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The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

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Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#181

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> > 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.

Er, no, they weren't. For Microsoft, they were not thinking users could just download top quality dev tools, in fact that would have been directly contrary to their interests -- they had a profit-based motive for assuring that quality dev tools were a separate purchase. Bundling them into the OS would have required them to sacrifice the additional cost that people making money developing software would be willing to pay for a dev tools .

And Borland was also trying to sell dev tools, but was really irrelevant to what Windows was going to be bundled with.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#182

Post by panzi »

callahad wrote: post #73
justcommenting wrote: post #71

This seems to reinforce the mindset that the web should be experienced and built using different tools for users vs. developers, and aside from thinking that's fundamentally condescending, I don't see why new tools couldn't simply be extended from FF's 'web developer' menu into a different mode of operation or even extensions. I think we're better off in a world where kids don't have to install ScaryFox on their tabl…

I'm not sure I see condescension here. Everyone does deserve access to built-in, high-quality tools. And everyone already gets that, with all major browsers. No one is taking away the built in developer tools in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, or Opera. The problem is that they're always just a little bit older than the tip of the current development branch. And that's fine for folks who are starting to teach themselves…

I think calling IE's development tools high-quality is a stretch. They got nice recently, but by far not as good as those of Chrome or even Firefox. Also it does not help that the development tools in the most recent IE are ok, I still have to maintain/debug older IEs. I think we can probably bin IE8 support, but it think only in recent IE11 the tools got good enough to not be a pain.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#183

Post by panzi »

panzi wrote: post #176
Yoric wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I'm asking because two Firefox devtools people sit in my office, so if you have feedback, I can forward it.

It's starts with GUI issues where you can't resize certain things (e.g. columns in the network tab) or only in a very limited way (it got better). Not being able to inspect objects inline in the console is very annoying. Is there no "clear network log" button? No option to retain/not retain the network log on page loads? I want a way to view an element that got logged to the console in the DOM inspector (Chrome has:…

Oh I want to add: I'm a big fan of the Mozilla foundation and the work it does for the free web. I just currently don't use Firefox. I do use Thunderbird and Chatzilla and I'm a fan of Rust. I hope the Phone will be a success, just so it finances Mozilla.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#184

Post by underpantsgnome »

Joeri wrote: post #154
azernik wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think that should necessarily be the case. By persisting resources in the cache after they are changed on the server there is an implicit promise of broken user experiences, since there is no control over which files are loaded from cache and which ones are not (so even for "harmless" images users will see mismatched artwork in the real world). Whatever caching strategy is used for production servers, it shou…

This is a lovely dream, but what if you're working on the caching software instead of the web app?

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#185

Post by hrktb »

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…

This discussion reminds me of Nescape Communicator of the old days, where a WYSIWG editor was bundled with everything else. Discovering HTML for the first time I actually used it to build small sites, but it got too heavy while being too limited very fast.

What I am saying is basically that I think we need powerful inspection tools, but Frankensteining editing and compiling tools to the normal browser would result in something way too complex, with lots of modes and settings to adjust, and it doesn't seem like a healthy path for something that is supposed to be user friendly, lightweight and high performance for everyone else.

In a way, I am afraid Chrome is precisely going in this direction, including all the features for the normal users (the Flash plugin for instance) with also progressively more and more power tools only relevant to developers.

> In my view developer modes (in browser or framework) are counterproductive because they create discrepancies between how your users experience your site or app and how you experience it.

I think we agree on this point, and having separate tools for building and testing a site would allow to switch between the two mindsets more easily. The testing would be done exactly on the same app, so on the same footing as the users, and not on an application with some hybrid half editing/half testing state. There would be fewer "it works for me, what's your problem people ?" moments I think.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#186

Post by hrktb »

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…

> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=328026

Interesting. I think there is also a plugin for WebStorm to send back modification made in the style panel to the actual files. Sadly sass/less resources makes it difficult to edit CSS and have it applied back to the sass source for instance.

> Chrome Inspector -> [x] Disable cache (while DevTools is open)

Yes, that's what I use for all my projects. Also there is a "Disable Caches" option in the Develop menu of Safari.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#187

Post by hirsin »

panzi wrote: post #182
callahad wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see condescension here. Everyone does deserve access to built-in, high-quality tools. And everyone already gets that, with all major browsers. No one is taking away the built in developer tools in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, or Opera. The problem is that they're always just a little bit older than the tip of the current development branch. And that's fine for folks who are starting to teach themselves…

I think calling IE's development tools high-quality is a stretch. They got nice recently, but by far not as good as those of Chrome or even Firefox. Also it does not help that the development tools in the most recent IE are ok, I still have to maintain/debug older IEs. I think we can probably bin IE8 support, but it think only in recent IE11 the tools got good enough to not be a pain.

Not everyone agrees about IE11, but we are trying to make it better. Better emulation is one place we could do better - I'll shill a bit and call out that we do use our Uservoice [1] to prioritize feature development, so please feel free to add your votes/ideas. I can say that some of these are already in the internal builds :)

[1] https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-internet-explorer-...

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#188

Post by paulirish »

callahad wrote: post #105
lmm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's just like Chrome Canary? Not exactly "the first" then.

Canary is equivalent to https://nightly.mozilla.org/ , or http://nightly.webkit.org/ This is different. It's not revolutionary (we're not releasing Servo yet), but it is pretty fantastic. I'd be shocked if most Firefox Aurora users don't switch over to the developer browser next week. :)

> This is different.

Is it? Sounds like a side-by-side Aurora with a toolbar button for DevTools. No separate feature set AFAICT, but you tell me if I'm wrong.

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#189

Post by agapos »

Yoric wrote: post #162
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?

Well, the main advantage that Chrome has vs Firefox is not speed (these days, Firefox is faster than Chrome on most benchmarks I have seen), but smoothness, which is largely due to the multi-process architecture of Chrome. Developer tools have strictly no influence on this, and the multi-process version of Firefox is currently being tested. I don't remember whether there is an ETA.

Last ETA was Firefox 36: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/07/12/mozilla-plans-release-elect...

Re: The First Browser Dedicated to Developers Is Coming

#190

Post by JackC »

panzi wrote: post #182
callahad wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see condescension here. Everyone does deserve access to built-in, high-quality tools. And everyone already gets that, with all major browsers. No one is taking away the built in developer tools in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, or Opera. The problem is that they're always just a little bit older than the tip of the current development branch. And that's fine for folks who are starting to teach themselves…

I think calling IE's development tools high-quality is a stretch. They got nice recently, but by far not as good as those of Chrome or even Firefox. Also it does not help that the development tools in the most recent IE are ok, I still have to maintain/debug older IEs. I think we can probably bin IE8 support, but it think only in recent IE11 the tools got good enough to not be a pain.

I recently had very good luck debugging an IE8 problem with IE11 in emulation mode (via Sauce Labs on my Mac, incidentally). Not sure if it works for everything, but it was by far the best experience I've had with IE.
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