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What's your main browser for development?

Madza on July 08, 2020

When it comes to development, the browser choice is obviously as important as a properly configurated code editor and terminal.

I'm on Chrome and still find dev experience best on it. I've read more and more people switching to Firefox and Brave, tho.

What is your current weapon of choice and why?

Richard • Jul 8 '20

Firefox because I like the way the Dev tools are laid out. I originally switched from chrome to Firefox because of the CSS grid visualiser in Firefox. I'm pretty sure chrome now has it but I've gotten use to Firefox.

Keff • Jul 9 '20

I usually use Chrome, but test in most common ones.

If I'm doing responsive design, I've recently started using Responsively. It eases the process quite a bit.

huncyrus • Jul 8 '20

It's depends.
Initially firefox, because of dev tools and available extra extensions (php, screenshot, ruler, interconnection, debug tools...) was a thing before chrome even exists.

Why I write, it is depends. Because there are many factor in this question:

Continent, region, country (same thing like Linux distro usage.... redhat and fedore rules in the US, but in EU nobody will touch them)
Project needs (for example a german bank uses only chrome for intranet, so everything should be optimal only for chrome)
Dev environment (there are places, where you only could have limited softwares like headless chromium (iot, arm, P.O.S. systems))

Subhomoy Haldar • Jul 8 '20

I had been using Firefox for web development projects. I found the support for CSS grids unparalleled there. However, there have been times where I faced stability issues.

So just for the sake of trying something new, I switched to Edge (others might avoid it and understandably so). The development experience is essentially identical to that of any other chromium based browser. Nothing sets it apart, other that the few nice touches that Microsoft has included. Is it the best browser? Probably not. Do I care? Not really. As long as I have something modern and I get my job done.

Pedro Pimenta • Jul 8 '20

Firefox for everything, but of course I always check Chrome and Safari for quirks.

bravemaster619 • Jul 8 '20

If you can make it for Safari, you can skip checking Google and Firefox ;D

Anik Khan • Jul 8 '20

I think this should be the standard. Have a primary browser but then always check for quirks.

Ismile Hossain • Jul 8 '20

Vivaldi (Chromium Based Browser). Have a ton of features.

Things I love about this browser:

Tab management (Tab stacks, Tab tilling, Tab hibernation).
UI customization.
Mouse and keyboard shortcuts.
Tools (Sync, Screenshot capture, etc)
Quick command (Press F2), where you can do simple calculations also.
Privacy & Security (Tracker blocking, Adblocking, etc).

Chad Smith • Jul 8 '20

Most of the time, Vivaldi.
It being chromium based it works just fine for dev work. Plus it's the browser I use personally, most of the time. I first started to use it because it was customizable and had a ton of features that you could only do with other browsers if you installed a lot of different extensions. I've lately seen Chrome and FireFox just now start adding some features that Vivaldi had for a bit.

Every now and then I have noticed a few small bugs with it, so sometimes I'll pop over into chrome to check something out.

Chablis Omo Oba • Jul 8 '20 • Edited

I work often with firefox year ago, but last 4month i am used with the new internet explorer, i meant Edge browser with its pretty background that update most of the time. Also the update include firefox and chrome extension. Very awesome utility

riidom • Jul 8 '20

Vivaldi
(if you haven't heard of it, in a nutshell: it's chrome-based, made by the developer of the original Opera browser)

bimlas • Jul 8 '20

... and it's more customizable then Firefox + a bunch of plugins. BTW it has the same Developer Tools as Chrome, which is a bit better in Firefox IMO.