I see the author's point, but the thesis is linkbait that can't even vaguely be considered true for anyone that is building modern websites with IE6 support. I have lost some time to some of these bugs. However if you compare the amount of time lost to Firebug bugs and vs IE6 support, it's still heavily skewed to IE6. The fact is that not everyone can know every bug in IE6, and though it's not too hard to avoid the big well-known issues, you may end up cutting design and interactive features or write a lot of ugly workarounds to deliver comparatively simple features. Additionally there are many subtle issues which become exponentially difficult to debug and isolate because the environment is so utterly opaque (admittedly I haven't tried Microsoft's commercial tools which I've heard actually have some utility, but I'll be damned before I pay a Microsoft tax just to debug for their hopeless broken software).
Firebug bugs are easier to deal with because there is more information and controls with which to isolate bugs. I admit they can catch you off guard from time to time, but as someone who cut his teeth on javascript in 1995, CSS in the IE4/NS4 era, I can tell you that IE6 is the bigger albatross around your neck. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Isn't it hilarious that Microsoft found a scheme where, even if they couldn't dominate the WWW, they are still relevant because of the ubiquity of their "embraced and extended" web browser. No, Microsoft, you don't need to actually innovate, just have the most popular operating system and shove a broken browser down everyone's throat.
Microsoft: screwing you with network effects since before the WWW
The Firebug team created a product that moves web development a generation a head in terms of tool sets, then released that tool for free when most people would have gladly paid for it.
It's free, and open source. If there are bugs, stop bitching, roll up your sleeves, and submit a patch.
Sure, Firebug may in fact have bugs. However, a sometimes buggy program is better than one with fundamental flaws. IE6's rendering errors have cost developers thousands of hours in finding and fixing problems, because everyone runs into them, whereas Firebug has only ever been an aid to developers, running into bugs only occasionally. In all the time I've been using Firebug, I've never encountered a bug. In fact, I've encountered more bugs with Chrome's dev tools, in that it seems to have stopped displaying XHRs in the console.
Firebug may suck compared to an ideal Firebug, but IE6 sucks compared to the standards-compliant browsers that everyone else has moved on to.
I have been using Safari for web development because of its great developer features. It has a DOM inspector, a resource tracker for tracking slow requests, even AJAX requests loaded after the page completes, a script debugger and a profiler and local database inspector. And best of all, no bugs that I have found yet.
I have heard that IE8s developer tools are also very good compared with Firebug.
It will also be interesting to see how Chrome shapes up as far as developer tools go.
Unless you just don't want to leave Firefox, or are using a strictly linux system, you might get better results doing your development in a different browser. At least that is what has worked for me.
Chrome uses Safari/WebKit's developer tools which are unhorrible, but has a couple of issues. (If you can simply paste to insert a new css attribute or DOM element, it would be amazing. Right now there's only hacky ways to do that.) What's interesting about it is that in the land of Google's minimal UI, is something that clearly belongs to Apple:
Are you using a Mac, by chance? The Mac version of Firefox isn't the best.
Linux is not Firefox only by any means - Google Chrome for Linux is very good, and the development tools are identical to the Windows and Mac versions of Chrome (which are the same Safari's tools). Opera for Linux is also top-notch.
Have you tried IE 8's dev tools? Firebug beats the pants off of IE 8's tool in usability and features, for me. Like most of IE, the dev tools are adequate, but lack a decent interface and are not updated or improved often, if ever.
I like Chrome and Safari's tools, but my personal assessment is that Firebug is more comfortable. It has all of the featured you mentioned except possibly the local database inspector.
For the site I work on the most, twice as much of our audience uses Firefox as Safari and Chrome combined, and FF even exceeds IE usage. So not only does it have my preferred dev tools, but is the most important browser for our audience.
Firebug definitely has it's ups and downs, but in no way can I believe the IE6 mention is anything other than linkbait (right near the end, he says he's moving to Webkit's debugger).
The most common problem I've run into with Firebug is that Firefox stops loading CSS/JS files. I've never had this happen without Firebug open, but it may be a Firefox problem.
Chrome / Webkit's Dev Tools are so far and away better than Firebug, if you're not giving it a try you're doing yourself a disservice (especially since Chrome is officially stable on Mac and Linux now). The only thing missing is the ability to plug in extensions (like YSlow) but otherwise I never pull up Firefox anymore.
Ok, I give up. How do I get the style editor to work like Firebug so I can test/tweak styles on the fly? I'd assume you wouldn't be advocating this if it has a read-only style inspector, so where am I missing a way to modify those?
The live style tweak is by far the most used feature in Firebug for my team.
Use a text editor? This seems to be the thing people say they like most about Firebug compared to the WebKit tools. I don't get it. Is the cost of a refresh really so high? There are dozens of editors with built in auto-refresh/live-preview too.
The cost of one refresh no, the cost of a dozen refresh and the associated context switches as you swap between your browser and your editor yes.
Usually when you're editing stuff in Firebug it's because you're trying, nudging a pixel here, a shade of gray there, trying to get the "right" values to yield the effect you want. Having to go back to the editor is a pain, just as it was before in-browser debuggers, when you had to go back to the editor and add alert() traces all over it.
I've switched to Chrome on my Mac because of its speed and quality of dev tools as well. It's a shame though since Firefox and Firebug were both revolutionary and "raised the bar".
> # Using jQuery to log out the elements sometimes shows an array like object (perfect) sometimes shows an object with a length (crap)
The jQuery object is exactly that. An object. With a length. What do you want Firebug to do, build jQuery support in the extension? Yeah, right.
And as to not having random extra plugins, I see at least 3 non-native firebug tabs in the first video...
Not saying firebug is ideal or anything, but some of TFA's criticisms barely make any sense (and that comes from somebody mostly using Safari's dev tools these days)
Thank you. I thought the same thing when I saw jquerify, page speed, and page speed activity. Those are extensions to firebug, and may have something to do with the problem. I work in web development with firebug all the time on both macs and pcs, and I've never seen that first issue.
I thought, maybe I'm crazy, so I tried replicating it, and I can't. I just opened up firebug, made a larger console, typed "test", clicked the run button, got the same error and my console is still there, still displaying "test" like it should. Hopped over to my PC (which I use for testing sites in IE6 because it is such a pile of fail) and tried the same thing in that version of firebug, also works as expected.
I'm not sure what this guy is complaining about, isolate your issue before you post link bait.
What do you want Firebug to do, build jQuery support in the extension? Yeah, right.
I would be awesome if someone did build the concept of profiles so that you could set firebug to do Dojo, or JQuery or YUI etc.. deep debugging in a manner that suits that toolkit.
It would also require far bigger a developer base for Firebug, they're barely keeping up as is (in fact they really aren't if you'd believe TFA and most commenters)
Apples and oranges? This is akin to comparing gdb with vim: sure, you use them both to develop software, but they're used for different parts of that process.
While I wouldn't say it sucks more than IE6, it is very true that Firebug changes frequently and has plenty of bugs. All the web developers I know gripe about it (but still use it). The stage is ripe for a better tool.
I think we're going to see FireFox go the way of Opera in the next few years.
They had a great start, and forced Microsoft to release IE7, but since then they've just sort of coasted along. MS came out with IE8, which turned out to be a pretty good browser. Then Google came out with Chrome, which redefined what a browser is supposed to be like.
So now we have FireFox still taking 30 seconds to fire up and basically functioning like a poor version of IE8 (but with plugins), while IE9 is coming out looking exactly like a Chrome clone and Chrome is sprinting off into the distance (yet still firing up in 3 seconds).
FF just seems to lose a bit more relevance every year.
If your Fx takes 30 seconds to start then you have a broken Fx. Have you tried disabling all your extensions to see if one of them is causing a problem?
For me, Firefox takes about 1 second to open on my Mac, 2 seconds in Linux, and 3 seconds in Windows. No idea how you see it as similar to IE 8 in any way.
I agree they have a long way to go to be as slick as Chrome, but sorry, it has nothing to do with Opera - Opera never had even 1/10 of the market share that FF has now.
Firebug bugs are easier to deal with because there is more information and controls with which to isolate bugs. I admit they can catch you off guard from time to time, but as someone who cut his teeth on javascript in 1995, CSS in the IE4/NS4 era, I can tell you that IE6 is the bigger albatross around your neck. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise.