Firefox/Projects/Console

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Summary

Create an interactive Console to help web developers understand everything that happens during the creation of a web-page. Console entries will be time-stamped objects representing errors, network traffic, javascript events, DOM/HTML mutation and logging output. The Console will also have an interactive command line for evaluating javascript against the current webpage and an interactive Workspace window for entering and evaluating larger blocks of code.

For web-developers, the Console should include a logging API and a richer interactive environment for executing live javascript against the active webpage.

The Console should fully-replace the existing Error Console window.

Current Status

Prototype underway, stalled as priorities shift. Still hoping to return to it though not sure we'll have alpha-level for end of this quarter.

Next Steps

milestone 0.1

• create proper, threadsafe hud-service
  • possibly modify/reuse existing console service to serve our purposes
• add global console object / API
  • bug 534398

milestone 0.2

• console panel
• eval JS from command-line
• shorten timestamps in log output

milestone 0.3

• create popup menu for console content area
  • edit (copy / paste), save (import(?), apply(?) for later)
• JS command line history

milestone 0.4

• JS workspaces (tentative name)
  • create popup menu for workspaces, eg file, edit, evaluate
• console command line aliases and magic

milestone 0.5

• add links to view source in console
• Create event for Reflow
  • bug 453650

milestone 0.6

• more events!

milestone 0.7

• ...

Related Bugs

bug 529086

Team

• Project Lead: robc
• Participants: ddahl

Designs

initial Console mockup, courtesy Johnathan Nightingale

Goals/Use Cases

• Replace Error Console
• Provide rich logging experience for web developers
• Provide interactive JS editing environment
• Provide simple object inspection (either via console or separate UI)

Non Goals

• chrome manipulation
• provide enough information to actually recreate the webpage from the logs
  • e.g., displaying images in expanded boxes
• overly pretty display. it's text!