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The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#141

Post by swift »

ksk wrote: post #124
jawerty wrote: post #118

I'm still on the fence about having separate browsers for developers. It sounds nice as a concept but when I think about it more it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. For instance, when I want to debug my website I go to the dev tools within the browser I'm viewing because I know that my users are viewing the same browser (typically). Having an entirely different developer browsers makes the debugging experienc…

This speaks to the general low quality of web specifications and/or inability of browser developers to create robust implementations of those specs. In the vast majority of scenarios we don't think about using the same processor to experience the same thing a user does. (Certainly driver developers and other low level h/w people will occasionally run into h/w bugs but they're in a very niche field).

The web platform is a lot more complicated than any ISA. The right comparison is having the same operating system version as the user, and anyone that develops native apps does have to care about that.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#142

Post by PavlovsCat »

callahad wrote: post #77
snlacks wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would probably start the trend of the dev features being reduced in regular browsers, I'd guess. But you're right no one is taking it away yet.

Why would any browser vendor have an incentive to remove or restrict developer features in released browsers?

It's not about already released browsers, but possibly future versions.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#143

Post by chc »

justcommenting wrote: post #102
kisielk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem? The users can just download the same browser if they're really interested in the additional functionality.

Instead of working to ensure that my parents' computer running Windows 3.1 shipped with a C compiler by default a few decades ago, people inside Microsoft and Borland were probably thinking the same thing. This line of thinking is basically the reason I had to wait a few more years until I could buy my own computer that could run Linux as a teenager. For lots of people, the world is a very different place now, but ju…

Building free software will never be a default mode, simply because building software inherently requires effort. Having the tools in one download or another doesn't appreciably change that.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#144

Post by dwild »

swift wrote: post #140
dwild wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

Generally by asking them to paste code into the JavaScript console. Here's an example: http://sdpcfix.com/security-alerts/facebook-scam-helps-trick...

We should instead remove access to the keyboard, that would be a way more effective way to stop any situation where theses users would cause a security issue.

Seriously, it's not the first kind of attack that appear because users are too naive. At one point we need to trace the line somewhere. Should we also block copy-paste to a file in case they create a batch file?

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#145

Post by dombili »

I wonder if they'll remove (or at least most of it) developer tools from the main browser and try to get developers to use this version. Common criticism of Firefox these days is it feels (and in most cases is) slower and more bloated than Chrome. This move could help Mozilla make FF faster, no?

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#146

Post by callahad »

mariusandreiana wrote: post #120
hrktb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point, but I think there is a reality where developing and actually experiencing the product can be fundamentally different. For instance the security model for a browser should be ultra tight and protect the user from the site, but as a developer I'd want to access and modify my files directly through the inspector panel. Another example would be the use of cache, where I want the minimum possible r…

>For instance the security model for a browser should be ultra tight and protect the user from the site, but as a developer I'd want to access and modify my files directly through the inspector panel. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=328026 >Another example would be the use of cache, where I want the minimum possible retention while a user would want the opposite. Chrome Inspector -> [x] Disable ca…

Or Firefox Dev Tools -> Settings -> [x] Disable Cache (when toolbox is open)

:)

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#147

Post by driverdan »

dombili wrote: post #145

I wonder if they'll remove (or at least most of it) developer tools from the main browser and try to get developers to use this version. Common criticism of Firefox these days is it feels (and in most cases is) slower and more bloated than Chrome. This move could help Mozilla make FF faster, no?

Developer tools don't add any overhead unless you enable them.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#148

Post by justcommenting »

gohrt wrote: post #132
justcommenting wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of working to ensure that my parents' computer running Windows 3.1 shipped with a C compiler by default a few decades ago, people inside Microsoft and Borland were probably thinking the same thing. This line of thinking is basically the reason I had to wait a few more years until I could buy my own computer that could run Linux as a teenager. For lots of people, the world is a very different place now, but ju…

You are comparing "Go to the store and buy a box of 10 floppy disks to bring home and install" to "click a button on a website"

that's my point: it's clearly not mozilla's fault if everyone doesn't have internet access today or devices that aren't shared with/scrutinized/controlled by others, just like it wasn't redhat or mandrake's fault that the install CDs in computer shopper magazine didn't ship with drivers for my parents' computers a few decades back.

but then, as now, getting started ended up being more complicated for some number of people than it probably seemed to our predecessors at microsoft and borland--including reasons that had little to do with software--but that still could've been influenced by how software development tools were distributed.

maybe it was just me, but getting started is probably still more complicated for some people in the world than either of us can imagine. maybe that's no big deal, but my experience makes me pretty sensitive to access to free software development tools.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#149

Post by azernik »

Joeri wrote: post #136
hrktb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point, but I think there is a reality where developing and actually experiencing the product can be fundamentally different. For instance the security model for a browser should be ultra tight and protect the user from the site, but as a developer I'd want to access and modify my files directly through the inspector panel. Another example would be the use of cache, where I want the minimum possible r…

I don't quite see it that way. > For instance the security model for a browser should be ultra tight and protect the user from the site, but as a developer I'd want to access and modify my files directly through the inspector panel. I don't see any inherent conflict between preventing sites from having access to the local filesystem, while having powerful local filesystem access from the browser's integrated devtools…

WRT caching, the experience of a developer is already completely different from that for a user - assets on a dev instance of you infrastructure (including both code and static files) are changing multiple times a minute.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#150

Post by justcommenting »

chc wrote: post #143
justcommenting wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of working to ensure that my parents' computer running Windows 3.1 shipped with a C compiler by default a few decades ago, people inside Microsoft and Borland were probably thinking the same thing. This line of thinking is basically the reason I had to wait a few more years until I could buy my own computer that could run Linux as a teenager. For lots of people, the world is a very different place now, but ju…

Building free software will never be a default mode, simply because building software inherently requires effort. Having the tools in one download or another doesn't appreciably change that.

sure--it's far from sufficient, but for some number of people, it's necessary. at least it was for me.
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