How to Install Firefox Developer Edition on Ubuntu 16.04, Linux Mint 18

September 6, 2016 Xiao Guoan
6 Comments
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Firefox developer edition, which is a browser built specifically for web developers, was first introduced by Mozilla back in November 2014. It streamline the developement workflow so developers don’t need to bounce between different platforms and browsers. This browser comes preloaded with many web developers tools such as WebIDE and Valence which allows developers to debug other browsers and apps directly from within Firefox developer edition.

By using the Developer Edition, you also gain access to tools and platform features at least 12 weeks before they reach the main Firefox release channel. It can run alongside your existing Firefox releases.

The latest version is 50.0a2, released on August 5, 2016. Changes includes:

  • Find in page now supports a mode to search for whole words only
  • New preference for allowing Ctrl+Tab to cycle through tabs in recently used order
  • Improved printing by using the Reader Mode
  • Emoji for everyone! Firefox will use built-in Emoji on operating systems without native Emoji fonts (Windows 8.0 and lower and Linux)
  • Use accel-(opt/alt)-r as the reader mode keyboard shortcut
  • changes for web developers can be found here.

Install Firefox Developer Edition on Ubuntu 16.04, Linux Mint 18 via Ubuntu Make

With this method, Firefox D.E. coexists with your default Firefox browser and can be updated in Help > About Firefox window. First, install Ubuntu Make which is available from repository.

sudo apt install ubuntu-make

Then install firefox-dev.

umake web firefox-dev

You will be asked to choose installation path and language. Pressing Enter will choose the default option. Once it’s installed, you can start it from Unity Dash or your application menu.

firefox developer edition ubuntu 16.04

Note that because Linux Mint ships with a different desktop environment, you won’t see the firefox developer edition icon in the menu. You can start it from the terminal. For instance, if you chose the default installation path, then start it with:

~/.local/share/umake/web/firefox-dev/firefox

Install Firefox Developer Edition from PPA

With this method your existing Firefox browser will be replaced. Open up a terminal window (CTRL+ALT+T), and run the following 3 commands one at a time.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/firefox-aurora
sudo apt update
sudo apt install firefox

Firefox developer edition linux

That’s it! I hope this article helped you install Firefox Developer Edition on Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18. As always, if you found this post useful, then subscribe to our free newsletter or follow us on Google+, Twitter orlike our Facebook page. Thanks for visiting!

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  • Hi. I got “ERROR: Download page changed its syntax or is not parsable” when trying to install using umake.

    • This is a new bug in ubuntu-make. To fix it, edit a file.
      sudo nano /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/umake/frameworks/web.py
      Find this line. 

      reg_expression = '< href="(.*)" title'.format(tag_machine)

      Replace it with the following line.

      reg_expression = r'href="(S+os=linux{}&lang=S+)"'.format(tag_machine)
    • Aleh

      umake version 16.09 its OK
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-desktop/ubuntu-make
      sudo apt-get update

  • as far as I understand, there are two versions of firefox on my laptop after installing the firefox-dev (I’ve made it through the rep). if I start firefox from terminal it opens non-dev edition. so can you help me with terminal command for running the development edition?

    • The executable path for firefox-dev is ~/.local/share/umake/web/firefox-dev/firefox. You can type it in terminal to launch firefox-dev.

      To make things easy, create a symbolic link with the following command

      sudo ln -s ~/.local/share/umake/web/firefox-dev/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-dev

      So now you can just type firefox-dev in terminal to launch it.

      • didn’t find that path! forgot to say I have xubuntu 16.04, maybe that’s the reason