Learn How To Use Firefox To Debug With Power Surge
Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Power Surge is a game that Mozilla has put together to let you discover how good the performance tools in the latest Firefox developer edition are. It is a nice idea.

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I for one have never been convinced that dev tools should be part of the browser, but if they are then Mozilla has the best approach with its Developer Edition. Why should users have to carry the overhead of dev tools? 

The performance tools were introduced in Developer Edition 40 at the start of June and updated in edition 41 a few days ago. The new performance tab can show you how your program behaves via a waterfall, call tree or flame chart.

Often the response to this sort of tool is to think that it is pretty, but then fail to see how it might actually be helpful in tracking down inefficiencies - hence the new game. 

The idea is that you play the game and actually get more ships and powers each time you find something that can be optimized. You can fork the game on GitHub and work locally, but using it on CodePen with an online editor is a lot simpler - especially if you don't know GitHub. Once you have the game running in the latest developer edition you can profile it and find the carefully hidden optimizations. 

You can find more out about the game, optimizing it and generally about the performance tools in the following video: 

 

This is a good idea and it might even have wider educational value in teaching how JavaScript is implemented.  

In this case "gamification", literally seems to be a great way to learn. All it lacks is a global leader board and perhaps some badges to show off what you have achieved.

 

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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 15 July 2015 )