Firefox Developer Edition

Firefox Developer Edition(developer.mozilla.org)

979 points by tazer 11 years ago | 295 comments

callahad 11 years ago |

Hi! Just a heads up that folks from the dev tools team will be monitoring this thread and are on-hand to answer questions. We'll try not to thread sit too much. :) In brief, the Developer Edition is a new release channel for Firefox, replacing Aurora (our pre-Beta channel). Everything else about the release cadence is the same.

There are four major new features here:

1. The Firefox Tools Adapter ("Valence"), which lets you use the Firefox dev tools to inspect and debug pages in Chrome for Android and Safari for iOS. The goal: one set of tools to debug any browser.

2. Side-by-side profiles. The Developer Edition defaults to a profile named `dev-edition-default`, which makes it easier to run Developer Edition at the same time as a normal release version of Firefox. You don't have to deal with the profile switcher each time.

3. Developer-friendly defaults. Developer Edition ships with things like remote debugging and browser-chrome debugging enabled by default.

4. And, for all of you who hated Australis, a compact theme with square tabs.

But those are just consequences of the single biggest change:

5. We have a new channel, which new rules. And we want to use it to build the best possible browser for web developers. We can ship new tools that aren't yet ready for the Beta channel, and we can change the browser's appearance and defaults specifically for web developers.

We'll be watching this thread during launch, but you can always submit feature requests on UserVoice. The right people will see them: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/forums/246087-firefox-devel...

This isn't a finished product. It's an invitation.

What tools do you need?

paulojreis 11 years ago | |

From the top of my mind:

1. HTTP Request builder (think cURL with a nicer GUI and the ability to save presets);

2. Web Proxy, able to "stop-and-modify" requests (think Fiddler or Charles);

3. Network conditions simulator for throttling, packet dropping and limited bandwidth, with profiles (e.g. GPRS);

4. Local Mock REST API, with a few predefined endpoints (e.g. /users/) + the ability to create new ones (with configurable values such as random integers between X and Y or a random string which is a valid e-mail);

5. Multi-touch simulator (with a modifier key);

6. A usability test facilitator, able to create test scripts and automatically record timing and extra information (e.g. define a task that ends when user clicks the element with id X; when said user clicks #X, you annotate the time, the number of misclicks, etc). You could also implement this for static images, with clickable regions. I would love you for this one.

dante9999 11 years ago | | |

I see that concerning point one and two there is option 'edit and resend' visible if you hover over request in network tab, and there is also option 'enable persistent logs', that shows what happens between refreshes. Don't know how it works, just playing around for 10 minutes.

Overall I'm impressed with new network panel, much better than before.

geoka9 11 years ago | | |

Very nice list. I would also add the ability to associate breakpoints with DOM elements. As in "break on any attempt to read/modify a given element". That would be extremely helpful in debugging the hodge-podge of Javascript libraries that many modern web pages are.

oib 11 years ago | | |

The second one is possible with the Tamper Data plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/tamper-data/

ndesaulniers 11 years ago | | |

The best channel for these suggestions is our user voice [0], or devtools bugzilla component [1] though lot's of Mozillian's hang out on HN (and subsequently ring vote themselves out of oblivion).

[0] https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/forums/246087-firefox-devel... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Developer...

jksmith 11 years ago | | |

Yeah on all this stuff.

masklinn 11 years ago | |

> What tools do you need?

Safari 8 introduced "breakpoint actions" similar to Xcode's: when a breakpoint is set, it can be configured to not actually break (keep running even if the breakpoint condition matches) and if it matches:

* log a message

* play a sound

* execute code

* run a probe

Each action type can be used any number of time on the same breakpoint.

It's not the most stable and almost undocumented — the only documentation I've found is the second half of WWDC'14 Session 512 "Web Inspector and Modern JavaScript" (starting ~37mn in) — but it's a great system, one I've been waiting for for a long time, and one I'd like to see more of. Especially with all the other features in e.g. the Xcode version: Xcode can ignore the first n hits of a breakpoint and can capture an OpenGL ES frame. In a browser, the breakpoint could allow capturing the DOM state, the renderstate or a WebGL frame.

juandopazo 11 years ago | | |

You can do this in the current dev tools by setting a conditional breakpoint. Conditional breakpoints allow you to write an expression which you can force to always be falsy. For example, "console.log()" returns undefined so it's falsy and it won't actually break.

sebasmagri 11 years ago | | |

Sounds great. I'd love to see it in https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/

serve_yay 11 years ago | | |

Hmm, interesting!

jperras 11 years ago | |

A MitM proxy like Charles (http://www.charlesproxy.com/) would be incredible. Debugging SSL issues is always difficult, and it would be great to have the tools all in one place.

Also, a shout-out to mitmproxy (https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy) which I've used on several occasions.

rkwz 11 years ago | |

> What tools do you need?

I wonder where do you draw a line for a developer oriented browser. Is a good 'line' be tools for 'whatever loads on page'?

Since we already have color picker etc, I think good candidates are

* Onscreen ruler

* Gradient generator

* Builtin JSfiddle

* CSS sprite generator

* Image to base64

* JS/HTML/CSS formatter

* JSON tools - tree-viewer/formatter/validator

* XML tools - tree-viewer/formatter/validator/xpath

acdha 11 years ago | | |

The JavaScript view in the debugger already has a built-in prettifier – look for the {} icon in the lower left corner.

It'd be really nice to have that for CSS, particularly if it could do a side-by-side view for e.g. source-mapped original and prettified CSS-as-used.

cturhan 11 years ago | | |

++1 for JS/HTML/CSS formatter and json tools

tumblen 11 years ago | |

One of the most powerful tools in my chest is Firefile (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefile/).

Firefile allows you to edit CSS in firebug and save to your stylsheet right from there. It's incredible how this smooths out my workflow and I can't work without it.

Firefile, though, doesn't appear to be in development anymore and it's latest release is broken. (I had to make some manual edits to get it working).

Any chance we'll see Firefile's functionality coming to FF Dev Edition?

jimmyhmiller 11 years ago | | |

If I'm understanding what you want, this is built in already.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Style_Editor

nnq 11 years ago | | |

You know you can do this with the CSS inspector in Chrome, without any extension, right?

atom-morgan 11 years ago | | |

Would you be able to share your edits?

technomancy 11 years ago | |

I would love to have FF profiles as dotfiles that I can actually check into source control and use reliably. I blew a couple hours a few months ago trying to make FF fit into my existing system of dotfiles in git and it was extremely frustrating.

Every other program I use lets me check config into git, but FF insists on storing config data into profiles with randomly-generated names. It's very resistant to automation. I understand there is an FF-specific sync solution, but I want all my config in one place.

JohnTHaller 11 years ago | | |

You can use the -profile switch to direct Firefox to use a specific directory for its profile. We utilize this for Firefox Portable at PortableApps.com.

Incidentally, if you're on Windows, you can actually check all of Firefox Portable into source control since it runs in a single directory. You'll get 'changes' each time its run from a new location, of course.

jryans 11 years ago | | |

I am not sure why the names are randomized, but you can still check in the folder if you wish. The outer profiles.ini is all you need to map in the right folder name (on Mac / Linux at least...).

sebasmagri 11 years ago | | |

I'd recommend using Firefox Sync to store your preferences and keep it synched across all your foxes.

acdha 11 years ago | |

I'd love it if the Responsive Design Mode had multiple viewport support so you could have the same page visible at multiple breakpoints simultaneously

at-fates-hands 11 years ago | | |

Add my vote to this one.

Also, having more than 6 presets would be better. There's so many devices with different viewport sizes now. Chrome at least has a fairly deep list of devices you can test with their responsive tool. It would be nice to see a more robust list in the Developer Edition.

kristiandupont 11 years ago | | |

This is not quite the same but still helpful: http://ami.responsivedesign.is/

3f48f9fh 11 years ago | |

>What tools do you need?

User agent spoofing for every tab. Mobile development is hell without it and nowadays almost every site needs to be developed with mobile devices in mind, which makes FF a bad tool for web development. Just copy Chrome in this regard, they do it right.

mcheely 11 years ago | |

A really small thing that would be immensely useful to me would be a quick way to to copy or save as plain text a full HTTP request & response, with a little bit of nice formatting to make it human readable. I often find myself passing this data along to API developers via email or chat to debug issues.

I can always just copy and paste directly from the request inspection dialog, but that loses all of the useful formatting, making it hard to parse, or requiring me to go in and add line breaks if I want to be nice to my fellow developers.

Small, but it's the sort of detail that makes for a nice, easy experience.

johns 11 years ago | | |

If I may offer a shameless plug...if those requests are on public DNS, you can capture and share them with Runscope: https://www.runscope.com/docs/debugging https://www.runscope.com/docs/sharing

agentultra 11 years ago | |

> What tools do you need?

A WebIDE that isn't focused on mobile? Not sure if this is already possible with WebIDE but the focus on mobile-first makes it confusing.

I do a fair amount of prototyping on WebGL and the web platform. However my current flow involves managing my project files, serving them to FF, and building the final bundle via a collection of third-party tools, libraries, and applications. I then run, test, profile, and tweak in FF.

It'd be nice to have a source editor and project manager built in. Give WebIDE an option to develop for desktop FF or something. Focus everything on live-coding: a DOM-enabled source editor could detect new nodes and tell the context to redraw the page; the debugger could highlight the source lines as I step through; the scripting engine can update the DOM-aware editor and highlight added nodes; I can connect source buffers to a namespace REPL to recompile and execute definitions on the fly.

Either that or add a chrome-less mode that allows me to embed FF inside my development environment and open up the remote APIs to allow for more interactive debugging, profiling, etc (eg: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WebKit)

yla92 11 years ago | |

Built-in Postman-alike API builder.

Inversechi 11 years ago | | |

This!

acdha 11 years ago | |

Critical path performance profiling:

1. Performance timeline which shows major events (e.g. DOMContentLoaded, load event) and the network / scripts which blocked them

2. Initiators for reflow, layout, etc. events. Currently it's really easy to identify a JavaScript hotspot if it's pure JS but it's hard to learn what's triggering hundreds of reflows, particularly in non-obvious cases such as CSS transitions.

roller 11 years ago | |

A simple way to edit Host: header so that it doesn't necessarily match the url host part used to get to the site. Debugging name based virtual hosts configs via editing host files is a huge pain point for me.

snomad 11 years ago | |

Integrated Unit Testing, mocked after PHPUnit+Selenium.

Would love to be able to save scripted unit tests, preferably per URL. Right now it is a bit of a pain point with test suites in JS, PHP, etc... what if we want to switch to another language? It would be better if the tests were local to the browser, unhinging us from some of the language dependencies.

tezza 11 years ago | |

Ability to set the task switcher icon of the Firefox instance.

If I'm alt-tabbing it helps identify which FF instance I am switching to

stephen 11 years ago | |

> 1. The Firefox Tools Adapter ("Valence"), which lets you use the Firefox dev tools to inspect and debug pages in Chrome for Android and Safari for iOS. The goal: one set of tools to debug any browser.

That's amazing. I can't wait until we have standard wire protocols for all of this so that I can stay in an IDE while writing GWT/Coffeescript/JS/etc., e.g.:

https://github.com/sdbg/sdbg

(AFAICT both the FF and Chrome teams seem hot on building IDEs into their browsers, but, sorry, that's a step down the all-in-one Netscape Suite road IMO. :-))

Bjartr 11 years ago | | |

I wonder if this implementation will allow the GWT debugger to work with Firefox again. The last version of FF that works with it is, I think, 26. When they removed the NPAPI layer.

Yoric 11 years ago | | |

Well, the code is better than that of Communicator :)

tezza 11 years ago | |

It'd be nice to have the URL bar entries as combobox dropdowns

Hand editing by moving the cursor is so fiddly and error prone.

Take:

  http://my.app/path/to/node?a=123&b=A34

it would be nice to be able to type into the parameters. Say change path to path1 or value of the b parameter from A34 to B67 .

Having MRU entries for each param value in a dropdown would be quite useful too.

Siecje 11 years ago | | |

You can double click 'path' on Window but not on Linux.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=926249

yxhuvud 11 years ago | |

Treestyle tabs like layout by default.

Seriously, FF without treestyle tabs IS NOT USABLE, and treestyle tabs breaks now and then in Aurora. Having such a layout actually being supported would be very nice.

As a long term Aurora user, a working profile switcher that actually respects resetting the default profile to the usual one would also have been nice.

nailer 11 years ago | |

I want to control / inspect Internet Explorer and Chrome desktop and Firefox in one consistent app. Moving between different devtools sucks. Browserstack and VMs have horrible latency.

It would be cool for Developer Edition to help me test websites everywhere. I'm not sure how technically you would do that though.

spain 11 years ago | |

2 and 4 alone are reason enough to use it, nice work.

EDIT: Wow after trying it out it seems like a long-time bug I've been experiencing has been fixed, I'm willing to bet it's not just the clean install either because I tried resetting Firefox multiple times before and it hadn't helped.

fixedd 11 years ago | | |

Considering eighty-something percent of people who responded to the survey despised Australis, I could see a lot of people choosing it for #4 alone.

jimrandomh 11 years ago | |

I want a command-line tool I can invoke from a Makefile, to refresh pages affected by the compile I just did. Existing solutions for doing this are awful and this represents more than half the time between saving and seeing the result on screen for me.

edeion 11 years ago | |

Probably not the right place for suggestions. However...

Developer or not, I have long waited for the possibility to: 1. Store bookmarks in "unsorted bookmarks" by default when I use ctrl-D. This option lacking, my bookmarks menu is so much cluttered that it is useless. 2. Edit bookmarks comments, with ctrl-D. 3. Query bookmarks and tags precisely (a bookmark with tags t1 and t2 which title contains regexp r).

Today, with small hacks, I manage to search bookmarks and trigger web search through the address "awesome" bar. But a bit of syntax like in w3m.el would be so much better.

I should try to prototype it in an app. These functionalities should not be very hard to implement. But it seems to be too much of a burden :(

explorigin 11 years ago | |

The current debugger lists the current execution stack horizontally. This is bad UI because it's hard to follow. It is more convenient for short stack hops but for deep traversal, it is worse than Chrome's vertical stacking in a tree.

jwmerrill 11 years ago | | |

Check the left hand side. There's a tab next to the file list that has a vertical stack trace.

jbm1991 11 years ago | |

I would really like to switch to this to get away from Chrome but there is one thing stopping me. Which is that in Chrome when I'm debugging JS I can see a full list of files in their folders and can open them up to see them and add breakpoints and things. Like this http://derp.co.uk/1ae64 But in Firefox all I get is http://derp.co.uk/3be04 which is of zero use to me and it means I can't use it over Chrome. Am I missing something or is this just not a feature that Firefox has?

Thanks

kuschku 11 years ago | | |

It does work for me, though: http://i.imgur.com/Hj6IlvM.png

cturhan 11 years ago | | |

I feel the same on that. FF should present that like a folder tree.

youngtaff 11 years ago | |

Does it inspect Safari on iOS 8?

(Google's ios-webkit-debug-proxy doesn't appear to yet)

callahad 11 years ago | | |

Sure does! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH0R10Ga4Hs

kgtm 11 years ago | |

Firefox is unusable for developers with poor eyesight that use OS-level accessibility features such as high contrast on recent versions of Windows.

There is an open bug but no love: [ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=790706 ]. Firefox forces high-contrast colors, completely destroying HTML rendering, with no option to disable this behavior.

Using a high contrast theme in Windows doesn't mean i don't want to see web pages as their developer intended.

Chrome gets it right, why can't Firefox?

Yoric 11 years ago | | |

I am not familiar with this part of the code, but generally, the answer to this question is « lack of manpower, but if you volunteer to implement it, we'll be glad to help you out and have you onboard. »

If anybody motivated to help us implement features reads these lines, the next step is to join us on IRC: irc.mozilla.org, channel #introduction .

bzbarsky 11 years ago | | |

I moved that bug to a place where someone who might know something about the matter might actually see it...

harmonicon 11 years ago | | |

I have to say I rather like it that way but I guess I am not the target user group for such accessibility features.

tbassetto 11 years ago |

I think it really should not prompt to be the default browser when you launch it (and maybe never show this prompt like Chrome Canary).

A colleague had a weird race condition (I guess) with this prompt + the "how-to" overlays and Firefox Developer Edition stopped responding to clicks 3 seconds after launching it…

Kudos for using a different profile than the classic Firefox/Nightly :)

trvz 11 years ago | |

At installation, there's also a checkbox to set it as the default browser, and it's pre-checked. I think, even full-time web developers wouldn't want to set it as default, and Mozilla should retain themselves here.

craigds 11 years ago | | |

FWIW I'm using it as my default browser. Maybe it's just me, but a developer browser is more than just for debugging websites. I really like the way they've customised certain things to be power-user-friendly (e.g. no patronising "Show Advanced Settings" buttons)

I've always used the bleeding edge Aurora and Chrome, have never had substantial problems with that.

publicfig 11 years ago | |

I had the same issue, the overlays hid the message and I wasn't able to tell that the default browser message was there in the first place (OS X)

rurounijones 11 years ago | | |

Same issue, luckily was able figure out what was going on.

Walkman 11 years ago |

Angelina Fabbro introduced this tool on a Web developer conference in Hungary [1] a couple of days ago. Here is a short summary as far as I can recall:

- a couple of decades ago alert() was used by pretty much everybody for debugging, even her :) [2]

- most of the developers use(d|s) Chrome for web development

- this is the first serious dedicated tool for web developers which is not just a browser plugin

you don't have to close a million tabs during development

- they worked together with the Firebug team, there will be no duplicate functionality in the plugin and the browser

- seamless Firebug integration. You can switch between Firebug and default theme, it will not break your workflow

- NOT a new browser which you have to support, same engine as in Firefox, nothing new or special about it

- multiple profiles

- developer friendly default settings like enabled experimental CSS features, etc.

- UX improvements for changing config, like switches for features, so you don't have to dig about:config

- support debugging Android, even the iOS simulator or attached device real time

- the dev team is really looking for feedback, they want to make web developers' life easier and put in features based on feedback

- there will be no built in REST API tester tool like Postman REST Client at first, but I was not the first dev who asked for it, so they will consider it for sure

- it will replace the firefox dev channel

- themeable

- much stable than nightly, but you can try out experimental browser features, so it's a good compromise

[1]: http://instagram.com/p/vIiNp_vRXD/

[2]: https://twitter.com/hopefulcyborg/status/530033632636055552

realusername 11 years ago |

I'm taking advantage of the fact that there's a few Mozilla developers around to say a big thank you to the team.

I've never used most of the features of the developer edition except the console and everything is great on this developer edition.

I'm a proud owner of a Firefox OS phone and the simulator is really good and fast, I think I'm going to make an app or two during my spare time !

A big thank you to all the team for your great work !

Yoric 11 years ago | |

I'm not part of the devtools team, but I'm going to shamelessly accept the thank you on their behalf.

Have fun coding :)

grk 11 years ago |

For those not liking the dark UI, you can switch by opening the dev tools, clicking the gear icon on the right and selecting "light theme".

_jomo 11 years ago | |

In case it's already light, but looks a bit unclean then you might have set it to Firebug theme which apparently comes with Firebug. For some reason this was the default for me.

bnycum 11 years ago | |

Thanks. As someone who isn't even a Firefox user I would have never found this. The dark UI was tough for me to read.

andyfleming 11 years ago | |

The Dark UI looks really cool, but switching to the light theme feels so much better. It suddenly feels like Chrome except with better dev tools!

Either way, the new UI changes in this edition make it way more elegant and appealing.

daveoflynn 11 years ago | |

Thank you so much. I felt like I was in a teenager's bedroom.

In dark theme, the contrast to the Yosemite system toolbar is terrible and the tab text is extremely hard to read.

nickpresta 11 years ago |

If a member of the dev tools team is watching, when first launching Firefox Developer Edition, I get a modal on top of a modal:

http://i.imgur.com/w11zZJJ.png

This wouldn't be a problem usually (although strange) but I have to click the partially hidden box under the top most box to dismiss anything.

callahad 11 years ago | |

Doh. That's http://bugzil.la/989947 :(

jekrb 11 years ago |

There's no need to download this if you're already running firefox aurora. Just update and you'll find that firefox aurora is now firefox developer.

zenocon 11 years ago |

Doesn't look like I can debug websockets? Chrome's network tab allows you to see websocket frames, but you have to navigate away from it and back to it again to refresh it -- which is a pain.

I'm not seeing where/how to view frames in the network tab here, but perhaps I missed it?

zimbatm 11 years ago | |

Last time I checked Firefox didn't support showing the websocket frames

mtrycz 11 years ago | | |

I vote for this.

Websockets have been around for years, and are becoming normal in day to day internet. Mozilla was one of the biggest promotors. I'm using them more and more.

It just doesn't make sense that I can not debug websockets in Firefox.

zaphoyd 11 years ago | | |

I end up doing much of my WebSocket app development in Chrome for this reason alone. I'd love to see WebSocket message inspection in the FF dev tools.

I'd also like to see the tools go farther with minimal formatters for messages, particularly messages in JSON format.

rdebeasi 11 years ago |

Exciting stuff! If you're already on Aurora, when you auto-update to developer edition, you'll switch over to the new dev profile and your bookmarks and settings will be gone. You can get at those by opening the profile manager and switching back to the default profile, or by using a stable version of Firefox.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

kibwen 11 years ago | |

In my case this was unnecessary and the update to Developer Edition preserved everything. Might have something to do with the fact that I already make use of multiple profiles.

EDIT: Wait! The default profile was used when clicking "Restart" from within the updater, but when closing and reopening the browser manually it did indeed start up with a new profile.

vitaminjuk 11 years ago | |

You don't need to manually fiddle with profiles, just untick "Allow Firefox Developer Edition and Firefox to run at the same time" in settings to go back to your old profile rather than the segregated one

wrl 11 years ago | |

Developer edition doesn't seem to respect the setting for default profile. It always opens its `dev-edition-default` profile instead.

tshadwell 11 years ago |

I noticed the logo loads slowly and it actually loads a huge x1024 image https://mdn.mozillademos.org/files/9069/firefox-dev-ed_logo-...

groovecoder 11 years ago | |

We're working on this right now in #mdndev on irc.mozilla.org

NietTim 11 years ago | | |

How many developers does it take to resize an image..?

shangxiao 11 years ago | |

Did you analyse it with Firefox Developer Edition?

_jomo 11 years ago |

If you don't like setting up your Browser again, you can go to about:preferences#general and uncheck Allow Firefox Developer Edition and Firefox to run at the same time

This will cause Firefox Dev to use the Firefox profile with all your settings and Addons.

lucideer 11 years ago | |

Thank you for this! That was quite a panicky first-run experience until I read this comment ...

kolme 11 years ago |

I have a few problems with this.

First, using a browser which includes fancy experimental features might result in the page looking or behaving differently in the users' (stable) browsers. I see this as kind of risky, that's why I usually develop against stable browsers and use the nightly/aurora for personal browsing.

Second, having browser-chrome debugging on by default is not very helpful for web developers, it actually gets in the way. It might be more useful to activate these features in the nightly channel, where people are more actively debugging the browser itself.

Third, if this channel is the intended one for developers, why ship the development tools with the stable release?

JetSpiegel 11 years ago |

Just a rebranding of Aurora, focused on developers?

I was expecting something more from all the fanfare.

callahad 11 years ago | |

There are new features (tools adapter, side-by-side profiles, compact theme, developer-friendly default preferences).

But what's larger than any of that is the change in Mozilla's policy / conception of the pre-Beta channel. This is very much a v0 offering, of course, but it's an indication that we genuinely want to take developer feedback seriously and co-design this with you.

We've given ourselves the freedom to ship tools into Developer Edition that aren't yet ready for Beta. We're willing to change the browser's appearance and defaults specifically for a web developer audience.

If you have feature requests, please submit (or upvote) them on UserVoice: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/forums/246087-firefox-devel... the DevTools team actively monitors and responds to requests there. Your ideas will get seen, and now, we have even more freedom to actually execute on them.

warp 11 years ago | | |

Hm, so if I develop on this I will still have to test in the regular stable Firefox release, that seems unfortunate.

Having more tools in a developer edition compared to the regular version of the browser seems fine, but at least for me I would like run it with the same rendering engine my users are likely to run.

ancarda 11 years ago | |

I think the idea is Nightly/Aurora/Beta builds aren't just for Firefox Developers but Web Developers too and it would be beneficial if more web developers used this branch for development.

Of course, don't forget to test in stable.

Another thing I can think of is rather than prefixing CSS/JS, experimental features could always be enabled in the developer builds and it then kicks into life on stable when it's ready for the general public. Right now you need to change various flags for that to happen.

dickvdbrink 11 years ago | |

It has some addons installed by default (ADB Helper, Firefox Developer Tools Adapter and Web IDE is turned on by default). I like the Firefox Developer tools but it feels like this one isn't that different from a nightly build with some plugins.

Gracana 11 years ago |

I noticed there's a checkbox for "make FirefoxDeveloperEdition my default browser," is that just a vestigial thing from the regular FF installer, or is it actually safe for me to use FFDE as my regular browser?

sp332 11 years ago | |

This page says "We'll include experimental tools that aren't yet ready to ride the trains to release." But https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozilla-introduces-the-fir... says "It’s a stable developer browser which is not only a powerful authoring tool but also robust enough for everyday browsing." So maybe the browser part is stable, but the tools are experimental? And it uses a different profile by default, so a broken plugin can't step on your history, bookmarks etc.

masklinn 11 years ago | | |

From other comments, it's ~aurora (pre-beta) but it may get new tools from nightly much sooner, very soon after nightly and long before they move to beta.

So the browser itself should be pretty stable, but the devtools may not be.

It may also gets developer-specific UI customisations which never get merged into the beta/release channels.

Yoric 11 years ago | |

I've been using Firefox Nightly (which is more experimental than FDE) for years, without any real problem. So, I believe it's safe.

andyfleming 11 years ago |

It would be great to see something like JSON View be built in.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/jsonview/

(There could be an option to disable "automatic JSON formatting" for those who don't like it for whatever reason)

timdorr 11 years ago |

Here's the prettier link to download: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

agumonkey 11 years ago | |

I believe this is the stub (~400Ko)

Sniffing my laptop gave me this http://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/nightl...

Felt weirdly generic since the name didn't indicate any special edition, but I ran it and it says developer edition.

----

tl;dr In case someone needs an offline installer, grab that url.

towelguy 11 years ago | | |

The subt stopped downloading in my crappy connection and gave me this link to the installer: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late...

Edit: Use the custom installation option to prevent it from becoming your default browser.

shangxiao 11 years ago | | |

I hope your laptop smells nice.

I'm sure you meant sniffing your network traffic?

Edit: Oh man I think I've hung out with the Python crowd for too long I think their rancor is starting to rub off on me ;)

tjbarbour 11 years ago | | |

Thank you, as someone who develops almost exclusively offline, this was crucial ;)

drannex 11 years ago | | |

Thank you so much! This was so needed on this horrible internet connection I have here at work!

px1999 11 years ago |

The developer tools are the only thing stopping me from switching back to FF from Chrome.

The tooling in Firefox does seem to be improving rapidly (kudos to the devs for that, I'm not trying to trivialise the hard work that they've been putting in, by any means), but there are still several basic(?) features missing from the script debugger. Calling this a "developer edition" is IMO a misnomer until you can reasonably use it to develop pages/sites/applications - currently every other major "not-for-developer edition" browser already gives you almost everything this does, and in some areas quite a bit more.

What would make it a developer browser to me:

* Folder grouping on resources

* Allowing webide or the script web tools tab to work with local folders (Chrome workspace equivalent)

* Dynamic updates to scripts (Chrome workspace/dev tools equivalent)

* The ability to open and/or display more than 1 script at a time. Tabs in developer tools should operate like browser tabs (orderable, poppable etc)

I hope that this isn't just a re-branding exercise - the video, site and fanfare make it sound like Mozilla's aiming to make something great for developers (not to mention that the FF tools are headed in the right direction), but the first release and associated posts/comments seem to indicate that it's essentially a nicer packaging of what used to be aurora.

Yoric 11 years ago | |

This is largely the codebase that used to be Aurora. However, it's not a "nicer packaging", it's a complete change of direction for Aurora.

Now regarding your needs, the devtools teams is watching this thread, but just in case they miss your message, you might be better off making your requirements known here: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/

fiatjaf 11 years ago |

I've always used Chrome since I started developing, and I liked their Developer Tools. Since I switched to Firefox four months ago I've had a lot of trouble with FF DevTools:

* debugging is too slow (or my computer is weak, but Chrome DevTools run smoothly); * debugging is very slow; * the debugger has some unpredictable behavior, like stopping at all calls that lead to some error, when I expected it to stop at the error properly.

wkdown 11 years ago |

For some reason, I convinced myself that Valence was going to allow us to change the engine to Webkit and Trident as well as Gecko. While testing iOS and Android is awesome, this would have been downright incredible.

KyleSanderson 11 years ago |

Not to be the guy to bring this up again, but if this is targeted for development why are sessions still limited to consuming 2GB of memory? Why is nightly still the only branch with 64bit builds?

JohnTHaller 11 years ago | |

You'd be amazed how small a difference 64-bit makes in browsers. And in most apps for that matter.

Source: I package apps for portable use for PortableApps.com. We analyze many of our apps for whether the trade-off of a size increase including both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of an app is outweighed by the performance or stability advantages of the 64-bit version of a given app. Including the 64-bit version is worth it in VERY few instances. Even then, it won't help most users.

nnethercote 11 years ago | |

Win64 builds aren't quite ready yet, but they're being actively worked on and a lot of progress has been made recently. Just a little longer now!

mariusmg 11 years ago |

Is the theme available to use it with "regular" Firefox ?

bigbango 11 years ago |

For those who like me are wary of running unverified binaries:

- checksums: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late...

- signatures: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late...

- signing key: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/lat...

edit: reformatting

2nd edit: added https

skrebbel 11 years ago | |

You're wary of running unverified binaries but you're OK when they're verified by a checksum downloaded over unencrypted HTTP?

bigbango 11 years ago | | |

Thanks, I was so focused on finding the files that I forgot.

nartz 11 years ago |

Firefox already does a lot - how about a website similar to 'RailsCasts' that takes different use cases and shows how to do them with FireFox plugins?

I think its important to differentiate different users / use cases, because 'Web Developer' is pretty broad.

tzgrish 11 years ago |

Editing JavaScript functions on the fly is the main feature I hear devs complain about Firefox devtools (anecdotal). Chrome allows you to edit the JavaScript in the script tag which is amazingly intuitive. I realize editing variable values is possible while debugging, there are console commands and Scratchpad is neat, but it's not the same. Being able to edit the JS directly in the tab, save and see the changes on the page is a huge time saver.

I was able to find a firebug feature request with applicable bugzilla links: https://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=5083

Edit: changed reload to save

bad_user 11 years ago |

Wow, so Firefox's Preferences panel is being redesigned, or is this a "Developer Edition" thing? I like it - hopefully they'll also add searching capabilities. Yes, like in Chrome, that was a good design choice.

On the theme, I personally don't like dark themes for my browser. But I like that this theme is space efficient, so I hope to see an equivalent for the stable Firefox, as I for one would use it, but please make it light instead of dark :)

I do hope to see Electrolysis get some love. It's available in Nightly, but not in this developer preview. From what I understand, the next version (36) is the first version in which Electrolysis starts being moved between channels.

Anyway, great job.

kibwen 11 years ago | |

The preference panel redesign has been a long time coming (years, it feels like), and yes it does look fantastic compared to the prior tabbed popup window.

Also, you can get a light version of the same compact theme by opening the devtools (Ctrl+Shift+I), clicking the gear in the upper-right, and selecting the "Light theme" radio button. It looks great!

blowski 11 years ago |

Thanks! I've essentially been using a developer profile in Firefox for some time, but the OSX dock doesn't play well with profiles, so this makes things a lot easier.

hassanzaheer_ 11 years ago |

I would really like to see a good javascript profiling tool in FF. Chrome has one but I think it can be improved upon.

Yoric 11 years ago | |

Have you tried the profiler in the devtools? If there's anything that you think is missing, don't hesitate to mention it here: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com

philo23 11 years ago |

I managed to get this when downloading Firefox Aurora over the weekend while reinstalling my OS. I wasn't expecting the dark UI when I opened it. I personally found it a little garish and I couldn't immediately see a way to turn it off. Anyone know if there's a way to switch it back?

cadecairos 11 years ago | |

You can change the theme in the customization menu (there's a theme drop down on the bottom left), or by using the about:addons and going to "appearance"

bjz_ 11 years ago | | |

Can you switch it to the normal OS theme? I'm really not a fan of the non-standard UI... :[

philo23 11 years ago | | |

Fantastic, I'll try it out.

dschep 11 years ago |

Will https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ubuntu/... switch to this new build or will there be a new PPA for Firefox Developer Edition?

AaronMT 11 years ago | |

Mozilla doesn't own this PPA, it's third party. Chris Coulson, the maintainer had mentioned he doesn't have the time to maintain this anymore as I recall. Suggest just getting Aurora on aurora.mozilla.org

dschep 11 years ago | | |

Oh, didn't realize that. I got it from FF directly for now, but was hoping there'd be an easier way to install it.

gpo 11 years ago | |

Yes! (I automagically got firefox dev from that PPA)

daphneokeefe 11 years ago |

Can I run this Dev Edition side-by-side with the regular version of Firefox, on the same machine?

Siecje 11 years ago | |

Yeah, you can with other channels but you have to setup a different profile. By default this has a different profile.

mbrubeck 11 years ago | |

Yes.

robertschultz 11 years ago |

Some of the same points other are bringing up.

1. HTTP Request Builder (i.e. Postman) 2. Web Proxy 3. Make the Web IDE for anything like Atom or SublimeText 4. CSS media emulation

The release looks great, congratulation guys. Looking forward to the future of this model.

kristopolous 11 years ago |

I'm going to complain that it doesn't work on my tiling window manager. Usually I can't do this because I'm not the target audience.

But this time I am!!! So yeah, menu doesn't work in notion. There you go!

alwayslearning 11 years ago |

Why all the negativity? It's an early release and a great idea, not to mention they're actively soliciting feedback and answering questions in the thread. Thanks for this, Mozilla!

rpwverheij 11 years ago |

Just downloaded it and gave it a try. I've been using chrome for development for a long time and I must say this looks really good and I'd really like to switch cause I like the firefox image/mission much more. However I'm experiencing some problems editing my .less files directly from the browser. They don't show up in the list of style sheet files, even though I have "show original sources" checked. Where do I submit an issue for this?

asantos3 11 years ago | |

Bugzilla? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

sergiotapia 11 years ago |

Unfortunately, I can't acces HackerNews with this new browser. Just a heads up to the team, liking the browser so far!

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to news.ycombinator.com. The OCSP response contains out-of-date information. (Error code: sec_error_ocsp_old_response)

    The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
    Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

diversewhat 11 years ago | |

I'm getting this error on CyanogenMod (latest for nexus) using Firefox 33.0 Help anyone?

bdunbar 11 years ago | |

It's working for me.

groovecoder 11 years ago |

BTW, there are also some sweet new demos at https://developer.mozilla.org/demos/

alanh 11 years ago |

The annoying experience of launching this for the first time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585522

Direct link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/2O3M10153r1h3A1P3T3T/...

tobr 11 years ago | |

I thought it was a bug in my install. You can't even close the top-most tour window, because of the covered prompt.

Apparently, the wide button where all the text is hidden sets Firefox as default browser. I accidentally clicked it when trying to give the prompt focus. Thankfully, OS X asked me to confirm that I wanted to do this.

I'm not sure what's worse, purposefully tricking me into setting default browser by hiding the text of the prompt, or starting with such a buggy first-run experience!

cavneb 11 years ago |

Thank you for making this available. Great job Mozilla!

gear54rus 11 years ago |

That's really cool. Big thanks to the team behind this!

The biggest feature for me was that it can run alongside the normal version of Firefox so I could tinker with it without disrupting day-to-day workflow.

Not like it's a big deal or anything, but it still shows a warning when you enter about:config even though it's targeted at devs :)

Illniyar 11 years ago |

I love firefox, but this looks like a simple rebranding of the experimental beta version.

If that version is going to be the same version that regular users get 12 weeks from now, it's hardly "tailored" for developers.

Though I'm assuming getting rid of "unstable beta" marker gets a whole new group of unknowing beta testers.

Siecje 11 years ago | |

The interface is for developers and will not be the same when in the stable channel.

pherocity_ 11 years ago |

Well, I'm getting a 404 when trying to download. I'm guessing the new toolset doesn't help with this?

_ducky 11 years ago | |

404 for me as well.

Update: The link for Download at the bottom of the page worked for me.

sgarrity 11 years ago | | |

Should be all set now.

sgarrity 11 years ago | | |

Patience, friends.

anonfunction 11 years ago |

What is this "hello" thing I see in the top right as the smiley chat icon? I've started a conversation, here's the link: https://hello.firefox.com/#call/fmX1j62g-P4

callahad 11 years ago | |

It's an experiment with WebRTC -- you can start peer-to-peer voice/video calls with it. No accounts or special software needed. Just modern browsers. :)

chrift 11 years ago |

The only issue I have with the inspector tools in its current guise, is the fact you can't open an XHR request logged in the console in the network tab so you can view the nicer layout of parameters and stuff.

Which is really annoying and the main reason I stick with firebug.

chrift 11 years ago | |

Lack of being able to format a JSON response from the console is my main issue with this.

Superia 11 years ago |

I don't know if this belongs here, but my Aurora installation automatically replaced itself with Developer Edition, which would be fine if it did not also delete all history, bookmarks, saved passwords, plugins etc. Is there anyway to get that stuff back?

art-of-code 11 years ago |

I honestly thought that Valence was a way to view renderings of the desktop versions of Chrome, Safari, Opera and IE within Firefox. Anyway, congratulations at the team at Mozilla for creating this. Can't wait to try the WebIDE for editing remote code.

fpgeek 11 years ago |

Is there an Android version? I can't find a download link when browsing from my Nexus 7.

lechevalierd3on 11 years ago |

I get a kernel Panics when I move a fullscreen window from one screen to another one. If this can help https://gist.github.com/3on/cf6464e0ecb9f73aad6f

sergiotapia 11 years ago |

Just to clarify is this the tool they announced a few days ago with that small video?

cvburgess 11 years ago | |

Yup - the very same

Walkman 11 years ago |

Here is the first talk about it by Angelina Fabbro if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LPZMgRIXJc

gsam 11 years ago |

Looking forward to see how much of a 'Web IDE' can actually be achieved. I continually feel like I should be making things in the browser, but there's no adequate editor still.

mattfrommars 11 years ago |

Please tell me there is a feature like in chrome when you do shift-esc. I really would like to see CPU usages in a browser a memory breakdown like about:memory

IanCal 11 years ago |

Is it possible to create regular static websites using the webIDE? I couldn't find anything but it seems like everything is there to be able to do this.

ecaron 11 years ago |

Better conversation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8583257

zobzu 11 years ago |

"you are using an outdated version of firefox" Sup mozilla im on freaking nightly - detection seem to need work :)

pandog 11 years ago |

Getting a 50kB/s download rate for the Linux bzip. If anyone's going to find that annoying, it's developers!

kibwen 11 years ago | |

Confirm, speeds are positively glacial here using the official Aurora updater. If nothing else, I suppose that indicates overwhelming popularity. :P

amelius 11 years ago |

Does it support multiple browser profiles? Can I easily switch between Gecko/IE 8,9,10/Webkit/etcetera?

plainOldText 11 years ago |

Why the black theme? I think that as developers/designers we should use environments which closely resemble that of the users we're creating for. Colors influence people's emotions, as well as how they perceive a specific design. Even if you are a designer, you're still a user; a user of your own creations. And when you change the mindset to that of a user, why not change the environment as well?

(just a thought)

nnethercote 11 years ago | |

I suspect the motivation is to make it easy to distinguish the developer edition from the normal browser when you're running them side-by-side. There's a light theme that you can switch to from within the developer tools panel.

GUNHED_158 11 years ago |

So, Safari on iOS setup is only available for Linux and Mac users?! Is there any plan to support IE simulation?

canuckistani 11 years ago | |

Safari on iOS is currently working for Mac & OS X, but we plan to ship and support Windows as well.

g4k 11 years ago |

A key feature that is missing is having the option to open a private window with all extensions disabled.

cturhan 11 years ago |

As it is developer edition, would you give us option to enable/disable CORS policy.

nubbie 11 years ago | |

Trying Firefox again after many years on Chrome. As a developer, this is the thing I'm missing most so far.

Have been using the Allow-Control-Allow-Origin: * extension[1] on Chrome, while not perfect, is tolerable.

1. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/allow-control-allo...

gsam 11 years ago | |

I agree, although obviously it needs to be smart about how widely it disables. There was an addon available but it got removed from addons.mozilla.org I assume because it violated security. The developer still hosts the addon though.

pimlottc 11 years ago |

A little sad they didn't go with "Firefox Gold" for old time sake...

ganeshk 11 years ago |

HI there i need full download file to install in my system how do I?

bmoresbest55 11 years ago |

The download is taking so long! Apparently this is highly desired?

k__ 11 years ago |

WebIDE isn't for normal web-apps?

pluc 11 years ago |

That's great. Now if everyone else could have an up-to-date, experimental-feature-activated browser, this would be useful.

cdevroe 11 years ago | |

I agree. However, I think I'll use this for debugging my applications rather than relying on it to see how our users will see our apps.

jader201 11 years ago | | |

Effective debugging often depends on us being able to see the app as others see our app.

gtirloni 11 years ago | |

By everyone you mean other vendors?

https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/canary.html

http://devchannel.modern.ie/

http://www.opera.com/developer

pluc 11 years ago | | |

I mean end users. I'd love to develop using one of these, but if 80% of the rest of the world can't see what I've done the way I see it when I do it, there's no real benefit here.

fz7412 11 years ago |

i can't install the firefox developer edition on ubuntu despite all efforts !

SnaKeZ 11 years ago |

Linux?

Attic 11 years ago | |

There's a linux version as well, it automatically gave me the tar ball.

geniium 11 years ago |

Will see if that new version will bring us (web developer) anything helpful.

ganeshk 11 years ago |

i need a full .exe file how do I get that?

helb 11 years ago | |

http://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/nightl...

esro360 11 years ago |

why isnt firebug installed by default ?

abhishekkr541 11 years ago |

Great for porn, I guess. :-/

mariusmg 11 years ago |

WebIDE still feels like a toy for now. Very little customization for the text editor for now. Also the browser has a shiny new dark theme but the text editor doesn't seem to support themes (and has a light theme as default).

Yoric 11 years ago | |

I have been using it for a few weeks, and I find it extremely useful. Not the editor itself (I'm currently test-driving Atom), but the ability to quickly send my app to all my devices and emulators, and remote debug it.

UncleCarbs 11 years ago |

Am I the only one here

Who doesn't get how Dev Edition is different to normal firefox?

kibwen 11 years ago | |

AIUI, it replaces the Aurora channel in the Firefox release schedule (which historically went Nightly -> Aurora -> Beta -> Release). In addition, whereas previously all experimental browser features would be held back in Nightly until fully-baked, this new channel will receive experimental developer tools from Nightly while still holding back all experimental non-developer features, so that the browsing experience itself isn't affected.

(Also, it has a darker and more compact visual theme by default that echoes that of the built-in devtools.)

towelguy 11 years ago |

Why emphatize on the download button that it is a "free download"? Maybe they'll add a payed option in the future?

sp332 11 years ago | |

You get more clicks if you reassure people that it's free.

Edit: I'm serious, here's an example https://vwo.com/blog/ab-test-case-study-how-two-magical-word...

blowski 11 years ago | |

I think you're probably reading too much into the 'free' bit - it says the same on the download for the normal Firefox. If anything, it's a play on it being "free as in freedom".

nnethercote 11 years ago | |

User feedback in the past has shown that a surprising number of people assume/fear they'll have to pay for it if you don't clearly say that it's free.

dz0ny 11 years ago |

They bundled theme otherwise all old stuff. I was at least expecting remote API, more UI fixes with dev tools.

/me Loves Chrome Dev tools, anything less is a waste of time...

Yoric 11 years ago | |

DevTools support remote debugging. I'm using it to remotely debug my mobile app right now. Is that what you call remote API?

Someone1234 11 years ago | |

They don't seem to have anything akin to Chrome's mobile emulator. They have "Responsive Design View" but it is much less feature complete than Chrome's mobile emulator, only seems to set a resolution.

Yoric 11 years ago | | |

If you launch WebIDE, you'll see that it can install Firefox OS emulators. I think it can connect with an Android emulator, too, but I haven't checked.

warcode 11 years ago |

Will this version survive months of usage with multiple open tabs without performance deteriorating massively like the regular firefox? I left FF after my 10th profile reset / reinstall to get back to "normal" performance.

ZenoArrow 11 years ago | |

I swear this type of comment is becoming like a meme, it's pretty much repeated on every HN thread about Firefox.

The response is standard too... Electrolysis. Wait for it.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap

bryanlarsen 11 years ago | | |

I'm kind of hoping that Eloctrolysis never becomes main-line. Right now I have a browser that isolates misbehaving web pages (Chrome) and a browser that allows me to have a million open tabs simultaneously (Firefox).

If I could only choose one I'd choose the browser that isolates misbehaving web pages but both is even better.

nnethercote 11 years ago | | |

In my experience this kind of response was typical a few years ago, but Firefox's performance has improved so much over the past few years that complaints are much less frequent, and when they do occur there is now typically quite a bit of pushback.

Electrolysis will help with some performance problems, but not all.

warcode 11 years ago | | |

I don't see how e10s will fix any of the profile-based performance degradation issues that have existed in FF for years.

It will fix the crashing tab equals crashing browser issue, but that is a very different problem.

acdha 11 years ago | |

This is almost certainly caused by an extension. If you use Firefox with few or no extensions (e.g. 1Password doesn't cause problems) you'll find this doesn't happen.

nnethercote 11 years ago | | |

Although badly-written extensions do cause a lot of problems, please don't assume they cause every problem. It's not always true and comments like these give the impression that Firefox developers simply pass the buck every time somebody complains.

Having said that, if someone is experiencing bad performance and they do have extensions enabled, temporarily disabling them is a good diagnostic step. If performance improves, it's clear that it's an extension at fault, and then bisection can be used to work out which one. Otherwise, it's clearly a Firefox problem and a bug report (bugzilla.mozilla.org) would be very helpful!

pbhjpbhj 11 years ago | | |

Or just cruft from an old profile. A year or two back I had to start with a fresh profile and found FF ran far-far better.

_broody 11 years ago | | |

Pretty much. I never close Firefox on my laptop, and haven't seen any performance degradation for over a year now.

Chrome on the other side, starts degrading my entire system's performance forcing it to hit swap memory the second the string of tabs on my top bar threatens to stretch across the screen. No need to wait for 'months of use without closing'...