Mozilla is starting up a new developer tools lab that will be run by Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith who are best known as the co-founders of the popular Ajax site Ajaxian.
Developer tools are an area that Mozilla itself specifically has not been engaged in too heavily, which frankly has been a bit of shame since it’s something that Netscape definitely was engaged in. Almaer has not yet laid out a plan with specifics but he does have some ideas that he blogged about.
As we ramp up this new group, we will be looking at the problem and
seeing where it makes sense to step in. We are going to be
experimenting, and thinking about how to make developers lives better
in different ways. so we aren’t expecting to see traditional tools come
out of this group. Also, we don’t want to do this alone. We want to
involve the entire community which is one reason that we are so excited
to kick off this work at Mozilla. We believe that we have a unique
opportunity to put developers first. We can build these tools in the
open, with total transparency; the Mozilla way.
I’m going to put in a request right now. I want to see a full featured Mozilla Web Editing Tool – not Firebug, but a bona fide full development suite. Now i know that there is the Mozilla Composer Effort but it’s high time that there is an open source project that can compete against Adobe Dreamweaver. Yes I know that’s a bit low-level for some developers, but it’s a level that I personally think is important. Almaer does note however in his blog post that traditional tools aren’t what his group is going to be focused on (but hey doesn’t mean you can’t put in a request).
Beyond that Firebug is awesome (i have it installed myself) and if that team does get the full power and resources of the new Mozilla Developer Tools Lab – then wowza – watch out!
