Development Blog

Since Firebug is just a side-project for me, I’m not able to spend as much time improving it as I would like. Fortunately, someone has come forward and offered to help. I am excited to report that Yahoo! has created a full-time position within the YUI group for a developer to work on Firebug. This is great news for all Firebug users, as it means you can expect to see Firebug moving forward much more quickly in the future.

Yahoo! has been a tremendous supporter of the project, first by giving me the opportunity to speak on their campus and hosting the video of my talk, and now with actual engineering resources. I’m really looking forward to meeting candidates and working with this developer on Firebug 2.0 and beyond.

If you’re interested in the position, contact yui-jobs /at/ yahoo /dash/ inc /dot/ com with examples of your work, preferably working URLs.

About an hour ago I received word of a 0-day security exploit that has been discovered and reported. I have just released a new Firebug (version 1.03) with a fix for this bug, and I recommend that everyone install it as soon as possible.

The update has been published to addons.mozilla.org, so you can get it by updating Firebug from the Firefox Add-ons window. Alternatively, you can install the update using the big orange button on the getfirebug.com home page.

One of the most common questions about Firebug is, “How do I get the source?” I’ve been planning to create a public Subversion repository on getfirebug.com for a long time, but this weekend I decided I’m better off letting someone else be the sysadmin. With that, I’m happy to announce that the Firebug open source project is now live on Google Code. Now you can browse the source without having to crack open the xpi or jar files!

In addition to source control, Google Code provides a simple but capable bug tracking system. I’ve been keeping all bug reports in a little text file, but now I’m starting to enter them on Google Code. If you find a bug in Firebug, I would appreciate if you could search the Firebug issues list first, and if you can’t find it there, enter a new issue.

There is one last thing I could use some help with. If you’re interested in working on Firebug, the first thing you’ll need to do is build the extension’s jar and xpi files. Currently, I use Parakey’s fancy Python-based build system to do this, but we’re not ready to release that yet. It would be easier to just include a little build script along with the source. If you’re into writing shell scripts for Unix or bat files for Windows, this would be an excellent way to help out the project!

On January 12th, 2006 I released the first public version of a thing called Firebug with this description:

This is a very early release - the code is only a few days old. Beware of the leopard.

One year and twelve days later I am happy to announce that the leopard’s growl has been quieted to a purr, clearing the path for the final Firebug 1.0 to make its way in the world.

If you read this blog, that won’t mean much to you personally since you’re probably already using 1.0 beta. However, there are still tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people who are still using 0.4.1 and are going to get a very nice present the next time they restart Firefox.

Thanks to all the people who have supported Firebug during its infancy, especially those who have contributed new ideas and donations to the project. We’re just getting started here! If nothing else, I hope Firebug inspires the makers of other browsers to invest more time in development tools. The web development paradigm wants to evolve, but we can’t build the future with yesterday’s hammer.

I promised myself I wouldn’t add any more features to 1.0, but with the freshly posted Beta 9 I broke that promise to restore a feature from version 0.4 which many users have missed. The Style tab now allows you to show the computed style of an element instead of the list of cascaded CSS rules. To turn this on, look in the Options menu of the Style tab.

Beta 9 could very well be the final beta, so, again, your feedback is very important! I’m looking at January 25th as the day for shipping 1.0 final.

The latest issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal contains an article that I wrote giving a high level overview of Firebug. It might just be a better introduction to Firebug than anything I’ve written before, so if you are trying convince your co-workers to use Firebug, this could be a good place to point them first.

The article is in the February issue which is just hitting newstands. You can read it online here.

The latest beta of Firebug (b8) is what I would consider a “release candidate”. That means that while there are still plenty of bugs in the queue, there are no longer any that I would deem catastrophic. I would consider making this the final release, unless I hear any objections.

So, if there are any bugs that you feel strongly should be fixed, now would be the time to let me know. Hopefully, later this week I will apply the final 1.0 stamp and upload Firebug to addons.mozilla.org, where it will be distributed far and wide. You can use the comments here, or the Firebug discussion group. Thanks!

Update: I think I’m probably going to do at least two more “release candidates” before the final release, which means it will probably be a couple more weeks before it’s done. I’ve got a number of fixes in the oven right now.

The most recent beta of Firebug contains a number of localizations, and there are more on the way. At first, I was elated to have the opportunity to provide Firebug in different languages, but it’s looking like this might not be a good idea. Many users have been asking for the English version back, much to my surprise. Apparently, it’s non-trivial to translate technical jargon into languages other than English. Some companies have even given up on the idea entirely, prefering to offer their products only in English.

This is a difficult situation for me to judge. English is my only language, so I can’t verify that any of the locales are well translated. To make matters worse, Firefox doesn’t even allow you to switch locales, though there is an extension that does. I’m going to have to ask for your help here. If English is not your first language, but you would prefer that Firebug remain in English, please let me know. If you think that your language can handle the translation, and would like for me to try to localize for it, let me know too. From what I see now, Dutch can probably hold up, but not Chinese.

Tonight I released the fifth Firebug beta. In addition to a bunch of important bug fixes, this beta is the last one that you’ll have to install manually. From now on, Firebug will be updated automatically by Firefox when I release a new beta.

I believe Firefox only checks for updates when you restart it or otherwise once a week or so, so if you want to check for new Firebug betas more often, just go to the Add-ons window, right click on Firebug and hit “Find Update”.

Thanks to Laurent for reminding me about Firefox’s automatic updating feature!

If you’ve installed the Firebug 1.0 beta in the last week, I’d recommend you check the release notes to see what’s new in the latest beta (4) . It has a number of important bug fixes and new features.

The most critical bug fix is one that broke XMLHttpRequests on some websites, including Google Reader. Also, if you are using Ubuntu Linux, I’ve fixed the problem that caused many graphics to be missing from Firebug’s theme. If you stopped using the beta because of these problems I’d recommend trying it again now.

The most interesting new feature is that you can now edit entire CSS style sheets in one big editor, rather than just individual properties one at a time. Many users asked for this feature, particularly those who have gotten used to it in the popular Web Developer extension, so there it is. Look for the “Edit” button in the toolbar of the CSS tab.

Have fun, and keep the new ideas and bug reports flowing on the Firebug Discussion Group.