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Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#51

Post by tikhonj »

zanny wrote: post #49

As a guy who writes software who doesn't write much html (because web is hard) I can't help but feel that having all these devtools built in by default, while nice for developers, seems silly to have wasting space on the hard drives of millions of users. They will never use the source viewers, live editing, page heuristics, etc, and it reeks of feature creep to me, and one product trying to be too many things at once…

It may be a waste of space, yes, but space is cheap.

Also, it is extremely valuable to have these tools on every browser I happen to use. I can see what's wrong with my website--or anybody's website--at any computer. If you go to some page and something doesn't work, I can just open the developer tools on your browser and try to sort it out.

So while most people don't need these tools most of the time, they can still be useful once in a while and have a negligible cost.

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#52

Post by monkeypizza »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #48
cicloid wrote: post #11

Lately Firefox started looking more atractive again. Mostly because of Chrome's feature creep. But probably I'm just overthinking it.

Firefox has been improving noticeably faster since Chrome came into the picture. Not just lately either. FF has gotten much faster, much less memory hungry, and added a lot of new features (many inspired by chrome). I find I use both regularly, and which I use by default changes often, depending on the circumstance. E.g. they're both pretty fast these days, but on different things. FF seems more memory efficient over…

I just added fauxbar[0] to chrome, which fixes the worse feature of chrome - the bad history integration when typing in the url bar. I love both, too, but this addition to chrome puts it back in the lead.

[0]http://code.google.com/p/fauxbar/

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#53

Post by gizzlon »

danneu wrote: post #20

The shortcut to bring it up (fn+shift+f2) is pretty unwieldy on the Mac keyboard. Anyone have any idea on how to change the shortcut? No luck in about:config.

Isn't it really just "shift+f2" ? But your keyboard doesn't have an f2 key, so you have to press "fn" to get "f2" ?

Of course that doesn't help you, but this has annoyed me on mac, and I think they deserve the blame ;)

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#55

Post by sesqu »

zobzu wrote: post #41
BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #22

Who downscales a screencast to 480p before uploading to YouTube? It would be a much better demo to watch if they hadn't.

can't read what he's typing indeed

Be sure to watch in 480p, not 360p. I can make out what he's typing, though it is a bit blurry. Plus, if you only care about the commands, he always mentions them - just not all of the parameters.

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#56

Post by petepete »

nsmartt wrote: post #19

If Firefox had a GUI that didn't rely on the window manager's decorations (a la chrome), I would switch in a heartbeat. As it stands, using Firefox on Linux (Openbox) feels like a huge step back from Chrome.

Sorry, am I missing something - Why use Openbox if you don't like the window decorations?

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#57

Post by mushishi »

codemac wrote: post #35
cpeterso wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox's lack of HiDPI support was killing my eyes, but I've been using Nightly builds and they look great. The only problem I see is that Flash plugins get confused about screen sizes (so YouTube has tiny control buttons).

The plugin support hasn't bothered me yet, and it's almost surprising. The amount of flash I use on a daily basis is so incredibly minimal these days. I've started using the built in plugin blocking with firefox. The only time I really turn it on is for Netflix and the occasional video that isn't part of the HTML5 beta on youtube is about it. ( not that any of this is an excuse to not fix the bug :P )

As Google Chromes GWT Developer plugin is noticeably slower (and stopped working altogether) than that of Firefox's, having to use non-retina supported browser for GWT development is annoying.

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#58

Post by RobAley »

tikhonj wrote: post #51
zanny wrote: post #49

As a guy who writes software who doesn't write much html (because web is hard) I can't help but feel that having all these devtools built in by default, while nice for developers, seems silly to have wasting space on the hard drives of millions of users. They will never use the source viewers, live editing, page heuristics, etc, and it reeks of feature creep to me, and one product trying to be too many things at once…

It may be a waste of space, yes, but space is cheap . Also, it is extremely valuable to have these tools on every browser I happen to use. I can see what's wrong with my website--or anybody's website--at any computer. If you go to some page and something doesn't work, I can just open the developer tools on your browser and try to sort it out. So while most people don't need these tools most of the time, they can stil…

Some stats: ~350 million users[1] ~17Mb download[2]

Lets assume a full 25% is dev tools (I think its likely to be much less), so 4.25Mb per user. That's 1418Tb, or just under 500 3Tb disks. Considering that's spread across 350 million users, I think that's not too much at all, and its probably much less.

[1]https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/e/ed/Analyst_report_Q1_2010.... [2]http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html

Re: Firefox debuts new developer toolbar

#60

Post by gioele »

zanny wrote: post #49

As a guy who writes software who doesn't write much html (because web is hard) I can't help but feel that having all these devtools built in by default, while nice for developers, seems silly to have wasting space on the hard drives of millions of users. They will never use the source viewers, live editing, page heuristics, etc, and it reeks of feature creep to me, and one product trying to be too many things at once…

> seems silly to have wasting space on the hard drives of millions of users.

I'd be more worried about memory consumption, wasted CPU cycles, lost opportunities to let the CPU sleep, the cost of running CI tests...

I am also worried about the increase in the attack surface exposed to random pages downloaded from the Web.

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