Here are some ideas associated with their pain points in no particular order.
1) I'd like to environment to feel more "dev" when I'm in the debug tools. Ctrl-L should clear the console, C-a should get to the beginning, etc. Ideally, there should be standard console mode (Vim-like, Emacs-like) so programmers can feel more at home while in the firefox console. There should also be a way, maybe a json file a-la sublime, to tweak the debugging tools. That way, I could tweak the appearance, tweak the hotkeys, tweak which tabs are visible, etc.
2) I'd like to have plugins that integrate better with the "main" firefox tool. For instance, a plugin could create a new tab in the firefox dev console or add features on top of what's already there. I.e. A "surround" vim plugin or whatever. That way, existing IDE and other dev tools could integrate with firefox which would make it so much more powerful.
2) I'd like to always have the console at the tip of my hand, so it can load "very" fast and be non-intrusive. An idea would be to bind it to the ~ key which would popup a transparent console on top of the web page. For instance, I'd type:
~$('.whatever')
which would evaluate this and return the result in a tool-tip. It annoys me to death to write things like
console.log($('.whatever')).. It should be easier to evaluate things as we write them.
i.e.
~$('.whatever')<key to evaluate>.click<key to evaluate (ok good there's the click function)(function() { return 'meh'; }
<Actual click on the .whatever link show 'meh'>
~$('.whatever')<key to evaluate>.click<key to evaluate (ok good there's the click function)(function() { return $('.submit-button')<key to evaluate> } etc, etc.
A little bit like a scheme repl.
And I stress the transparent console because it's so annoying to have a big white console take a large portion of the screen even if most of the time you don't have to look at it. Yes, you look at what you're typing, but everything that happened before isn't that much relevant. And if you need it, you can still "pop" it for real.
3. Firefox needs to be lighter and faster. Maybe on your machine it's fast, but on mine, it's so slow compared to chrome. The main reason I'm not using Firefox for my debugging needs is because I don't use Firefox for normal browsing. It's not just about the page loading.. it's also about the ram footprints and the time it starts. The best analogy I have to explain this is "Presently, Chrome is to Firefox what Firefox was to Explorer in term of speed".
4. Firefox needs to be prettier. Again, maybe on your machine with I-don't-know-what-you-have-installed Firefox looks nice, but on my Archlinux distribution, it looks awful. Here are two snapshots from Chromium and Firefox (Firefox really looks like netscape 10 years ago)
I'd also like to see more readline-like behavior. It's hard to stop entering C-p and C-n to explore the command history, which currently bring up a print dialog/new window.
Currently I hack some limited readline functionality with Pentadactyl, which is probably appropriate given the potential invasiveness of that change. But if we're talking about dream FF dev features-- there you go.
Here are some ideas associated with their pain points in no particular order.
1) I'd like to environment to feel more "dev" when I'm in the debug tools. Ctrl-L should clear the console, C-a should get to the beginning, etc. Ideally, there should be standard console mode (Vim-like, Emacs-like) so programmers can feel more at home while in the firefox console. There should also be a way, maybe a json file a-la sublime, to tweak the debugging tools. That way, I could tweak the appearance, tweak the hotkeys, tweak which tabs are visible, etc.
2) I'd like to have plugins that integrate better with the "main" firefox tool. For instance, a plugin could create a new tab in the firefox dev console or add features on top of what's already there. I.e. A "surround" vim plugin or whatever. That way, existing IDE and other dev tools could integrate with firefox which would make it so much more powerful.
2) I'd like to always have the console at the tip of my hand, so it can load "very" fast and be non-intrusive. An idea would be to bind it to the ~ key which would popup a transparent console on top of the web page. For instance, I'd type:
which would evaluate this and return the result in a tool-tip. It annoys me to death to write things likeconsole.log($('.whatever')).. It should be easier to evaluate things as we write them.
i.e.
A little bit like a scheme repl.And I stress the transparent console because it's so annoying to have a big white console take a large portion of the screen even if most of the time you don't have to look at it. Yes, you look at what you're typing, but everything that happened before isn't that much relevant. And if you need it, you can still "pop" it for real.
3. Firefox needs to be lighter and faster. Maybe on your machine it's fast, but on mine, it's so slow compared to chrome. The main reason I'm not using Firefox for my debugging needs is because I don't use Firefox for normal browsing. It's not just about the page loading.. it's also about the ram footprints and the time it starts. The best analogy I have to explain this is "Presently, Chrome is to Firefox what Firefox was to Explorer in term of speed".
4. Firefox needs to be prettier. Again, maybe on your machine with I-don't-know-what-you-have-installed Firefox looks nice, but on my Archlinux distribution, it looks awful. Here are two snapshots from Chromium and Firefox (Firefox really looks like netscape 10 years ago)
http://s4.postimage.org/e5zmk1m1n/firefox_netscape.png http://s10.postimage.org/4o2te27x5/chromium.png