Ontario, Canada
Stephan has an interest in software freedom, human-computer interaction, user interface/experience design, programming, and Linux... but he prefers to leave graphic design to the experts.
Stephan Sokolow (He/Him)
Stephan has an interest in software freedom, human-computer interaction, user interface/experience design, programming, and Linux... but he prefers to leave graphic design to the experts.
Authored Comments
True. I know browser extension load-outs and the design trade-offs between Chrome and Firefox make a big difference.
Chrome is memory-heavy but responsive because of its multiprocess design (though <em>window.opener</em> support causes multiple tabs to share the same process) and I can't stand a lot of the design decisions that went into its extension API.
Firefox's single-process nature helps it to be memory-light and its approach to extensions makes it easy to implement things like HTTPS Everywhere and RefControl, but they push so many things Chrome does naturally (like matching the system's native scroll-wheel behaviour for tab bars) into extensions that said lightness is a bit deceptive... and I'm still trying to track down the last of the slow extension memory leaks
Worse, and more relevant to this case, a messy site in one tab can bog down every other tab.
Given how I find Opera to be unacceptable for being closed-source and Chrome for making various design decisions I dislike and can't override with extensions, I'm stuck with Firefox, which means I'm effectively stuck with Ye Olde Windows 3.1 Cooperative Multitasking.
Basically, I'd have to run a separate Firefox or Chrome profile just as an application runtime environment and doing that just for ICEcoder doesn't make it feasible.
Perhaps in the future, but I just don't see the web runtime environment (or whatever you want to use as a general term) being mature enough to satisfy me right now.
I've tried to use various IDEs throughout the years but every one I've tried has just caused me more distraction and bother so I kept coming back to something visually minimalistic like Vim (with various plugins for static analysis and the like) combined with <em>git gui</em>, a Quake-style terminal for various command-line tools, and, for web apps, something like Firebug or the Chrome developer tools.
I do see your point though. Tools like Cloud9 are sort of in an uncomfortable middle ground. Too IDE-like for some, not complete enough for others.