

Firebug website just got a super gorgeous facelift - audionerd
http://getfirebug.com/

======
statictype
>The most popular web development tool for Firefox

They could probably call it "The most popular web development tool period."
and it wouldn't be a lie.

There are plenty of designers\developers who keep firefox around only for
firebug.

~~~
warfangle
Started a new contract the other day, and one of the folks I'm working with
asked me what the deal is with my browser (I use Chrome to hold documentation
/ collab tools) - everybody else simply uses Firefox for everything. I can't
stand how slow FF is for general browsing, but I cannot give up Firebug for
the work I do.

Best part? Not the CSS editing, and not the JavaScript debugger (although
that's really handy too) - truly the most useful features are the DOM
inspector (easier to do that than look up some rarely-used property in the ref
specs) combined with the console (test out a one-off bit of idea before
fleshing it out and integrating it into the actual codebase).

~~~
edd
I have recently been using the latest webkit nightly for all of my debugging.
It's developer inspector is getting fairly close to firebug in terms of
useful-ness. There are a few instances where it can't quite jump into the code
as well as firebug but its getting there.

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pedalpete
I have to disagree about it being 'gorgeous'. I think it could use more
layers. It feels very flat to me, and it doesn't direct my eye to any one
thing in particular

~~~
taitems
Plus they just sourced their icons from somewhere, hit CTRL+SHIFT+U
(Desaturate) and left them as is. I either expected them to change colour when
I moused over them, or if they are meant to remain static they should have
been contrasted or leveled properly. They look blurry and amateur.

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ellyagg
I knew as soon as I saw the post title, that every comment in this thread
would be ripping how it looked. If you're ever thinking of commenting on the
attractive appearance of a site, just don't bother. There's nothing
hypercritical people hate worse than that.

~~~
aw3c2
The culprit is found easily: The headline of the submission. It is just not
good to post something like that. Reverse flamebait or however you might call
it.

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houseabsolute
Re: the top bar. People shouldn't feel like they need to have an explanatory
note on each menu item or option. Which is easier to grok?

* What is Firebug? / Introduction and Features

* Resources / Documentation wiki, FAQ, and other Firebug lore

* Community / Discussion forums and lists

* Get Involved / Hack the code, create plugins

or

* About

* Documentation

* Community

* Get Involved

(And maybe "Get Involved" should be "Contribute")

~~~
viraptor
I like those listings tbh. They save me some thinking - "Community" and "Get
involved" ideas have some overlap and many projects divide the contents
differently (for example, where does the source control go? - developer
oriented projects often put it in community). While "About" and
"Documentation" don't overlap that much, there should be some links from the
first to the second for detailed information - which makes you wonder where is
the "Getting started" section - it could be in either of them. I think
describing sections like that serves a purpose.

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tptacek
I dunno. It's pretty busy and confusing. I like the bug, but not the design.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I don't even like the bug. I feel like the bug should be a stinging bug.

My bugs aren't friendly lady bugs with fire shells. They are savage robotic
hornets sent from the past to destroy my future.

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lanstein
I like this: <div id="boasting">

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psadauskas
They're using some neat HTML5 tech on the page. Ogg video, embedded fonts. The
header background image, though, seems to be a ".pmg", which I'm not familiar
with, and doesn't show up for me on chrome. Maybe a typo for png, but that
image gives a 404 page.

~~~
lanstein
nope, the .png doesn't exist either, but the 404 page it hits is kind of fun:
<http://getfirebug.com/img/bg-header.pmg>

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teye
Far from gorgeous in FF 3.6 Win. A few quick ones:

1\. Use (or make better use of) a grid layout.

2\. Vary the type less. I count 3 fonts (excluding Firebug logo type) in too
many sizes.

3\. The 6 feature/functions (inspect, log, etc.) aren't doing much for me, and
the bullets could be condensed. Firebug is awesome -- no need for fluff like
_Get the information you need to get it done with Firebug._

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aaronblohowiak
Ugh, the lines are off between the "Recent News" and "Links and Elsewhere"
columns. web typography: care about it!

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sketerpot
It's pretty, and it gets you to the content fast. I have no complaints. And
the bugs are rad.

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jrockway
The best website is no website. "apt-get install xul-ext-firebug"++.

~~~
blasdel
A thousand times no! I barely trust the distro people to not screw up the
browser itself. The only reason to use a distro-packaged extension would be
that it's more likely to be fucked in lockstep with the browser.

I'm sure you use CPAN, gems, hackage, etc. instead of the broken crap in
nearly every distro's repositories -- why not use <http://addons.mozilla.org>
while you're at it?

~~~
jrockway
I use OS packages for everything. Fixing the occasional breakage there is much
easier than the constant manual updating and tweaking required to maintain
your own installation of everything.

I have a few local Emacs Lisp extensions, and I maintain my own ~/perl5 and
~/.cabal... but I bootstrap them with the OS packages; various emacs
extensions, the OS perl and liblocal-lib-perl, and haskell-platform. Modules
my own software needs goes into ~; modules that OS-managed software needs I
leave untouched.

Basically, if your distribution breaks your packages regularly, you should get
a new distribution.

