Web developers get their own browser

Blisk draws on Google’s Chromium with tools for developing, debugging, and testing websites.

With a belief that existing browsers were made for looking at the web and not for developers, Brisk has built a browser specifically focused on website development.

Based on Google’s Chromium open source browser project, Blisk features a toolbox for developing, debugging, and testing “modern” websites. Available via a subscription service, Blisk is in a 1.0 release, having completed a beta program. It is available for Windows and Mac.

Blisk is looking to solve a problem in which “millions of developers are suffering from setting up the development environment,” said co-founder Andrii Bakirov. “Developers need to download, set up, configure and maintain tens of different tools even before writing a single line of code. It could be different frameworks, tools, extensions and SaaS services,” he said. “To build fast and modern websites, [a] developer has to buy and set up this fragmented set of tools and then suffer from maintaining it.”

Blisk supports a variety of iOS and Android devices, with the intent of making life easier for developers. It provides a number of features, including emulation, and developers can preview a website on desktop and mobile simultaneously. It also offers navigation sync, in which a URL and scroll position are synchronized for mobile and desktop. In addition, Blisk refreshes pages every time a developer saves code changes, so there is no need to reload multiple tabs whenever code is altered. Pages are monitored for JavaScript errors, and developers can document technical issues via a one-click screenshot and record capability. Screenshots are saved to a user’s cloud storage to provide access to others.

Blisk pointed out differences it sees between its own technology and common browsers Chrome and Firefox. Blisk, proponents said, enables simultaneous development on desktop and mobile, boosts developer productivity, and provides developer-specific features for web development. Improvements under way include capabilities such as page analysis and improved emulation.

Source : http://www.infoworld.com/