Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Teases First Browser Dedicated To Devs
hypnosec writes Mozilla has teased a browser for developers — a first of its kind — in a bid to equip developers with a set of tools at one place for better and enhanced productivity. Speaking about the perils of web development Mozilla says engineers, while building for the web, use a range of tools that don't always work well together. Because of this, they have to switch between platforms. This process of switching from one platform to another makes a developer less productive, Mozilla says. The not-for-profit organization hasn't detailed its browser for developers to a great extent, but has revealed that the browser will be available on November 10.
What leaks? I've yet to see them since I switch back to FF. I've had this session open for several days, I'm presently at 330mb with three tabs. The most I remember seeing this session (last night, in fact) is 670mb though I don't remember how many tabs I had open at the time.
I think the memory leak meme has outlived reality...
Required reading for internet skeptics
What leaks? [...] I think the memory leak meme has outlived reality...
That just means it's gone gold, as far as Internet memes are concerned. If an Internet "meme" can remain in usage past the natural lifespan or the relevance of its subject, some people mistakenly think that makes it funny.
grumble, grumble Al Gore invented the Internet @(&*@) The Internet is ... a series of tubes *&^^$%^)*#@ 640k[i]B is enough memory for anyone #$@#$@*& BSD is dying !$%#@#)
HTML, JS, CSS are all W3C standards, so why should a web developer care what software the user browses with?
For at least three reasons.
First, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are at times underspecified. Touch screen and mouse-and-keyboard devices send events in different orders on different platforms. Differences in font rendering cause a particular CSS box to have different heights on different platforms. Differences in 2D canvas antialiasing and image resizing algorithms cause the output of an identical script to have subtly different appearances. Different support different audiovisual codecs: Safari requires MPEG codecs whereas third-party browsers often require royalty-free codecs. And different browsers for small-screen devices have different triggers to disable desktop-width document layout.
Second, user agents are free not to implement certain parts of the standard at all. Older browsers are unlikely to implement new standards, requiring use of polyfills. Some browsers require prefixes for specific CSS properties and values and JavaScript objects. Some omissions appear deliberate, designed to sway web developers toward the device manufacturer's (paid and OCD-curated) native app developer program. For instance, <input type="file"> wasn't implemented in Safari for iOS (or any of the other browsers in the App Store, which are all Safari wrappers) until iOS 6, and as I understand it, it still doesn't work for any content type other than pictures and videos. WebGL still doesn't work in web pages on iOS.
Even among parts of the standards that a user agent does implement, quality of implementation varies. One browser's JavaScript JIT might execute a particular construction quickly, another not so quickly. WebGL might work on some underlying video drivers but not others.