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Future of Firefox DevTools

paulrouget.com

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Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#111

Post by czzarr »

st3fan wrote: post #102
rlx0x wrote: post #35

I find the responses here really strange, has anyone here actually used the devtools in pratice? The firefox devtools seem to me just a awful waste of time from the beginning, they are years behind the competition and the development progress is so slow that I've given up on them. I'm using firefox as my main browser but for web development (dom/css inspection, javascript debugging) there is currently nothing that be…

Can you explain why nothing beats the chrome dev tools?

It's hard to pinpoint one thing. They're just much more usable and don't make you fight against it. It just gets out of your way. That's great UX design right there. Just measure the amount of key strokes, clicks, time and overall actions needed to do one thing in Chrome and the same in Firefox. You'll be amazed.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#112

Post by shardling »

smnrchrds wrote: post #74
quaunaut wrote: post #9

At the moment, I really like Chrome because I just find the behavior of the Omnibar superior to Firefox's Awesomebar. But hot damn, you're making me question loyalties on my dev machine.

I removed search box from Firefox few months ago and never looked back. I use search engine keywords instead[1]. My current keywords include goog, bing, amzn, crate, and wiki. Guess what search engine they refer to. :) [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

I really, really prefer the search box. For me, searching the web and searching my history are very different intents; so activating them with different keystrokes doesn't seem like much of a burden.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#113

Post by johnath »

mnemonik wrote: post #107
rhdoenges wrote: post #106

Poking around the wiki I noticed that work is beginning on GCLI, a gui command line. I'm not sure how it's going to get integrated into FF yet (I saw mention of an mdn command, though). I love the demo: https://people.mozilla.com/~jwalker/gcli/

Shift-F2

Yeah, get thee to a recent release or pre-release and tell us what you think.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#114

Post by quaunaut »

ajanuary wrote: post #93
quaunaut wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally internalized the downdown for going to things I've gone to before. However, I do brand new searches constantly . Often 20+ a day, that often look similar to older searches, but aren't quite. Now, whether I've developed that behavior because of Chrome, or because it works well for me, is a question for itself. Also, since I'm here- anyone get frequent fuckups lately in the Chrome omnibar, not searching…

Is it associated with Google Instant failing? I've noticed frequently Google Instant will fail half way through searching, and it will ignore everything I typed and just go with what Instant guessed before it crapped out. If Instant is prioritizing your previous search, it may be linked.

This definitely could be what it is.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#115

Post by nsmartt »

nsmartt wrote: post #95

I'm loving all of this. With these improvements, I have only one complaint. The tab bar is beautiful on Windows and OS X, but it's awful on Linux. Tabs should be the same on each OS.

I can't edit my post, but I just saw http://paulrouget.com/e/australis-ux/. I'm beyond excited for this.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#116

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

czzarr wrote: post #111
st3fan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why nothing beats the chrome dev tools?

It's hard to pinpoint one thing. They're just much more usable and don't make you fight against it. It just gets out of your way. That's great UX design right there. Just measure the amount of key strokes, clicks, time and overall actions needed to do one thing in Chrome and the same in Firefox. You'll be amazed.

I would hope or presume that Firefox's tools eventually do get this level of polish, though. Chrome (and even Safari) has had quite a bit of a head-start, and neither of those were shining examples of great UX at the beginning.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#117

Post by bjustin »

shardling wrote: post #112
smnrchrds wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I removed search box from Firefox few months ago and never looked back. I use search engine keywords instead[1]. My current keywords include goog, bing, amzn, crate, and wiki. Guess what search engine they refer to. :) [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

I really, really prefer the search box. For me, searching the web and searching my history are very different intents; so activating them with different keystrokes doesn't seem like much of a burden.

I did too, but Google instant changed things. Try this:

1) Set your search engine to Google (if it isn't currently)

2) Remove the search bar.

3) Press ctrl+k (cmd+k) and start typing. You'll be searching on Google's site, by far the best search experience with Google Instant on.

The only downside is that you need a reasonably fast, low-latency connection for it to work well[1].

[1] Fine with decent Internet service, but what a downside it is on a lesser connection. The ~0.5-1 sec delay was unbearable on a 3Mbps DSL connection with average latency.

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#118

Post by endemic »

czzarr wrote: post #111
st3fan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why nothing beats the chrome dev tools?

It's hard to pinpoint one thing. They're just much more usable and don't make you fight against it. It just gets out of your way. That's great UX design right there. Just measure the amount of key strokes, clicks, time and overall actions needed to do one thing in Chrome and the same in Firefox. You'll be amazed.

Pretty subjective statements. Maybe you're just more familiar with the Chrome tools UI?

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#119

Post by steveklabnik »

h2s wrote: post #36
paulrouget wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed in Firefox 21.

My apologies, I remember in the original post you asked us to hold off on providing feedback unless the issues were present in recent Firefox versions. On the plus side, this motivated me to switch to Firefox Aurora just now and I must say, I'm extremely impressed!

I've been using Aurora for the past few weeks, and really enjoy it quite a bit. I'd been using Chrome for the past few years, but the recent shenanigans by Google was enough to motivate me to take a few more steps away...

Re: Future of Firefox DevTools

#120

Post by Mahn »

Aardwolf wrote: post #98
diminish wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still prefer Firebug, instead of Chrome dev tools. What are the reasons which make you think, it is not great?

Firebug: -is slower -has more glitches (things doing plain weird or not working sometimes) -requires "activation" of each panel and reloading of the page -sometimes suddenly opens for no reason when you visit a webpage without the intention to debug it -is impossible to use if you want to debug a project with hundreds of js files (e.g. uncompiled JS of a large project) because it has a bad type of dropdown for select…

This is unfortunately true, and that's why it's exciting to see Mozilla do something about it. As it stands right now, Chrome is the better tool, and if you prefer Firebug to it chances are you haven't tried Chrome for long enough.
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