Have you come across Yahoo!’s YSlow plug-in for Firebug? It scores your page against their “Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site”, and is handy for looking at the page’s external resources and relevant HTTP headers.
If you have used YSlow before you might be interested in the upcoming YSlow 2.0. I just came across a slideshow while looking for URLs for my comment above. The extensibility looks quite interesting.
Firefox plugin API really needs an overhaul. It shouldn't be assumed that everything breaks on every point release. Firefox needs to come up with an API going forward and stay backwards compatible till the next full version number.
I think Chrome is going to lead the way here. Their plugin strategy seems to be based off fixing the mis-steps of firefox.
I just use extensions.checkCompatibility=False in about:config and most extensions work just fine.
Also, they've changed addons.mozilla.org where most addon authors just have to flip a dropdown box to move support to a new version-- no new upload required. Many authors don't know that, so they wait until the full release to change their support.
FF 3.1 should break very few extensions. Almost none of mine died, though Firebug is particularly sensitive. But I used Firebug 1.3.0 betas just fine for a while on FF 3.1. (My new laptop isn't using FF3.1 at this moment, though.)
sorry to say this, but I think their API is great. They are innovating, and innovating requires breaking something. If the devs can't keep up, they shouldn't be creating extensions in the first place. Same could be said of iPhone development as well... it just so happens that the cool platforms tend to have more underlying changes than static platforms aka windows. (and even under windows, development can be shaky if you're doing stuff in .net)
EDIT: I'd also like to add that this version of Firebug actually does work in FF3.1. It's only that in their install.rdf file, they specified 3.0.*. I changed it to 3.1b2pre and re-built the extension and it seems to work great under Minefield. I think they put the version restriction to prevent people from reporting bugs for the still beta FF3.1.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] threadhttp://remi.org/2009/01/06/using-firebug-to-debug-unobtrusiv...
Now you don't have to guess what events were bound to which elements!
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
http://www.slideshare.net/stoyan/yslow-20-presentation/
EDIT:
Also, this article has a good overview of multiple Firebug extensions: http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firebug/list-of-firebug-e...
I know some people who love PixelPerfect for transferring Photoshop mockups to CSS.
Also one of the comments mentioned widerbug which I might try now that I have this weird 18.4" laptop: http://www.command-tab.com/2008/01/19/widerbug-widescreen-fi...
Great when working with sessions or cookies.
http://kid666.com/yui-event-list-bookmarklet/
I also wrote a rudimentary Firebug plugin but yours looks way more slick :)
Firefox plugin API really needs an overhaul. It shouldn't be assumed that everything breaks on every point release. Firefox needs to come up with an API going forward and stay backwards compatible till the next full version number.
I think Chrome is going to lead the way here. Their plugin strategy seems to be based off fixing the mis-steps of firefox.
Also, they've changed addons.mozilla.org where most addon authors just have to flip a dropdown box to move support to a new version-- no new upload required. Many authors don't know that, so they wait until the full release to change their support.
FF 3.1 should break very few extensions. Almost none of mine died, though Firebug is particularly sensitive. But I used Firebug 1.3.0 betas just fine for a while on FF 3.1. (My new laptop isn't using FF3.1 at this moment, though.)
EDIT: I'd also like to add that this version of Firebug actually does work in FF3.1. It's only that in their install.rdf file, they specified 3.0.*. I changed it to 3.1b2pre and re-built the extension and it seems to work great under Minefield. I think they put the version restriction to prevent people from reporting bugs for the still beta FF3.1.
Measure it - adds a ruler to FF for pixel pushing: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/539
Web Developer Toolbar - adds a whole bunch of inspector type stuff https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
Color Picker - Lets you get the color of a pixel by clicking on it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/271
IE also has similar tools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Script_Debugger http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=E59...