Chromebug 1.5a4
getfirebug.com has Chromebug 1.5a4. Chromebug is the Firebug code adapted for XUL applications. It is the debugger that Firebug developers use to develop Firebug. Note: you must install Firebug 1.5 as well as the Chromebug XPI. .
If you have looked any previous released version of Chromebug you will see a lot of changes. Some of these are inherited from Firebug. Others are improvements in Chromebug itself.
The key features that we use routinely and that work well:
- Inspect over Firefox. Probably also works on Thunderbird.
- Viewing XUL and HTML, CSS styles, Layout and the DOM properties all work well.
- Javascript debugging. Seems pretty good now, the only problem is when I breakpoint Firebug and then try to use the breakpoints in Firebug. Since they share the same core debug engine, the result is often that Chromebug fails to break.
- Error tracking in the Trace panel.
- The command line works for some commands at least (not something I use however)
It is also a fun tool for poking around under the covers:
- Try setting the context: to noWindow://BackstagePass and looking at the DOM panel
- The XUL Windows panel shows the output of the window mediator
- Filter: menu attempts to organize the chrome namespace (but I don’t use it after all)
- File: menu shows all the files Chromebug knows about (well just the JS files now).
- Tools > Open Chromebug Trace Console, if you want to know how to debug a debugger for debuggers
Problems areas:
- CSS editing is disabled because of Bug 503007
- No support for anonymous XBL nodes because of unimplemented functions.
- We don’t use Console or Net panel, so we don’t know if the work or not.
- Tools > Platform shows the components, but it is very slow then crashes Firefox.
- Some features under Tools have rotted but have not been removed.
- The source code looks like it was written by someone who did not understand XUL applications and did not have a lot of documentation for some of the APIs. (But its getting a lot better as the causes improve).
Finally Gerv helped set up a newsgroup, mozilla.addons.chromebug. I welcome suggestions and comments there.
jjb