Worth noting, this landed a patch that moves some of the UI work to Core Animation on MacOS[1]. More work will happen that builds on top of this, but some reports in that ticket are promising already.
Moving from OpenGL to Core Animation has required a huge amount of work, but even at this early stage (before many of the changes in progress land) the power savings and performance gains are already significant.
Has there been a significant update to the devtools recently? I've been a devedition user for years, odd to see it on the front page of HN just linking to the homepage..
This is why I dislike these software posts without context. It's never clear if there's been an update or if the submitter just discovered them for the first time.
I really wish posts like this, and posts that are just random Wikipedia articles, would have a paragraph (or at least a sentence) from the submitter.
Why is this interesting? For Wikipedia articles about people this is doubly important because the title is inevitably just the person's name - unless you already know who that person is there's no hint as to why they are significant.
I think it's mainly a difference in configuration. The developer version, IIRC, allows you to install extensions on your own machine without seeking approval from Mozilla, but on the other hand it apparently subjects you to additional telemetry:
> Firefox Developer Edition automatically sends feedback to Mozilla ... In addition to the data collection described in this Privacy Notice, these versions by default may send certain types of web activity and crash data to Mozilla and in some cases to our partners.
If you just want to be able to install unsigned extensions with neither the extra bugs from running a beta nor the telemetry, you can use the far less advertised "unbranded builds" of Firefox [1] instead.
When was the last time devs took time out of their day to create detailed bug reports with crash logs and context? Telemetry done right is just a way to surface bugs properly.
Special features: kind of like an IDE on top of Firefox, meant to be used by web developers. Comes with its own config profile, so you can fuck around and not break stuff in stable/beta that you are supposed to have concurrently installed.
Kind of like beta: all of the new APIs and features related to web development are there three months before they hit stable.
I can't seem to make the switch away from Chromium devtools. I don't know whether it's because I am habituated to the Chromium ones or whether there is something klunky about the Firefox devtools that I can't put my finger on.
As others have pointed out, it may be worth looking into whether or not your reasons for using Chromium for the devtools are simply habit.
Speaking for myself, I'm in the other camp. I never really ditched Firefox for Chrome except for a brief period[0]. I returned to Firefox back when it was still called "Firefox (Not Responding)". Other than the renaming (/s), it -- generally -- flies. The devtools do what I need them to do, however, I used to hop back and forth from Chromium to FF a lot more.
So I'll be re-evaluating things, again, myself -- just in the other direction. :)
[0] I used Chrome for about two years after its release because Firefox wouldn't work with an internal application. It was just easier to use a single browser.
I tried for the last several weeks to switch to Firefox ("normal" edition) after Google introduced new mechanics pushing account login, but ultimately, and disappointingly, found myself drifting back to Chrome.
Main reasons were speed (Firefox opened slightly slower, and there seemed to feel like subtly more per-character latency typing in URL's) and minor anti-native behavior (the default-disabled-until-you-move-your-mouse Save button was particularly annoying, even though I understand the rationale).
I got the dreaded "Firefox process is already running" dialog a few times and had to close all my windows (ugh). I really missed Session Buddy; tried alternatives like Tree Style Tab but they weren't as clean.
Finally, one or two pages didn't render / operate properly (guessing due to non-cross-compatible JavaScript statement buried somewhere in them).
Unfortunately I don't have the time to create good step-by-step reproducibles and log bugs. I know some of this can be tweaked out via preference settings. I even spent some time tailoring my userChrome.css per suggestions here. But just couldn't get everything to work quite perfect. FF will have to spend some more time as my secondary browser, may give it a shot again in another year or so or next time Google pedals something stupid. Will try out the new devtools when I'm working on a page, maybe that'll be the hook for another attempt.
>it may be worth looking into whether or not your reasons for using Chromium for the devtools are simply habit
After deciding that life's too short and that I really should give it a try - I've found out that source maps doesn't work on Firefox's dev tools.
Back to chrome.
Each has their pros and cons. My favorite features in FF devtools which are missing from Chrome are CSS diff and the advanced filtering in the network panel. Chrome filtering only works on hosts, while FF can filter in query strings and other sections of a request.
I often use network filtering in Chrome devtools to find requests by query string. If you start typing into the search box it matches it against the whole request including url parameters.
Having recently switched to Edge Dev after having used Firefox for roughly a year (and Chrome before that), I'd say Firefox devtools' strongest point are the style editing stuff.
Somehow Firefox devtools feel a bit clunkier when working on JS projects but they offer a lot of neat gimmicks if you dig into the depths of CSS. I also find the guidelines when highlighting an element more helpful than in Chromium for aligning elements on the page.
Personally I don't get to use grid layouts as my code has to work in IE11 (I gave autoprefixer a try but in the end it was no significant improvement over flexbox because of all the caveats and limitations). If you do, I'd imagine Firefox devtools would be a gamechanger for you.
I find myself occasionally switching back to Firefox for CSS work, then going back to Edge Dev for everything else.
I have the same problem in the opposite directions: the interface of Chromium developer console is unfriendly to me, I never manage to get comfortable with it...
Other than the web socket support in Chrome, the FF dev tools are a billion times better than Chrome now. I cannot work without the css layout overlays from FF dev tools. Makes working with grid layouts insanely easy.
The Chrome profiler is a lot better (IMO) than the one Firefox ships. But then there is https://profiler.firefox.com/
The debugger/sources view in Firefox also seems buggier still. E.g. a lot of times while it correctly displays source-mapped locations in the console, clicking on those source links will not actually go to the right place in the source view (it will either end up in the packed source or it will not go to the correct line in the source-mapped file even tho the console link gave the correct line).
One thing I miss that Firefox does not have at all is the Layers view. Which would be especially important since such things are browser specific and debugging performance/memory issues and making sure the engine uses a sane set of compositing layers can be important sometimes.
But the feature I miss most in my tiny corner of the world by a large margin is the Websocket support indeed. This is the thing that always makes me go back to Chrome devtools.
While I mostly agree, I do switch to Chrome every once in a while when the javascript stacktrace in FFdev is a bit unclear. Chrome usually seems to be a bit better. But I always switch right back to FF.
I tried FF dev edition with Angular, it was getting randomly slow. Weird issues popping while debuging typescript code. In the end I have to use Chrome for my work, even though I would like to drop Chrome personaly. That said, I sometimes have to debug Angular applications on IE11 which is worst nightmare...
I had similar experiences with a Vuejs application where I rendered thousands of "reactive" elements. The Chromium JS engine had substantially better performance then the Firefox JS engine.
However, to be fair, this is a strong sign that as a developer, we are doing something wrong. If a JS application feels slow on an average browser in an average computer, it will feel slow on all slower computers. The usability will be crap. In this particular example, the frameworks are not suitable for such a large number of "reactive" elements.
If its having performance issues on Firefox.... Leaving Firefox and making it work on Chrome is part of the problem with the browser wars... I also would consider that a bug in either that framework or your code or both. I rather websites worked the same in all browsers otherwise why bother with JS frameworks that are to be compiled for all browsers.
I use Firefox developer edition as my main browser, and there does seem to be some issue with Angular sites. admin.google.com is particularly bad – but so bad it makes me wonder if they only test in Chrome.
Does anyone know why Chromium hasn't fixed this supposedly old regression bug where opening large minified js file in the source tab hangs the whole tab/browser, sometimes for more than 10 seconds even on a fast machine. Can't this be done asynchronously or at least give the user a way to cancel loading it? If you open a large file and then close developer tools, reload the page and open developer tools again, it will try to reopen the last opened file again, blocking chrome for another 10 seconds. Very annoying.
meanwhile I'm the exact opposite. I've been using the firefox dev tools too much that using chrome on someone else's machine is something I feel like I have to put up with.
That's not me saying Firefox's tools are actually better though, there's still a number of weird quirks or features that could be lacking, while also having features I can't find in chrome that I also take for granted
I generally start with Firefox but recently needed to switch to Chrome for JS debugging. There were errors and they simply did not show in the FF console, and whole script tags of inline/embedded javascript was not to be found anywhere I spent 20-30 minutes mucking around looking here and there, and finally switched to Chrome and was done in a few minutes.
To my knowledge, no. They said they were working on it ages ago when they introduced the commands API for webextensions, but I don't think it is high on their priority queue.
What’s the Mozilla community like for external contributions? Before the big google dollars it seemed cliquey and now seems mostly paid people. Is that accurate ?
I wonder what happens to Firefox if the search dollars run out and companies are uniting behind chrome/WebKit
I regularly watch commits from webkit, chromium, gecko-dev and servo.
Webkit is developed almost exclusively by Apple (or more maintained because development is very slow, btw I suspect that Apple will drop webkit as it become too far behind)
There are also a few igalia devs and one Sony dev + one Gmail dev.
Chromium is developed by so many people, Google, Microsoft, opera, QT, hardware makers (ARM, Intel, nvidia), some enterprises, and many contributors (I wonder if chromium has more opensource non paid contributor than gecko)
Servo is mostly developed by paid mozilla devs, but had major improvements made by contributors.
Proportionally far more non paid contributor than the gecko of today, I expect mostly because they work on github which is more friendly than bugzilla and mailing lists...
Gecko dev today non paid developers are a few minority.
If Firefox does not die by himself, expect Google to slowly stop paying them
Thus mozilla will die which would be a great loss.
What a terrible argument. I really don’t understand how people don’t see the negative effects of browser monoculture. I feel like I’d just be rehashing the same old points :(
Quantum has been out for some time but it seems have updated some of the dev tools as well as added in a new shape editor and fonts panel, something that is not available in chrome. looking forward to trying these out.
Readit News
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522
Good work, and much appreciated!
Why is this interesting? For Wikipedia articles about people this is doubly important because the title is inevitably just the person's name - unless you already know who that person is there's no hint as to why they are significant.
Are all these features not in normal Firefox? Is this like a beta of normal firefox, set of extensions, or a significant fork?
> Firefox Developer Edition automatically sends feedback to Mozilla ... In addition to the data collection described in this Privacy Notice, these versions by default may send certain types of web activity and crash data to Mozilla and in some cases to our partners.
[1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Latest_Bu...
Unless it changed quite recently, you can do this with normal Firefox builds too AFAIK
Kind of like beta: all of the new APIs and features related to web development are there three months before they hit stable.
At least this is how I recall it, please anyone correct me if I am mistaken.
It also has the new logo and I suppose there's new stuff on the dev tools. "What's new" page is broken so not absolutely sure.
Deleted Comment
Speaking for myself, I'm in the other camp. I never really ditched Firefox for Chrome except for a brief period[0]. I returned to Firefox back when it was still called "Firefox (Not Responding)". Other than the renaming (/s), it -- generally -- flies. The devtools do what I need them to do, however, I used to hop back and forth from Chromium to FF a lot more.
So I'll be re-evaluating things, again, myself -- just in the other direction. :)
[0] I used Chrome for about two years after its release because Firefox wouldn't work with an internal application. It was just easier to use a single browser.
Main reasons were speed (Firefox opened slightly slower, and there seemed to feel like subtly more per-character latency typing in URL's) and minor anti-native behavior (the default-disabled-until-you-move-your-mouse Save button was particularly annoying, even though I understand the rationale).
I got the dreaded "Firefox process is already running" dialog a few times and had to close all my windows (ugh). I really missed Session Buddy; tried alternatives like Tree Style Tab but they weren't as clean.
Finally, one or two pages didn't render / operate properly (guessing due to non-cross-compatible JavaScript statement buried somewhere in them).
Unfortunately I don't have the time to create good step-by-step reproducibles and log bugs. I know some of this can be tweaked out via preference settings. I even spent some time tailoring my userChrome.css per suggestions here. But just couldn't get everything to work quite perfect. FF will have to spend some more time as my secondary browser, may give it a shot again in another year or so or next time Google pedals something stupid. Will try out the new devtools when I'm working on a page, maybe that'll be the hook for another attempt.
After deciding that life's too short and that I really should give it a try - I've found out that source maps doesn't work on Firefox's dev tools. Back to chrome.
Somehow Firefox devtools feel a bit clunkier when working on JS projects but they offer a lot of neat gimmicks if you dig into the depths of CSS. I also find the guidelines when highlighting an element more helpful than in Chromium for aligning elements on the page.
Personally I don't get to use grid layouts as my code has to work in IE11 (I gave autoprefixer a try but in the end it was no significant improvement over flexbox because of all the caveats and limitations). If you do, I'd imagine Firefox devtools would be a gamechanger for you.
I find myself occasionally switching back to Firefox for CSS work, then going back to Edge Dev for everything else.
I have the same problem in the opposite directions: the interface of Chromium developer console is unfriendly to me, I never manage to get comfortable with it...
Me too, as one example: Chrome had no way to edit/re-send AJAX requests for the longest time
The debugger/sources view in Firefox also seems buggier still. E.g. a lot of times while it correctly displays source-mapped locations in the console, clicking on those source links will not actually go to the right place in the source view (it will either end up in the packed source or it will not go to the correct line in the source-mapped file even tho the console link gave the correct line).
One thing I miss that Firefox does not have at all is the Layers view. Which would be especially important since such things are browser specific and debugging performance/memory issues and making sure the engine uses a sane set of compositing layers can be important sometimes.
But the feature I miss most in my tiny corner of the world by a large margin is the Websocket support indeed. This is the thing that always makes me go back to Chrome devtools.
However, to be fair, this is a strong sign that as a developer, we are doing something wrong. If a JS application feels slow on an average browser in an average computer, it will feel slow on all slower computers. The usability will be crap. In this particular example, the frameworks are not suitable for such a large number of "reactive" elements.
That's not me saying Firefox's tools are actually better though, there's still a number of weird quirks or features that could be lacking, while also having features I can't find in chrome that I also take for granted
Chromium for web dev.
Should the title be changed?
I wonder what happens to Firefox if the search dollars run out and companies are uniting behind chrome/WebKit
Webkit is developed almost exclusively by Apple (or more maintained because development is very slow, btw I suspect that Apple will drop webkit as it become too far behind) There are also a few igalia devs and one Sony dev + one Gmail dev.
Chromium is developed by so many people, Google, Microsoft, opera, QT, hardware makers (ARM, Intel, nvidia), some enterprises, and many contributors (I wonder if chromium has more opensource non paid contributor than gecko)
Servo is mostly developed by paid mozilla devs, but had major improvements made by contributors. Proportionally far more non paid contributor than the gecko of today, I expect mostly because they work on github which is more friendly than bugzilla and mailing lists...
Gecko dev today non paid developers are a few minority.
If Firefox does not die by himself, expect Google to slowly stop paying them Thus mozilla will die which would be a great loss.
Mozilla could save it's future, mozilla could become sustainable: I made a proposal here: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/24026
I'd like to read the discussion but can't find anything in the archives.
If the web is going towards a Chrome monoculture, then perhaps Microsoft would step in to keep some competition in the marketplace.
Stranger things have happened!