Firebug console is blank; DevTools console text is orange

[Lawrence San]

I've been trying to get used to the DevTools, and there are parts of it I even like, but I can't get used to its console. As I've written before, ordinary log text appears in orange, and error text in black, the opposite of what it should be. All my experiments have failed to unearth the reason for this, the bug reports accomplished nothing, and the orange is hurting my eyes.

Firebug still works (for the most part) on my system -- including the various tabs -- except for the Firebug Console. It remains blank no matter what I do; it doesn't display any log text at all. I vaguely remember that the DevTools console may preempt the Firebug console, but even if I turn off the DevTools and reload the page, the Firebug console remains blank. I am quite familiar with the Firebug console and the different settings that might affect it (which tabs and settings you enable, etc); they don't have any effect. It's still blank.

If anyone has an idea why my Firebug Console won't display any log text, I'd be interested to hear.

If anyone has an idea why the my DevTools Console displays ordinary log text in orange, I'd like to hear that too.

Thank you.

[Sebastian Zartner]

Hi Lawrence,

On Monday, February 13, 2017 at 8:39:43 PM UTC+1, San wrote:

I've been trying to get used to the DevTools, and there are parts of it I even like, but I can't get used to its console. As I've written before, ordinary log text appears in orange, and error text in black, the opposite of what it should be. All my experiments have failed to unearth the reason for this, the bug reports accomplished nothing, and the orange is hurting my eyes.

I agree that orange for normal messages is a poor choice. Unfortunately, I currently can't do more than ask you to provide your input on bug 1269730. It looks like the DevTools team currently has different priorities and I don't have enough time to contribute a patch for it.
I assume it's relatively easy to fix this, as it mainly means to change some CSS. If you or somebody else want to help, the color for the messages is defined in the variables.css file (note the three places for the three different themes).
 

Firebug still works (for the most part) on my system -- including the various tabs -- except for the Firebug Console. It remains blank no matter what I do; it doesn't display any log text at all. I vaguely remember that the DevTools console may preempt the Firebug console, but even if I turn off the DevTools and reload the page, the Firebug console remains blank. I am quite familiar with the Firebug console and the different settings that might affect it (which tabs and settings you enable, etc); they don't have any effect. It's still blank.

If anyone has an idea why my Firebug Console won't display any log text, I'd be interested to hear.

It looks like an internal Firefox API changed and broke Firebug's console output. A quick look at the Browser Console shows this:

TypeError: ConsoleAPIListener is not a constructor   chrome://firebug/content/console/console.js:149:38

Sebastian

[Lawrence San]

Thanks, Sebastian. Your link to  variables.css opens what seems like a standard CSS file. 

However, I spent a lot of time searching for the local copy of that file on my Mac and couldn't find it -- not even inside the Firefox application. (On the Mac, most applications are really "packages" that can be forced open to reveal the inner files that comprise them.) 

Finally I found this page that goes into some issues about customizing the FF dev tools. It turned out that the file (equivalent to variables.css) I was looking for is called omni.ja -- a compressed Java file. One tip for Mac users: on my machine, it wasn't exactly at the location shown on that web page, because I keep my applications in the global /Applications/ directory rather than in the user-account ~/Applications/ directory.

I haven't duped and unzipped the file yet, because I'm not used to working with Java files, and because my experiences with customizing the FF userChrome.css (as that page suggests) went sharply downhill after Australis came along -- creating more problems than it solved. However, I probably will experiment with it. I'd love to hear from anyone who has already gone this route (for customizing the DevTools UI) -- especially if you've done it on a Mac -- before I start hacking around with it.

On another issue, regarding the Firefox API that broke the Firebug console...  I'm probably going to "freeze" my FF + FB installation at some point, since Mozilla is en route to breaking all my essential dev extensions anyway. Using MultiFirefox, as I mentioned before, I can run one older setup for development only (including Firebug etc) and another current setup for secure general browsing purposes. (A pain in the ass, but I can't think of a better approach.) Can you tell me what was the last version of Firefox that completely supported Firebug without breaking anything? I assume I can dig up that older FF either from some online archives or my own backup archives. Thanks much as always!

Lawrence

[Sebastian Zartner]

Hi again,

yes, the variables.css is a normal file and is located in omni.ja,
which is actually a renamed ZIP file. omni.ja is located within your
Firefox installation directory under the 'browser' directory (at least
under Windows).
It can be edited and repacked.

Having said that, I just mentioned it, because maybe you or someone
feels up to provide a patch. I'm currently too busy with answering
questions related to Firebug and the DevTools and other things that I
don't find the time to do it myself. Though I assume it shouldn't be
too hard to do it, it just needs to pass the review.

The last working combination of Firefox and Firebug is 48 or 49, I think.

Sebastian

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