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Saying Goodbye to Firebug

hacks.mozilla.org

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Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#141

Post by majewsky »

StillBored wrote: post #78
snapetom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alert()

Which didn't help much when there was a syntax error somewhere close by causing the browser to silently terminate parsing/executing the code. At least these days the browsers tend to dump error messages into the console when this happens... In theory that could have been caught by a good jslint/syntax checker but those were a few years in the future too. Early, JS development really sucked, its only slightly better t…

> Which didn't help much when there was a syntax error somewhere close by causing the browser to silently terminate parsing/executing the code.

I recall a dramatic bug where, in 2012, I rolled out a new version of a web GUI with some JS mixed in it to an intranet audience of IE 7 and Firefox users. It initially looked good, but then reports came in that IE users couldn't use one of the buttons. After much debugging and confusion, it turned out that there was a trailing comma at the end of an array literal (i.e. `[1,2,3,]` instead of `[1,2,3]`). Firefox accepted that, but IE 7 didn't. (I think IE 8 added support for trailing commas.)

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#142

Post by kalleboo »

jordache wrote: post #98
irrational wrote: post #7

Firebug was the greatest thing to happen to web development. Honestly I still prefer it to the native dev tools. I especially love how most things go to the console so I don't have to jump all over the place to find the information I'm looking for. I absolutely abhor the network panel in Chrome. It's like they're purposefully trying to make it difficult.

huh? How can one love firebug over Chrome Dev Tools? With the latter being just as revolutionary as firebug was when it first came out.

Wasn't the initial version of the Chrome dev tools just the exact same as the Apple WebKit/Safari dev tools until Google started fleshing them out? Or am I misremembering history?

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#143

Post by analogic »

satanic_pope wrote: post #87

When I started out as a web developer 5 years ago, one of the prime reasons for choosing FF over chrome was Firebug. As a beginner, it made debugging so much easier. Five years later, I still cant fathom using anything but Firefox, alas, without firebug.

and now why i use chrome :/

dunno if chrome tools are better, but ff tools are sloow

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#144

Post by Piskvorrr »

flamtap wrote: post #133
piotrkubisa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that Network Panel in Firefox has built-in simple Postman-like tool [1] for editing request which you have already made. [1]: https://imgur.com/a/hBkmq // Chrome has copy as curl command.

Great for cheating at Facebook messenger games. Just send whatever score you like!

One would assume that the remote end doesn't trust user input...apparently not.

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#145

Post by Piskvorrr »

pjmlp wrote: post #41
giancarlostoro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual Studio did front-end web debugging back then?

Yep it did. Windows had one of the first JavaScript debuggers, due to JScript. Electron already existed as MSHTML packaged apps.

Everything old is new again. Oh the horrors of HTA!

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#146

Post by Piskvorrr »

bentaber wrote: post #70
snapetom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alert()

How about MODI - the mouseover DOM inspector loaded as a favelet. http://slayeroffice.com/?c=/content/tools/modi.html

Oh geez, the memories. And not happy memories, either. Those were truly the Dark Ages.

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#147

Post by pjmlp »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #145
pjmlp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep it did. Windows had one of the first JavaScript debuggers, due to JScript. Electron already existed as MSHTML packaged apps.

Everything old is new again. Oh the horrors of HTA!

The Electron generation seems to have a hard time understanding why consumers never liked HTAs.

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#149

Post by drderidder »

jgrahamc wrote: post #8
drderidder wrote: post #6

Firebug didn't just raise the bar for web debugging, it pretty much raised the bar for all debugging tools. It leaves a great legacy with the built-in dev tools. Great project.

Whoa. That's pretty hyperbolic. Firebug is definitely cool but things like SoftICE or the Visual Studio debugger were amazing.

Not really. It's not that other debuggers didn't provide some of those features and were very good at, say, stepping through program logic. I've spent many years using other debugging tools for C/C++ and Java, and although there are some good IDE's out there, firebug's capability to analyze everything from logic to object models to network activity and visual presentation details, in such a well-integrated and user-friendly way was frankly unprecedented.

Re: Saying Goodbye to Firebug

#150

Post by Drdrdrq »

michaelmior wrote: post #103
Drdrdrq wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeaaaah... not a Chrome-phone-home fan, so I'll make do with what FF has to offer. But thanks for the suggestion, hope it helps someone else. :)

Then why not use Chromium? You get the same development experience with less Google.

I just don't trust the devs behind Chromium (who are mostly employed by Google) to care about their users' privacy. Using FF is my way of voting against that.
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