Understanding Firebug source

[John J Barton]

I've been working with the very nicely written Firebug source. Mostly
the source makes the design clear. However a few key aspects are
puzzling.

One is the meaning of the "context". Firebug uses this extensively, I
believe as a container of state per instance (like member fields in
OOP). The state can be tracked down by looking at the fields of the var
"context". But what "instance" ? I guess that a "context" represents a
FF tab, that is a web page and all of the included scripts, style file
etc.

Is it accurate to think of "context" as "page"?

John.

[Joe Hewitt]

Yes, a context represents a single web page. These objects are an
instance of Firebug.TabContext (see tabContext.js) which is a
slightly more meaningful name.

- Joe

[John J Barton]

Just a note to others: the source code for firebug is included in the
distribution.
1) Find your Mozilla extension directory. (eg
C:\Documents and Settings\John J. Barton\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\w5tmpjcs.test\extensions\fir...@software.joehewitt.com\
2) Find firebug.jar under chrome.
3) unzip firebug.jar: there is the source.
John.

[John J Barton]

Some notes on source code for Firebug:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/FirebugInternals