Debugging CSS, AJAX and DOM with Firebug

prostoalex writes "Joe Hewitt of Parakey in the latest Dr. Dobb's Journal provides a detailed overview of the Firebug extension for Firefox: 'Firebug breaks the page down into a set of tabs that depict its most important aspects — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, network activity, and a console for errors and log messages. No tab is an island; Firebug lets you browse code just as you browse the Web by presenting objects as hyperlinks that can take you from one view to another.'"

Re:Good but no cigar

[Aladrin]

Please allow me to kiss your feet. ;)

But seriously, Firebug (and the webdev extension) have made my job a LOT easier. (And my co-workers, too.) Problems that took me 30 minutes to an hour in the past to find, I can now find them in seconds. It's been a god-send. Thank you so much.

Very Useful

[antialias02]

Rarely a day goes by when I don't find some use for Firebug, but I concur with the sentiment that the Web Developer's Toolbar is often needed to create a powerhouse set of dev tools for the Web. If all you have are these two, you're a head and shoulders ahead of the game.

Re:Exellent tool but, but not for web developers

[Azarael]

Not everyone has the option of integrating a whole ajax toolkit into their work. Anyway, ajax is far from the only thing that firebug is useful for. The error reporting makes it a lot easier to track down and repair general javascript problems than with the existing console.

Re:Good but no cigar

[Paradise Pete]

There is, alas. It works with my chosen browser, SeaMonkey, whereas Firebug doesn't

What difference does it make what your browser of choice is? You're developing, not browsing.