Browsers have long contained development tools to help debug and diagnose problems when authoring Web content, but Mozilla is taking Firefox to the next level. Nightly builds of the browser now contain a development environment, WebIDE, for creating, testing, and deploying Firefox OS apps.

With WebIDE, developers will be able to create new applications from scratch, package them for distribution, deploy them to both the Firefox OS simulator and real Firefox OS hardware, and remotely debug them—all from within the browser and without the use of additional tools.

Mozilla cites two major advantages of using WebIDE as compared with developing apps for competing platforms. In-browser development tools are already familiar to the enormous number of Web developers that exist, so using them for application development minimizes the number of new tools and new skills that must be learned.

Second, they're extremely lightweight as development tools go. The substantial size of downloading tools such as Xcode or Visual Studio, in addition to the cost of developer licenses on other platforms, can limit their appeal and usability, especially in emerging markets. Putting the tools into the browser means that Mozilla's reach is near universal.

The tooling itself augments the familiar debug, DOM inspection, scripting console, and other browser features with a code editor using the JavaScript text editor CodeMirror. Mozilla acknowledges that developers that are used to traditional development environments may find the editor a little simpler than they are used to, but company representatives tell us that WebIDE will still be useful to developers building Firefox OS apps thanks to its deployment and packaging features.

Currently, WebIDE targets Firefox on the desktop and running on Android, in addition to Firefox OS. Mozilla hopes to expand this reach to include Chrome for Android and Safari for iOS. Communication between WebIDE and Firefox (whether on desktop, in the simulator, or on a device) uses a protocol called Firefox Remote Debugging Protocol. Mozilla is developing a bridge to adapt from this protocol to the equivalent one used by WebKit (used in Safari) and Blink (used in Chrome). When this is complete, WebIDE will be able to deploy and debug on these other platforms, too.