There are two things about Mozilla's announcement that are out of the ordinary. The first is that it is trailing a release of a new browser on November 10th and the second is that the new browser is targeting programmers.

There isn't much information at the moment, and it is very strange that Mozilla should be announcing something of limited appeal so near to its launch and without any real information. It is not as if a browser for devs is likely to be a big event in the wider world and it's not as if it was commercial money-making company. This is Mozilla PR behaving as if they were Microsoft. 

As to the actual browser...

It is unlikely to be anything other than a Geko-based browser as there has been little news about Mozilla's other browser project, Servo. 

On balance, separating out all of the developer tools into a special browser makes sense - why burden the end user with features they are never going to use. Could it be that Firefox might even slim down a little if developer tools are removed?

In theory, yes.

This short video is a teaser for it but don't expect to gain much hard fact from it: 

Firefox already has lots of developer features, mainly because it was slowly morphing into the development tool needed for Firefox OS. The new custom browser takes this to the next logical step - a browser that is more like an IDE. All we know at the moment is that the new browser integrates WebIDE and Firefox Tools Adapter. WebIDE is exactly what it sounds like - an IDE, complete with a CodeMirror based editor and tern.js code analysis.  The role of the Tools Adapter is a bit more difficult to understand. It allows the Firefox's debugging tools to work with other browsers. Possibly this will allow the new browser to be used to run and debug apps on other browser engines.  No doubt it will also be integrated with the Remote Debugging Protocol so that you can work with Firefox OS devices. 

As far as information goes you are more likely to get a flavour of what to expect from this video on WebIDE:

To quote the Mozilla announcement:

We’ve redesigned the browser by looking at it through a completely new filter to put developers’ interests first. It’s built by developers for developers so you can debug the whole Web, allowing you to more easily build awesome Web experiences.

You can sign up for the Hack's monthly newsletter for more information on how Mozilla is planning to help you - otherwise you will just have to wait until the 10th to find out if the early hype is worth it.

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