I use the modern Firefox HTML5/JS dev tools on a daily basis and love the featureset that they provide, though it is equally shocking to compare the feel to that of the old DOM Inspector[0] (and Venkman[1], the old JS debugger), which was a XUL add-on for DOM inspection that used to run in Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey.

What feels snappy and instantaneous in DOM Inspector feels somewhat muddy and laggy in the modern devtools.

While I greatly appreciate the amount of features that Mozilla has integrated into the modern (post-firebug) devtools over the years, it is a little sad that the next generation will never get to experience just how fast some narrow aspects of web development used to be.

https://imgur.com/a/JZoSTXf

[0]: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/firefox/addon/dom-inspe...

[1]: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/firefox/addon/javascrip...

Thanks for the shoutout to the legacy DOM Inspector (which I used to maintain) and Venkman (which I have both admired and used in anger). When Mozilla decided to put together a devtools team for Firefox 4, I was disappointed when I realized that they weren't going to take any effort to make sure the fruits of their labor sidestepped any of the performance issues that Firebug had exhibited for most of its lifetime. I do want to quibble, though, about the suggestion that this is a matter of XUL+JS versus HTML+JS. I say this even as someone with strong feelings about what a joy XUL was in comparison, and a long-lasting bitterness over the decision (among many) that Mozilla made in mishandling its own future.

WebKit's Web Inspector has for a long time gone with HTML, and in all its incarnations I've ever tried out, it has always been snappier than either Firebug and or the devtools that ships with Firefox.

When making comparisons like this, it's important to keep in mind that you're comparing/contrasting teams and their output, and it's not just a matter of the building blocks they're using. Some teams do better work than others.

Venkman!

It's all about quantity over quality, lowest-common-denominator crap. Quality and craftsmanship has gone down the drain with "modern" software.