91–100 of 157 posts
"The story of Firefox and Firebug is synonymous with the rise of the web. We fought the good fight and changed how developers inspect HTML and debug JS in the browser. Firebug ushered in the Web 2.0 era. " I love, used and appreciate firebug as much as the next guy but this is a bit much. Its a great product that helped alot of people it's not an ideal to fight for nor "ushered" in web 2.0.
Things instantly became real when firebug for IE came out. To me that one tool made a front end web development career a viable option. Do y'all remember JS before Firebug? ouch
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I am more at home in FF so this might not be true for Chrome... Just look at the simplicity and elegance of Firebug net panel ( https://2r4s9p1yi1fa2jd7j43zph8r-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/fil... ). I love Mozilla and respect them immensely, but any change they made to Firebug was for the worse. If they just copied the functionalities and design the result would be much better. I am very sorry I had to stop using Firebug…
You can get a similar view in Chrome by turning off the filter button and the two view buttons in the network toolbar, then ctrl-click on any of the columns in the table to hide the ones you aren't interested in.
I'm really concerned about how much weaker the new WebExtensions API than the previous extensions API. Just today I saw (and submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15542316 ) an interesting article about Keysnail, an amazing extension which is impossible to turn into a WebExtension — all because WebExtensions (apparently) forbids overriding C-n despite allowing override of other key sequences. I'm very conce…
Given that webextensions are not just a firefox thing: HN's probably the wrong place to voice that particular concern? We're losing a number of sweet addons with the switch to web extensions in Firefox specifically, but in terms of cross-browser gains, web extensions rather than "these things only work in this one browser" still seems the right way forward, and it's just another web spec so if we need more out of it,…
Why not? This thread is about losing valuable capabilities due to the migration to WebExtensions. Firebug was possible in the old extension system; it's impossible (as I understand it) with WebExtensions.
> in terms of cross-browser gains, web extensions rather than "these things only work in this one browser" still seems the right way forward
Do they? Is working on multiple browsers really that useful for extensions, many of which exist specifically to modify the behaviour of a single browser? For that matter, ISTR that WebExtension aren't really cross-browser — there's still some customisation required.
> if we need more out of it, let's get the attention of the people who draft that spec and get them to given more access to the things we need to bring back the functions that made life better
I don't disagree. Why not do that before eliminating useful functionality?
My concern is for Firefox's direction: it has spent the past several years removing useful functionality (most recently extensibility, but also the security of its previous Sync product, which is now thoroughly compromised) and adding extraneous functionality (e.g. Pocket, Hello, even containers[0]). I'm reminded very much of how the GNOME project went off the deep end, removing functionality (twelve years on and it still can't replace xscreensaver) and features because they thought Linux users want simplicity.
Likewise, Firefox and Mozilla seem to have been taking a series of decisions based on an IMHO inaccurate read on Firefox's userbase and that userbase's desires. I believe that Firefox users use it because it is philosophically better: freer, more secure, more private, more open than IE, Chrome or Opera. I think we're fine if it's practically worse, because we know that in time philosophical quality will lead to practical quality, but the reverse rarely happens if ever.
[0] Firefox has supported profiles for years; profiles and containers have significant overlaps in functionality and I think profiles are more usable.
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Yeah, SoftICE, I remember buying Hackerzvoice (a French newspaper-like hacking magazine) which included SoftICE tutorials on how to crack WinRAR license verification. (for educational purposes of course) I was amazed that I could breakpoint and debug any running app. I miss SoftICE. I read this a while back from someone who work for the company which owns SoftICE copyright : https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.c…
Wasn't SoftICE a bit of an overkill for cracking WinRAR? If memory serves right, it was a tool mainly for debugging kernel-level code (drivers) -- that's why it had to start before windows. WinDBG and similar userspace tools should have been just as good (or even better, as they woudn't interfere with WinAMP :)) for dealing with userspace processes.
Ironically, the first software I cracked, well tried to, was an IRC client named Klient if I recall correctly. I bypassed the license check, but, this software included a functionality which, when it detected this, broadcasted to everyone (except me) that I was using a pirated version and that I was accepting the CTCP reboot command :-)
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.
I mean 5 years ago, Chrome added debugging Web Workers[0] so clearly Chrome Dev Tools were already quite mature by 2012.
[0]: https://blog.chromium.org/2012/04/debugging-web-workers-with...
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.
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> I absolutely abhor the network panel in Chrome. What do you mean? There are plenty of ways to filter down the activity tab in Chrome if the problem you're experiencing is that the volume of requests is too high to be useful.
I am more at home in FF so this might not be true for Chrome... Just look at the simplicity and elegance of Firebug net panel ( https://2r4s9p1yi1fa2jd7j43zph8r-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/fil... ). I love Mozilla and respect them immensely, but any change they made to Firebug was for the worse. If they just copied the functionalities and design the result would be much better. I am very sorry I had to stop using Firebug…