"Fixing a papercut in Firefox's WebIDE"
Web IDE has gone though some twists and turns as a feature in Firefox, but one thing has remained constant for me: When I launch an app, I always want to debug it. Having to repeatedly wait and hit the wrench button has always bothered me. During a development session I may do this hundreds of times.
So I wrote a small Firefox add-on that changes the functionality of the "play" button in Web IDE to also open the Developer Tools once the app has launched.
Warning: It's not pretty. There's probably a better way to do it. Take a look at the source here and let me know if you have ideas.
A couple of other things I want to add:
- First force-stop app when you hit Play. Currently the new app source doesn't get reloaded because the old app instance is running, which is wrong and maddening.
- Always show dev tools. The way the pop in and out is very heavy feeling. Just keep them open all the time.