5 ms·

A small nitpick: the article lists the "IE Developer Toolbar" for IE6 first, and suggests that everybody else's development tools followed that model. In fact,

A small nitpick: the article lists the "IE Developer Toolbar" for IE6 first, and suggests that everybody else's development tools followed that model. In fact, the earliest reference I can find to the IE Developer Toolbar suggests[1] that it was released in early 2007, while the Firebug version history[2] shows Firebug v0.2 released in January 2006, so it's about a year older than IE's developer tools. Even if Firebug itself is no longer head-and-shoulders better than other tools, the fact that the basic model was copied and polished by Microsoft, Apple, Opera and later Mozilla themselves shows that Joe Hewitt had a pretty great idea back in early 2006. [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/01/09/ie-developer-toolbar-beta-3-now-available.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/01/09/ie-developer-t... [2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/versions/?page=4 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/versi...

kybernetikos 13y ago
Yes, before Firebug, we were using MS Script Debugger/Script Editor in IE. It wasn't great, but it was more reliable for script debugging than Firebug for a long time.
- masklinn 13y ago
  Before Firebug, there was Venkman[0] which was definitely shite but worked if you had enough courage to understand its byzantine behavior. It provided a profiler on top of the JS debugger. And IE development could use Visual Studio (and later Visual Studio Express web edition) for a slightly better experience than the MS Script Debugger, although the core issues such as not being able to see let alone debug toplevel javascript remained). [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Venkman_Introduction https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Venkman_Introductio...
  - kybernetikos 13y ago
    I tried Venkman but found it so terrible I would do most of my script debugging in IE.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      It admittedly had a learning curve roughly on-part with Eclipse over POTS with a drunk monkey at the other end of the call. I was rather happy when Firebug came into my world.
wmt 13y ago
The Mozilla DOM inspector is even older, it was even bundled in the Firefox installer in 2003. If the IE toolbar DOM inspector which was the reason some devs used IE 6 like the article suggests, I would bet that they had never even tried Firefox. http://kb.mozillazine.org/DOM_Inspector http://kb.mozillazine.org/DOM_Inspector
ritchiea 13y ago
And once again the top comment doesn't do anything to continue the thoughtful discussion that began in the article, instead providing a pedantic correction.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  If it weren't for pedants, we wouldn't have computers.
  - tinco 13y ago
    Yes, because the introduction of the computer was a minor change to the world that only a pedant would have bothered with?
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Good point, it wasn't a minor change. I meant to specify working computers.
      - philh 13y ago
        That doesn't seem relevant. If it wasn't for hunter-gatherers, we wouldn't have much of anything; but that doesn't mean hunter-gatherers have much to contribute to particle physics. There are times when it's important to be pedantic, like when you're writing software. (I don't think we normally use the word "pedantic" in these cases, but I'm not going to argue the matter.) And there are times when it's not important, like when an article mixes up the order in which two pieces of software were released.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        A cornerstone of writing any kind of history is establishing an accurate chronology of events. In peer-reviewed articles the details of who came first in related work sections are critical. At any rate, I think many of us simply find it interesting to hear the real story. It's not like the guy was correcting a grammatical mistake, and it's not like he was impolite about it.
Fuxy 13y ago
I was about to point that out myself giving credit where credit is due is important and that is a considerable mistake in my eyes. Not to mention i was using Firebug before IE had any development tools so it saddens me that Microsoft gets credit for it.
mattmanser 13y ago
No, you're wrong. You weren't around obviously, so you probably don't know it was in Beta for donkeys. I actually remember first using it in 2006. Here's an article about the beta 1 refresh from Nov 2005, so it was out even earlier than that. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2005/11/01/487833.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2005/11/01/487833.aspx Your google-fu needs a lot of work as even my first search showed a lot of articles in 2006 and 2007 talking about the IE dev toolbar, e.g.: http://betanews.com/2007/05/10/microsoft-releases-ie-developer-toolbar/ http://betanews.com/2007/05/10/microsoft-releases-ie-develop... EDIT: Interestingly reading through some of the comments on the first post, it seems people claim the IE dev toolbar was inspired by http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ and the initial release date for the IE Dev toolbar was Sept 2005 (see http://c82.net/posts.php?id=23 http://c82.net/posts.php?id=23)
- chc 13y ago
  That is my recollection — the frustratingly hard-to-google Web Developer extension was the first thing along those lines I ever heard of. I continued using Web Developer for a long time after Firebug came out because I sort of wrote it off as a ripoff.
- tanzam75 13y ago
  The link for the IE Developer Toolbar in the original article carries a date of September 19, 2005 in the URL. Which makes sense, because it was demonstrated at PDC 2005, which was the previous week. Link: http://betanews.com/2005/09/19/microsoft-issues-ie-developer-toolbar/ http://betanews.com/2005/09/19/microsoft-issues-ie-developer... Note also that the release notes for Firebug v0.2 state: "This is a very early release - the code is only a few days old." Whereas the IE Developer Toolbar probably began a couple of months before its first release. So even by looking at the first mention on the web, we're comparing a days-old Firebug to a fairly-complete IE Developer Toolbar.

kybernetikos 13y ago

Yes, before Firebug, we were using MS Script Debugger/Script Editor in IE. It wasn't great, but it was more reliable for script debugging than Firebug for a long time.

masklinn 13y ago
Before Firebug, there was Venkman[0] which was definitely shite but worked if you had enough courage to understand its byzantine behavior. It provided a profiler on top of the JS debugger. And IE development could use Visual Studio (and later Visual Studio Express web edition) for a slightly better experience than the MS Script Debugger, although the core issues such as not being able to see let alone debug toplevel javascript remained). [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Venkman_Introduction https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Venkman_Introductio...
- kybernetikos 13y ago
  I tried Venkman but found it so terrible I would do most of my script debugging in IE.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    It admittedly had a learning curve roughly on-part with Eclipse over POTS with a drunk monkey at the other end of the call. I was rather happy when Firebug came into my world.

wmt 13y ago

The Mozilla DOM inspector is even older, it was even bundled in the Firefox installer in 2003. If the IE toolbar DOM inspector which was the reason some devs used IE 6 like the article suggests, I would bet that they had never even tried Firefox. http://kb.mozillazine.org/DOM_Inspector http://kb.mozillazine.org/DOM_Inspector

ritchiea 13y ago

And once again the top comment doesn't do anything to continue the thoughtful discussion that began in the article, instead providing a pedantic correction.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
If it weren't for pedants, we wouldn't have computers.
- tinco 13y ago
  Yes, because the introduction of the computer was a minor change to the world that only a pedant would have bothered with?
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Good point, it wasn't a minor change. I meant to specify working computers.
    - philh 13y ago
      That doesn't seem relevant. If it wasn't for hunter-gatherers, we wouldn't have much of anything; but that doesn't mean hunter-gatherers have much to contribute to particle physics. There are times when it's important to be pedantic, like when you're writing software. (I don't think we normally use the word "pedantic" in these cases, but I'm not going to argue the matter.) And there are times when it's not important, like when an article mixes up the order in which two pieces of software were released.
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        A cornerstone of writing any kind of history is establishing an accurate chronology of events. In peer-reviewed articles the details of who came first in related work sections are critical. At any rate, I think many of us simply find it interesting to hear the real story. It's not like the guy was correcting a grammatical mistake, and it's not like he was impolite about it.

Fuxy 13y ago

I was about to point that out myself giving credit where credit is due is important and that is a considerable mistake in my eyes. Not to mention i was using Firebug before IE had any development tools so it saddens me that Microsoft gets credit for it.

mattmanser 13y ago

No, you're wrong. You weren't around obviously, so you probably don't know it was in Beta for donkeys. I actually remember first using it in 2006. Here's an article about the beta 1 refresh from Nov 2005, so it was out even earlier than that. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2005/11/01/487833.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2005/11/01/487833.aspx Your google-fu needs a lot of work as even my first search showed a lot of articles in 2006 and 2007 talking about the IE dev toolbar, e.g.: http://betanews.com/2007/05/10/microsoft-releases-ie-developer-toolbar/ http://betanews.com/2007/05/10/microsoft-releases-ie-develop... EDIT: Interestingly reading through some of the comments on the first post, it seems people claim the IE dev toolbar was inspired by http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ and the initial release date for the IE Dev toolbar was Sept 2005 (see http://c82.net/posts.php?id=23 http://c82.net/posts.php?id=23)

chc 13y ago
That is my recollection — the frustratingly hard-to-google Web Developer extension was the first thing along those lines I ever heard of. I continued using Web Developer for a long time after Firebug came out because I sort of wrote it off as a ripoff.
tanzam75 13y ago
The link for the IE Developer Toolbar in the original article carries a date of September 19, 2005 in the URL. Which makes sense, because it was demonstrated at PDC 2005, which was the previous week. Link: http://betanews.com/2005/09/19/microsoft-issues-ie-developer-toolbar/ http://betanews.com/2005/09/19/microsoft-issues-ie-developer... Note also that the release notes for Firebug v0.2 state: "This is a very early release - the code is only a few days old." Whereas the IE Developer Toolbar probably began a couple of months before its first release. So even by looking at the first mention on the web, we're comparing a days-old Firebug to a fairly-complete IE Developer Toolbar.