Don't Let Firebug Bite Ya!!

[drewprops]

I love the Firefox plug-in 'Firebug' because it lets you delve deep into a site's code to let you figure out "How'd They Do That??"

But one of the things that I detest about Firefox is how incredibly s l o w it runs after awhile. Now I know that Firefox has a memory leak, but it's ridiculous how beachball-prone that app can be. So today I went to Gmail and saw a warning that said that Firebug is known to make Gmail run slowly.

::headsmack::

So if it makes Gmail run slowly maybe it's making OTHER sites run slowly.... so I've decided to keep it TURNED OFF until those times when I need it.

Just thought I'd pass that little idea along to you folks..... fully expecting you all to say "Oh yeah, I already knew that" to which I say "Well why the FUZUCK didn't you tell ME????"

:p


.

[autodata]

Yeah, the slowness created by a bunch of add-ons is one of the things that have me leave firefox as my "work" browser. Firebug and other extensions dog it down, but it basically turns into the utility truck of browsers.

FWIW, I keep flock around for when I really want a firefox + minimal set of extensions for regular surfing, but most of the time just use safari and camino.

[ghoti]

I keep it turned off for other sites than my own out of principle, and so I haven't seen any slowness. But I have found a much better alternative: CSSEdit. Not only does it allow you to browse the CSS from the rendered page and see how things are done, it also lets you override stylesheets and change them. This is so much better than coding stuff by hand, uploading, reloading in the browser, etc. You see immediately what happens, and it's also independent of your production site. I got it as part of MacHeist, so it was really cheap, too.

[autodata]

Not only does it allow you to browse the CSS from the rendered page and see how things are done, it also lets you override stylesheets and change them.
I haven't used CSSEdit, but you can do this with the web developer toolbar. I'm sure CSSEdit is much prettier and has some targeted features that you can't get through firefox extensions, though, but there are also a lot of things those extensions do that are unrelated to CSS.

[Brad]

So if it makes Gmail run slowly maybe it's making OTHER sites run slowly.... so I've decided to keep it TURNED OFF until those times when I need it.
Firebug has a tendency to introduce new JavaScript bugs, too. At the office where I work, we had a bug a few months ago in development before one of our releases that we couldn't manage to reproduce consistently, even on machines running the exact same OS version and exact same Firefox version... until we realized that the ones having troubles all had Firebug installed and enabled. Disabling Firebug solved the mystery!

For what it's worth, I've created a video tutorial outlining how you can fix those kinds of problems. :)

[drewprops]

Brad looks funny when he puts his hands on his hips and stomps his feet... :lol:

[drewprops]

I'm really enjoying the speed of FF3 and am probably moving over to it for the next little while, but I notice that Firebug only has a 1.1 beta that will run on it. The only discouraging notes I see in the docs (http://code.google.com/p/fbug/source/browse/branches/firebug1.1/docs/ReleaseNotes_1.1.txt) for this beta say:

!Incomplete: HTML + DOM side panel still breaks browser repainting.
Internal: evalInSandBox introduced, install has updateKey, update is signed


So....
I'm wondering if anyone here has taken the leap to FF3 and FB1.1 ??

Otherwise, the only way to find out how poorly it behaves is to install it myself! :\

[ast3r3x]

Cripes you are a bunch of girls. FF3 works with FB 1.2.0b3. I haven't had any major problems, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I like it a lot so far, but I've been using it generally for testing and development because Safari 4 is awesome and pretty awesome for development as well.

My biggest problem right now is that I'm posting this from Camino because it is still habit to use it. I guess I need to remove it from my dock.

[Brad]

I'm really enjoying the speed of FF3 and am probably moving over to it for the next little while, but I notice that Firebug only has a 1.1 beta that will run on it.
The 1.1 beta has been out for a while and isn't intended for Firefox 3. It will run, but it has bugs. Instead, there's a 1.2 beta (curiously not advertised on the Firebug homepage (http://getfirebug.com/releases/index.html)) that has fixes specific to Firefox 3. I would recommend using it instead.

Firebug 1.2 seems to work okay with Firefox 3. I can't say I've had any new issues with the latest verion, but I also haven't used Firefox 3 for more than a couple hours outside the time I spent reviewing it for the grievances list (http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=29478).

[Brad]

Cripes you are a bunch of girls. FF3 works with FB 1.2.0b3. I haven't had any major problems, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
You did notice the dates on the posts in this thread, right? Most were from long before Firefox 3 was released.

[ast3r3x]

You did notice the dates on the posts in this thread, right? Most were from long before Firefox 3 was released.

Yeah, I guess I should have pointed it more towards drewdrops since his was the recent one I was replying too. Although trashing firefox isn't a good solution either, even though I can understand the frustration to having random bugs :p

Anyways, wasn't really angry, was just playing!