Firebug 2.0.15

[Jan Honza Odvarko]

https://blog.getfirebug.com/2016/03/24/firebug-2-0-15/

Honza

[Lawrence San]

Regarding the linked discussions... I still don't like the revised message:

"The next version of Firebug will be integrated directly into the Firefox Developer Tools..." etc.

​As a whole, I find the new description vague and unclear. Do I have some choice to make? Is Firebug just an optional skin (theme) on the FF dev tools? If so​, is there something I have to do to opt in/opt out? Or is this just a marketing-ese way of saying that Firebug is, for all practical purposes, disappearing entirely?

The original message may have sounded negative/pessimistic (as a couple of people complained), but I actually preferred it. I don't give a crap about the marketing psychology of sounding upbeat about the change. I want clarity -- what does the change really mean, when is it happening, what choices (if any) do I have to make, that kind of thing. Specifics, not happy-talk.

[Jeff Taylor]

I saw the update after restarting firefox this morning, then discovered firebug is no longer available in my browser.  Add-ons shows 2.0.15 installed, however right-clicking a page no longer gives me the option to inspect with firebug, and I also did not find anything under developer tools.  Another restart of the browser failed to bring it up.  I finally had to revert to 2.0.14 and restart firefox once more before firebug was available.

Currently running FF 34.0.5 binary release under debian wheezy.

[Jan Honza Odvarko]

No marketing involved. The message we are sending is that Firebug 2 doesn't support multi-process (aka 10s) and will stop working as soon as e10s is on by default in Firefox. We do all we can to offer the same functionality in built-in developer tools.
See also: https://blog.getfirebug.com/2016/02/08/merging-firebug-into-the-built-in-firefox-developer-tools/

Honza

[Jan Honza Odvarko]

I don't see the problem on my machine. Please install Firebug in clean fresh Firefox profile and let us know if it helps.
https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Install_Firebug_into_a_clean_profile

Honza

[Дмитрий Асеев]

After recent update Firebug totally disapear from my browser - no icon, no menu item, no links in context menu, absolutely nothing.
I use FF 35.0 under Windows 7.
Installing Firebug in clean profile don't help - no Firebug tools at all.

[Sebastian Zartner]

Дмитрий, Jeff, your versions of Firefox are outdated. You should install the latest version, which is currently Firefox 45.0.1.

Sebastian

[Lawrence San]

The most likely reason I might have to disable e10s has little to do with Firebug. I have a suspicion e10s is going to disable other development extensions I find critical. I hope I'm wrong; we'll see.

Especially, if David Ficano's Dafizilla ViewSourceWith stops working -- which seems quite possible, since it's not under very active development -- I will stop moving forward. (Unless I find a substitute, which I haven't yet.)

Or if Chris Pederick's Web Developer Toolbar stops working. Or ColorZilla. Or LinkVisitor. Or the Empty Cache Button. Or Tile Tabs. Or NoSquint. Or TabMixPlus. Or various other things I use. If the limitations of Firefox extensions become similar to the limitations of Chrome extensions -- which, though numerous, are crippled, feeble things, in my opinion -- then I have no reason to stay with Firefox moving forward at all. Chrome is a better browser in general, except for the interface and (especially) the extensions ecosystem, something that the Firefox developer team is in denial about.

The Firebug-dialog conversation I referenced (which I can no long find since I criticized it, funny) was all about marketing psychology -- how to put a positive spin on the changes. That's just smoke.

Even the dialog your latest blog link shows -- which looks like the original, not the suggested "marketing" revisions, if I remember correctly -- is silent on specifically how someone would turn off e10s; whether they could turn it off after letting it run experimentally for a while (revert) and how; how long they could keep it off for before new FF versions prevent this; and so on. What I'd really like is a tree chart with compatibilities and action items (including specific instructions) at each decision point (typically those would be version numbers).

This stuff is too important to many of us for vagueness and brief optimistic descriptions.

[Sebastian Zartner]

All information about e10s including a schedule and communication channels can be found here:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/E10s

Sebastian

[Lawrence San]

Thank you for the link, but I don't understand the chart at all.

I know what the first column is -- those are dates. I don't understand any of the other columns. What are Trunk, Aurora, Beta, and Release? They're not dates... For example, one row (chosen at random) says:

Date             Trunk                                            Aurora          Beta       Release

June 29th     42 default (working on m7/m8)    41 prompt     40 off     39 off

...with no explanations, built-in quick links, or even tooltips. That could all be ancient Greek to me. Anybody care to explain? I suppose I could spend a few days going through the long, long list of similarly mysterious "reference" links at the bottom of the page, in an attempt to decipher what the hell they're talking about, but I don't have time for that.

Also no list of compatible/incompatible extensions, but it sounds like they're putting the onus on extension developers. And "A black list of clients known to have issues with e10s will be added for roll out to Aurora and beyond." What the heck does that mean? And how long will I be able to turn off e10s for? And does turning it off mean all currently working extensions will continue to work?

I'm sure it all makes sense to somebody who's already familiar with the jargon and issues, but that's the classic mistake bad tech writers make. As someone who's been doing technical writing for clients for many years... this is tech writing at its worst.

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Lawrence San
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[Sebastian Zartner]

On Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 6:43:47 AM UTC+1, San wrote:

Thank you for the link, but I don't understand the chart at all.

I know what the first column is -- those are dates. I don't understand any of the other columns. What are Trunk, Aurora, Beta, and Release? They're not dates... For example, one row (chosen at random) says:

Date             Trunk                                            Aurora          Beta       Release

June 29th     42 default (working on m7/m8)    41 prompt     40 off     39 off

The numbers are obviously the version numbers.
The notes behind the numbers probably mean:

• default = e10s on by default
• prompt = prompting whether e10s should be turned on
• off = e10s off by default
• A/B = Testing one implementation against another (see A/B testing)

Also no list of compatible/incompatible extensions

For a list of extensions see https://www.arewee10syet.com/, linked to within the section "What to Expect".
 

but it sounds like they're putting the onus on extension developers.

Mozilla helps extension developers to make their extensions e10s ready.
 

And "A black list of clients known to have issues with e10s will be added for roll out to Aurora and beyond." What the heck does that mean? And how long will I be able to turn off e10s for? And does turning it off mean all currently working extensions will continue to work?

These are all questions far out of the scope of Firebug development. You should ask them in the related IRC channel or newsgroup linked to from the wiki article.

I'm sure it all makes sense to somebody who's already familiar with the jargon and issues, but that's the classic mistake bad tech writers make. As someone who's been doing technical writing for clients for many years... this is tech writing at its worst.

The article obviously targets implementors and add-on developers, not users. There is another article about it at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox, but I don't know whether there is any more reference targetting users other than that.

Sebastian
 

[Jan Honza Odvarko]

On Friday, March 25, 2016 at 1:36:40 PM UTC+1, Дмитрий Асеев wrote:

I think I've fixed the problem, see a test build (xpí) here:

https://github.com/firebug/firebug/issues/8004#issuecomment-201313753
 
As soon as someone verifies the fix I'll release a new version.

Honza