[thegeomaster]

The curious won't be perplexed by such a simple barrier. They'd find this Web IDE, had it been an add-on, and happily continue exploring. Is that little convenience enough to justify bloating an executable millions of people use daily with a lot of code that only 5% of them (a very generous estimate) will ever use?

We should be splitting software into smaller components, and let the user choose what they need. There's no need to pander to lazy or unwilling-to-learn users by barfing up all they need into a single binary, thereby adding stuff most of the people won't ever use.

[mercer]

That's a solid point, assuming that it actually does create bloat (which I don't know much about, I admit).

Could another advantage of coupling browsers with development tools be that it makes it logistically easier to maintain 'parity' between the browser and its development tools? Or is that not how these things are done?

Edit: I see my question has been addressed elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933515)

[thegeomaster]

We shouldn't really be asking if some excess software (and an IDE is pretty heavy) is causing bloat or not. If it's not needed by most of the people, it is bloat. If not so much for the user, then also for the development team.

I like when software is doing one single thing, and is great at doing that one single thing. With Firefox needing to address a lot of problems to stay on par with Chrome, the last thing it needs is more cruft to worry about in the browser itself.