14 ms·

Saying Goodbye to Firebug

805 points by kungfudoi 9y ago

homero 9y ago
Firebug taught me css. I'll miss it. I hate the built in tool.
- limeblack 9y ago
  Same here. I wish there was something like Firebug for Android Studio. Unfortunately it isn't exactly the same idea. MIT app inventor is to simple.
throwaway6497 9y ago
What is Joe Hewitt doing now?
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  https://medium.com/@joehewitt/entrepreneurship-or-lack-thereof-36ae0f420a07 https://medium.com/@joehewitt/entrepreneurship-or-lack-there...
- neil1023 9y ago
  His Github seems pretty active: https://github.com/joehewitt https://github.com/joehewitt
alayek 9y ago
In my first job, about four years ago, my first task was to make certain modifications in firebug for our company's internal use (mostly in reporting and filtering). I didn't even know JS to begin with. Jan Orvadko, the lead maintainer of Firebug, is an amazingly approachable & affable human being. He helped me a lot in the IRC channel, in going through the firebug codebase.
baldfat 9y ago
I know Firebug was great but it didn't usher in Web 2.0 > Jan 2007, Firebug 1.0 The start of Web 2.0! O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference was in 2004 We than had the infamous Time Person of the Year "YOU" "TIME selected the masses of users who were participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites."
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  That in itself doesn't mean much. At the time it was said that Web 2.0 is like teenage sex: everyone is talking about it, almost noone is doing it and those few that are doing it are doing it all wrong. :) I do agree that Firebug (as much as I miss it) didn't have much to do with Web 2.0 though.
  - pvdebbe 9y ago
    I just hate how everyone has their own meanings for "Web 2.0". I wish the modern, JS-dependent web was versioned 3.0 or something.
slivanes 9y ago
I remember using Firebug for the first time and being blown away by the real-time editing of the DOM/CSS, it saved my F5 key from certain destruction.
agotterer 9y ago
Thank you for the amazing contribution and for for making it a little bit easier to debug during a time when debugging was even harder. Firebug set in motion the browser tools that are bundled today.
nopacience 9y ago
i will miss you firebug!!! I loved when i could open firebug + native dev tools... that way i could navigate in html with firebug and make css changes on the native dev.. on the same screen! Now i can only open the native dev tools and i can only view either "Style editor" OR "Dom navigation" but not both at the same time. Will miss you firebug as extension!!
robin_reala 9y ago
I guess this is the right place to point out to people reminiscing that if you open Firefox dev tools and click the options cog, you can select a Firebug theme.
- muxator 9y ago
  Not the same thing... The Firefox dev tools' Firebug theme gives me the illusion that I can click the network tab and find that old, reassuring interface. And instead it's the (in my opinion) less functional one from dev tools. At that point, I prefer ditching the Firebug theme altogether, and embrace the loss. :(
  - irrational 9y ago
    I did that, but I'm not seeing the same functionality. It seems to just be a skin.
drderidder 9y ago
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.
- jgrahamc 9y ago
  Whoa. That's pretty hyperbolic. Firebug is definitely cool but things like SoftICE or the Visual Studio debugger were amazing.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    Don't forgot it was mostly imitating IE6's Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Even though it surpassed it pretty fast! go open source!
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    Visual Studio did front-end web debugging back then?
    - jgrahamc 9y ago
      The parent claimed the following: "Firebug didn't just raise the bar for web debugging, it pretty much raised the bar for all debugging tools." I dispute the idea that Firebug raised the bar for non-web debugging tools.
      - giancarlostoro 9y ago
        Guess I missed the latter claim.
    - gcb0 9y ago
      firebug took a while to have a proper javascript debugger. For a long while, you could only ever have breakpoints using IE+VS... But it was a crapshot if your code had too much DOM interaction. The debugger itself would crash (and offer you to debug itself heh)
irrational 9y ago
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.
- pkrefta 9y ago
  I can assure you - you're not the only one who hates Network Panel.
  - jherdman 9y ago
    It's definitely one of the weakest parts of the Firefox dev tools suite. I quite like Chrome's network panel though.
    - fenier 9y ago
      I consider Firefox's Network panel more useful than Chrome's. Having the ability to edit and resend network requests out of the box is exceptionally handy.
      - mgkimsal 9y ago
        On the other hand, having it always be a 2 step process kinda stinks. I haven't yet seen a way to just say "replay this request". The editing is nice, but I almost always have to just replay, quickly, and I can't do that in FF, but can in Chrome. Might be 20% of the time the 'edit and resend' is a handy/useful functionality - 'replay xhr' is handy the other 80% of the time.
        other_herbert 9y ago
        Copy the whole thing as curl, then go to postman and import the raw text of the curl command... Edit and replay all you want
emehrkay 9y ago
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
- snapetom 9y ago
  alert()
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    Or, easier without popups, logging to a div (hidden or at the bottom) that you could expand/open up to see output. Firebug was revolutionary not only for the console but the inspect tool was very needed as layouts and CSS progressed where outputs weren't enough.
  - nathancahill 9y ago
    document.write() cringe
  - gcb0 9y ago
    There was a very capable javascript debugger as a mozilla plugin (don't think it was an addon), years before firebug/browsers dev tools had one. It don't remember the name, it was something with a V.
    - rkwz 9y ago
      Venkman Debugger? https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/ https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/
    - fzzzy 9y ago
      Venkman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venkman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venkman
      - carussell 9y ago
        Firebug was neither the first for step-by-step JS debugging, nor for poking at the DOM. Those two things were within the purview of Venkman—the original Mozilla JS debugger—and the DOM Inspector—Firebug's predecessor created in 2001 by Joe Hewitt, an ex-Netscape/AOL employee and the original author of Firebug itself. Honza's timeline is off. I've left a note in the blog comments about this.
look_lookatme 9y ago
For those that have made the switch in the Firefox Developer era, do you find the developer tools as good as Chrome's? In the last week I've made the switch back to Firefox (Developer) and it's been awesome. I haven't had done any front end work yet so I haven't used the developer tools, though. I never really cared for the ergonomics of the Chrome devtools but I was really familiar with them and could efficiently profile/debug code.
- fenier 9y ago
  I consider most of the tools on par or better than what Chrome offers, with the exception of the performance tools. I find that Chrome makes things to clearer to folks, and the panel is easier to work with.
- chmln 9y ago
  Theyre OK, but I find the dev tools on chrome have a much better UX. I particularly dislike the console in FF which is just one tiny input at the bottom of the window. Overall ff devtools also seem slower to open and clunkier.
- wldcordeiro 9y ago
  They trade off. I think I still prefer the Chrome performance and memory tools but the inspector, debugger and most other tools I prefer in Firefox.
zeveb 9y ago
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 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 concerned for the future direction of Firefox.
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  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, 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.
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > Given that webextensions are not just a firefox thing: HN's probably the wrong place to voice that particular concern? 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.
wnevets 9y ago
I loved Firebug until chrome's devtools got so good and fast. Chrome's devtools is a main reason why I use chrome so much.
calimac 9y ago
It seems like they open sourced Firebug, developed it and now are taking it private by integrating it into Dev tools. As, a-side, I feel like users are going to, at some point get tired of building communities and applications to have the mature manifestations be yanked into the corporation and turned into a paid product. Not saying this is what's going on here. Look at facebook pushing tests on paid Feeds. So users build facebook, businesses build facebook and facebook has the audacity to test paid posts in 6 markets across the country. When are we going to stop the madness of being web-based surfs, indentured servants, building the new world with no property rights? The current licensing structure of information across the web has to change. There is no organized money behind the users. Until Users organize to build collective power against the usurious user licensing strategies we will continue to be exploited. Look at Hulu circa 2010.
agnivade 9y ago
FF Quantum seems to usher in a new era in browser development. Upgraded CSS Engine Upgraded Render Enginer with WebRender And now integrated firebug support. Exciting stuff.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  WebRender is coming but absolutely isn’t ready yet; it’s not even turned on by default in Nightly (although I use it on my home machine and it’s getting a very good very quickly).
  - Drdrdrq 9y ago
    And there is no integrated Firebug - just replacement.
    - krallja 9y ago
      > The good news is that all the capabilities of Firebug are now present in current Firefox Developer Tools. > Firebug 3 ... was built as an extension to built-in Firefox devtools and eventually integrated directly into devtools.
bhauer 9y ago
I miss Firebug for one simple reason: It detached from the browser window as a singular window that provided developer functions to all of your browser tabs. In modern Firefox and Chrome, each tab has its own distinct developer tools panel that can be detached as a separate window for the operating system's window manager to handle. Firebug's behavior was somewhat analogous to "MDI" in legacy GUI applications, in that a single window handled multiple views. The view switched with your browser's active tab. The funny bit is that the stack of developer tool windows we end up with today is reminiscent of the stack of browser windows we had prior to the advent of tabbed browsing. The relevant Bugzilla bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1219917 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1219917
- ino 9y ago
  I hate juggling dev tools, opening, resizing, detaching them one by one, for each tab. It fucking sucks.
moomin 9y ago
It feels like Firebug’s had a longer farewell tour than Barbara Streisand.
osteele 9y ago
Before Firebug, those of us doing web development were writing things like this for use in our coder's carry kits http://blog.osteele.com/2006/03/inline-console/ http://blog.osteele.com/2006/03/inline-console/ Firebug made me happy to leave that behind.
jdorfman 9y ago
Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross have really left their mark. I wonder from time to time what they would have created if Facebook didn't acquire Parakey back in 2007. Hopefully, they will collaborate again in the future.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
I appreciated firebug back in the day, but a few years ago the devs decided to force a white background to it, which did not work in our darkened media studio. They would not reconsider (not the first time I’ve had a run in with white bg fascists; they’ve now taken over the prefs panel). Thankfully moz dev tools were getting to be just good enough around that time and supported a dark theme. Last time I ever used firebug, thanks for all the fish.
Illniyar 9y ago
"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.
- underwater 9y ago
  I was building web products professionally before and after Firebug and the difference was staggering. It opened up the full possibilities of CSS and JavaScript like no other tool before it.
- maaaats 9y ago
  Could the web be what it is today without the dev tools?
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Having been a developer since Web "1.0" it's not exactly wrong, but I think you're interpreting that incorrectly. Without Firebug a lot of the JS development that was basically required for Web 2.0 sites would have been much much slower and even more complex to maintain. It didn't create Web 2.0 (arguably that had been a thing since 2003-2004, and the term dates to ~99) but it did usher it into mainstream development due to making it less painful to create that content.
- irrational 9y ago
  Do you not remember what it was like in the years (nearly decades) prior to firebug? alert() still gives me nightmares. Firebug was easily as huge as AJAX, ES6, and other such milestones.
inanutshellus 9y ago
edit: wldcordeiro pointed to a UI that looks nothing like what I have as a UI (in Firefox 56)... removing my comment until I can figure out why. edit edit: Apparently the last time I tried to install Firebug it instead asked me to just make Developer Tools look like Firebug, which is definitely a bad idea.
- wldcordeiro 9y ago
  The modern Firefox Debugger has none of the issues you're whining about. https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html
Perceptes 9y ago
Does anyone know the history of the `console` object? The first time I ever saw it and used it was with Firebug, but it occurs to me that I don't know if Firebug invented it. Did it just decide to inject this name into the global namespace? And having it become a common API across multiple JS environments was due to its popularity in Firebug? Or was it somehow already in JS and I just wasn't aware of it up until that point?
- llimllib 9y ago
  My recollection is that you are correct; it originated with Firebug and sprouted in other browsers after that, but I would love some history around it too. Here's console.js in 2007: https://github.com/firebug/firebug/blob/85f35d8e871783adcf9cc07f6fc584c9da6ec7d7/content/firebug/console.js https://github.com/firebug/firebug/blob/85f35d8e871783adcf9c...
- maaaats 9y ago
  I remember we had to check for its existence before using it, monkeypatching it to noop if not found.
- flomo 9y ago
  Firefox had a Console window which displayed error messages from the very beginning. But I have no idea if you could log to it.
- solidr53 9y ago
  Netscape debugging http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/DOMM-4UZHEY http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/DOMM-4UZHEY
homero 9y ago
I still need some extensions https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Firebug_Extensions https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Firebug_Extensions
yeukhon 9y ago
Wait DDG couldn't possibly have existed when 0.2 was released in 2006? Is that image a reconstruction on an XP VM?
- Macha 9y ago
  Yeah, the video is from 2013, not 2006.
nicodjimenez 9y ago
RIP Firebug, brings back great memories of learning HTML / CSS / XPath selectors. I use Chrome developer tools these days (not a huge fan but it does work) but Firebug will always have a special place in my heart as a GREAT debugging tool.
invalid_name 9y ago
I expected a similar article when it was time to say goodbye to Internet Explorer as well.
partycoder 9y ago
I remember using Firebug for the first time: it was polished from the very beginning, not feeling like an early release at all. Had enough added value to be a commercial tool, but it was released for free. For that, kudos.
satanic_pope 9y ago
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.
- styfle 9y ago
  That's odd because I seem to recall that I switched to Chrome from Firefox shortly after Chrome was released because it shipped with Dev Tools circa 2009. 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-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2012/04/debugging-web-workers-with...
- giobox 9y ago
  My memory might be way off base here, but I'm fairly sure Chrome Dev Tools were in a reasonable state by 2012. Screenshots from the time certainly suggest so. My experience is much the opposite, in that it was around 2012 or so that I probably stopped installing Firefox on my dev machines altogether. That said, recent features in Firefox (Containers especially) have me much more interested again.
  - Zarel 9y ago
    I played around with Chrome in 2008 when it first came out in beta, and I remember finding Chrome Devtools an improvement over Firebug. By the time the Firefox 4 betas were out, it was no contest; Firebug was very crashy (which, to be fair, it's hard for an extension to support a beta browser, but Chrome's dev and beta channels always had a reasonably stable devtools thanks to it being built-in).
- analogic 9y ago
  and now why i use chrome :/ dunno if chrome tools are better, but ff tools are sloow
digitalmaster 9y ago
Wow.. feels like a legendary player is retiring .. Thank you for changing the game Firebug. #hallOfFame
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
shmerl 9y ago
Regarding Firefox Developer Tools. Is there a way to set older dark theme there? I don't like the current one that appeared in Firefox 57. Previous had milder / metal colors.
nerpderp83 9y ago
Firebug enabled the Web 2.0 revolution. The impact it has had is immeasurable. Joe Hewitt needs a huge fucking award. Huge.
smaili 9y ago
Good memories and good times. Thanks Firebug for existing, it' hard to imagine web development without dom inspection, especially in the days of IE6.
lurker12390879 9y ago
It lives on in Waterfox...
rplnt 9y ago
Opera used to have its own debugging/inspection tool[1] as well. It was released in 2008, it was open-source[2] (unlike the browser), didn't required plugins like firebug at the time, had handy remote debugging, overall I enjoyed it the most. But it died with the browser. Honestly, I'm surprised it's still up somewhere. 1. https://www.opera.com/dragonfly/ https://www.opera.com/dragonfly/ 2. https://github.com/operasoftware/dragonfly https://github.com/operasoftware/dragonfly
werdnapk 9y ago
I'm on Firefox 56, but I believe Firebug worked in 55 still. The performance of Firebug fire exceeded the native browser tools. The inspector tool in Firebug was damn near instant to allow me to select an element in the browser. Firefox's version of the inspector can take upwards of 5 seconds sometimes to become "ready". Side note... I'm on a 7 year old macbook air, so the differences are very notable.
- concerned_user 9y ago
  My experience as well lately dev tools are very sluggish in FF.
guftagu 9y ago
I'm debugging a symphony app that sends out error messages as full fledged HTML pages with bells and whistles. Previously I could see the rendered version of the HTML in firefox by going to the Preview tab after selecting the request but a short while back they removed this feature. I am now forced to use Chrome for debugging. I can't see the point of Forgot dev edition of they have to remove useful dev features from it.
shahriar-alam 9y ago
Firebug was the great tool for checking XHR is a clean way. No bullshit only what is most important. Yes, you can do it in built-in dev tools too, but sometimes it feels like UI is unnecessarily complex.
boksiora 9y ago
nooooo :(( i miss it. please bring it back

805 points by kungfudoi 9y ago

homero 9y ago

Firebug taught me css. I'll miss it. I hate the built in tool.

limeblack 9y ago
Same here. I wish there was something like Firebug for Android Studio. Unfortunately it isn't exactly the same idea. MIT app inventor is to simple.

throwaway6497 9y ago

What is Joe Hewitt doing now?

TheRealPomax 9y ago
https://medium.com/@joehewitt/entrepreneurship-or-lack-thereof-36ae0f420a07 https://medium.com/@joehewitt/entrepreneurship-or-lack-there...
neil1023 9y ago
His Github seems pretty active: https://github.com/joehewitt https://github.com/joehewitt

alayek 9y ago

In my first job, about four years ago, my first task was to make certain modifications in firebug for our company's internal use (mostly in reporting and filtering). I didn't even know JS to begin with. Jan Orvadko, the lead maintainer of Firebug, is an amazingly approachable & affable human being. He helped me a lot in the IRC channel, in going through the firebug codebase.

baldfat 9y ago

I know Firebug was great but it didn't usher in Web 2.0 > Jan 2007, Firebug 1.0 The start of Web 2.0! O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference was in 2004 We than had the infamous Time Person of the Year "YOU" "TIME selected the masses of users who were participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites."

Drdrdrq 9y ago
That in itself doesn't mean much. At the time it was said that Web 2.0 is like teenage sex: everyone is talking about it, almost noone is doing it and those few that are doing it are doing it all wrong. :) I do agree that Firebug (as much as I miss it) didn't have much to do with Web 2.0 though.
- pvdebbe 9y ago
  I just hate how everyone has their own meanings for "Web 2.0". I wish the modern, JS-dependent web was versioned 3.0 or something.

slivanes 9y ago

I remember using Firebug for the first time and being blown away by the real-time editing of the DOM/CSS, it saved my F5 key from certain destruction.

agotterer 9y ago

Thank you for the amazing contribution and for for making it a little bit easier to debug during a time when debugging was even harder. Firebug set in motion the browser tools that are bundled today.

nopacience 9y ago

i will miss you firebug!!! I loved when i could open firebug + native dev tools... that way i could navigate in html with firebug and make css changes on the native dev.. on the same screen! Now i can only open the native dev tools and i can only view either "Style editor" OR "Dom navigation" but not both at the same time. Will miss you firebug as extension!!

robin_reala 9y ago

I guess this is the right place to point out to people reminiscing that if you open Firefox dev tools and click the options cog, you can select a Firebug theme.

muxator 9y ago
Not the same thing... The Firefox dev tools' Firebug theme gives me the illusion that I can click the network tab and find that old, reassuring interface. And instead it's the (in my opinion) less functional one from dev tools. At that point, I prefer ditching the Firebug theme altogether, and embrace the loss. :(
- irrational 9y ago
  I did that, but I'm not seeing the same functionality. It seems to just be a skin.

drderidder 9y ago

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.

jgrahamc 9y ago
Whoa. That's pretty hyperbolic. Firebug is definitely cool but things like SoftICE or the Visual Studio debugger were amazing.
- gcb0 9y ago
  Don't forgot it was mostly imitating IE6's Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Even though it surpassed it pretty fast! go open source!
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  Visual Studio did front-end web debugging back then?
  - jgrahamc 9y ago
    The parent claimed the following: "Firebug didn't just raise the bar for web debugging, it pretty much raised the bar for all debugging tools." I dispute the idea that Firebug raised the bar for non-web debugging tools.
    - giancarlostoro 9y ago
      Guess I missed the latter claim.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    firebug took a while to have a proper javascript debugger. For a long while, you could only ever have breakpoints using IE+VS... But it was a crapshot if your code had too much DOM interaction. The debugger itself would crash (and offer you to debug itself heh)

irrational 9y ago

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.

pkrefta 9y ago
I can assure you - you're not the only one who hates Network Panel.
- jherdman 9y ago
  It's definitely one of the weakest parts of the Firefox dev tools suite. I quite like Chrome's network panel though.
  - fenier 9y ago
    I consider Firefox's Network panel more useful than Chrome's. Having the ability to edit and resend network requests out of the box is exceptionally handy.
    - mgkimsal 9y ago
      On the other hand, having it always be a 2 step process kinda stinks. I haven't yet seen a way to just say "replay this request". The editing is nice, but I almost always have to just replay, quickly, and I can't do that in FF, but can in Chrome. Might be 20% of the time the 'edit and resend' is a handy/useful functionality - 'replay xhr' is handy the other 80% of the time.
      - other_herbert 9y ago
        Copy the whole thing as curl, then go to postman and import the raw text of the curl command... Edit and replay all you want

emehrkay 9y ago

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

snapetom 9y ago
alert()
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Or, easier without popups, logging to a div (hidden or at the bottom) that you could expand/open up to see output. Firebug was revolutionary not only for the console but the inspect tool was very needed as layouts and CSS progressed where outputs weren't enough.
- nathancahill 9y ago
  document.write() cringe
- gcb0 9y ago
  There was a very capable javascript debugger as a mozilla plugin (don't think it was an addon), years before firebug/browsers dev tools had one. It don't remember the name, it was something with a V.
  - rkwz 9y ago
    Venkman Debugger? https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/ https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/
  - fzzzy 9y ago
    Venkman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venkman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venkman
    - carussell 9y ago
      Firebug was neither the first for step-by-step JS debugging, nor for poking at the DOM. Those two things were within the purview of Venkman—the original Mozilla JS debugger—and the DOM Inspector—Firebug's predecessor created in 2001 by Joe Hewitt, an ex-Netscape/AOL employee and the original author of Firebug itself. Honza's timeline is off. I've left a note in the blog comments about this.

look_lookatme 9y ago

For those that have made the switch in the Firefox Developer era, do you find the developer tools as good as Chrome's? In the last week I've made the switch back to Firefox (Developer) and it's been awesome. I haven't had done any front end work yet so I haven't used the developer tools, though. I never really cared for the ergonomics of the Chrome devtools but I was really familiar with them and could efficiently profile/debug code.

fenier 9y ago
I consider most of the tools on par or better than what Chrome offers, with the exception of the performance tools. I find that Chrome makes things to clearer to folks, and the panel is easier to work with.
chmln 9y ago
Theyre OK, but I find the dev tools on chrome have a much better UX. I particularly dislike the console in FF which is just one tiny input at the bottom of the window. Overall ff devtools also seem slower to open and clunkier.
wldcordeiro 9y ago
They trade off. I think I still prefer the Chrome performance and memory tools but the inspector, debugger and most other tools I prefer in Firefox.

zeveb 9y ago

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 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 concerned for the future direction of Firefox.

TheRealPomax 9y ago
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, 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.
- zeveb 9y ago
  > Given that webextensions are not just a firefox thing: HN's probably the wrong place to voice that particular concern? 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.

wnevets 9y ago

I loved Firebug until chrome's devtools got so good and fast. Chrome's devtools is a main reason why I use chrome so much.

calimac 9y ago

It seems like they open sourced Firebug, developed it and now are taking it private by integrating it into Dev tools. As, a-side, I feel like users are going to, at some point get tired of building communities and applications to have the mature manifestations be yanked into the corporation and turned into a paid product. Not saying this is what's going on here. Look at facebook pushing tests on paid Feeds. So users build facebook, businesses build facebook and facebook has the audacity to test paid posts in 6 markets across the country. When are we going to stop the madness of being web-based surfs, indentured servants, building the new world with no property rights? The current licensing structure of information across the web has to change. There is no organized money behind the users. Until Users organize to build collective power against the usurious user licensing strategies we will continue to be exploited. Look at Hulu circa 2010.

agnivade 9y ago

FF Quantum seems to usher in a new era in browser development. Upgraded CSS Engine Upgraded Render Enginer with WebRender And now integrated firebug support. Exciting stuff.

robin_reala 9y ago
WebRender is coming but absolutely isn’t ready yet; it’s not even turned on by default in Nightly (although I use it on my home machine and it’s getting a very good very quickly).
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  And there is no integrated Firebug - just replacement.
  - krallja 9y ago
    > The good news is that all the capabilities of Firebug are now present in current Firefox Developer Tools. > Firebug 3 ... was built as an extension to built-in Firefox devtools and eventually integrated directly into devtools.

bhauer 9y ago

I miss Firebug for one simple reason: It detached from the browser window as a singular window that provided developer functions to all of your browser tabs. In modern Firefox and Chrome, each tab has its own distinct developer tools panel that can be detached as a separate window for the operating system's window manager to handle. Firebug's behavior was somewhat analogous to "MDI" in legacy GUI applications, in that a single window handled multiple views. The view switched with your browser's active tab. The funny bit is that the stack of developer tool windows we end up with today is reminiscent of the stack of browser windows we had prior to the advent of tabbed browsing. The relevant Bugzilla bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1219917 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1219917

ino 9y ago
I hate juggling dev tools, opening, resizing, detaching them one by one, for each tab. It fucking sucks.

moomin 9y ago

It feels like Firebug’s had a longer farewell tour than Barbara Streisand.

osteele 9y ago

Before Firebug, those of us doing web development were writing things like this for use in our coder's carry kits http://blog.osteele.com/2006/03/inline-console/ http://blog.osteele.com/2006/03/inline-console/ Firebug made me happy to leave that behind.

jdorfman 9y ago

Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross have really left their mark. I wonder from time to time what they would have created if Facebook didn't acquire Parakey back in 2007. Hopefully, they will collaborate again in the future.

mixmastamyk 9y ago

I appreciated firebug back in the day, but a few years ago the devs decided to force a white background to it, which did not work in our darkened media studio. They would not reconsider (not the first time I’ve had a run in with white bg fascists; they’ve now taken over the prefs panel). Thankfully moz dev tools were getting to be just good enough around that time and supported a dark theme. Last time I ever used firebug, thanks for all the fish.

Illniyar 9y ago

"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.

underwater 9y ago
I was building web products professionally before and after Firebug and the difference was staggering. It opened up the full possibilities of CSS and JavaScript like no other tool before it.
maaaats 9y ago
Could the web be what it is today without the dev tools?
abritinthebay 9y ago
Having been a developer since Web "1.0" it's not exactly wrong, but I think you're interpreting that incorrectly. Without Firebug a lot of the JS development that was basically required for Web 2.0 sites would have been much much slower and even more complex to maintain. It didn't create Web 2.0 (arguably that had been a thing since 2003-2004, and the term dates to ~99) but it did usher it into mainstream development due to making it less painful to create that content.
irrational 9y ago
Do you not remember what it was like in the years (nearly decades) prior to firebug? alert() still gives me nightmares. Firebug was easily as huge as AJAX, ES6, and other such milestones.

inanutshellus 9y ago

edit: wldcordeiro pointed to a UI that looks nothing like what I have as a UI (in Firefox 56)... removing my comment until I can figure out why. edit edit: Apparently the last time I tried to install Firebug it instead asked me to just make Developer Tools look like Firebug, which is definitely a bad idea.

wldcordeiro 9y ago
The modern Firefox Debugger has none of the issues you're whining about. https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html

Perceptes 9y ago

Does anyone know the history of the `console` object? The first time I ever saw it and used it was with Firebug, but it occurs to me that I don't know if Firebug invented it. Did it just decide to inject this name into the global namespace? And having it become a common API across multiple JS environments was due to its popularity in Firebug? Or was it somehow already in JS and I just wasn't aware of it up until that point?

llimllib 9y ago
My recollection is that you are correct; it originated with Firebug and sprouted in other browsers after that, but I would love some history around it too. Here's console.js in 2007: https://github.com/firebug/firebug/blob/85f35d8e871783adcf9cc07f6fc584c9da6ec7d7/content/firebug/console.js https://github.com/firebug/firebug/blob/85f35d8e871783adcf9c...
maaaats 9y ago
I remember we had to check for its existence before using it, monkeypatching it to noop if not found.
flomo 9y ago
Firefox had a Console window which displayed error messages from the very beginning. But I have no idea if you could log to it.
solidr53 9y ago
Netscape debugging http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/DOMM-4UZHEY http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/DOMM-4UZHEY

homero 9y ago

I still need some extensions https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Firebug_Extensions https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Firebug_Extensions

yeukhon 9y ago

Wait DDG couldn't possibly have existed when 0.2 was released in 2006? Is that image a reconstruction on an XP VM?

Macha 9y ago
Yeah, the video is from 2013, not 2006.

nicodjimenez 9y ago

RIP Firebug, brings back great memories of learning HTML / CSS / XPath selectors. I use Chrome developer tools these days (not a huge fan but it does work) but Firebug will always have a special place in my heart as a GREAT debugging tool.

invalid_name 9y ago

I expected a similar article when it was time to say goodbye to Internet Explorer as well.

partycoder 9y ago

I remember using Firebug for the first time: it was polished from the very beginning, not feeling like an early release at all. Had enough added value to be a commercial tool, but it was released for free. For that, kudos.

satanic_pope 9y ago

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.

styfle 9y ago
That's odd because I seem to recall that I switched to Chrome from Firefox shortly after Chrome was released because it shipped with Dev Tools circa 2009. 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-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2012/04/debugging-web-workers-with...
giobox 9y ago
My memory might be way off base here, but I'm fairly sure Chrome Dev Tools were in a reasonable state by 2012. Screenshots from the time certainly suggest so. My experience is much the opposite, in that it was around 2012 or so that I probably stopped installing Firefox on my dev machines altogether. That said, recent features in Firefox (Containers especially) have me much more interested again.
- Zarel 9y ago
  I played around with Chrome in 2008 when it first came out in beta, and I remember finding Chrome Devtools an improvement over Firebug. By the time the Firefox 4 betas were out, it was no contest; Firebug was very crashy (which, to be fair, it's hard for an extension to support a beta browser, but Chrome's dev and beta channels always had a reasonably stable devtools thanks to it being built-in).
analogic 9y ago
and now why i use chrome :/ dunno if chrome tools are better, but ff tools are sloow

digitalmaster 9y ago

Wow.. feels like a legendary player is retiring .. Thank you for changing the game Firebug. #hallOfFame

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

shmerl 9y ago

Regarding Firefox Developer Tools. Is there a way to set older dark theme there? I don't like the current one that appeared in Firefox 57. Previous had milder / metal colors.

nerpderp83 9y ago

Firebug enabled the Web 2.0 revolution. The impact it has had is immeasurable. Joe Hewitt needs a huge fucking award. Huge.

smaili 9y ago

Good memories and good times. Thanks Firebug for existing, it' hard to imagine web development without dom inspection, especially in the days of IE6.

lurker12390879 9y ago

It lives on in Waterfox...

rplnt 9y ago

Opera used to have its own debugging/inspection tool[1] as well. It was released in 2008, it was open-source[2] (unlike the browser), didn't required plugins like firebug at the time, had handy remote debugging, overall I enjoyed it the most. But it died with the browser. Honestly, I'm surprised it's still up somewhere. 1. https://www.opera.com/dragonfly/ https://www.opera.com/dragonfly/ 2. https://github.com/operasoftware/dragonfly https://github.com/operasoftware/dragonfly

werdnapk 9y ago

I'm on Firefox 56, but I believe Firebug worked in 55 still. The performance of Firebug fire exceeded the native browser tools. The inspector tool in Firebug was damn near instant to allow me to select an element in the browser. Firefox's version of the inspector can take upwards of 5 seconds sometimes to become "ready". Side note... I'm on a 7 year old macbook air, so the differences are very notable.

concerned_user 9y ago
My experience as well lately dev tools are very sluggish in FF.

guftagu 9y ago

I'm debugging a symphony app that sends out error messages as full fledged HTML pages with bells and whistles. Previously I could see the rendered version of the HTML in firefox by going to the Preview tab after selecting the request but a short while back they removed this feature. I am now forced to use Chrome for debugging. I can't see the point of Forgot dev edition of they have to remove useful dev features from it.

shahriar-alam 9y ago

Firebug was the great tool for checking XHR is a clean way. No bullshit only what is most important. Yes, you can do it in built-in dev tools too, but sometimes it feels like UI is unnecessarily complex.

boksiora 9y ago

nooooo :(( i miss it. please bring it back