Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thank You, Firebug (2017)

getfirebug.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 89 posts

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#31

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

tim-- wrote: post #20

Internet Explorer 6 also had the Microsoft created IE Dev Toolbar that came out around the same time as Firebug (I think it was 6 months after?). It really was a powerful tool, but somehow not really well known in the dev world at that time. I'm really sad that Microsoft put all thier eggs in the Chrome/Chromium basket, instead of continuing thier own engine, or supporting Firefox.

Yeah, I remember using this to try and debug MS JScript issues. What a headache, it was extremely flaky and would crash if you looked at it wrong.

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#33

Post by netsharc »

mongol wrote: post #4
moasda wrote: post #2

For me, Firebug was a game changer in web development. It has set a new standard.

For sure. I think Firebug, Gmail and Google Maps are approximately of the same age and they all opened up a new era, showing the way to a more modern web. I am unsure if the Web 2.0 moniker applies to what happened around this time but I think it was around then too.

Isn't Web 2.0 the web with user-contributed content, i.e. social media? For me, being part of Web 2.0 would not be something to be proud about, it's the tech that brought uninformed, angry populist rage online...

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#34

Post by mhd »

I'm still not sure whether adapting it as the main browser tool was a good choice. It would've been interesting to see various extensions working with e.g. a deep-internal API. Probably with none installed by default, making the browsers a bit more modular.

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#35

Post by malfist »

cxr wrote: post #19
masklinn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's worth also mentionining its precursor Venkman Is it, really? The experience of Venkman was horrendous. Not quite as bad as MS’s Script Debugger (I don’t remember venkman crashing multiple times per session, and it was able to debug the toplevel frame), but still just awful all around. And more relevant, it was nothing special, at least that I remember. It was notable in being a “normal” extension, but…

Strong disagree. Compared to Venkman, Firebug had the following misfeatures: - modal interface* - bloat - dubious** interface labels, like "DOM" (or whatever) to look at the object's property tree - totally sucked at debugging any part of the Gecko runtime/toolkit code, or anything that wasn't a Web page (including e.g. Firebug's own code) * This is a misfeature that every browser's built-in devtools copied, and it's…

Did we use the same firebug? Why all this vitriol towards it?

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#36

Post by tiborsaas »

Firebug was a game changer in frontend development, suddenly everything made sense and things got a lot more simple.

Before firebug in the IE6 days, there was a script that you could inject into your page which created a draggable floating window in the document with a basic console and maybe some DOM view. I can't remember the name.

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#37

Post by Exness199507 »

tiborsaas wrote: post #36

Firebug was a game changer in frontend development, suddenly everything made sense and things got a lot more simple. Before firebug in the IE6 days, there was a script that you could inject into your page which created a draggable floating window in the document with a basic console and maybe some DOM view. I can't remember the name.

No post body was provided.

Re: Thank You, Firebug (2017)

#38

Post by ransom1538 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #24
ZiiS wrote: post #3

I genuinely wonder if Flash/Silverlight would have won without this single tool.

Flash absolutely would have become more entrenched. You get the feeling that Apple wasn't going to support Adobe's Flash plugin on the iPhone, no matter what. Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes. They weren't going to pour billions into the iPhone just to have it be a delivery mechanism for Adobe's mess of a runtime. I see three alternate histories: 1. The iPhone launches without Flash, and it flop…

"Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes."

Lol. The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. If flash was supported 100% (practically natively) - there would be no point creating native apps in objective C (Flash was a full decade ahead). Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem. Once flash was dead and gone: SWIFT!

Post reply on HN