[userbinator]

From my experience, IDEs do not help in reducing the notion that programming is somehow "magic" - on the other hand, beginners will tend to develop an attachment to them, and that's where the "magic" shifts to. Basic concepts like "source code is just a text file" will be foreign to them (I'm surprised how many supposedly educated "developers" I've encountered don't understand this.)

I think the best way to start writing webpages is with a text editor - which almost any OS out there will already have, and that IDEs are like calculators - they're a great help when you already know what you're doing, but not ideal for starting out learning.

That said, if this makes it to the stable release channel it would be a big (and positive) change of direction for Mozilla, who have had a history of removing power-user-oriented features (and most developers probably started out as power users.) I remember a thread on HN (might've been about Australis?) in which others were wondering whether they would eventually remove the "View Source" function.

[feider]

True enough: bundling IDE with browser does not solve the problem, but it certainly lowers the bar for beginners to start programming.