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posted by n1 on Monday November 10 2014, @07:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the sophisticated-web-development dept.

Mozilla announced that they are excited to unveil Firefox Developer Edition, the first browser created specifically for developers that integrates two powerful new features, Valence and WebIDE that improve workflow and help you debug other browsers and apps directly from within Firefox Developer Edition. Valence (previously called Firefox Tools Adapter) lets you develop and debug your app across multiple browsers and devices by connecting the Firefox dev tools to other major browser engines. WebIDE allows you to develop, deploy and debug Web apps directly in your browser, or on a Firefox OS device. "It lets you create a new Firefox OS app (which is just a web app) from a template, or open up the code of an existing app. From there you can edit the app’s files. It’s one click to run the app in a simulator and one more to debug it with the developer tools."

Firefox Developer Edition also includes all the tools experienced Web developers are familiar with including: Responsive Design Mod, Page Inspector, Web Console, JavaScript Debugger, Network Monitor, Style Editor, and Web Audio Editor. At launch, Mozilla is starting off with Chrome for Android and Safari for iOS. and the eventual goal is to support more browsers, depending on what developers tell Mozilla they want, but the primary focus is on the mobile Web. "One of the biggest pain points for developers is having to use numerous siloed development environments in order to create engaging content or for targeting different app stores. For these reasons, developers often end up having to bounce between different platforms and browsers, which decreases productivity and causes frustration," says the press release. "If you’re a new Web developer, the streamlined workflow and the fact that everything is already set up and ready to go makes it easier to get started building sophisticated applications."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Monday November 10 2014, @08:22PM

    by Lagg (105) on Monday November 10 2014, @08:22PM (#114608) Homepage Journal

    It's not the first browser built for developers by far, nor is it anything novel but that's really a good thing. I was kind of worried that Mozilla was wasting yet more money and other resources on something that didn't need doing but this is just a rebrand basically that includes some experimental developers tools (that we can already install separately) and some about:config preferences that usually must be toggled manually already set. That's all. I wish they'd have spent time working on firefox as a whole and cleaning things up but really it's the lesser of the two evils. For a while I really was worried that the media stupidity and hype would end up being correct and Mozilla actually did write an entirely new browser.

    I know you generally don't care about what people that aren't on slashdot say, Hugh, but in the event you do please don't worry about the length of your summaries. You're making this sound like an advertisement. It's okay to have one quick paragraph.

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  • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday November 10 2014, @08:30PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Monday November 10 2014, @08:30PM (#114610) Journal

    I wish they'd have spent time working on firefox as a whole and cleaning things up

    If you mean by making it more stable, better memory management, and less Chrome-like, I agree. Thank the heavens for the more traditional Pale Moon [palemoon.org] browser.

    please don't worry about the length of your summaries. You're making this sound like an advertisement. It's okay to have one quick paragraph.

    I was happy to see a list of what components are included. Two paragraphs are fine.

    • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday November 10 2014, @08:36PM

      by Lagg (105) on Monday November 10 2014, @08:36PM (#114614) Homepage Journal

      I tried using pale moon for a while but for some reason the inspector had horrific slowdown issues and was missing a lot. It was great from a standard user standpoint but they really need to focus on the other stuff.

      Also the first paragraph had the new stuff that was included, everything he said in the second was redundant and a list of tools that already exist in 33.0.3. Otherwise the big things of note are Valance and WebIDE. That's it.

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  • (Score: 1) by novak on Monday November 10 2014, @09:07PM

    by novak (4683) on Monday November 10 2014, @09:07PM (#114626) Homepage

    Yeah, my first thought was that moving their focus from the UI to things that more competent users might want is a good thing; Firefox has gone steadily downhill in their mad race to become chrome 2.0. But I think it's pretty funny that they have a developer edition which is basically just changing defaults and installing a couple things developers might want, but they don't have something similar for the standard users who hate the new UI. Who's more likely to have trouble changing a few settings? A developer, or some relatively non-computer literate user who wants to know what just barfed on their browser?

    So to summarize: Mozilla continues to focus on cosmetic changes for people who don't need them instead of addressing the performance issues in their browser.

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    novak
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 10 2014, @10:26PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday November 10 2014, @10:26PM (#114651)

      in their mad race to become chrome 2.0

      There's a joke in there somewhere, considering that Chrome is already on version 38.0...

      (yeah, I know what you were getting at)

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  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday November 10 2014, @10:59PM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday November 10 2014, @10:59PM (#114661) Journal

    Yeah but when you are already bleeding to death [sitepoint.com] that is like saying "Oh I thought they were gonna add slit wrists on top and instead its only a dozen or so paper cuts!"

    The Firefox numbers have been dropping like an arrow in almost a perfect down curve for a couple years now and talking to folks on various forums it seems to be that a huge chunk of the Firefox users are jumping ship and never coming back. The consensus is that the devs refuse to listen to the users, keep making FF into a Chrome with shitty threading so folks either jump ship to one of the more sane gecko browsers like PaleMoon (my choice as a backup browser), IceDragon, or Seamonkey, or they jump ship completely and go to the other side with Chrome, Chromium, or one of the two Comodo Chromium variants like Dragon or Comodo Secure Chromium. No matter which they switch to the one thing they all seem to agree on is that they will NOT be coming back, the Moz devs done burned that bridge.

    My personal feelings on the matter is that the Moz devs done lost their way, they have forgotten their mission statement and instead are acting like Google and throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks without having Google money to waste on a path like that. anybody remember what the stated goal was when they asked everybody to switch from Moz Suite to Phoenix or whatever it was called then? It was "to make the best, fastest, most lightweight standards compliant browser possible"...well anybody who has used ANY of the Chromium variants knows they failed in that regard, as a single bad page can bring FF to its knees, its really bad about slamming a core during load, which makes it suck more power on mobile devices, and its a hel of a lot more likely to suffer a lock up or a crash than the others in my experience. But instead of listening to the users, giving them a decent UI, fixing performance, and making FF a joy to use what do we get? Moz OS, an OS made to run apps based on HTML V5...snicker...on low powered devices...BWA HA HA HA HA, sorry but that is like taking the engine from a hummer and stuffing it into a Trabant, HTML V5 is a resource hog, several projects that came and went like MozTV and now MozDev....how is any of this gonna stop the bleeding of users? Its not.

    remember the ONLY way Moz stays afloat is if they keep enough users for Google to throw a mountain of money at them for the rights to the default search and if they keep bleeding users at the rate they have the past 2 years by the time the next bidding round comes by they'll be lucky if they can get ask to give em $50k for the rights. as somebody who was once a total diehard Mozzer, going from the first suite all the way through the beta and even weathering the mess that was the 2x/3x leakage mess? I'd really hate to see Mozilla drop off the face of the world but its probably been 6 months since I seen a system with a FF installed grace my desk, its all Chrome with some PaleMoon or variants. The new UI has gone over about as well as Metro and the sooner they admit that and put in the work on seriously wooing users back the better, because if they don't I wouldn't be surprised to see FF go the way of the suite and become this little tiny community that most mainstream users don't even know exists.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 11 2014, @01:16AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 11 2014, @01:16AM (#114696)

      Those stats are suspect. They put Firefix at 17% of the desktop market. The data I've seen put the number much lower, down around 10% of the market.