Things I miss about Firebug

Developer Tools
#1

Hello!

Firstly, thanks to all the developers who have worked on Dev Tools and Firebug over the years. They’re obviously a big part of the daily work flow for a lot of people, including myself. I’ve recently made the switch from Firebug, and wanted to share the things I miss. Maybe there’s a way to do these things and I just haven’t found it? If there is please let me know!

One of my favourite features of Firebug was the ability to have it running but not open. The icon would change colour, and if there were any errors you got an error count on the icon itself. I now have to keep Dev Tools open, giving up screen real estate. To see errors I need to leave it on the console tab and keep an eye out for errors scrolling by between xhr log messages. (And I don’t want to change the log filter settings, but when I’ve tried this I don’t see any visual indication of what I’ve toggled in the filters.)

When I do see a javascript error in the log, clicking on it opens a new browser tab to show the file? I find that really strange because you’ve got a script debugger right there! I’m sure Firebug used to take you to that line, from which you could set a breakpoint, and then try the action again. There was a nice workflow that Dev Tools doesn’t seem to have yet. Maybe it’s getting better, or I’ll adjust to how it works…

Sorry to gripe, I would’ve stayed with Firebug longer but the Firefox upgrade made it pretty clear it was time to switch.

thanks,
Malcolm

#2

probably want this doc:

“Migrating from Firebug”

Also interested in the error count. Haven’t realized its not there yet.
– edit –
It does show in the DEVELOPER TOOLBAR but havent found a way to make it show above the icon like firebug did.

developer_toolbar
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#3

Hi Michael

Thanks for the reply, yes I read that article before posting, it definitely helped ease the transition.

I should’ve mentioned the error count in the developer toolbar in my original post. I would be happy to leave it open if the error count made sense, but it seems to have a mind of it’s own? Is it the total error count for all tabs? Because it just seems to keep ticking over even when there are no errors on the current tab. The great thing about the Firebug error count was that it reset when you cleared the log, so a new error would catch your eye and you could then open Firebug to check it.

  • Edit - just tried clearing the log and that resets the error count too, which is great. But the count just keeps increasing anyway, even though there are no new log messages.
#4

I just changed over from firebug yesterday and have the same question. “how to get the error notification to show errors when the developer tool section is closed”.

In firebug it was a quick way to understand that the page you are looking at has errors, so you know to open the developer tools.

1 Like
#5

I missed the jquery autocomplete functionality

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#6

In Firebug, when you hovered a link, the right panel would actually show the hover CSS that is being applied in real time. Without this, it is more difficult now to physically search the CSS for where the hover css is.

#7

Hello,
I think what you are trying to do is achievable in the devtools as well. See Nov-20-2017 09-05-35