Sudhindra Rao For development I choose to use tools which make the code transparent. Hence I prefer to use simple text editors over IDEs (although I like IntelliJ for Java code), or browsers that have good builtin support for debugging over closed/magical ones (hence Firefox/Chrome/Safari over IE).
Recently I switched to Chrome as my primary browser since it promised to have all the add-ons to make it comparable to Firefox. On the contrary, in fact it still lacks the power and the flexibility of Firefox for development. Here are a few reasons why Firefox is still better at supporting development:
- greasemonkey for Firefox works with XMLHTTPRequests for different origin - greasemetal (now userscripts) for Google Chrome has still not been able to fix this issue.
_“GMxmlhttpRequest is same-origin only.” - User Scripts .
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A number of add-ons on Firefox show useful information on the status bar - I use ”DCurrency“:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6462/, ”CruiseControl Monitor“:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/896/.
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”Selenium IDE”:http://seleniumhq.org/projects/ide/ is available for Firefox - a big plus when I am trying to record andplay while I am trying to debug some apps.
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In the minimal view my frequently used bookmarks always show in Firefox ~~Google Chrome shows them when I open a new tab only. Maybe a minor annoyance but I cannot reuse the current tab with a single click access to my bookmarks.
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Minor annoyance~~ when I maximize the window on OSX Google Chrome expands only vertically. Firefox does not have this problem.
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Even with proxy switchers Chrome depends/modifies system proxy settings (diabolical). When using on Windows changing the proxy on IE will affect Chrome and vice-versa.
“Chrome uses system’s proxy settings (IE proxy settings on Wndows) because it doesn’t have its own proxy settings yet (see http://crbug.com/266)).Therefore, changing Chrome’s proxy settings using Switchy will also affect the system proxy settings.” - quote from Proxy Switchy! extension.
That means when I use Chrome as a browser with tools like Sahi, it will affect how other things work.
In conclusion, for now Firefox is the best browser for development.