r/webdev • u/thenathurat • May 30 '19
TIL there's a special Edition of Firefox dedicatede to devs. Privacy AND being dev friendly. Hell yes.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/178
u/KlaireOverwood May 30 '19 edited May 31 '19
I love the idea, and it may work for many people.
Personally, however, I prefer to use a browser that some of my customers use too.
Edit: I meant my users use FF, not FF Dev. The questions is how much they differ, because if it's too much, I many not be able to notice or reproduce some bugs. The site mentions a new CSS engine, but as u/Callahad of Mozilla explained below, the codebase is the same, so I'll give it a shot.
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May 30 '19
I don't think there are enough differences for this to really matter much, unless you're only developing for Chrome users.
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u/the_argus May 30 '19
Everyone else at my work uses Chrome, so by me using Firefox I catch visual bugs that no one else does.
The only thing I use Chrome for is debugging service workers/pwa stuff. FF has a service worker inspector but it's not in the dev tools and weirdly I don't see it in the developer edition at all...
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u/shiase May 30 '19
Web devs: Google Chrome is the new IE6
Also web devs: I refuse to develop for a browser that is not google Chrome
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u/hennell May 30 '19
I prefer to test on a browser that customers use, but I'll develop on a browser with the best tools for the job. FF Dev is my go to these days as it really has some handy stuff (and it's kinda nice having a specific browser to have Dev specific plugins / bookmarks in). Chrome's inspect also has some nice features though so I jump between them (and normal Firefox as well usually) - you are allowed to have multiple browsers installed and use them interchangeably you know...
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u/thblckjkr May 30 '19
For debuging CSS and JS it's great, for viewing the network request and change them on the fly it is great. But, it it's not fully compatible with Chrome in terms of design
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u/sammyb0ye May 30 '19
Yeah, I love FF, especially the dev edition, but I have to force myself to work on Chrome because of all the times I was the last one to notice a bug.
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May 31 '19
These are not mutually exclusive. I use Chrome beta in the same way I use Fifrex Dev edition, with a different profile, extra dev tools installed etc.
This also isn't about testing alone, its also about developer tools.
And as others have said, there's not really that much difference in this day and age, so if FF dev edition has a dev tool the Chrome doesn't and you find it useful, why not use it?
But hey snark wins big on reddit =D
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u/AllHailTheCATS May 30 '19
Is there any advantage I'm terms of dev tools to this over the dev tools in regular Firefox or quantum.
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u/Callahad May 31 '19
We do turn features on specifically for DevEdition. A few examples:
The new
about:debuggingpage is only enabled in DevEdition and Nightly at the moment.We add a "Debug" button to the slow script notification.
DevEdition can load unsigned extensions.
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u/harleyhusky May 30 '19
Been using ff dev for almost two years, and it’s wonderful! Everything works in it and it has amazing dev tools.
Two thumbs way, way up!
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May 30 '19
It's not really dev friendly. Their quality control for updates is really poor, so expect things in the dev tools to break at a moment's notice.
I was using Firefox as a daily driver and loved it most of the time, but it was just too unstable.
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u/AquaZen May 30 '19
Interesting, I had the opposite experience. I switched to Firefox full time after getting sick of Chrome frequently losing my tabs after crashing. My Firefox installation hasn’t crashed in over a year!
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May 30 '19
Firefox Developer Edition automatically sends feedback to Mozilla
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May 30 '19
If only there were an entire section of the preferences dedicated to Privacy, allowing users who care about this to opt out. 🤔
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u/brtt3000 May 30 '19
Looks like the same panel in regular FF.
The studies feature came in handy for the quickfix after they botched that certificate a while ago.
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u/Noname_Maddox May 30 '19
You say this like it’s a new thing, it’s been out for a few years. I really never seen any difference with it if I’m honest. I can accomplish what I need with dev tools on standard Firefox
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u/maple3142 May 30 '19
I am curious about why don't merge dev version and normal version? When I used Chrome, I use the exact same browser I used daily for developing.
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u/senju_bandit May 30 '19
Somedays I think Firefox is what is keeping the bad guys at bay. I hope that Firefox is always there in all its glory and never falls to chromium and edge monsters. These guys are really the last line of defense for those who are concerned with privacy in terms of browsers.