of the web gives people who have been consumers the ability to be creators. The tools of creation belong in everyone's hands.

And? That doesn't mean it cannot be a plugin.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#36

Post by sliverstorm »

colinramsay wrote: post #34
kibwen wrote: post #24

> We’re working on a protocol adapter that will allow > clients using the Firefox Remote Debugging Protocol – > including the Developer Tools and WebIDE – talk to all > mobile browsers, regardless of rendering engine or > runtime. Our first targets are Chrome for Android and > Safari on iOS. My company expects all of our internal web applications to function on the executives' iPads, but they refuse to purchase Macs…

I've never tried it, but how about this? http://developer.telerik.com/featured/a-concise-guide-to-rem... Or, run OSX in a Windows virtual machine? You could us Safari remote debugging then.

Are OSX virtual machines allowed now?

I mean, obviously you can do it at home, but a company has to be a little more careful.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#37

Post by Sephr »

kibwen wrote: post #24

> We’re working on a protocol adapter that will allow > clients using the Firefox Remote Debugging Protocol – > including the Developer Tools and WebIDE – talk to all > mobile browsers, regardless of rendering engine or > runtime. Our first targets are Chrome for Android and > Safari on iOS. My company expects all of our internal web applications to function on the executives' iPads, but they refuse to purchase Macs…

Mozilla didn't have to reverse engineer anything. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all aim to support http://remotedebug.org/

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#38

Post by jryans »

sliverstorm wrote: post #36
colinramsay wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never tried it, but how about this? http://developer.telerik.com/featured/a-concise-guide-to-rem... Or, run OSX in a Windows virtual machine? You could us Safari remote debugging then.

Are OSX virtual machines allowed now? I mean, obviously you can do it at home, but a company has to be a little more careful.

Yes, Apple's license allows it now.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#39

Post by toyg »

thegeomaster wrote: post #15

This should be a separate tool. An add-on, or whatever, but it shouldn't be bundled with the browser. If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? No, because you wanted to play your Black Sabbath .mp3, or read a .pdf scientific paper. If you wanted to re…

We've gone full circle: Firefox/Phoenix was born as a way to separate the browser from (guess what) html-authoring, email, calendaring etc, which used to be "the same program" aka Netscape Communicator / Mozilla Suite. The split basically killed off most of the orphaned components.

Now Mozilla are busy rebuilding an html-authoring tool and packing it into the browser. I bet messaging will follow.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#40

Post by thegeomaster »

gress wrote: post #25
thegeomaster wrote: post #15

This should be a separate tool. An add-on, or whatever, but it shouldn't be bundled with the browser. If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? No, because you wanted to play your Black Sabbath .mp3, or read a .pdf scientific paper. If you wanted to re…

I strongly disagree. Just because economics have temporarily separated the means of creation from the means of consumption in some domains, there is no reason that they should not be recombined now that it can be done freely. Why shouldn't all systems be programmable?

Sorry, but this looks like you're attacking a straw man. I never said that "not all systems should be programmable". My actual belief is, as a matter of fact, completely opposed to that.

What I'm saying is that you do and will for a long time need a degree of technical expertise to develop webpages. The gap is shrinking, but will exist for at least quite some time. I'm not being an elitist, just real. The technical expertise needed to browse even the most complex websites versus the one needed to put together even the simplest ones is far smaller. Why would putting this Web IDE into an add-on ever accent the border between creation and consumption?

It's good to have software with a single responsibility. All other things equal, Mozilla's Firefox division can maintain a web browser without an IDE better than they can a browser with an IDE. If Mozilla was to develop an IDE, it would be easier to split it into a separate piece of software (say an add-on) and dedicate another, different development team to work on it. That would be another program with a single responsibility.

This is vaguely reminiscent of the Unix way, and I'm very respectable of it, for the main reason that it's aligned with my personal philosophy (KISS), but also because it was able to create and sustain such a big community founded on openness and contributions and not driven by profit margins and managers in suits.

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