In this chapter, we will have a quick introduction to Firebug—its origin and history, who should use Firebug, and a glimpse of Firebug's main features. Hopefully this will spark your interest in both Firebug and the rest of this book. We will also look at how to install Firebug on several browsers and the different modes in which Firebug can be opened.
In this chapter, we will look at the following:
What is Firebug
The history of Firebug
The need for Firebug
The capabilities of Firebug
Installing Firebug on different browsers
Opening and closing Firebug
Firebug modes
Firebug is a free, open source tool that is available as a Mozilla Firefox extension, and allows debugging, editing, and monitoring of any website's CSS, HTML, DOM, and JavaScript. It also allows performance analysis of a website. Furthermore, it has a JavaScript console for logging errors and watching values. Firebug has many other tools to enhance the productivity of today's web developer.
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at our fingertips while we browse a website. Firebug allows us to understand and analyze the complex interactions that take place between various elements of any web page when it is loaded by a browser.
Firebug simply makes it easier to develop websites/applications. It is one of the best web development extensions for Firefox. Firebug provides all the tools that a web developer needs to analyze, debug, and monitor JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and AJAX. It also includes a debugger, error console, command line, and a variety of useful inspectors.
Note
Although Firebug allows us to make changes to the source code of our web page, the changes are made to the copy of the HTML code that has been sent to the browser by the server. Any changes to the code are made in the copy that is available with the browser. The changes don't get reflected in the code that is on the server. So, in order to ensure that the changes are permanent, corresponding changes have to be made in the code that resides on the server.
Firebug was initially developed by Joe Hewitt, one of the original Firefox creators, while working at Parakey Inc. Facebook purchased Parakey in July, 2007.
Currently, the open source development and extension of Firebug is overseen by the Firebug Working Group. It has representation from Mozilla, Google, Yahoo, IBM, Facebook, and many other companies.
Firebug 1.0 Beta was released in December 2006. Firebug usage has grown very fast since then. Approximately 1.3 million users have Firebug installed as of January 2009.
The latest version of Firebug is 1.5. Today, Firebug has a very open and thriving community. Some individuals as well as some companies have developed very useful plugins on top of Firebug.
During the 90s, websites were mostly static HTML pages, JavaScript code was considered a hack, and there were no interactions between page components on the browser side.
The situation is not the same anymore. Today's websites are a product of several distinct technologies and web developers must be proficient in all of them—HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM, and AJAX, among others. Complex interactions happen between various page components on the browser side. However, web browsers have always focused on the needs of the end users; as a result, web developers have long been deprived of a good tool on the client/browser side to help them develop and debug their code.
Firebug fills this gap very nicely—it provides all the tools that today's web developer needs in order to be productive and efficient with code that runs in the browser.
Firebug is developed as a Firefox add-on and can be installed on Firefox similar to all other add-ons. In order to make Firebug work for non-Firefox browsers, there is a JavaScript available from Firebug that makes available a large set of Firebug features.
Based on your browser version, we can install the corresponding Firebug version.
|
Firebug version |
Browser version |
|---|---|
|
Firebug 1.5 |
Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 |
|
Firebug 1.4 |
Firefox 3.0 and Firefox 3.5 |
|
Firebug 1.3 |
Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 3.0 |
|
Firebug Lite |
IE, Safari, and Opera |
To install Firebug on Firefox, we will follow these steps:
Open Firefox browser and go to https://addons.mozilla.org.
In the search box of the site, type Firebug and hit Enter or click on the Search for add-ons button.
In the search results, click on Add to Firefox button.
A pop up will appear asking whether we want to continue with the installation. We will now click Install now.
After installation is complete, let's restart Firefox.
When the browser comes up, it will prompt us by saying a new add-on has been installed. Now we are all set and ready to play with Firebug.
Firebug is an extension for Firefox, but that doesn't mean it works only on Firefox. What happens when we want to test our pages against Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari? Firebug Lite is the solution for this. It's a product that can be easily included in our file via a JavaScript call, just like any other JavaScript, to support all non-Firefox browsers. It will simulate some of the features of Firebug in our non-Firefox browsers.
To use Firebug Lite on non-Firefox browsers, we should include the following line of code in our page:
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.2/firebug-lite-compressed.js'> </script>
Note
For more information and updates on Firebug Lite, refer to http://getfirebug.com/lite.html
If we don't want to modify the source code of our page and still want to use Firebug Lite on a non-Firefox browser, we can run Firebug as a bookmarklet by creating a bookmark with the value of the URL as the following JavaScript code:
javascript:var firebug=document.createElement('script');
firebug.setAttribute('src','http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.2/firebug-lite-compressed.js');
document.body.appendChild(firebug);
(function()
{
if(window.firebug.version)
{firebug.init();}
else
{setTimeout(arguments.callee);}
})();
void(firebug);We can inject Firebug into any page by running the bookmarklet created with the preceding URL.
Firebug can be opened in the following two modes:
Dock view
Window mode
In the dock mode, the Firebug opens the document in the browser's window while in the window mode the Firebug opens in its own window, which is separate from the browser window.
Most often we use the dock view mode of Firebug while developing. In this mode, the inspection and CSS tweaking can be done more easily than in window mode. The advantage of this mode is that the user can view the rendered page while simultaneously working on Firebug.
Firebug is an extremely useful web design and development tool that integrates seamlessly with Firefox. Firebug has a huge worldwide user base along with a very open and thriving eco-system.
We now have an idea of how to install Firebug on Firefox and Firebug Lite on non-Firefox browsers. Installing Firebug is as simple as installing any other add-on or extension of Firefox. We have also seen some of the ways of opening, closing, and undocking Firebug, and learned when to use dock view and when to use window mode for different purposes.