Safari and nowadays Chrome DevTools are great.

I miss the "DOM" tab, that Firebug for Firefox had features had, and I haven't found anywhere else. You can browse the DOM tree state and edit - similar to Smalltalk and Windows Registry - very useful & powerful. Sadly, they just killed Firebug, broke the addon, deactivated it with an update and replaced it with a still not feature-complete (at the moment sub-par) solution.

> I miss the "DOM" tab, that Firebug for Firefox had features had, and I haven't found anywhere else.

It's in the Fx DevTools sinve v48 [1]. You may need to enable it though in the DevTools settings.

> Sadly, they just killed Firebug, broke the addon, deactivated it with an update and replaced it with a still not feature-complete (at the moment sub-par) solution.

Who's they? The Firebug Team works with the DevTools team since forever to port all functionality to the internal tools. The Firebug Team decided it was not worth to maintain the standalone version beyond v2 (also related to architectural changes to Fx, see project e10s) since they almost achieved feature parity by now and are working on the last remaining pieces [3]. Firebug v3 is Fx DevTools + a lot of extra features that Firebug never had. If you miss a feature in the DevTools, try Fx DevEdition [3].

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/DOM_Property_...

[2] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/12/firebug-lives-on-in-firefo...

[3] https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/developer/

I think that what you're asking for is already doable in the "Elements" tabs of Chrome DevTools, no? Or maybe I didn't get what you really meant by "You can browse the DOM tree state and edit"?

I think they're talking about the DOM tree, not the HTML element tree. Similar to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dom-inspector...

I have strong hopes for Servo performance wise.

But my guess is that Google will become more and more monopolistic, more and more close in disguise. And closer to the big companies interest with DRM and such.

And if Mozilla keeps being Mozilla, they will be a natural alternative.

Don't use 8GB of memory?

Nah, people have lots of memory.

I honestly don't know (but...then that's not such a bad thing, right?).

Firefox dev tools are sometimes painful to use and lacks some important features which Chrome's has.

Some examples:

- debugging with source maps: it doesn't work properly (I can set breakpoints and debug variables content on typescript files in Chrome, but not in FF)

- JS exceptions: clicking on the filename inside the stack opens a new window with the source of the JS file, not the debugger (ugh)

- doesn't support typescript highlighting

Did you try the Fx DevEdition? I know of some recent Source Map related changes. If the issue persists (same with the other issues you mention), would you mind filing a bug [1]?

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&c...

Yup, I tried FF Dev Edition a month ago, same thing. Maybe I will try again later after updating

On the other hand, the network tab in the dev tools actually knows how to parse incoming JSON, unlike Chrome which only renders a string.

>"How would you even unseat Chrome?"

I won't directly mention the project that's best placed to do that, as it's not yet ready for primetime, but let's just say Chrome may not have the performance crown in the next 5 years.

Also, aside from on the Mac, what's holding back Firefox? I accept that the Mac version seems to have more problems than the Windows or Linux versions (I have no technical explanation for this, it's just what I've heard anecdotally), but on Windows it seems to be a solid choice. Is it just about momentum for Chrome rather than superiority at this point?

As another poster in this thread mentioned: bookmarks and other personal data syncing. Allowing 3rd party sync servers would go a long way towards Chrome projecting the message they don't want to lock you in but that's probably not the case -- if we judge by their team's [lack of] actions.

(And don't get me started on services like XMarks. They're miles behind.)

> let's just say Chrome may not have the performance crown in the next 5 years.

Servo?