
Developer Tools Update – Firefox 22 - Fletch137
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/04/developer-tools-update-firefox-22/
======
pieter
Biggest thing I'm missing in the FF Aurora builds is a console in the
Inspector / Debugger panes. Having to switch to the console pane all the time
gets annoying quickly.

~~~
mihai_sucan
This is something the team is looking into implementing. There's a ton of work
we need to do and we have that in mind as well.

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shocks
__Please __, stop making the inspector lose focus immediately after you open
it. It's very annoying.

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sirn
Is there any plan to expose some of these new features (subpanes, docking
mode) to the developer command line tools as well? Being able to do something
like this would be very nice:

    
    
        inspect body --font
        console open --side
    

(That aside, developer command line tool[1] is already a big productivity
booster. You should check it out if you haven't.)

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/08/new-firefox-command-
line-h...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/08/new-firefox-command-line-helps-
you-develop-faster/)

~~~
mikeratcliffe
That sounds like a good idea.

We are going to give the command line it's own tab. This way output remains
visible when navigating around the page.

The popup panels are a nightmare to deal with ... particularly on some OSes.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Great. I still wish FF's Console was as good as WebKit's, though.

~~~
Ygg2
What's wrong with it? Honest question? I've used both a bit but I see no big
discrepancies?

~~~
Skalman
For me the biggest problem is that it doesn't clear upon reload. Having to
keep track of which messages/errors came from the previous page is really
annoying.

Edit: Also, viewing objects is inferior compared to Chrome's tools.

~~~
mihai_sucan
We just changed the way you can inspect objects in the Web Console, check out
a Firefox Nightly. For more details you can read:

[http://www.robodesign.ro/mihai/blog/web-console-
improvements...](http://www.robodesign.ro/mihai/blog/web-console-improvements-
and-the-new-browser-console)

Also, we have an open bug about clearing the web console after page reload.
See:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=705921>

~~~
Skalman
Okay, nice. Did you also remove the need for clicking those tiny arrows to
expand?

~~~
mihai_sucan
Yes.

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akavlie
That font inspector looks awesome. I've wanted exactly this several times
before.

It's often surprisingly difficult to pin down exactly what font the browser
chooses. You can look at the CSS font declaration (which is often hard enough
to find in complex CSS), but what if the browser didn't go with the first
option?

~~~
robin_reala
Well, if you’re using Firebug you install FireFontFamily[1], which crosses out
the unused fonts in the CSS inspector.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
Us/firefox/addon/firefontfamil...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
Us/firefox/addon/firefontfamily/)

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ecaron
Looks like they're finally making my add-on - <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/font-finder/> \- obsolete. Frankly, all I can say is about
time. This is something that I would've expected to be able to do long ago,
and I welcome my new font analysis overlord.

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chrismccord
I've been giving the nightly builds a real shot at replacing the main browser
I do my development in, but I've been sorely missing a shortcut to clear the
console output, ie ⌘K in the webkit inspector. As far as I know, the only way
to clear the console is either clicking "clear" or invoking clear(); in the
console itself.

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timtadh
It used to be that I could close the inspector in FF by hitting escape. I
would love to get that functionality back it makes it super easy to go in and
out of it. (Ctrl+Shift+I) do thing (ESC)

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mariusmg
Honest question.....why work on these features when we have Firebug ?

~~~
pavpanchekha
If I recall correctly, Firebug had to do nastier and nastier black magic in
order to hook into the correct parts of the rendering engine and provide the
data it had. This meant both that Firebug was a poor experience to develop
for, and also that it constrained Mozilla to not break certain internal
interfaces, even though they weren't designed for public consumption.

A tool like this really does need to go into the browser as a first-class
thing, because the information it needs access to is very low-level. So, the
Firefox team is making their own. As a side benefit, it should be much easier
to write, since they have the power to actually change Firefox to make the
information they want easily available.

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obeattie
Font panel. YES.

