Live editing WebGL shaders with Firefox Developer Tools

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/11/live-editing-webgl-shaders-with-firefox-developer-tools/

by rnyman • 13 years ago

180 18 13 years ago

hacks.mozilla.org

chime• 13 years ago

This looks fantastic. If I had this tool in 1995, my career trajectory might have been quite different. I loved graphics but it was so time consuming to make one change, recompile, re-run the program, and then start again to tweak 0.1 to 0.2.

With this editor, after you make the changes, do you have to copy-paste that back into your source to save it?

Slightly unrelated but seeing as how neat Firefox has become, I really feel like I need to switch back to it from Chrome. I went Netscape > IE > Maxthon > Firefox > Chrome. Chrome dev tools are good but Firefox seems even better. Anyone revert back to FF lately?

blueveek• 13 years ago

With this editor, after you make the changes, do you have to copy-paste that back into your source to save it?

Currently yes. However, we have plans to make this better soon. (we call them Project Maps, and they're on the roadmap)

josteink• 13 years ago

I reverted back to Firefox, but that was only because Google was gettting pretty creepy, and their stance on web-standards seems to have gone pretty downhill since they gained a majority market-share.

To me it just makes sense to support the guys who are working for the internet and world-wide web at large, as opposed to the advertising-company just trying to get more input-data into their big-data profile-crunchers.

cromwellian• 13 years ago

This is a completely unfair characterization of the people on the chrome team who deeply believe in the web. It's also a non-sequitur for a thread that should be about discussing Mozilla's announcement and not sullied by this.

pygy_• 13 years ago

I went back to FF earlier this year. The factors were both technical (Firefox has drastically improved from a speed and memory standpoint) and "political" (I'm gradually withdrawing from Google services). I'm still more familiar with the Chrome dev tools, but the default FF ones are coming along nicely.

Initially, I installed a few extensions to make FF as Chrome-like as possible. I disabled them after a while, and I couldn't be happier.

RyanZAG• 13 years ago

Definitely back to Firefox. With all the non-standards compliant features that have been built into Chrome recently, it's a lot slower than it once was. Plus the less support Chrome gets, the less chance they have of destroying web standards. Just watching how Google handles the Android ecosystem should be enough to prove to anyone what would happen if Google had more control over the web. These days if you want an open web, you pretty much need to be at least Google-wary.

Firefox has also made leaps and bounds in memory usage and keeping the UI good looking but usable. Definitely a project worth supporting.

TazeTSchnitzel• 13 years ago

Back to FF, I don't like where Google's going and the tools are getting better.

hansjorg• 13 years ago

Very cool. Another option for working with shaders directly in the browser is Shadertoy, a kind of jsfiddle for shaders: https://www.shadertoy.com/

andreea_popescu• 13 years ago

Amazing work. Go Firefox Developer Tools team!

Ygg2• 13 years ago

I can't wait to see the rest of their other updates that were preview at Paul Rouget's site.

coldcode• 13 years ago

Now if someone would write something similar for desktop OpenGL that supported multiple platforms, I'd go back to doing this :-)

pjmlp• 13 years ago

Something like GLSL Hacker you mean?

http://www.geeks3d.com/20131031/glsl-hacker-0-6-0-0-physx-3-...

agentultra• 13 years ago

Amazing. I love WebGL. I could never have predicted that Firefox was going to become a better game development platform than the current proprietary solutions. At least for certain trade offs. But how long will that remain true?

binarycrusader• 13 years ago

Reminds me of shadertoy (http://www.shadertoy.com/); although this should perform better.

ozten• 13 years ago

Totally unexpected, looks freaky amazing.

angersock• 13 years ago

For people doing native development, RenderMonkey is an invaluable tool:

http://developer.amd.com/resources/archive/archived-tools/gp...

Really great way of prototyping shaders, though I don't think it supports geometry shaders right now, and it seems to be only Windows.

For debugging, gDebugger is amaaaazing (and has Windows and Linux support):

http://www.gremedy.com/

It lets you inspect textures, buffer objects, and suchlike, and can help you profile graphics calls.

bjz_• 13 years ago

It's a shame there's not much out there for OSX. :(

nagaj• 13 years ago

Couldnt have come at a better time for me. I am Java dev and started on Opengl Mobile Development. I have been scratching my head on the GLSL. But this i feel like i can actually learn GLSL and build something useful

Live editing WebGL shaders with Firefox Developer Tools

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