Firebug 1.9 illuminates Firefox from all sides

The developers of the web debugging add-on for Firefox, Firebug, have announced the availability of version 1.9 for Firefox 6.0 to 11.0. The most visible change is that the Firebug user interface can now be docked to any side of the Firefox window allowing it to be placed where it least interferes with the web application being worked on. A font viewer for .woff files and the display of fonts in tooltips in the CSS panel make life easier for designers using Firebug.

For developers, syntax errors are now marked by a caret pointing at the exact position the error occurred, information from requests can be copied to the clipboard in JSON format and, to simplify the debugging of anonymous functions, developers can set a displayName property on the function which Firebug will show in
A syntax error pinpointed in Firebug
Source: Firebug Project stack traces. It is now possible to add a watch on elements in the DOM panel and elements in a page can be quickly removed by selecting them and pressing delete. HTTP requests can be resent from the net panel which also has a new, but by default not shown, protocol column.

Firebug provides developers with a number of features to aid in debugging web applications: a JavaScript debugger, network analysis tools for examining usage and performance, and the ability to inspect and modify HTML and CSS styling in real-time within the browser. Originally developed by Joe Hewitt, the project is now run under the auspices of the Firebug Working Group (FWG).

The 1.9 update is not suitable for the current Firefox 12 nightlies; for that the developers recommend Firebug 1.10 alpha 1, which will be released next week. For users of older Firefox releases, 3.6 to 5.0, the developers recommend using the older Firebug 1.7.3.

Firebug 1.9 is available to download from its Mozilla Add-ons page. Release notes detail all the changes and source code can be found on the project's Google Code page.

(djwm)