Firefox 27 + Firebug - minor issues

[Jonas Smithson]

I've just upgraded Firefox from version 26 to version 27 on both my Mac (running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8) and my Windows VM (Windows 7). I'm running the latest version of Firebug on both. So far I've only been playing around with the Mac version, which is where I mostly develop.

The good news: everything seems snappier, even when using the Firebug Scripts panel.

The bad news: there's still that warning message showing up, "Warning: Enabling the Script panel causes a Firefox slow-down due to a platform bug. This will be fixed with the next major Firefox and Firebug versions."

I thought that annoying warning would be gone, especially since it does seem faster. Did the developers just neglect to remove the warning message, or do they consider that the bug is still unfixed? If the latter, what constitutes "the next major...versions"? I hope they don't mean Australis (Firefox 29 or whatever it is) since I'm unlikely to _ever_ "upgrade" to that.

Another issue I'm seeing: when I load my pages with "All" errors enabled, I'm seeing no errors anywhere. However, when I select the Firebug "Inspect Element" tool and start clicking on things, errors appear. I don't see them at first because clicking the tool takes me to the HTML panel, but as soon as I come back to the Console, there are one or more errors that I'm pretty sure have nothing to do with my code. For example, one error says:

"! Cannot specify value for internal property. Error in parsing value for "-x-system-font'. Declaration dropped."

Looks like some kind of internal CSS error, but I don't even know what an "x-system-font" is. There are also a whole bunch of "errors" that show up intermittently that falsely claim to come from one of my external JavaScript files that are linked in to that page -- but I'm pretty sure actually have nothing to do with it. I don't think clicking anything with a Firebug tool should itself cause an error.

Any enlightenment concerning the "slowdown warning," and the new Console errors, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Simon Lindholm]

We'll probably remove that message and workaround in 1.12.7, but it's up to Honza. "Next major version" refers to that of Firebug, which will probably be out in a couple of months. It will have minVersion >= 29, but seriously, don't worry, Australis is quite okay, and there are addons that give you the old appearance back. Keeping with an up-to-date browser is important.

For the second error, can you post a link to some page online where that message can be reproduced, and somewhat more detailed instructions? It sounds like it's something like Firebug trying to copy styles from the page and failing because of CSS oddities, which isn't anything to worry about at all but clearly still ought to be fixed if possible.

[Jonas Smithson]

"Next major version" refers to that of Firebug, which will probably be out in a couple of months. It will have minVersion >= 29,

In other words, I'll never be able to run it, because I'm not downgrading to Australis.

but seriously, don't worry, Australis is quite okay,

No, it's not okay. It's part of the general trend of over-simplifying everything to cater to the mass audience, and screw the geeks and the content creators. It's a trend being pushed by Apple, Microsoft, and now by Mozilla. I test in lots of browsers, but if I wanted to use Chrome as my primary browser, I would. Why should I run a Chrome wannabe?

The arrogance of Mozilla is stunning. They seem to think there's something special about Firefox itself -- but actually the only thing that's special about it is the amazing extensions ecosystem, which Moz itself does not create, and which Moz's behavior often breaks. Many of those extensions (including most of the ones I rely on) need a status bar and custom toolbars and menus... you know, visible furniture. And also there's no way I'm going to use a browser that crams the address bar, bookmarks, icons, whatever into a single cramped bar at the top in the name of some misplaced "minimalism."

and there are addons that give you the old appearance back.

I know, but very addon I add -- and I use many -- complicates keeping the whole show running. New incompatibilities crop up. Moz breaks stuff. I have to spend a lot of time testing every new update because of all the interactions. I don't want to rely on extensions for something as basic as toolbars. For example, is Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar still going to be able to have its own toolbar in Australis? I asked him on his forum months ago and he didn't know. The alternative, presumably, would be something like his version for Chrome, which disallows those kind of toolbars. The Chrome version is _clearly_ inferior to the Firefox version. And so on.

Keeping with an up-to-date browser is important.

Getting my work done is important. I'll install the latest Firefox in my Windows VM, since that's just for testing, but my development Mac environment will use whatever tools I find the most powerful, even if they're not the "latest." Not everything gets better; most things do, but some things get worse. So I guess I'll be locked out of the latest versions of Firebug too. Great.

 

For the second error, can you post a link to some page online where that message can be reproduced, and somewhat more detailed instructions? It sounds like it's something like Firebug trying to copy styles from the page and failing because of CSS oddities, which isn't anything to worry about at all but clearly still ought to be fixed if possible.

 

Unfortunately I can't, because it's running on a development server (not on the Internet) and the project hasn't been made public yet. I can tell you that those weird errors don't appear from the identical pages when viewed in the Windows 7 versions of Firefox and Firebug. They only appear on the Mac -- same pages, coming off the same development server, same behavior on my part (clicking page components with Firebug's Inspect Element tool). Of course, since Mac FF is my main development environment, I have far more extensions installed there, so it's possible this is some kind of extension interaction, in which case I'll probably never track it down. This all seems to be going downhill fast.

[Simon Lindholm]

 Okay, I see. It's wildly off-topic for the list, and I'm not in the position to affect any of it, so I'll make not too long a reply.

 

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2014, at 01:12 PM, Jonas Smithson wrote:

No, it's not okay. It's part of the general trend of over-simplifying everything to cater to the mass audience, and screw the geeks and the content creators.

Mozilla needs users, so of course it tries to cater to the mass audience. Though from what I've heard they've also tried to make customization simple (for the same mass audience), and I haven't seen them limit what addons can do, so in theory geeks should be fine also. Modulo compatibility concerns, as you mention.

 

The arrogance of Mozilla is stunning. They seem to think there's something special about Firefox itself -- but actually the only thing that's special about it is the amazing extensions ecosystem, which Moz itself does not create, and which Moz's behavior often breaks. Many of those extensions (including most of the ones I rely on) need a status bar and custom toolbars and menus... you know, visible furniture. And also there's no way I'm going to use a browser that crams the address bar, bookmarks, icons, whatever into a single cramped bar at the top in the name of some misplaced "minimalism."

AFAIK toolbars have not been removed, only the addon bar has. (And the addon bar wasn't very nice anyway, it had the wrong height and a "close" button.) And from personal experience most things have continued to work. For the things that break I suspect it's mostly because maintaining backward compatibility is hard, not because of arrogance. (There has traditionally not even existed an API for toolbars/toolbar buttons, etc., addons have just had to do their own random DOM modifications to the chrome (often by XUL overlays). Australis introduces one, so with luck we could expect breakage and addon conflicts to reduce somewhat in that area in the future.)

 

I don't want to rely on extensions for something as basic as toolbars.

(I think you have to, sorry. On the plus side they will probably be better and more customizable than the addon bar. I do know that Australis has a new API for "add customization area", so they're explicitly designing for it.)

 

I know, but very addon I add -- and I use many -- complicates keeping the whole show running. New incompatibilities crop up. Moz breaks stuff. I have to spend a lot of time testing every new update because of all the interactions.

I feel for you. :/

 

 

For the second error, can you post a link to some page online where that message can be reproduced, and somewhat more detailed instructions? It sounds like it's something like Firebug trying to copy styles from the page and failing because of CSS oddities, which isn't anything to worry about at all but clearly still ought to be fixed if possible.

 

Unfortunately I can't, because it's running on a development server (not on the Internet) and the project hasn't been made public yet. I can tell you that those weird errors don't appear from the identical pages when viewed in the Windows 7 versions of Firefox and Firebug. They only appear on the Mac -- same pages, coming off the same development server, same behavior on my part (clicking page components with Firebug's Inspect Element tool). Of course, since Mac FF is my main development environment, I have far more extensions installed there, so it's possible this is some kind of extension interaction, in which case I'll probably never track it down. This all seems to be going downhill fast.

Okay. It might not be a very common error then, so I'd just recommend trying to live with it. Write a user stylesheet for hiding it if you care enough. ;)

 

[Jonas Smithson]

> AFAIK toolbars have not been removed, only the addon bar has.

I hope you're right. I'd read various complaints (a couple of months ago, I guess) on a few different online forums about Australis killing all toolbars, including custom toolbars needed by extension developers... but perhaps they were mistaken, or maybe Mozilla has added more flexibility. I haven't experimented with Australis myself; I just assumed the complaints were accurate.

For the second error, can you post a link to some page online where that message can be reproduced, and somewhat more detailed instructions? It sounds like it's something like Firebug trying to copy styles from the page and failing because of CSS oddities, which isn't anything to worry about at all but clearly still ought to be fixed if possible.

I've just done a lot more experimenting, disabling various extensions and themes, relaunching Mac Firefox repeatedly, etc.  I finally discovered that the problem happens even with *all* extensions and themes disabled except Firebug itself. So it isn't an extensions conflict.

I also discovered that the problem happens if the "Warnings" button is enabled in the Console, but if I only have "Errors" enabled, the problem goes away. So I guess I just can't use Warnings any more.

By the way, can somebody explain the relationship between the choices you can check in the popdown menu -- like "Show JavaScript Errors", "Show JavaScript Warnings", etc. -- and the simple "All"/"Errors"/"Warnings" buttons along the top of the Firebug panel? (I should explain that I run Firebug in a standalone window on a separate monitor.)  At present, the popdown-menu options seem to have no effect at all, although the buttons work.

I also tried to find online pages that exhibited the problem I was describing, that is clicking with the "Inspect Element" tool generating these weird warnings. But I discovered that on common pages such as https:///www.google.com or http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ I can't even get that far -- if the Warnings button is enabled, the Console panel fills up with many, many warnings before I even get a chance to click anything. (Not always at first load, but always on reloading those pages.)

I also discovered that the same version of Firefox + Firebug on Win7 generates different messages in general than on the Mac, looking at the same pages. As I said before, the Windows version generates far fewer of the weird Warnings (generally none for my own pages). But it flags some things as Errors that the Mac doesn't -- for example, in a JavaScript "for loop", I had started it (as I usually do) like this:   for(i=0;   and Mac FF/Firebug had no problem with that, but the Windows version flagged it as an undeclared variable error and stopped the page from even loading further. (I easily fixed this by changing it to for(var i=0;... which seems kind of picky to me, but okay.)  I was told here previously that the errors may come from Firefox, and are simply displayed by Firebug, but still I don't understand why Mac vs. PC would differ that way. Anyway, that's fairly trivial.

Sorry for running on so long. Finally, here are two more of the weird Warnings I'm getting with my own devel pages when clicked with the Firebug Inspect tool, with the Warnings console button enabled -- sometimes the same few warnings repeated hundreds of times per page, filling up the whole Firebug console, such as:

Cannot specify value for internal property. Error in parsing value for 'border-left-color-rtl-source'. Declaration dropped.

physical

Cannot specify value for internal property. Error in parsing value for 'border-left-color-value'. Declaration dropped.

-moz-use-text-color

...and so on. All other addons disabled; doesn't look related to my source code; happens only on Mac, not on PC. Any idea what's causing that?

Thanks much for your patience,
Jonas

[Sebastian Zartner]

On Sunday, February 23, 2014 3:52:21 AM UTC+1, Jonas wrote:

> AFAIK toolbars have not been removed, only the addon bar has.

I hope you're right. I'd read various complaints (a couple of months ago, I guess) on a few different online forums about Australis killing all toolbars, including custom toolbars needed by extension developers... but perhaps they were mistaken, or maybe Mozilla has added more flexibility. I haven't experimented with Australis myself; I just assumed the complaints were accurate.

Instead of reading the statements of others and before judging it, you should try it out by yourself and build your own opinion. Custom toolbars definitely still work. I verified that right now by installing Web Developer. It works totally fine for me.
As Simon wrote only the Add-on bar was removed (see bug 749804), which I don't like neither (and already complained about at Mozilla like many other people), but at least there are add-ons like The Puzzle Piece that bring it back.
But again, that's off-topic and the Firebug Working Group has no influence on the redesign.

For the second error, can you post a link to some page online where that message can be reproduced, and somewhat more detailed instructions? It sounds like it's something like Firebug trying to copy styles from the page and failing because of CSS oddities, which isn't anything to worry about at all but clearly still ought to be fixed if possible.

I've just done a lot more experimenting, disabling various extensions and themes, relaunching Mac Firefox repeatedly, etc.  I finally discovered that the problem happens even with *all* extensions and themes disabled except Firebug itself. So it isn't an extensions conflict.

Do you have Show Chrome Errors, Show Chrome Messages and Strict Warnings (performance penalty) unchecked? If not, please do so and try it again.
 

I also discovered that the problem happens if the "Warnings" button is enabled in the Console, but if I only have "Errors" enabled, the problem goes away. So I guess I just can't use Warnings any more.

By the way, can somebody explain the relationship between the choices you can check in the popdown menu -- like "Show JavaScript Errors", "Show JavaScript Warnings", etc. -- and the simple "All"/"Errors"/"Warnings" buttons along the top of the Firebug panel? (I should explain that I run Firebug in a standalone window on a separate monitor.)  At present, the popdown-menu options seem to have no effect at all, although the buttons work.

The option menu items control whether the messages are logged to the console at all while the filter buttons filter the messages after logging. Because I also think that the current UI is not perfect, I created issue 6357 and 6358 as suggestions for improving it.
 

I also tried to find online pages that exhibited the problem I was describing, that is clicking with the "Inspect Element" tool generating these weird warnings. But I discovered that on common pages such as https:///www.google.com or http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ I can't even get that far -- if the Warnings button is enabled, the Console panel fills up with many, many warnings before I even get a chance to click anything. (Not always at first load, but always on reloading those pages.)

 

I also discovered that the same version of Firefox + Firebug on Win7 generates different messages in general than on the Mac, looking at the same pages. As I said before, the Windows version generates far fewer of the weird Warnings (generally none for my own pages). But it flags some things as Errors that the Mac doesn't -- for example, in a JavaScript "for loop", I had started it (as I usually do) like this:   for(i=0;   and Mac FF/Firebug had no problem with that, but the Windows version flagged it as an undeclared variable error and stopped the page from even loading further. (I easily fixed this by changing it to for(var i=0;... which seems kind of picky to me, but okay.)  I was told here previously that the errors may come from Firefox, and are simply displayed by Firebug, but still I don't understand why Mac vs. PC would differ that way. Anyway, that's fairly trivial.

That's surely because you have the Strict Warnings option checked on your Windows machine. Just uncheck it and you should not see these messages anymore.

Sebastian