Mozilla Releases Special Editition Firefox For Developers With Built-In Debugging Tools

Mozilla is a company that cares a lot about developers - especially those who make the Web a better, more exciting place. Over the years, the company's done much to aide developers who work towards that goal, and today, even the standard Firefox browser includes a number of useful tools that can be used to quickly improve development work.

Well, to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of Firefox 1.0's release, Mozilla has kicked its developer support up a notch. The result? Firefox Developer Edition, a Web browser designed through and through for those who take Web development seriously.

It's hard to tell from the simple screenshot above, but this version of Firefox includes what I personally believe is the best-looking browser theme ever. After spending just a couple of minutes with the Developer Edition, I found myself wanting to continue using it, based almost entirely on its aesthetics - and I'm a devout Chrome user! Hopefully we'll see this theme trickle out to the theme store for the regular Firefox version at some point.

In this edition of Firefox, the developer tools are front and center. To the right of the address and search bar is a wrench icon that will lead you to all of the various tools available. Many of these are already available in the basic Firefox package, but Developer Edition introduces two brand-new ones: WebIDE, and Valence.

WebIDE, as it sounds, is an IDE for developing apps from right inside of the browser. You'll be able to launch an app in its own window, and adjust its code on-the-fly. This will be especially useful to those building apps or websites for mobile devices, since the aspect ratio and orientation will match what most people will see. Valence, formerly known as Firefox Tools Adapter, connects the Developer Tools to other browser engines, including mobile.

Like the nightly build of Firefox, the Developer Edition is completely standalone, so you'll be able to use this version for development duties, and your regular Firefox for normal use. As mentioned above though, the theme for the Developer Edition is so good, I'd suspect that most people will just stick to it for regular use as well.