Good luck! FYI, there's a hidden developer menu that's handy for browser developers to change the number of iterations, select specific tests, etc: https://browserbench.org/Speedometer3.0/?developerMode, and ?startAutomatically avoids needing to click the button to start the tests.

I worked on this project - Web Components had a lot to do with it. It's true they weren't feature complete in Firefox when we started the project (notably missing Shadow DOM) - but the first migration from late 2017 was XBL->Custom Element (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1500626), and we used the migration project to inform performance and feature work for Web Components within Firefox.

We could have converted the bindings to JS modules (and we did plenty of that too), but Web Components were key because they allowed us to migrate in-place with near API compatibility rather than rewriting the UI. I have a post at https://briangrinstead.com/blog/firefox-webcomponents/ with more detail on that point.

There are pros and cons to using web tech for the application UI. To be clear, the old XBL code was already using JS/DOM, so the most obvious pro in this case was that it didn't require completely rewriting Firefox from scratch (which hasn't historically worked out well). I also expect that dogfooding web technologies means we can improve the tooling and web standard implementations in Gecko.

Regarding performance, this work didn't regress anything. Performance is measured on every commit and staying at least at parity was a requirement for the project.

> you now need to right click in the console and tick "Log request and response bodies" every single time

Yes, seems like there could be a pref for that. Filed a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1064458.

The eyedropper is using a panel with a call to openPopupAtScreen to open it (http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/devtoo...).

I'm not sure exactly in what ways this is failing, but please file a bug under "Developer Tools: Inspector" if you have STR and we can try to narrow it down: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox.

Will do, what is STR?

> Thanks for the link. What about IndexDB, Web SQL and Local Storage?

Not yet, but a storage inspector panel is being worked on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=970517

A storage inspector is not part of the tools yet. Some of the functionality for this has landed, but the frontend is still being worked on here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=970517.

Thanks for the info. What are you wanting to do with xpath? The console supports the $x function, like $x("//body"). Also, HTML node drag and drop is on the radar here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=858038

I want to get XPath from a node. I use it in WebDriverJS.

Good to see drag and drop coming.

There was some features that I loved. It's not fair to not mention those:

    CSS autocomplete is much better than Chrome’s
    Code Editor’s Search is just amazing!
    The filter for computed CSS properties is very handy for my work
    Black Theme is great! Please make it easy to write custom themes

One little request, in console. ⌘+K should clean the console.

I've filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=987877 for adding a Copy XPath menu item in the inspector

A long time ago I wrote a Firefox plugin to get an XPath:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xpath-checker...

It's open source, so perhaps you could reuse the code from WebDriver:

https://code.google.com/p/xpathchecker/

We have Ctrl-L for clear output.

⌘+K is consistent across other apps on OS X (e.g. Terminal)

But ^L is also consistent with Terminal, across all platforms, at least in bash and other programs that use readline. :)

We've had long discussions and arguing over cmd-k, ctrl-L, and all the shortcuts we could use. cmd-k takes over the search field focus.

This is a bitter pill: any shortcut we choose is a different kind of 'wrong'.

I'd throw in a vote for cmd+k to clear

It's mostly JavaScript. Take a look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/GetInvolved and https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/Hacking for more information

The contrast for the selected node in the markup tree is being updated here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=968315.

Awesome! Thanks for making my day :)