6 ms·

Firebug 1.12 – New Features

183 points by tmister 13y ago

itsbits 13y ago
I worked in Firebug for sometime but since Chrome came up with WebKit tools I never looked back,...
AndrewDucker 13y ago
Is there work going on to build Firebug on top of the built-in Firefox debugging tools? The two don't seem to work well together at the moment.
- simonlindholm 13y ago
  Not really, no. There was some talk about adding a Firebug panel to the built-in tools, but nothing has really come from it, and any deeper UI integration is probably out of the question for being too much work. But suggestions about how to make it better are still welcome, of course. The main thing we have gotten out of the new devtools are new cool APIs, e.g. for debugging, paint flashing, CSS auto-completion, profiling (though we haven't gotten around to using most of them yet).
  - AndrewDucker 13y ago
    Aaah, so the idea is that you'll be two different UIs built on the same APIs? That makes sense.
  - SebastianZ83 13y ago
    For everyone interested, the issue related to the built-in tools integration can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=6320 http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=6320
- mnemonik 13y ago
  When you enter debug mode in SpiderMonkey most (all? I forget) jit'ing and optimizations won't happen; code becomes a lot slower. The new debugging api allows you to debug specific tabs, while the old one would force all of the browser (including the chrome js that handles the browser's UI) to enter debug mode and the whole browser gets slow. Because Honza is working on porting firebug to the new debugger API, it will get faster, and so will all of firefox when you are using firebug. IIRC, Honza is not just working on porting from the old api to the new one, but also on top of our remote debugging protocol. This means that we improve the debugging server, and both the native tools and firebug get better. Plus, you'll be able to use firebug on your laptop, connected remotely to firefox on your android phone, or firefox os.
fletchowns 13y ago
Love the new features. I still find myself using Firebug over the built in dev tools in either Chrome or Firefox. The Firebug team has done a really tremendous job over the years. Keep up the good work!
- illumen 13y ago
  Yeah, firebug still has quite a lot of polish compared to the others. Perhaps it has to do with the contributors being expert UI developers, and firebug developers second. Whereas the other tools are mostly developed by employees who do full time dev tool development, but not so much work using the tools. But I know others mostly prefer chrome tools. The same people often get stuck in firebug or in IE dev tools. Anyway... GREAT WORK FIREBUG TEAM! xo
  - dubcanada 13y ago
    I fail to see how Firebug has a better UI then WebKit Developer Tools? As far as I am concerned they are the same in that regard. And since both of those tools are not built by "developers", but by "frontend engineers" it doesn't really matter. I spent like 15 minutes trying to figure out how to attach Firebug to the browser window. Only to find out that the upward pointing arrow in a gray circle means attach to browser window. On WebKit I click an icon that looks like a browser window with developer tools. The resources tab in WebKit is ten times better then the mishmash of CSS/Script/Net/Cookies tabs all spread out. Anyways that is just my opinion, and as far as I am concerned Dragonfly was the best.
    - actionscripted 13y ago
      Think what s/he's saying is that it helps that they use their own tools for UI dev versus those who hammer on the browser and made comparable tools, not that Firebug has a better UI.
      - dubcanada 13y ago
        That's fine, but I think it's a bit far fetched to say that the people who work on WebKit/Blink developer tools don't use the developer tools.
mnarayan01 13y ago
The list of improvements might be the most exciting I've ever seen for any software, ever. Seriously...great work!
sbarre 13y ago
"Copy as cURL" is great! I'm curious to see if it even builds POST requests properly.. Edit: it does! It includes all the headers, the POST data, etc...
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  Even the cookies. It's been in webkit for a while. SO USEFUL. You can also use it to leech stuff from login/captcha protected download areas like rapidshare or the apple dev center. No more failed browser downloads of 1gig files! Just add -C to your curl command!
  - sbarre 13y ago
    I think it's actually "-C -" to tell it to automatically figure out where to restart.
- tmister 13y ago
  Well Chrome had this feature for a long time. Personally I don't find it much useful. But to me the killer feature of firebug is that when you open an XHR entry in new tab it opens the tab with all POST variables. Super handy when debugging REST api.
  - sbarre 13y ago
    I don't know that this is in regular Chrome (at least I can't find it). Google-fu says that Chromium has it though..
    - thejosh 13y ago
      It's in Chrome for Linux and Windows for me. http://i.imgur.com/42D59mv.png http://i.imgur.com/42D59mv.png
    - paulirish 13y ago
      Yup it's in regular Chrome: https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/network#copying_requests_as_curl_commands https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/ne...
rmccue 13y ago
Very annoyingly, in the FF 24 beta, Firebug basically crashes the browser every time you open it (or switch to another tab and then back). Not sure if it's FF's problem or Firebug's, but it's really annoying.
- simonlindholm 13y ago
  Firefox's, certainly. It would be good if you reported it on Bugzilla.
  - rmccue 13y ago
    Thanks, I had meant to ping someone about this, but keep forgetting. Filed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=908174 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=908174
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Interesting, you don't have lag when first opening it? I was investigating pretty much the same thing yesterday, in the end my problem was that the JSD was ridiculously slow to toggle, but firebug is already working to move to JSD2 so I can't really complain too much. There is a test extension you can use attached to this bug. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815603 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815603 I was getting something like 100ms to pause and 10000ms to unpause. With 5 tabs loaded and a couple hundred tabs unloaded. I disabled the javascript parts of firebug for general use, which does avoid the problem most of the time.
      - rmccue 13y ago
        Aha, you're right! Disabling the Script tab helps immensely. It's a shame since I need the Script tab for a lot of work, but it's not too much of a pain to disable/reenable.
  - Achshar 13y ago
    How do you know for sure?
talles 13y ago
What a great release, it's hard to tell with new feature I liked more :)
anaphor 13y ago
Great, that seems to have fixed several bugs I've been encountering as well (if I switched tabs the firebug UI would disappear).
instakill 13y ago
I don't know if it's just on my machine but I prefer the built-in tools for a quick debug because FB is so damn slow.
chadscira 13y ago
But does it support blackboxing? - (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaFBvItTJrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaFBvItTJrE)
- SebastianZ83 13y ago
  Not yet, though it's something I suggested some time ago: http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=4888 http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=4888. Let's see if we can get that for the next version.
ghostdiver 13y ago
I only miss those two features - Pretty print - Hot code replace

183 points by tmister 13y ago

I worked in Firebug for sometime but since Chrome came up with WebKit tools I never looked back,...

Is there work going on to build Firebug on top of the built-in Firefox debugging tools? The two don't seem to work well together at the moment.

simonlindholm 13y ago
Not really, no. There was some talk about adding a Firebug panel to the built-in tools, but nothing has really come from it, and any deeper UI integration is probably out of the question for being too much work. But suggestions about how to make it better are still welcome, of course. The main thing we have gotten out of the new devtools are new cool APIs, e.g. for debugging, paint flashing, CSS auto-completion, profiling (though we haven't gotten around to using most of them yet).
- AndrewDucker 13y ago
  Aaah, so the idea is that you'll be two different UIs built on the same APIs? That makes sense.
- SebastianZ83 13y ago
  For everyone interested, the issue related to the built-in tools integration can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=6320 http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=6320
mnemonik 13y ago
When you enter debug mode in SpiderMonkey most (all? I forget) jit'ing and optimizations won't happen; code becomes a lot slower. The new debugging api allows you to debug specific tabs, while the old one would force all of the browser (including the chrome js that handles the browser's UI) to enter debug mode and the whole browser gets slow. Because Honza is working on porting firebug to the new debugger API, it will get faster, and so will all of firefox when you are using firebug. IIRC, Honza is not just working on porting from the old api to the new one, but also on top of our remote debugging protocol. This means that we improve the debugging server, and both the native tools and firebug get better. Plus, you'll be able to use firebug on your laptop, connected remotely to firefox on your android phone, or firefox os.

fletchowns 13y ago

Love the new features. I still find myself using Firebug over the built in dev tools in either Chrome or Firefox. The Firebug team has done a really tremendous job over the years. Keep up the good work!

illumen 13y ago
Yeah, firebug still has quite a lot of polish compared to the others. Perhaps it has to do with the contributors being expert UI developers, and firebug developers second. Whereas the other tools are mostly developed by employees who do full time dev tool development, but not so much work using the tools. But I know others mostly prefer chrome tools. The same people often get stuck in firebug or in IE dev tools. Anyway... GREAT WORK FIREBUG TEAM! xo
- dubcanada 13y ago
  I fail to see how Firebug has a better UI then WebKit Developer Tools? As far as I am concerned they are the same in that regard. And since both of those tools are not built by "developers", but by "frontend engineers" it doesn't really matter. I spent like 15 minutes trying to figure out how to attach Firebug to the browser window. Only to find out that the upward pointing arrow in a gray circle means attach to browser window. On WebKit I click an icon that looks like a browser window with developer tools. The resources tab in WebKit is ten times better then the mishmash of CSS/Script/Net/Cookies tabs all spread out. Anyways that is just my opinion, and as far as I am concerned Dragonfly was the best.
  - actionscripted 13y ago
    Think what s/he's saying is that it helps that they use their own tools for UI dev versus those who hammer on the browser and made comparable tools, not that Firebug has a better UI.
    - dubcanada 13y ago
      That's fine, but I think it's a bit far fetched to say that the people who work on WebKit/Blink developer tools don't use the developer tools.

mnarayan01 13y ago

The list of improvements might be the most exciting I've ever seen for any software, ever. Seriously...great work!

sbarre 13y ago

"Copy as cURL" is great! I'm curious to see if it even builds POST requests properly.. Edit: it does! It includes all the headers, the POST data, etc...

JonnieCache 13y ago
Even the cookies. It's been in webkit for a while. SO USEFUL. You can also use it to leech stuff from login/captcha protected download areas like rapidshare or the apple dev center. No more failed browser downloads of 1gig files! Just add -C to your curl command!
- sbarre 13y ago
  I think it's actually "-C -" to tell it to automatically figure out where to restart.
tmister 13y ago
Well Chrome had this feature for a long time. Personally I don't find it much useful. But to me the killer feature of firebug is that when you open an XHR entry in new tab it opens the tab with all POST variables. Super handy when debugging REST api.
- sbarre 13y ago
  I don't know that this is in regular Chrome (at least I can't find it). Google-fu says that Chromium has it though..
  - thejosh 13y ago
    It's in Chrome for Linux and Windows for me. http://i.imgur.com/42D59mv.png http://i.imgur.com/42D59mv.png
  - paulirish 13y ago
    Yup it's in regular Chrome: https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/network#copying_requests_as_curl_commands https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/ne...

rmccue 13y ago

Very annoyingly, in the FF 24 beta, Firebug basically crashes the browser every time you open it (or switch to another tab and then back). Not sure if it's FF's problem or Firebug's, but it's really annoying.

simonlindholm 13y ago
Firefox's, certainly. It would be good if you reported it on Bugzilla.
- rmccue 13y ago
  Thanks, I had meant to ping someone about this, but keep forgetting. Filed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=908174 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=908174
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Interesting, you don't have lag when first opening it? I was investigating pretty much the same thing yesterday, in the end my problem was that the JSD was ridiculously slow to toggle, but firebug is already working to move to JSD2 so I can't really complain too much. There is a test extension you can use attached to this bug. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815603 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815603 I was getting something like 100ms to pause and 10000ms to unpause. With 5 tabs loaded and a couple hundred tabs unloaded. I disabled the javascript parts of firebug for general use, which does avoid the problem most of the time.
    - rmccue 13y ago
      Aha, you're right! Disabling the Script tab helps immensely. It's a shame since I need the Script tab for a lot of work, but it's not too much of a pain to disable/reenable.
- Achshar 13y ago
  How do you know for sure?

talles 13y ago

What a great release, it's hard to tell with new feature I liked more :)

anaphor 13y ago

Great, that seems to have fixed several bugs I've been encountering as well (if I switched tabs the firebug UI would disappear).

instakill 13y ago

I don't know if it's just on my machine but I prefer the built-in tools for a quick debug because FB is so damn slow.

chadscira 13y ago

But does it support blackboxing? - (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaFBvItTJrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaFBvItTJrE)

SebastianZ83 13y ago
Not yet, though it's something I suggested some time ago: http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=4888 http://code.google.com/p/fbug/issues/detail?id=4888. Let's see if we can get that for the next version.

ghostdiver 13y ago

I only miss those two features - Pretty print - Hot code replace