Development Blog

getfirebug.com has Firebug 1.6X.0a15, another quick bug-fix release so we can get a decent version for alpha testers to give us feedback.

jjb

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getfirebug.com has Firebug 1.6X.0a14. It has the last of the features for Firebug 1.6:

• Command line available on all panels
• Command line completion rewrite:
  • popup completion list, you can click on the list to select if you like. Max of 40 entries
  • preview-with-select, shows up blue, erased if you type, accepted if you type any non-identifier character
  • tab-cycles (like other Firebug editors), this is an incompatible change (TAB used to accept completion).
• Net panel reports BFCache hits

Feedback on these new features would be most welcome.

Bugs Fixed in 1.6a14.

jjb

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getfirebug.com has the final demo web page for our Velocity demo.  We are in the Lightning Demo session at 10:40am on Wednesday.  If you want to reproduce the demos you will need to install the extensions.

jjb

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getfirebug.com has Firebug 1.6X.0a13 with couple of features that are still incomplete but with a fix for issue 3017 which broke JS debugging.

• Reimplement command line and console (again), avoiding elements and attributes in the page.
• Popup completion on command line
• Improved presentation of the scope chain in the Script panel Watch side panel
• Show the prototype, constructor, and __proto__ properties of objects

The 5 other bug fixes are also included.

jjb

Please post follow ups to the newsgroup.

getfirebug.com has Firebug 1.6X.0a12. Just one more alpha to go then its Beta time!

Feature work:

• SVG pretty print in the net panel (contribution from Sebastian  Zartner)
• save and restore error breakpoints
• Script panel file list has auto scroll button and shows filtering text
• Lots of locale updates

Internal source refactoring work:

• Panel activation source refactoring (prep for Firebug 1.7)
• convert all Firebug ‘components’ to Components.utils style modules (so Firebug 1.6 can work with FF 4.0)

The release also has 28 bug fixes.

We have one test case failing, but only on automatic testing. When we run our test net/1456/issue1456.htm we sometimes get the message:

Permission denied for <https://getfirebug.com> to get property Function.__parent__ from <>.

I have no idea what it could mean.

jjb

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There’s a now a new way to learn about Firebug: “Firebug 1.5: Editing, Debugging, and Monitoring Web Pages,” by Chandan Luthra and Deepak Mittal, published by Packt Publishing.  This book examines Firebug features in a straight-forward, easy-to-ready manner, including lots of annotated screen shots and examples. Luthra and Mittal go beyond the basics to survey Firebug extensions, give pointers to creating your own extension, tabulate options and shortcuts, and to summarize Firebug future plans.

For new users this book introduces the individual panels as you’d expect but it also highlights the way Firebug interconnects information across panels. That combo provides a solid foundation for anyone picking up Firebug for the first time. The middle part of the book, on AJAX debugging and performance tuning, give an additional boost to the beginner. Introducing Firebug’s growing ecosystems of developer tools helps the new user branch out as soon as they get the basics down.

But experienced users may also be interested. Many Firebug users focus on one aspect of the tool. This book will help them see opportunities in areas they may not have explored.  Firebug  has lots of stuff inside: Luthra and Mittal provide a new way to understand it.

jjb

Pedro Simonetti Garcia announces the release of Firebug Lite 1.3.0!  This in-page version of the Firebug concept offers many of the Firebug features popular in Firebug for Firefox, but it works in many browsers.  The  new release improves the user interface, deepens the implementation of CSS support, and improves the inspector and console panel.

With 1.3 Pedro Simonetti began integrating the Firebug Lite and Firebug for Firefox source code.  Next we divide Firebug for Firefox into user-interface (front end) and information extraction (back end). Then we merge Firebug Lite and the new front end. That gives us a common front end interface for Firefox multi-process, Fennec mobile web, Firefox with JSDebugv2, and cross browser. So in one master stroke Pedro Simonetti enhances Firebug Lite and sets us on a new course for Firebug development!

Of course the Firefox version of Firebug has many more features and we keep moving it forward. Ultimately we hope this trend continues: Firebug gets stronger on all browsers but the Firefox version keeps pushing out ahead.

jjb

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getfirebug.com has Firebug 1.6X.0a11. This release is dedicated to Sebastian Zartner who recently joined the Firebug Working Group and has been working on our bug list.

• Honza implemented console.table so source like this:

var family = {};
family.header = ["First", "Last", "Age", "Desc"];
family.mother = new Person("Susan", "Doyle", 32);
family.father = new Person("John", "Doyle", 33);
family.daughter = new Person("Lily", "Doyle", 5);
family.son = new Person("Mike", "Doyle", 8);
family.mother.desc = "mother";
family.father.desc = "father";

console.table(family);

produces:



More examples are available in our console/api/table test page. This feature was suggested by Patrick Mueller who works on webkit based on a similar feature implemented in FirePHP by Christoph Dorn.

• Disabling break on next error and  debugger; keywords. When you hit these in the debugger you now have the option of replacing them with a disabled breakpoint. The debugger will not break at these lines until you remove the disabled breakpoint:
• You can also see the forward and back arrows Honza added in 1.6a10 in these screenshots.

Of course we have bug fixes, mostly around problems I created with the persistent breakpoints feature.

jjb

Please post comments in the newsgroup.

Firebug 1.5.4 has been available on getfirebug.com for a while and since we have received only positive feedback, it’s now available on addons.mozilla.org too.

This minor update fixes two annoying bugs. One is related to script truncation problem and the other to an options menu (the mini drop down menu available for the selected panel tab).

Special thanks to Mark Rawling for providing test cases and help!

Honza

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We’ll be showing a quick Firebug demo at Velocity again this year. We are on Wed. morning June 23.  I’ll try to highlight a couple of new things from the Net panel and the new breakpoints, using break on XHR for the example.

Lightning Demos Andreas Grabner (dynaTrace Software), John J. Barton (IBM), Stoyan Stefanov (Yahoo! Inc), Bryan McQuade (Google).

The promoter says you can put the code vel10fsp in when you register to get 20% off.

jjb

Comments in the newsgroup please.