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WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

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Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#131

Post by georgemcbay »

jannes wrote: post #116
ryanmcbride wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A first step on a sinking ship doesn't count.

Mozilla Composer was part of the Mozilla Suite (a predecessor of Firefox). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Composer

Yeah but Mozilla Composer was begat by Netscape Composer, which was part of the push into "enterprise" and being a "collaboration suite" that jwz lists as the #2 cause for sinking of the Netscape ship:

http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

Anyone who doesn't think the Netscape ship sank is probably too young to remember pre-Firefox (or too close to events to be objective); but the fact that the ship was salvaged from near the bottom of the ocean doesn't change the fact that it did sink.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#132

Post by groby_b »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #85
phkahler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>Do you not want the curious to have ready access to dig in and understand the stuff they use every day? Yeah, pretty much. Combine offshoring with the baffling obsession some programmers have with teaching EVERYONE their trade and you can expect compensation levels to plummet in the coming years.

Right. Let's keep the rest of the world illiterate, as long as we keep making nice salaries.

The "baffling" obsession might come from the fact that many programmers realize that basic programming knowledge is the coming equivalent of literacy. And that they'd never be in the position they're in now if generations of CS people hadn't freely shared what they learned.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#133

Post by JetSpiegel »

kyllo wrote: post #100
yeukhon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modularity is a great idea, but modularity isn't always a solution. Sometimes, tight, monolithic integration is better, for both developers and end user. As an example, some companies have a single source tree with every project. Why the hell would they do that? Make 100 repos on github is better - you know which repo is which repo. Maintenance and usage headache. > A vast, vast majority of people downloading Firefox…

Nope. I can do this with Word, python -m SimpleHTTPServer, and a web browser to write code, test code and see code in live action. Wait, what is Word being used for, in this process?

Writing an essay to the security folks justifying using Python in a corporate environment?

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#134

Post by userbinator »

simonsarris wrote: post #54

This is fantastic and I'm really glad it's being bundled with Firefox and not as a separate download. As I've said elsewhere, a lot of kids still assume that programming is essentially "magic" done by professionals and they implicitly assume there is no way to getting started at their education level (This is especially true if their parents are non-technical, as mine were). All the resources in the world may exist,…

From my experience, IDEs do not help in reducing the notion that programming is somehow "magic" - on the other hand, beginners will tend to develop an attachment to them, and that's where the "magic" shifts to. Basic concepts like "source code is just a text file" will be foreign to them (I'm surprised how many supposedly educated "developers" I've encountered don't understand this.)

I think the best way to start writing webpages is with a text editor - which almost any OS out there will already have, and that IDEs are like calculators - they're a great help when you already know what you're doing, but not ideal for starting out learning.

That said, if this makes it to the stable release channel it would be a big (and positive) change of direction for Mozilla, who have had a history of removing power-user-oriented features (and most developers probably started out as power users.) I remember a thread on HN (might've been about Australis?) in which others were wondering whether they would eventually remove the "View Source" function.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#135

Post by JetSpiegel »

rimantas wrote: post #32
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 ar…

Mozilla is not Apple, they can very much function without a leader.

They have the ONLY fully featured modern browser that is also free software. IMHO, it fits the "make the best browser" philosophy.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#136

Post by yeukhon »

kyllo wrote: post #100
yeukhon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modularity is a great idea, but modularity isn't always a solution. Sometimes, tight, monolithic integration is better, for both developers and end user. As an example, some companies have a single source tree with every project. Why the hell would they do that? Make 100 repos on github is better - you know which repo is which repo. Maintenance and usage headache. > A vast, vast majority of people downloading Firefox…

Nope. I can do this with Word, python -m SimpleHTTPServer, and a web browser to write code, test code and see code in live action. Wait, what is Word being used for, in this process?

Writing code. at least in open office you can create a new HTML document, don't have Word with me right now but in the old days I believe it was possible.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#137

Post by yeukhon »

thegeomaster wrote: post #121
yeukhon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modularity is a great idea, but modularity isn't always a solution. Sometimes, tight, monolithic integration is better, for both developers and end user. As an example, some companies have a single source tree with every project. Why the hell would they do that? Make 100 repos on github is better - you know which repo is which repo. Maintenance and usage headache. > A vast, vast majority of people downloading Firefox…

>No this is not bullshit, because developers are users and some users turn into developers BECAUSE they poke around tools available to them. And by moving the web IDE to a separate add-on, we make it unavailable to them? It's just more easily available. That's a huge difference. You have a web browser, you ask yourself, "how do I create webpages?" Then you maybe Google how to do it, and the answer says "it's in Firef…

As a developer, I like native integration. Why should an operating system bundle media player if they can just download a media player on their own using a browser? How many people start to play a video as soon as they get a new computer? A 5 minute research is enough to find out a variety of good media player.

In fact, OS bundle media player sucks because they can only play some formats. I shall say it sucks that we have so many different codec available and yet OS can only bundle a small subset of the free codec (forget about the one that are proprietary).

And you know what? This integration is done. It's in nightly. It probably won't be removed for a long time because it's a feature that has a use case. You don't have to like it, but it's in there.

I don't know about you, but sometimes the things I dislike turn out all right and I like them later because I start to use them.

Also, I own multiple copies and multiple profile of Firefox for development purpose (and testing purpose). I am not sure whether there is a global way to make add-on available across profile, but at least I don't know how and I don't want to re-install the same add-on five times a day. Minor use case but it's a use case.

Also, when I teach programming to students, I and the class can benefit from a single installation. Just need Firefox! I don't need to worry about different IDE and I can focus on showing them the result in the same browser they use to see live code and debug code. I don't use fancy IDE and I hate full blown IDE for web app.

This integration makes me happy, makes some of us happy and that's how a software is. You don't have to like this decision, but it's in there, so try it when you have a chance and you may like it.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#139

Post by hmsimha »

josso wrote: post #5
Deutscher wrote: post #3

I've always wondered why developer tools are bundled with browsers. Shouldn't they be available as separate downloads as: 1. Most people use browsers compared to working with them for development, and 2. The additional tools just add to the package size and possibly increased resource usage (if they are running with the rest of the browser)? Thanks in advance for the replies.

Regarding #2: The developer tools don't run unless they're opened, so that shouldn't affect any normal users.

Although every now and then a 'normal user' might get an unexpected surprise when they accidentally open them. Reminds me of this http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1tkld5/my_facebook_s...

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#140

Post by Raphael »

kibwen wrote: post #56
paulirish wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Mozilla truly reverse-engineers Apple's remote debugging protocol it would be a godsend for us. Google did this a while ago: https://github.com/google/ios-webkit-debug-proxy It works well for connecting Chrome DevTools to Safari, automating Mobile Safari through ChromeDriver, or hooking up your iOS device to a private instance of WebPageTest.

Thanks, I've never heard of this before and it sounds very useful. ...Or rather, it would be very useful were it not for the fact that it only appears to run on Linux and OS X, whereas my employer-granted computer is running—drumroll, please—Windows XP! And like I said, these are all internal applications, and I don't have the authority to VPN in on any computer that I please. Ah well. Enterprise bureaucracy strikes…

Linux virtual machine.
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