No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message.
> This is a talk that I’ve given at CityJS this September. I am a principal product manager for developer tools in Microsoft Edge and these are things I encountered during working on the tools, documenting them and going through user feedback.
Microsoft Edge is a browser based on Chromium and we joined the project quite some time ago, fixing hundreds of bugs, making the developer tools themeable, localisable and accessible to assistive technology. All of these changes have been submitted back to the Chromium core, so that Chrome, Brave and all the other browsers based on the same open source project also benefited from that. We work closely with the Chrome team and share a lot of ideas and plans for the future of the Chromium platform.
We differentiate in the UX of the developer tools, much like all Chromium based browsers differentiate in the interface for the end user.
I spent about 10 hours on the presentation and this morning about 3 hours turning the slides into this blog post. If my goal were to promote Edge, I could have done a much simpler, shorter and to the point post.
If you read the article, you might realise the things we're adding exclusively to the Edge devtools based on user feedback and demands, the focus mode and in-context explanations being one of the efforts, and the deep integration with VS code being another one.
As to whether these things are useful, I think I pretty clearly explained that this is exactly what we'd like people to tell us. Which is why there are several ways to contact the team and provide feedback.
"No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message."
I am pretty sure, private blog posts promoting your day jobs work, are beneficial to your career as well (and I can imagine it is encuraged). And the language used, "We are open to your feedback and many of the recent changes to the tools are direct results from demands from outside developers" sounds definitely official.
"I spent about 10 hours on the presentation and this morning about 3 hours turning the slides into this blog post. If my goal were to promote Edge, I could have done a much simpler, shorter and to the point post."
And I don't think so, because many people still have a bias against edge, who would have just skipped reading it, if it would be plainly stated, edge only. So burying the promotion inside some general useful tips, combined with what awesome plans you might have for edge dev tools - worked apparently quite well for promotion, but not for clarity.
Basically, what I am missing, was a paragraph like this:
"Microsoft Edge is a browser based on Chromium and we joined the project quite some time ago, fixing hundreds of bugs, making the developer tools themeable, localisable and accessible to assistive technology. All of these changes have been submitted back to the Chromium core, so that Chrome, Brave and all the other browsers based on the same open source project also benefited from that. We work closely with the Chrome team and share a lot of ideas and plans for the future of the Chromium platform."
And more importantly: to differentiate what of your "secrets" work everywhere. And what works only with edge. A normal technical blog post would have covered this, as they are usually neutral.
You are not neutral (and you do not have to be), but just tell me, why edge is superior and what does it do better. But maybe do so clearly.
"If you read the article, you might realise the things we're adding exclusively to the Edge devtools based on user feedback and demands, the focus mode and in-context explanations being one of the efforts, and the deep integration with VS code being another one."
So I did read most of the article, but this is my criticism. Finding out what of your features were edge only, was very hard - as it was not plainly stated. And if you read the comments here, that kind of confirms it. Lots of confusion and general web dev tips mixed with edge only stuff. That limits its usefulness.
I am curious why you can edit Edge dev tools with Edge. There is literally a part of the article where I show that this is possible with a screenshot showing it on my Mac.
I could not "just" edit it like I am used to from chrome - but apparently had to activate a experimental setting. Which you did explain in a video. Not text. I read text.
I still want to understand the issue. The Sources tool is the same in Chrome and in Edge. And if you undock the devtools and you press CMD+Shift+I (or CTRL+I) on either Chrome or Edge you get a second DevTools instance to debug the first one. If you use a workspace, you edit files externally in either Edge or Chrome as they are the same thing. There is no difference in either of these use cases. What use case are you finding where it is different? I'm really confused.
"And if you undock the devtools and you press CMD+Shift+I (or CTRL+I) on either Chrome or Edge you get a second DevTools instance to debug the first one. "
Not for me on a vanilla edge instance. Pressing Ctrl + Shift + I closes the dev tools completly, no matter where the focus is. (on Win 10, german localisation, Edge 95.0.1020.40)
But it works like you describe (and how I know it) on a vanilla chrome dev instance.
So is there maybe some hidden setting, one needs to activate first?
Isn't the point of this article to highlight specific tools? A lot of technical PR blog posts do well on HN. Not as many as technical PR blog people wish they would, but still - if the post contains interesting information, that's what matters. Here's a past explanation about this, in case it's helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186280, which was an answer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186246 ("Is it acceptable to have unmarked advertisements on HN?").
There's also this guideline:
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
In general I do enjoy technical PR blog posts and also in this one I found interesting bits.
What disturbed me was, that the title said "web developer tools secrets", while in the text it is specifically microsoft edges web developer tools.
This style of language I do not like so much. There is too much agenda in it, in my taste. As this seem to imply, there are only one web dev tools - the ones that comes bundled with your windows OS. (Microsoft does have a history)
Now it seems, the edge dev tools are allmost identical to chrome dev tools, so I might have assumed more ill intent, than what was actually there, as most web devs use one or the other.
But it is still not clear to me, what of the posts information apply only to edge for example. What to chrome. And what would also work in firefox. All of them have web dev tools.
As far as my understanding goes (which may not be very far at all), the common base seems to be Chromium. When I want to debug an HTML source (like the one in the article), VSCodium offers me Chrome or Edge as the base browser (none of which I have installed). I wonder why Brave isn't in there, since it's also Chromium-based.
Oh, I think I understand now. You mean when you use the debugger in Visual Studio Code the target browser dropdown only shows Edge or Chrome and not Brave?
That is weird and I wonder if it has something to do that brave hasn't got the CDP methods turned on that allows other software to remotely control it.
In essence, the debugger spawns a new instance of the browser and controls it remotely from VS Code, much like automated test tools do. It would be interesting to hear from Brave if there is interest in showing up there, too.
Oops, seems my last sentence was badly worded. With “in there” I meant the set of browsers offered by VSCodium, not your article. Your article is fine and informative, except that the title makes it seem more general than it actually is.
Never used it, but it looks pretty much like chrome dev tools, which might be, because they just copied it, when they forked chrome/webkit?
Well, why not copy what works, but is there anything edge dev tools are now doing better than chrome?
(there seems to be a connection possible to VS code, is that useful?)