

Firefox debuts new developer toolbar - lforrest
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/10/09/firefox-debuts-new-developer-toolbar/

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cicloid
Lately Firefox started looking more atractive again. Mostly because of
Chrome's feature creep. But probably I'm just overthinking it.

~~~
ch0wn
> Mostly because of Chrome's feature creep.

I think I'm actually quite sensitive to that, but haven't felt about Chrome
that way yet. Could you explain what features you mean in particular?

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azakai
Some things Chrome includes that other browsers do not: Pepper, Native Client,
Chrome Web Store, WebSQL (Safari might have that one too), a native PDF
viewer, SwiftShader, etc.

(People of course disagree on which of those are bad and which are good.)

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jvm
Isn't WebSQL supposed to be replaced by IndexedDB?(which FF has btw)

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azakai
Yes. Google hasn't removed it yet though (apparently some Google properties
use it, so there is a conflict of interest here with web standards).

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jvm
Of course, web standards don't oblige browsers to not have features that
aren't in the standard (it would be a harsh world if they did!).

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BHSPitMonkey
Who downscales a screencast to 480p before uploading to YouTube? It would be a
much better demo to watch if they hadn't.

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zobzu
can't read what he's typing indeed

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sesqu
Be sure to watch in 480p, not 360p. I can make out what he's typing, though it
is a bit blurry. Plus, if you only care about the commands, he always mentions
them - just not all of the parameters.

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codemac
If you have a HiDPI display (ips or retina mac), Jonathon Kew's patchset to
add this feature to Firefox has landed in the Aurora branch.

[http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-
mozilla-aurora/)

There are 18a2 builds in there, I'm using it now! However, I haven't seen it
mentioned on the main aurora release page, so proceed with caution.

~~~
cpeterso
Firefox's lack of HiDPI support was _killing_ my eyes, but I've been using
Nightly builds and they look great. The only problem I see is that Flash
plugins get confused about screen sizes (so YouTube has tiny control buttons).

~~~
codemac
The plugin support hasn't bothered me yet, and it's almost surprising.

The amount of flash I use on a daily basis is so incredibly minimal these
days. I've started using the built in plugin blocking with firefox. The only
time I really turn it on is for Netflix and the occasional video that isn't
part of the HTML5 beta on youtube is about it.

( not that any of this is an excuse to not fix the bug :P )

~~~
mushishi
As Google Chromes GWT Developer plugin is noticeably slower (and stopped
working altogether) than that of Firefox's, having to use non-retina supported
browser for GWT development is annoying.

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zanny
As a guy who writes software who doesn't write much html (because web is hard)
I can't help but feel that having all these devtools built in by default,
while nice for developers, seems silly to have wasting space on the hard
drives of millions of users. They will never use the source viewers, live
editing, page heuristics, etc, and it reeks of feature creep to me, and one
product trying to be too many things at once.

~~~
tikhonj
It may be a waste of space, yes, but space is _cheap_.

Also, it is extremely valuable to have these tools on every browser I happen
to use. I can see what's wrong with my website--or anybody's website--at any
computer. If you go to some page and something doesn't work, I can just open
the developer tools on your browser and try to sort it out.

So while most people don't need these tools most of the time, they can still
be useful once in a while and have a negligible cost.

~~~
RobAley
Some stats: ~350 million users[1] ~17Mb download[2]

Lets assume a full 25% is dev tools (I think its likely to be much less), so
4.25Mb per user. That's 1418Tb, or just under 500 3Tb disks. Considering
that's spread across 350 _million_ users, I think that's not too much at all,
and its probably much less.

[1][https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/e/ed/Analyst_report_Q1_2010....](https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/e/ed/Analyst_report_Q1_2010.pdf)
[2]<http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html>

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callahad
Favorite feature of the dev toolbar: it has a "screenshot" command to dump a
PNG of either the entire page or a specific block.

~~~
ed209
Is this one better than the extensions that already existed for taking
screenshots?

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pbhjpbhj
Which extension are your referencing. I'm currently using Page Saver but
previously used Awesome Screenshot Plus until they started intercepting pages
and spamming adverts to them by default. Having it in-browser is good.

Also I've not seen a screenshot tool that allowed an id to be specified before
as someone said this will/does.

~~~
dioltas
I use this: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pixlr-
grabber...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pixlr-grabber/)

Allows you to capture a defined region or the entire page, and upload / edit
it online.

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mariusmg
Shift + F2 opens the command line but pressing Shift +F2 again doesn't close
it. That's.....unexpected (and annoying).

~~~
cpeterso
Works for me with Nightly 19 on OS X.

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state
It's really nice to see an approach that's different not just in UI but in
concept. Smart.

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welder
That's great! It's much better than the prev Firefox dev toolbar. I wonder if
people will take the time to learn the Firefox specific console commands?

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senorcastro
I might be more impressed if I didn't use FireBug.

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ttaubert
What do you mean? It doesn't use Firebug at all.

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CrazedGeek
He means that Firebug is better than this new toolbar in his opinion.

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ttaubert
Oh, I misread that. Well, apples and oranges.

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no_news_is
Reminds me of: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox)>

Tying this down to the specific domain of web development will probably help
its longevity though.

I'm very excited about the add-your-own feature and hope it's similar.

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james33
I'm really pleased to see that Mozilla is finally stepping up to the plate and
trying to bring web developers back into the fold that have been enjoying the
much better Webkit dev tools. I hope they continue with this momentum.

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danneu
The shortcut to bring it up (fn+shift+f2) is pretty unwieldy on the Mac
keyboard.

Anyone have any idea on how to change the shortcut? No luck in about:config.

~~~
antidoh
You can also get at the menubar through the keyboard:

alt-T W v

which looks a little unwieldy, except you don't have to move from the home
keys, and I find it much easier to type than

hands up, look for fn, left middle to shift and left index to fn, right middle
float up and over to f2

You can muscle memory a short menubar keyboard sequence pretty quickly if you
use it enough.

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acomjean
wonder if it will play nice with pentadactyl or vimperator or any other of the
keyboard based browsing add-ons.

Looks good though.

~~~
danneu
Plays nicely. Just pops you into insert-mode when you bring up the devbar and
pops you back into normal when you exit.

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jvm
Would be cool if Vimperator integrated it though! E.g., :! could give you
access within the Vimp command line itself.

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qoo
Tried the CSS inspector in Aurora. As of today, there is still no keyboard
nudge support (Click on the value of a CSS rule and then press keyboard up /
down keys to adjust it +1 / -1).

Sticking with Firebug until this feature is added.

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nsmartt
If Firefox had a GUI that didn't rely on the window manager's decorations (a
la chrome), I would switch in a heartbeat.

As it stands, using Firefox on Linux (Openbox) feels like a huge step back
from Chrome.

~~~
thristian
That's interesting. Chrome's lack-of-integration with the rest of my desktop
is one of the things that keeps me away.

~~~
nsmartt
On Linux, Chrome has an option to use system decorations. Does it lack that
option on other systems?

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jmcejuela
Big congrats to the Mozilla team.

Lately they haven't stopped releasing new great things: Persona, lljs,
WebPlatform (co-participation), now this developer command bar, ... sth else?
Impressive.

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polarix
Ah, do they finally have a debugger again?

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past
Yes, since Firefox 15.

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89a
Jesus christ, Firefox is the definition of "over designed"

