Difference between Firefox and Firefox developer nowdays - 2017

Question

When Firefox developer edition introduced, I was so happy, that I can use WebIde, responsive design tool, eyedroper, etc... Today I had enough.

There are a lot of bugs in it, I wont start to enumarate how many bugs sended and approved by me and my colleague...

I've searched for this topic in google, and everywhere I saw, that regular firefox has no WebIde, responsive design view, eyedropper, etc...

I've downloaded the regular firefox, and see no difference. All of these tools are in it, so it seems to me that with aurora channel I get an unstable something what is just impede in my work instead it helps me.

So, my question is: is there any significant difference between the two versions what I did not spot?

Answer 1

Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Developer_Edition
The Firefox Developer Edition is a version of Firefox that's tailored for web developers. It includes:

• the latest Firefox features: Firefox Developer Edition replaces the old Aurora channel.
  • Each new release includes features which have been stabilized via nightly builds.
  • New features enter the Firefox Beta channel six weeks before being released
  • New features are stabilized for 12 weeks before appearing in the released version of Firefox.
• a separate developer profile: this means you can easily run the Developer Edition alongside your release or Beta version of Firefox.
• experimental developer tools: we'll include experimental tools that aren't yet ready for production. For example, the Developer Edition includes the Firefox Tools Adapter, which enables you to connect the Firefox developer tools to other browsers such as Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android.
• preferences tailored for web developers: we've set default preference values tailored for web developers. For example, chrome and remote debugging are enabled by default in the Developer Edition.
• a distinct theme: this includes quicker access to the developer tools.

For the reasons: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/04/simplifying-firefox-release-channels/

Answer 2

One major difference is that when you install Firefox Developer Edition it doesn't take precedence over any existing version of Firefox installed on your machine. With Nightly and Beta, they become the default version of FF. This means you can run Firefox Developer and standard/nightly/beta Firefox concurrently.

Answer 3

Here is a still I grabbed from a video called Why are there Four Firefoxes? from the Mozilla Developer YouTube channel, which does a great job of visualizing the differences:

As shown, Firefox Beta and Firefox Developer Edition are one version ahead of the standard release, while Firefox Nightly is two versions ahead.

Naturally, the beta or alpha versions may be less stable than the general production release, so you can make your decision on which version to use based on how beneficial it is to get new features and developer tools a bit earlier than they'd otherwise be available.

Firefox Developer Edition also lets you run unsigned extensions, which are disallowed in normal Firefox for security reasons, in addition to some other tweaks tailored for developers.