Not sure why your reply is framed in terms of Chrome & Firefox.

If one buys a Mac laptop with no intention of connecting it to the internet, the preinstalled OSX will include the Safari web browser which has the Web Inspector tool.

If one buys a Windows pc that will never connect to the internet, it will include Internet Explorer which has the F12 Developer Tools.

The web browser (regardless of flavor) dev tools is still the closest equivalent we have today to the BASIC that was preinstalled in the ROM of 1980s home computers.

> it has no offline documentation.

The BASIC included with Commodore 64 and IBM PC also didn't include offline documentation (in the sense of copying MSDN doc library from DVDs on to local harddrive). Unless you meant "offline" such as the spiral bound hardcopies that came with the 1980s computer. Yes it's true that one can't go to Barnes & Noble to buy a "Web Browser Dev Tools 2016 for Dummies". On the other hand, the dev tools change so quickly that no publisher would find it profitable to sell books that would be out of date before it hits the physical shelves.

Passable for making a quick change to test an idea but I wouldn't use it as an introduction to an IDE.

Then again I suppose I should be grateful it runs at all; Servo browser won't start because it requires a certain level of OpenGL support from the chipset. That makes me worry about the future hardware requirements of browsers and is another reason for splitting dev tools off from the client UI.

> Scrolling is painful.

> Passable for making a quick change to test an idea but I wouldn't use it as an introduction to an IDE.

I have the same experience, albeit in Chrome. Using it on "about: blank" and restricting yourself entirely to the console helps (e.g. no debugger, not using the feature described in OP, etc). But at that point it's just a REPL, not an IDE.