Mozilla Firefox Developer Edition Released

[engine]

As predicted, Mozilla has launched its Firefox Developer Edition which provides developers with quicker access to tools and experimental features.

Some of the additional features look great, and although some have been in development and beta for a while, this version looks as if the stability of pre-beta versions has taken a step forward.

Firefox Developer Edition replaces the Aurora channel in the Firefox Release Process. Like Aurora, features will land in the Developer Edition every six weeks, after they have stabilized in Nightly builds.

By using the Developer Edition, you gain access to tools and platform features at least 12 weeks before they reach the main Firefox release channel.Mozilla Firefox Developer Edition Released [developer.mozilla.org]

We've set default preference values tailored for web developers. For example, chrome and remote debugging are enabled by default.

[mozilla.org...]

Here's what's new in the Firefox Developer Edition.

[developer.mozilla.org...]

Earlier on WebmasterWorld
Mozilla Will Launch A New Browser For Developers Next Week [webmasterworld.com]

[incrediBILL]

Maybe this will be a trend setter among the browsers, who knows.

With the dwindling Firefox market share developers are one of their prime demographics now and if they don't cater to us, then they're going to lose the war. Kind of how Apple saved their bacon years ago by targeting the writers and artists, it's a good move.

Losing Google as a primary backer and having Chrome become the dominant browser being pre-installed on Android sure isn't helping their cause. Not to mention Chrome is a much stabler browser hands down. Every other version of Firefox I get gobbles up memory like it's candy, they fix it ever other version, but still, it's hardly as stable as IE or Chrome IMO. Don't know if the memory bloat issue is just the Windows version or if Linux has the same problem, but when my Firefox gets over 2GB it destabilizes. Hasn't happened in the last couple of versions, but as a developer, I'm kind of stuck using it, but end users don't tolerate that crap when there are options.

I think they're at the tipping point of obscurity if they don't find some way to reclaim some of that lost market share, and I'm not sure they have the man power or the war chest capable of accomplishing such a comeback.

But it happened to Lotus 123, Word (im)Perfect, Novell Netware, Netscape, all dominant market leading desktop products that we couldn't live without that suddenly went POOF! when nobody was looking.

I hope I'm wrong, it'll be sad to see them slip by the wayside, but I have them on my endangered software list facing possible obscurity or extinction if they don't turn it around.

[not2easy]

When I first read about this I thought they were talking about a separate browser. They tricked me into losing the last non-chrome looking version. I haven't had it long enough to try out the developer addon built in, looks like it offers a lot of tools people have been wanting like ways to check responsive design, what their site looks like on mobile and using LiveHeaders in a Safari or Chrome browser environment. From the walk through, it looks like the more you do, the more you will find useful about it.

[dstiles]

Bill: no problem with linux. Better memory/disk scavenging all round, I suppose.

I don't think firefox's plight is entirely their fault - far from it. It's google's aggressive (and sometimes at best quasi-legal) push for chrome that's damaging firefox with the general user, who has no idea what security means.

[not2easy]

I did get a chance this evening to turn on the developer stuff for some isolation of a css issue. It has nice visual tools, just such a teeny work area that I prefer my text editor. It may be helpful for people trying to figure out just what does what in their css and learn to use it more efficiently. When you see the inherited properties that get added in out of habits even though they are inherited and can be left out, it gives you different ways to see your structure.

I tried out the "Views" options down to 320 wide and it is OK, but it does not apply any mobile properties, no viewport recalculating. Not any different than the .js bookmarks you can make at home, or just dragging the edge of the browser to resize it.

[incrediBILL]

I don't think firefox's plight is entirely their fault - far from it. It's google's aggressive

I do know something about customer retention and it's giving them what they want, and they aren't.

Google could so anything they wanted and I wouldn't care as a Firefox customer EXCEPT that Firefox doesn't listen to us when we tell them what we want. They're trying to keep up with Chrome, failing, but that wouldn't matter if they keep up with customer requests.

See, when I worked for Lotus I heard the same arguments about Microsoft and the fact of the matter was Excel was simply a better product and the team would rather whine ME used special Windows calls they didn't have access to use instead of fixing their core, which was the issue, the Lotus 123 for Windows was dog slow compared to Excel, which had nothing to do with special Windows calls, and had all sorts of memory issues.

Basically, Lotus lost the war worrying about Microsoft instead of their customers just like Firefox is worrying about Google.

Google can be as aggressive as they want but Firefox has to be just as aggressive and make more deals to get it pre-installed on desktops and phones if possible, run some TV ads for mind share, and above all, listen to their customers!

The world is going jQuery and AJAX for all sorts of online apps, including spreadsheets and word processing online, which requires lightning hast javascript which is where Chrome shines and even MSIE got with the program and boosted their speed.

People complain about the UI changes, they ignore us because "that's the way the other browsers are doing it" which is a big fat WHO CARES! because we used Firefox because of how the UI did work.

People raised all sorts of hell and Firefox ignored them.

That's NOT how you retain customers.

Firefox simply needs to be best of breed and they're not, so they need to be what the customers want, and they were but now they're not.

I, like all the rest of us, adapted to the fugly UI changes but I find the top of the browser layout and behavior less usable than it was in previous editions.

The lack of an actual status bar I can enable, that sucks too. I don't like the little floating status at the bottom. Since the status bar is now gone, I'd prefer that little pop up status to be positionable as I'd prefer it at the top where all the other action is happening as I tend to not see what's going on down their anymore since it's not a static status bar.

Lot's of little stuff like that really bugs me, and it all piles up to the point I started using Chrome more simply because they don't have things I used to prefer that kept me in Firefox.

What really bugs me is they didn't have to remove prior UI elements, they could be optional whether it's the UI standard or not.

Silly stuff.

In the end they have one other major problem, they have no compelling killer app feature that sets them heads above the competition.

I have some ideas that I think would significantly differentiate Firefox from the rest, but I don't work there and I'm not getting paid to solve their problems ;)

[graeme_p]

I agree with incrediBill on this (a bit of rarity). I could rant at length about the number of ways in which they have lost it, but following Chrome (therefore becoming less distinct), poor PR, taking on too many projects with a bad case of NIH, stopping real work on a product people like (Thunderbird), and more.

I prefer not to use Chrome because it is too tied to Google, but there are now a LOT of webkit browsers out there.

[not2easy]

The lack of an actual status bar I can enable, that sucks too. I don't like the little floating status at the bottom. Since the status bar is now gone, I'd prefer that little pop up status to be positionable as I'd prefer it at the top where all the other action is happening as I tend to not see what's going on down their anymore since it's not a static status bar.

Get the Status-4-Evar Addon. it looks and works like the same old status bar and you can customize it. I found it about 5 min. after they thought it needed to be removed. (grrr..)

[incrediBILL]

I prefer not to use Chrome because it is too tied to Google, but there are now a LOT of webkit browsers out there.

Webkit only renders, it doesn't contain Chrome's high speed javascript if I remember correctly which is key to fast web apps.

I've found more than a few web apps that simply weren't tolerable in Firefox because of being slower to execute.

The other cool thing about Chrome is one tab can crash and not bring down the whole session, as each tab is a separate browser instance. Firefox on the other hand, when one tab goes ape with a run amok script, the whole browser goes poof.

Chrome is better technology but changing Firefox to match shouldn't be that hard, yet they keep ignoring such things and having had Firefox crash a few times recently, makes me use Chrome more and more as I like to leave my browser open for weeks at a time with 50-100 tabs open and watching it crash is really painful.

I think the only thing keeping me on Firefox at the moment, other than development, is the vast wealth of add-ons but as upgrades break them and I keep losing old faves, and Chrome add-ons are picking up steam, that last major advantage is quickly fading.

[graeme_p]

Firefox usually popsup a window asking you whether to stop a script that has run amok. I find Chrome uses more memory and I imagine that is even worse on Windows.

Running plugins in a separate process seems the right thing to do to me, but Firefox's approach seems correct to me with regard to Javascript - the browsers developer cannot control the stability of plugins, but should be able to control the behaviour of their own embedded scripting language.

I think some of the other webkit browsers now use V8 as well, so should be as fast as Chrome. It has never been an issue for me and it all modern JS engine has been fast enough for differences not to matter (stability is another issue).