Poster opens up as a sidebar and Live HTTP Headers gives you to ability to open in a tab changing Firefox into a HTTP debugging machine.
I can’t agree more about the goodness of Firebug too. It’s amazing. I only wish the third-party browser version of it worked as well as the Firefox native one (clicking on an object taking you to its info would be great).
Firebug Rocks!!!
I have been using firebug since last 6 months. I can’t imagine the web application development without it. Debugging Ajax application would have never been such fun. And yes, the javascript debugging,it’s cool and powerful, this makes firefox a true IDE. Also,Javascript console, its just awesome!. Can’t live without it. Regarding the Web Developer Extension, I had installed it few days ago, its powerful, but I haven’t used it much.
The scrapbook plugin is also very useful. It’s major functionality is collecting websnippets or entire webpages, but it also has note entries where you can enter any html, css,and script and get an instant rendering. It is a wonderful companion to firebug because it acts as a script/code library for firebug development. I also use the earea editor, which is a simple editor where you can copy/paste into and get relative path URL fixups. Using firebug on the earea document gives you a dyno webpage IDE combination. The earea editor is simply a blank webpage that turns on the native wysiwyg editing capabilites of your browser. There’s no buttons for adding HTML elements, but you don’t really need that with Firebug since it allows you to edit the HTML itself, and with Scrapbooks notes it’s easy to grab templates for tables, embeds, etc.
If you could combine this with the [Li|U]nix command line, so you could do some real web development, like Ruby on Rails, then you’d really have something.
Anyone claiming that IE’s developer toolbar is remotely close to either of these is kidding themselves. I have tried the developer toolbar, but it is painfully lacking if you are trying to deal with moderately complex website layouts.
Komodo, an actual IDE, is also based on the mozilla code. One advantage it has is the ability to debug both JavaScript (using same api’s that Firebug uses) and the server side code (such as PHP) at the same time, along with a liveheaders style proxy. There’s also a free (non-debugger) version.
I can’t help but feel that “IDE” isn’t quite the right term here. If it were truly integrated, you’d be able to actually edit and save the pages right there inside the web browser.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is a great way to develop. I use this exact setup (along with Zend).
Myself and another developer I work with use Firefox with those developer plugins as well. I’d have to say for me, on OSX a lot, Safari is faster for sure. And I think IE as a whole is faster on Windows. But definitely, when it comes to finding some busted code, Firefox rules. Now if we could only get cool extensions like those for other browsers.
Even though Firefox has extensions like this, the error messages for JavaScript errors are still rather cryptic most of the time and it doesn’t even spot everything. Opera’s, on the other hand, are usually much more helpful. And nothing beats Opera in sheer JavaScript execution speed.
Even though Firefox has extensions like this, the error messages for JavaScript errors are still rather cryptic most of the time and it doesn’t even spot everything. Opera’s, on the other hand, are usually much more helpful.
I have had nothing but problems using firebug. It constantly crashes or just stops working. I have never had an issue debugging javascript in VS/IE7
The Web Developer Extension looks interesting and I’ll definitely check it out the next time I’m debugging layout in Mozilla. The IE developer toolbar also rocks balls; however I don’t believe you can edit HTML on the fly. Woudl be nice, tho.
I use these two extensions daily, and UrlParams ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1290 ) whenever I’m doing serious debugging. It lets you watch and modify all the GET/POST parameters in a handy sidebar.