What happened???

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Glen Hong

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Dec 6, 2016, 5:41:37 AM12/6/16
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It feels like I've just found out my Mother is dead but in actual fact she died month's ago?? 

All of a sudden my Firebug is different.  I can just make out that somewhere down the line there has been an integration to the Firefox native development tools.  I've started scouring the internet but to my surprise there is barely nothing to be said?!  I can see on the Firebug home page that they have stated that is the case but I cant find anywhere what happened and why?

In my view and I'm sure for a lot of developers out there Firefox is/was the number one debugging environment by far.  With all the support I just can't believe that there have been no blog posts nothing explaining what is going on.  Did the guy just get jack of it and decided to call it quits?  Why was there no kickstarter page started if money was an issue Im sure the guy could've raised enough to keep going?  

Pardon the ignorance but like I said there is just nothing on the internet that I can find.   If someone can take the time to explain or post me some links as to what is going on.  Im still living in hope that this is a joke and things will kick off again?

Thanks for any insight someone may give me!!

alfonsoml

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Dec 6, 2016, 6:55:05 AM12/6/16
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Everything is explained at length in this forum, so you just have to read the main threads.
If you haven't heard anything about it until today, then I wonder how you would have noticed more blog posts or even a kickstarter.

Just a hint: currently most of web developers have moved to chrome dev tools.

Erik Krause

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Dec 6, 2016, 4:21:48 PM12/6/16
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Am 06.12.2016 um 02:34 schrieb Glen Hong:

> All of a sudden my Firebug is different.

Where did you live all the time? The change was announced more than one
year ago:
> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/
and several times in between:
> https://blog.getfirebug.com/2016/02/08/merging-firebug-into-the-built-in-firefox-developer-tools/
> https://blog.getfirebug.com/2016/06/07/unifying-firebug-firefox-devtools/

However, there is a migration guide:
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Migrating_from_Firebug

If you miss specific things please add to the
"Suggestions for Firebug gaps to be closed by the DevTools" thread:
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/firebug/Q6eyvGt6hyI/discussion

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de
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joschka...@gmail.com

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Dec 6, 2016, 6:09:47 PM12/6/16
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Am Dienstag, 6. Dezember 2016 11:41:37 UTC+1 schrieb Glen Hong:
It feels like I've just found out my Mother is dead but in actual fact she died month's ago?? 

[...]


Pardon the ignorance but like I said there is just nothing on the internet that I can find.


Like Erik said... the end of Firebug was early announced... e.g on the Firebug Homepage...but Glen is not totally wrong I would say. The important infos are not really present for everyone!

In the last days I searched hard on the internet for some more information about everything. After hours of surfing the web I always asked myself: Where the hell was that special info again?

Indeed there are/were lot of information sources out there but nothing is/was really centralized! Instead we now have few Google Groups, the Mozilla Bug Tracker, some other Mozilla resources and so on. One of the most interesting project for me was the uservoice.com site. But sadly this good site was closed by Mozilla itself. I don`t know why because now we discuss in some small Google Groups e.g. about what we miss in the native Dev Tools. ;-)

I can't say this enough...  at the uservoice.com site there were really brilliant ideas for the the Dev Tools. But what's the outcome??? Nothing! Non of the ideas were really implemented in the Dev Tools until now and all Firebug Users out there are now complaing about the situation! Mozilla rather announces - big-eyed -  the new feature of displaying a CSS grid. Wow... :(

That's nice... but wre is the real shit? Were are all those features we really need???

We all loved Firebug because of the way it worked! Now we have to deal with the Dev Tools... but believe me... the Dev Tools are far, far away from Firebug.

Think about that! ;-)
 

Sebastian Zartner

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Dec 7, 2016, 5:14:27 AM12/7/16
to Firebug, Jan Odvarko, Patrick Brosset
On Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at 10:21:48 PM UTC+1, Erik Krause wrote:
Am 06.12.2016 um 02:34 schrieb Glen Hong:

> All of a sudden my Firebug is different.

Where did you live all the time? The change was announced more than one
year ago:
 > https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/
and several times in between:
> https://blog.getfirebug.com/2016/02/08/merging-firebug-into-the-built-in-firefox-developer-tools/

And just quoting this blog post for the reasons:

"Firebug 2 doesn’t work in multi-process browsers (i.e. e10s) and converting it is too complex, it will stop working when e10s is activated in Firefox."
Where "too complex" means that the multi-process change would have meant a major recreation of the Firebug code base and the team behind it didn't have enough manpower to do it.

Note that Firebug is still open source after all, so if you want to start a kickstarter campaign and find people willing to revive it, you are welcome to do so.
Though at this point I think it makes more sense in pushing the Firefox DevTools to implement the missing pieces Firebug had.




On Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 12:09:47 AM UTC+1, joschka...@gmail.com wrote:
Am Dienstag, 6. Dezember 2016 11:41:37 UTC+1 schrieb Glen Hong:
It feels like I've just found out my Mother is dead but in actual fact she died month's ago?? 

[...]


Pardon the ignorance but like I said there is just nothing on the internet that I can find.
Like Erik said... the end of Firebug was early announced... e.g on the Firebug Homepage...but Glen is not totally wrong I would say. The important infos are not really present for everyone!

In the last days I searched hard on the internet for some more information about everything. After hours of surfing the web I always asked myself: Where the hell was that special info again?

I agree that this info should be presented/linked from a central place like the Firebug homepage.

Sebastian

pd

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Dec 8, 2016, 6:51:09 AM12/8/16
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I completely relate to your surprise, even though I haven't been 'away'. What is happening to Firebug is a travesty. Someone else in this thread suggesting "most devs have moved to Chrome" is a massive generalization that isn't backed up by any evidence. However who could blame them? Mozilla unfortunately makes a lot of very bizarre decisions. Choosing to build a whole new set of developer tools has been one of their worst. The logic must have seemed sound: Firebug is limited architecturally, isn't native, and wouldn't be able to support e10s etc. Or at least, that was the claim. But really, what has happened is we now have two different options for devs in Firefox, and neither of them is adequate. That's right, NEITHER! The development of the new/native tools have been piecemeal and far too slow. The freeze on Firebug development has meant it has not grown either. So now we've both tools that are inadequate yet Firefox is supposed to be the biggest champion of the open web ... the only browser developer that doesn't have a huge other agenda.

Right now, it would seem that Firebug no longer even detects JS in web pages! I could be wrong but the main aspect of my setup that has changed lately is Firefox has been updated, but it appears Firebug has not, since October?

The sensible approach would have been to have some devs replicating the UI and functionality of Firebug, another to expand upon it's functionality, when Mozilla was developing the new/native version. Instead .. years down the track ... we have a mismatch of new and are missing simple, but very helpful, old Firebug features. This is hugely disappointing. Firebug was/is that good, there was no need to write an alternative add-on to give users choice. Then along comes Mozilla, kills Firebug and now we have no choice but to adopt the inferior new/native tools.

In what other industry is there no real competition for providing professionals with the tools they depend on? Do mechanics not have a choice between Sidchrome and other toolmakers? Do medical professionals not have a plethora of choice for equipment providers? The list would be long. Only in IT must we be forced to use substandard tools if we want to support / use Firefox. Chrome devtools is not an option either. They give new meaning to 'clunky' ... how could they not being based in/on webshit?

joschka...@gmail.com

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Dec 12, 2016, 6:48:06 AM12/12/16
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Exactly, there is nothing more to add!

Sebastian Zartner

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Dec 17, 2016, 7:29:20 PM12/17/16
to Firebug
I can understand your frustration, though complaining here in the Firebug discussion group doesn't help to improve the situation.
If you want to help, you should file bugs for the things that don't work as expected (if they are not already filed).

Sebastian
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