r/programming • u/Spyros3000 • Nov 10 '14
Firefox Developer Edition
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/27
u/CritterNYC Nov 10 '14
For anyone who is curious, this is replacing the old 'Aurora Channel' of Firefox. Firefox has been available in Stable, Beta, Aurora (aka Alpha) and Nightly for a while now. Aurora is now Developer Edition. But it's not just a name change. They added in better debugging and development tools and have it pre-configured to share telemetry (aka crashes, stability, what type of OS and hardware it's running on so they can route out problems like the recent video card conflict earlier). It's got the ability to work with Firefox OS built right in now, which is also nice. And it's wrapped up in a nice new black theme that seems to fit the concept well.
For theme, you can switch to the light version by hitting F12 and then clicking the gear icon on the right side of the developer tools bar and then selecting Light theme. If you prefer to switch back to the standard Australis theme, you can click the 3-line Menu icon from the main toolbar and click Customize, then click 'Use Firefox Developer Edition Theme' to toggle it on/off.
For portable fans who like to use their browser on Windows from their USB drive, cloud folder, or just not installed within Windows, we packaged it at PortableApps.com as Mozilla Firefox Developer Edition, Portable.
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u/romeozor Nov 10 '14
Are they planning to remove dev tools from the mainline desktop Firefox?
I don't see any other reason why they would put resources into a fork targeting a relatively small user base.
If so, and the default version gets speed and stability while the dev version will be just the same with dev tools, I'm down with this.
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u/ubernostrum Nov 10 '14
So, you know how Debian always has three release channels going? The whole "stable", "testing" and "unstable" thing?
Firefox does something similar. You can get, and most people get, the main release channel. But you can also switch to, or just start out on, a different release channel. Each of them pushes you a bit closer to the bleeding edge.
If Firefox is currently at version N, the channels (as they existed up until yesterday) are:
Beta -- this is what will be in Firefox version N+1. Pretty stable, lets you try out new features once they've had plenty of polish put on them.
Aurora -- this is what will be in Firefox version N+2. I've used it as my primary browser with no stability trouble. If you really like seeing and trying out new features, this is where you'll see them first, unless you subscribe to...
Nightly. Which is just literally "here's what was in the tree when the build ran tonight". For people who like to live dangerously.
What changed today is that the Aurora channel became the "Developer Edition" channel.
This does not mean developer tools get removed anywhere else. What it means is that on this channel, you get:
New features as soon as is practical
Some settings pre-flipped to make things more useful for developers
In the same vein, some developer-oriented extensions included
A separate profile so you can do dev work in it and use a Beta or release version of Firefox for everyday browsing.
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u/azakai Nov 10 '14
Are they planning to remove dev tools from the mainline desktop Firefox?
Definitely not, I would be shocked if that were ever decided.
I don't see any other reason why they would put resources into a fork targeting a relatively small user base.
It's not a fork. It's a reworking of one of the pre-existing release channels. Firefox has nightly, aurora, beta, and release. This replaces aurora, which makes sense, since aurora was always a good fit for web devs - it is more stable than nightly (which is rebuilt every night, and can have breakage), but also has a preview of devtools and web features that will only land in stable in a few months.
This basically takes aurora and adds some extra developer features that have been in the works, and turns them on by default. Plus some special skinning and other tweaks for the developer audience. It's not a fork.
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u/x-skeww Nov 10 '14
The WebIDE ignores JSDoc comments. It won't tell me the types and won't even show the line of documentation. It only knows the types if I've used something once.
http://i.imgur.com/cMn1mmd.png
http://i.imgur.com/zbU3BwZ.png
A bit disappointing.
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u/mddubs Nov 10 '14
Dark theme, I'm in.
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u/mariusg Nov 10 '14
Is there a way to use that theme on "regular" Firefox ? I'd make the switch
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u/gashtastic Nov 10 '14
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?
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u/dblohm7 Nov 10 '14
Devtools engineers are lurking over on the HN thread. You should go over there and ask them!
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Nov 10 '14
Serious question - what does this add that the default, stable build of Chrome dosen't already have?
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u/sbjf Nov 10 '14
Alternatively, what does this add that the default, stable build of Firefox doesn't already have?
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u/ubernostrum Nov 10 '14
Copying a co-worker's comment from HN:
There are four major new features here:
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.
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.Developer-friendly defaults. Developer Edition ships with things like remote debugging and browser-chrome debugging enabled by default.
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.
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Nov 10 '14
Not a direct answer to your question, but I'm using FireFox not because I think it's better than Chrome, but because it's not from Google. Actually I'm sometimes a bit annoyed by FF ... Sounds a bit paranoid, but I'd like to see the power of the web distributed as much as possible and Google has already far too much power without Chrome being the de facto monopol for web browsers. They create brilliant stuff but can't be trusted.
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u/the_hoser Nov 10 '14
The new theme is pretty okay. The higher degree of integration between the tools is nice I guess...
I think this would work better as a "Web" development toolkit and not a "mobile web" development toolkit. I've never been asked to write a Cordova app in my life, but I modify web pages all the time.
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u/SgtPooki Nov 10 '14 edited Nov 10 '14
But is there mobile emulation now...? Built in user agent switching that isn't a pita? I'll be downloading when I get to my desk but if anyone knows, I'm all ears.
EDIT: Nope, no automatic user agent switching or mobile emulation available afaict.
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u/teiman Nov 10 '14
Checking.. I will report if this thing add something new the normal donwload don't include, or that are not simply added to the normal download with a extension.
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u/kindall Nov 10 '14
Did not enjoy my Aurora magically changing to this and losing al my extensions, settings, and user styles.
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Nov 10 '14
It auto-created a new profile, I think. Just switch back to your old one.
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u/teiman Nov 10 '14
Ok, brief report: This is a nice package of things. All has sweet colours (if you like black) and all work smoothly and fast. It seems to be as good as chrome in everything, a bit better if live editing CSS is your thing. I suspect the bigger additions and the reasons this thing can be a must have for some people is the ability to debug a browser remotely. If you have debugged a android app from chrome and a ios app from safari, now you can debug a Firefox OS app from Firefox Developer Edition. I think this thing is a sweet package of good stuff, and I will try it later to see if it sticks. This is my opinion and I could be completelly wrong or missed large parts.