Firebug - by a guy who programmed browsers and stuff

[Darren Dirt]

Joe Hewitt never used Javascript debuggers... now he's built a tool that even includes one (and thus even intriguing Mr. Notepad aka me)

http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/

FireBug lets you explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors.

Some Fun Features

• Logging for web pages
• JavaScript Debugging
• Errors at your fingertips
• Inspectors galore
• Command line
• Ajax Request Spy
• Live Editing

What is the origin of the idea of "Firebug"?
http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/firebug_a_love.php


Who is Joe?
http://www.joehewitt.com/about.php


What is the proof that Joe is an insane* genius?
http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/the_glory_of_pl.php


...and that he's pretty cool, too?
http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/hitchhikers_gui.php



- - -
* I say "insane" because I found myself nodding way too many times as I read that particular blog... and I'm now thinking of doing the "one .TXT file per day" idea as well

[Darren Dirt]

Remember when Firebug was kinda new? (i.e. this thread was started in 2006!)

And then Developer Tools got added to some browsers?

Now even Internet Explorer has developer tools!


So apparently that (developer tools(!)) is the next battlefront on the browser wars -- because everything else is pretty much indistinguishable, apparently.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/14/browser_tools_bake_off/?page=2

[Mr. Analog]

YOU DoN'T SAY
*been built-in since IE8 and a dev toolbar since IE6

sorry, been a grumpy day for me haha

[Darren Dirt]

Yeah, but now it's finally "ready for primetime, ready to compete with the geek-preferred browsers" -- apparently. (Or maybe the "now" is apparently, in the article I linked to).

Anyway, it's just a cool time to be a web developer again (instead of dreading all the different quirks about each individual browser, now it's all about fully utilizing cool tools and concepts and actually building/tweaking stuff!

...for this kind of thing to hit TheRegister (aka pretty much mainstream media) is what stands out to me.

[Thorin]

Uhh...  So...

Internet Explorer 10 and up have a Compatibility Mode where it emulates IE 7.  This is so that you can use the better developer tools to debug old sites, and also so that old intranet sites built only for IE 6 and 7 still work (IE 8 being the default Vista IE).

The default installation setting is that websites accessed by server name only rather than domain name are treated as intranet sites.  And intranet sites, by default, are treated as needing compatibility mode.

So you're looking at this site on your dev server and it doesn't look the same as on your production server.  Not only that, but on the dev server there's a bug that you just can't fix, but it doesn't happen on your production server.  This only happens in IE 10 and 11, not 9 or 8 or 7 or 6.  Turns out it's a bug in the IE 7 emulator.

@%&# INTERNET EXPLORER.  They're so worried about backwards compatibility that they unintentionally break backwards compatibility.  I will continue to tell people to use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Iceweasel.

[Mr. Analog]

Compatibility mode is TRASH and has caused more bugs for my team than it has fixed