Mozilla Firefox 10 Released, With Added Developer tools

[engine]

Mozilla Firefox 10 Released, With Added Developer tools [blog.mozilla.com]

Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux adds powerful built-in developer tools and delivers smoother updates by making add-ons compatible by default.

Firefox adds a number of new built-in developer tools that let developers change the look and feel of websites in real-time. With Page Inspector, developers can peek into a page’s structure and layout without having to leave Firefox. This means they can quickly navigate between page elements and view the HTML document structure for the page. Style Inspector makes editing the style of websites even easier. Now developers have quick access to CSS properties and can view or change values for their website within Firefox. Scratchpad now uses the Eclipse Orion code editor to provide syntax highlighting and other features that make it easier and simpler to write JavaScript.

[mozilla.org...]

[J_RaD]

whew finally made it beyond IE.

Now in 2 years is it going to look funny seeing FF30?

[dstiles]

Typical of developers. Add in everything you can think of to make your own life easier but forget that real users want something that's lightweight, quick and easy to use. :(

Surely a simple installation option could be arranged: Do you want the simple (and safe) User version or the complicated Developer version?

PS: I'm a site developer. :)

PPS: It's still a dumb idea to issue so many full version numbers in one year. :(

[tedster]

delivers smoother updates by making add-ons compatible by default

I don't know how they accomplish that - but it sounds awesome to me. But if it's true, why do I still get a notice that "some of your add-ons won't work with this update and will be disabled"?

[graeme_p]

@dstiltes, these improvements are probably fairly lightweight. One is just syntax highlighting, one seems to catch up with Chrome(ium), and the last is just lightweight editing of properties.

They are also not making their own life easier, as they are browser developers, not web developers.... it is important for platforms to keep developers happy - to quote Steve Ballmer "developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers...." (the video is easy to find, as is the rather better dance one)

@tedster, I think it just means that add-ons are assumed to be compatible unless declared incompatible with the new version, whereas previously add-ons were assumed to be incompatible unless declared compatible. It makes sense as most add-ons will work fine with new versions of Firefox, so waiting for an upgrade to all of them before they would work with a new versions was unnecessary - but it will mean more bugs in add-ons because some are sure to break. It works for Chrome....

[enigma1]

PPS: It's still a dumb idea to issue so many full version numbers in one year. :(

Yes indeed, it seems like a marketing thing to surpass IE version numbers. They should still be at version 4 or something.

Now in 2 years is it going to look funny seeing FF30?

Depends if they switch from decimal to binary we may see really long version ids.

When they will give the option to completely remove plugins from the UI, that's something I like to know.

[graeme_p]

Its not IE, its Chrome : it is partially justified by adopting the same frequent release practice as Chrome.

It is linked to the dropping of support for past releases (i.e. if you want bug, including security, fixes you move to the current version), which they subsequently compromised on.

The idea now is that there will be rare stable releases (for organisation that want a stable platform) and very frequent releases of the latest version. Its a bit like Ubuntu, except, I think, the support for the current version will cease as soon as the new one comes out (except Ubuntu provides 1.5 years support for six monthly releases).

[zuko105]

Maybe they needed a newer release to comply with something to do with their renewed agreement with Google

[allthingsd.com...]

...and bundled the developer tools that they've already had available to make it worth a version upgrade?

I'm just speculating.

[dstiles]

They still have another update number to go before they catch up with Opera. :)

[mcneely]

Well I don't know about the rest of you, but I downgraded back to 9

The 10 is still too buggy out of the gate for me ..

For instance? .. I prefer all history, and cookies go away when I close the browser session .. I have it in 9 .. I don't have it in 10

I guess that makes 9 the winner :)

[graeme_p]

My Ubuntu install just upgraded to Firefox 10 and Chromium 16 on the same morning.

[piatkow]

I prefer all history, and cookies go away when I close the browser session

Pressure from the affiliate marketing community perhaps? There is a thread referring to loss of commission because of nasty people who delete their cookies before they get around to buying on the Affiliate forum.

[graeme_p]

@mcneely. I can see the settings for that under Preferences > Privacy

Looks just like 9 to me.

@piatkow, I doubt affiliate marketing people have much influence on Mozilla. How can they apply pressure?

[bigbusideas]

These are the most valuawble tools of this browser. That's why it's my favourite

[BillyS]

Wow, they are fast. I just went from 10.0.1 to 10.0.2! Catching up to Chrome at 17.