1032816 - provide standard, pristine JS environment for testing code

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: General, defect)

Description

[Ben Kelly [:bkelly, not reviewing]]

Over in bug 1032243 there is some discussion about how to test arbitrary JS code in firefox.  It seems many people do the following:

1) open new tab
2) open console
3) type JS to test

The problem with this, as described in bug 1032243, is that about:newtab is a particular page with its own configuration.  In this particular case, it uses a separate Promise library from the default.

After reading that bug I also tried using scratchpad thinking it would provide a more isolated environment:

1) Open new tab
2) Open console to see output
3) Open scratchpad
4) Enter and run code in scratchpad

Unfortunately this has the same problem as its still in the page context.  (Its also annoying that scratchpad does not have the console output in the popup window.)

Anyway, it seems like making some kind of easy workflow for this use case would be useful to devs.

Maybe we could create a new about: page for this purpose?  Devs could then set it as their new tab page if they desired.  Maybe about:scratchpad or something?

Comment 1

[Mihai Sucan [:msucan]]

Is about:blank not sufficient?