Mozilla Introduces Browser-Based WebIDE

mpicpp (3454017) writes with word that Mozilla released a full development environment integrated into Firefox (available now in nightly builds). From the announcement: Developers tell us that they are not sure how to start app development on the Web, with so many different tools and templates that they need to download from a variety of different sources. We’re solving that problem with WebIDE, built directly into Firefox. Instead of starting from zero we provide you with a functioning blueprint app with the click of a button. You then have all the tools you need to start creating your own app based on a solid foundation. WebIDE helps you create, edit, and test a new Web application right from your browser. It lets you install and test apps on Firefox OS devices and simulators and integrates the Firefox Developer Tools for seamless debugging and inspection across those devices. This is a first step towards debugging across various platforms and devices over WiFi using open remote debugging APIs. The default editor is based on CodeMirror, but the protocol for interacting with the IDE is open and support for other editors (Emacs anyone?) should appear soon.

Comments

IPE

[fph il quozientatore]

Ah, the inner platform effect at its finest.

Bloat !!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh ffs. Firefox is supposed to be a browser. Put the web IDE in it's own product. This is going to introduce yet more attack vectors and bugs into the code.

Firefox *really* needs forking to follow the original vision. Make a fast, lean, controllable web BROWSER. Not a bloody operating system. Not a bloody IDE, not a bloody whizz bang collection of crud.

Developers suck. They get something to a good point and every single time they tinker and fiddle leading to bloated, unusable, resource hungry, insecure crap.

Re:Bloat !!!!!

[NotInHere]

This is going to introduce yet more attack vectors and bugs into the code.

They won't write it natively, but in js+xul. Won't add much security relevant bugs.

Re:Bloat !!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So the WebIDE is bundled into every download of FF, but at same time they are moving every single feature a normal browser user uses into extensions or at most, into "about:config" -ui?!! I now have a one extension which provides the "hide tabs when one tab is open" -functionality, another to move tabs below the address-bar and to hide the other Australis-crap. Likely there will be need for yet another extension on FF 31, but the dev tools used by ~0,000001% of the FF userbase are always included. Great.

Re:Bloat !!!!!

[TheDarkMaster]

You picked up a very bad example. It is perfectly possible to make very good applications using VB6 when you know what you're doing, and the same goes for any other programming language. But when you have a "script kiddie developer", he will make trash code in any language.

Re:Antitrust...?

[colfer]

Not that.

Right now this protocol is useful for Firefox Desktop, Firefox Android, and Firefox OS. But we aren’t stopping there. We’re working on a protocol adapter that will allow clients using the Firefox Remote Debugging Protocol – including the Developer Tools and WebIDE – talk to all mobile browsers, regardless of rendering engine or runtime. Our first targets are Chrome for Android and Safari on iOS.

Mozilla II

[kimvette]

Mozilla.org is very quickly expanding Firefox to becoming Mozilla II. Remember when the suite was split apart into its various components, leaving Firefox a very lightweight-but-extensible browser, and Thunderbird a lean and mean yet also expandable email client, and if you still wanted the monolithic build you downloaded Mozilla instead?

Not any more. Firefox is very quickly edging its way toward becoming a heavyweight web development suite again. I think if users want that, they will either install the Web Developer extension or maybe just go straight to installing the Mozilla suite. Why are they "bloating" Firefox again instead of making the IDE an optional add-on via extensions?

Re:Mozilla II

[Tridus]

Because the people that run Mozilla seem to have no idea what Firefox users actually want. That's the only explanation I can come up with for what they've been doing.