Mozilla releases Firefox Developer Edition, with built-in development environment

Earlier this week, Mozilla released Firefox Developer Edition — a web browser with an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) built right in. If you’re in the web development business, this means that Firefox just became relevant again.

So, what’s new in the Developer Edition? Undoubtedly, the first thing you’ll notice is the dark default theme that matches the aesthetic of the developer tools. This minimalist theme keeps the entirety of the Firefox user interface nice and tidy, so there’s more space on screen to view and tweak your projects. It’s a small improvement, but I really appreciate the attention to detail.

Next up, the Developer Edition has the “Firefox Tools Adapter” baked right in. Under the new name “Valence,” this feature allows you to test your websites using different rendering engines. Not only does it work for desktop-class browsers, but mobile as well. With this tool, you can even test your code against Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. Unsurprisingly, Firefox OS support is included, but that user base remains minuscule compared to the competition.

The last major feature in this release is what Mozilla calls “WebIDE.” This suite of tools helps you create, test, and release web apps right from your browser, and specifically targets the Firefox OS platform. If you’ve ever used other IDEs like Xcode or VisualStudio, you’ll be right at home. This is a development suite made from the ground-up for web apps, so it has everything you need to get up and running as fast as possible.

 In the video above, Mozilla’s Dave Camp walks us through some of the highlights of this suite. This first release is just a small step forward, but you can see that the Mozilla team really believes in this project. Those of you interested in participating in the future of the Firefox dev tools are invited to sound off in the feedback channel, and help Mozilla improve this all-in-one development tool.

This release doesn’t magically fix all of the problems Firefox has had over the last few years, but this is a clever way to celebrate the browser’s tenth anniversary. If this successfully brings a large number of web developers back into the arms of Mozilla, we might just be in for a Firefox renaissance in a year or two. Until then, I’ll be sitting in a corner frowning at all of the “Works best in Google Chrome” footers I’ve been seeing lately.