Firefox Developer Tools Update, March 8

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This week in the world of the Firefox Developer Tools team:

Rob‘s newly-formed Script Tools team is working furiously to get our new script debugging panel ready for general use:

Mihai and Panos have landed some source editor changes which will let you set breakpoints from the script’s gutter.  Previously breakpoints could only be set in from the web console command line.  Rob and Paul are working on updating the script panel’s interface, bringing it in line with the Firefox Developer Tool visual style.

The JS team landed some of the underlying support we need to add real stepping support to the debugger.  They’re about ready to land support for listing the scripts in the page, so you won’t need to reload a page to see all the active scripts.  This change will also benefit Firebug when it is switched to JSD2.

Joe is continuing work on our toolbar, which will help tie the various tools together.  He’s working to integrate our command line into the toolbar to provide quick access to developer tools features.

Paul, Heather, and Mike have been working on our Inspector.  There’s a patch up to expose the pseudo-class lock feature directly from the highlighter’s infobar, rather than a difficult-to-find context menu.  There’s also a patch under review to copy information out of the rule and computed views, either by normal selection or a context menu to choose the specific information you want on the clipboard.  We hope to get both of these into Firefox 13.

The Firebug team has moved development to github.  See https://github.com/firebug for more information.

The full notes of this week’s meeting are available here, along with dial-in info we use every week for anyone interested in listening in live.

4 responses

  1. pd wrote on :

    I’ve never seen re-writing the wheel expressed to appear as productivity so eloquently.

    1. Dave Camp wrote on :

      Thanks for describing it as ‘eloquent’ – the people on my team are working hard writing great stuff, that makes it easy to write about.

      We have no plans to stop working on our built-in tools, but we do intend for some of our work to find its way to Firebug. To take a few items from the blog post:

      * Firebug will eventually use and benefit from JSD2. JSD2 will help with Firebug’s performance, and should simplify some of their debugger code. It’s a much more streamlined API than the JSD that Firebug relies on today. Any work you see mentioned in these posts that is done by Jim Blandy, Jason Orendorff, or the JS team in general will apply directly to Firebug.
      * Honza tells me that he hopes to use the remote debugging protocol implementation Panos, Rob, and Jim are building. Almost all of the non-UI work to build our script debugger panel will be directly applicable to Firebug.
      * Honza also plans to use the source editor Mihai is working on to replace the script display in Firebug.
      * Much of the work Heather did for the pseudo-class lock feature was done at the platform level. The pseudo-class editing feature in Firebug would benefit quite a bit from this API, but I haven’t yet talked to Honza to know if he plans to take advantage of that soon.

      I can’t speak to the Firebug team’s schedule for integrating these things. Maybe Honza will.

      I know you are upset by our choice to build new tools inside the browser. I wish I could convince you otherwise, but I don’t want to rehash that debate with no new information to add on either side.

      1. Nicholas Nethercote wrote on :

        FWIW, pd regularly bitches and moans on a wide range of Mozilla blogs.

  2. jack wrote on :

    build-in tools inside the browser is *must*. the speed is the best it could get and the new way of presenting css and the console is great!