Overview

I recently sat down to analysis the state of Firebug. I looked at Firebug 1.4.2 running on Firefox 3.5.2 in a fresh profile. I believe this represents the most common Firebug configuration in the wild.

My goal was to identify problem areas of Firebug functionality that are likely responsible for anecdotal feedback of the type "Firebug sucks." A secondary goal was to identify areas where Firebug features lead ahead of or behind of Safari 4. (Google Chrome and is clearly way behind Firebug--for now; Opera and IE8 comparisons would also be interesting.)

This document is divided into sections corresponding to the tabs in Firebug's interface:

File:Fbtabs.png

in addition to a "General Observations" section that applies to the interface in general.

General Observations

• Firebug's "activation" behavior (i.e., turning it on) is very annoying

File:7.png

It is basically site-specific; if you switch it on for a domain, it will stay on for that domain, but when you browse to another domain, it will be off until you turn it on. The net result is that it is constantly turning on and off.

You can turn Firebug on for all domains, but when you click "Off", it doesn't switch it off globally, just for that that site--so you enter in a weird mode where it appears to be on globally, but is on for all sites except the site you turned off. A better description for the modes would perhaps be "Opt In" and "Opt Out" modes.

• "Off" text label to close Firebug instead of the X of previous versions

Plus, the "Off" doesn't always appear for unknown reasons.

File:6.png

File:15.png

Inspection Panel

• "Edit" label is unintuitive; you can edit in-place without clicking on it

• Default size of "Style" pane causes the text to be laid out in a goofy manner

• In the DOM panel, "get childElementCount" -- why the space between get and childElementCount?

• Firebug inserts a div into the document for itself; long-time behavior but still lame

File:9.png

• Selecting any of the "Show" items from the pull-down menu cause the item you've selected in the inspector to expand erroneously

• + Firebug greys out invisible elements, Safari doesn't

File:10.png

• File:FBFTW.png Firebug has very useful context menu, Safari doesn't (10)

File:10.png

• - Safari highlights the current line when hovered over