Firefox 15 Coming With Souped-Up, Faster Debugger

StormDriver writes "Firefox 15 has hit the Mozilla pre-beta Aurora channel, and it features a redesigned, built-in debugger." The original weblog post has more. Thanks to improved debugger internals in SpiderMonkey, supposedly code should run just as fast with debugging enabled as without (ever try loading Slashdot with firebug accidentally enabled?). There are also new tools for testing mobile layouts from the comfort of your workstation, and the debugger can attach to remote processes (Something Emacs users have enjoyed for years now, albeit in a hackish manner and without support for mobile Firefox).

Comments

ever try loading Slashdot without firebug enabled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, "Web 2.0" transforms so much otherwise perfectly functional hardware into environmentally-unfriendly junk that you might as well just stick your dick in an endangered species.

The web ten years ago was fine: people programmed for content and efficiency. Why can't we stay that way, with the advancement being in quality and quantity of /content/?

Oh shut up already.

[nashv]

Can all these noobish people with their issue with version numbers get over it? Every Slashdot post has these idiots cribbing.

You can disable automatic updates. Why are you whining? You don't like something called 15? Write a Greasemonkey script to display the correct version number however you want.

All version numbers as supposed to say is which distribution came first and which came later. 15 > 14. That is all you need to know from a version number.

Re:Oh shut up already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Version numbers are also supposed to inform about possible compatibility problems.
One would normally expect anything that works in version 1.2.3 to also work in version 1.2.4 with no adjustments whatsoever, while an upgrade to version 2.0 might entail a great deal of extra work to adapt custom scipts and plug-ins.

Re:Oh shut up already.

[ThePhilips]

Why are you whining?

Because every minor FireFox update gets to the /. front page.

Many people do not care. Most ex-FireFox users are still pissed that Mozilla has abandoned them. Throw in here Chrome users who dropped by to mock FireFox for being a copycat - and you have ideal mix for a minor flamewar.

You don't like something called 15?

You miss the point of software having the version number at all. FireFox version numbers are useless, because it is a rolling release strategy. And for example I personally do not like being an alpha tester for a piece of software which I use mostly for business purposes.

That is all you need to know from a version number.

Let me tell you an old story. Long long time ago, when Facebook was called MySpace and Google was still good, version numbers were also used to indicate stability of the software. E.g. version 2.2 was literally the same as version 2.1, but with less bugs. People could, for example, wait for software to stabilize sufficiently, for relevant bugs to be fixed, and then use it, expecting no nasty surprises at every possible turn.

Re:Oh shut up already.

[UnknownSoldier]

> All version numbers as supposed to say is which distribution came first and which came later.

Actually, you're missing the point. I can tell you have never had to support an existing corporate infrastructure that just can not upgrade to the "latest bleeding edge" because they don't have the resources to test everything possible code path to tell what broke, what works, etc.

The current numbering schema in FF is a "revision" number. Originally Version numbers conveyed EXTRA information. It lets users know about compatibility / bugs because it denotes which branch the code is in. Let's give a practical example using a fictional language 'Gem'.

If I'm working with Gem v5.x I can (reasonably) expect those features (and bugs) to be relatively consistent no matter if I'm with 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, etc. If I switch to Gem 6.x the developer may have switched to a completely different (source control code) branch which may also be a completely different implementation. As an user, I may not like it, but I can stick with the old (stable) version until the new version gets the kinks worked out AND when I have the time and resources to properly test the new version before deploying it.

If the developer instead has used a relative numbering schema, aka, revisions, like
* rev 4
* rev 5
* rev 6
* rev 7
* rev 8
* rev 9
* rev 10

How do I *easily* tell when

a) features were added? and,
b) features deprecated? and
c) features removed?

Yes, you still can tell this with a relative revision number but it is easier to manage the complexity with the traditional hybrid version.revision numbers.

The Mozilla team switching their focus to hyper-inflate their version number because they are trying to play some marketing game with Chrome tells me that they are no longer focused on building a great product -- their priorities are all fucked up. i.e. How many more versions do we have to go before they _finally_ fix the dam memory leak??

Re:bloated RAM usage

[Cyko_01]

Yes they did. There was a benchmark story in slasdot a little while ago. It is as good as or better then chrome

Re:So in normal development

[Anonymous Coward]

That would defeat the purpose of being worried about something that makes perfect sense just because the number changes too much, and then you can't use that as an excuse to ridicule Firefox on every new release post while totally ignoring the fact that Chrome started the trend in the first place because it just makes sense.

So no, you can't ask mwfisher not to be a totally retarded fuckerlord. That would be against his soul's purpose.

Re:Debugging Is the Next Frontier in Faster Browsi

[hackertourist]

From my (totally unscientific) observation, most of the page load time is due to every page requesting crap from 10 different ad networks and trackers, which are inevitably overloaded. You can optimize the pages you serve all you want, but this may be a case where developers need to adjust the attitude of the commercial people involved instead.