Firebug Lite does not work in Chrome

[kicsitian]

When I click on the Firebug Lite icon in the toolbar, a window pops
up:

"Firebug Lite can't complete its activation because this page was open
before the extension itself was enabled. The process will complete
when you reload the page.

Press ok to reload the page now, or cancel to reload it later."

I press OK and nothing happens, the page does not reload and Firebug
Lite won't start. I tried reinstalling the extension, manually
reloading the page, but nothing helps. Is there any other way I can
start the Firebug Lite extension?

Chrome version 5.0.375.99 on Windows 7 Professional 32bit.

Any help is appreciated, Firebug is the only thing that still ties me
to Firefox.

[Pedro Simonetti Garcia]

2010/7/22 kicsitian <krisz...@gmail.com>:

> When I click on the Firebug Lite icon in the toolbar, a window pops
> up:
>
> "Firebug Lite can't complete its activation because this page was open
> before the extension itself was enabled. The process will complete
> when you reload the page.
>
> Press ok to reload the page now, or cancel to reload it later."

Which exact URL are you visiting? It is an internal Chrome's page
(like "chrome://downloads/"), or some page related to Google Chrome
extensions "https://chrome.google.com/extensions/")?

Google Chrome won't allow content scripts (required by Firebug Lite)
running on such pages. The problem is that Chrome does not inform the
user and neither the extension about it. In other words, there is no way
to Firebug Lite know if the content script was loaded or not, and we
worked around this by sniffing the URL and detecting when you visit
URLs that begins with "chrome://" or "https://chrome.google.com/extensions/",
alerting users in such cases.

Another problem of Chrome extensions is that besides the fact that
you don't have to restart the browser in order to install an extension,
extensions that require content scripts won't work on pages that were
opened *before* the extension was installed. That is, the first time the
user install *any* extensions that require content scripts, the extension
won't work on *any* pages you are seeing. It won't work in the gallery
("https://chrome.google.com/extensions/") and it won't work on any
other page you already had opened at that time. We implemented
another dirty workaround to detect such cases, but the solution is not
perfect.

So it is important to know 2 things:

- which URL are you visiting
- was this page opened *before* you installed the extension?

> I press OK and nothing happens, the page does not reload and Firebug
> Lite won't start.

This was not supposed to happen. Firebug Lite should have been loaded.
We need to investigate what is happening.

> I tried reinstalling the extension, manually
> reloading the page, but nothing helps. Is there any other way I can
> start the Firebug Lite extension?

Other than the restricted Chrome URLs listed above, and the pages
opened before the installation, you are supposed to load Firebug Lite
without problems in all other pages.

If this is not happening then it is a bug and we need to fix it.

regards,

Pedro Simonetti.

>
> Chrome version 5.0.375.99 on Windows 7 Professional 32bit.
>
> Any help is appreciated, Firebug is the only thing that still ties me
> to Firefox.
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebug" group.
> To post to this group, send email to fir...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to firebug+u...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/firebug?hl=en.
>
>

[Krisztián Fekete]

Weird thing is that it happens only if I try to run Firebug lite on a local file (e.g. file:///C:/Stuff/index.html). If I open it as http://127.0.0.1/index.html, it works like a charm. It's no biggie, but the "process will complete when you reload the page" message is quite misleading.

The page was not open before, (I just created it).

[Pedro Simonetti Garcia]

2010/7/22 Krisztián Fekete <krisz...@gmail.com>:

> Weird thing is that it happens only if I try to run Firebug lite on a local
> file (e.g. file:///C:/Stuff/index.html).

Hmmm... I forgot to mention other limitation :)

Firebug Lite could theoretically read local files (file:///*) but that
leads to some problems:

* extensions that requires local files (file:///*) access needs to be
manually reviewed by Google and it would probably take a long
time (considering that Firebug Lite has around 30 kloc) and
consequently it would make it difficult to publish new releases.

* access to local files can lead to a security vulnerability. Firebug
Lite is fully extensible and vulnerabilities could be exploited by any
page.

The recommended approach is to use a local web server. You
can however manually edit the manifest.json file in the extension
directory and grant it with local file access, but this setting will
be loosed when you update the extension to the next version:

...
"permissions":
[
"tabs",
"file:///*", <<======== INCLUDE THIS LINE
"http://*/*",
"https://*/*",
"http://127.0.0.1/*",
"http://localhost/*"
]
}

2010/7/22 Krisztián Fekete <krisz...@gmail.com>:

> Weird thing is that it happens only if I try to run Firebug lite on a local
> file (e.g. file:///C:/Stuff/index.html). If I open it
> as http://127.0.0.1/index.html, it works like a charm. It's no biggie, but
> the "process will complete when you reload the page" message is quite
> misleading.

Sure the message is misleading and combined with the fact that
it won't work on local pages it creates a lot of confusion.

I will include a proper message when you are running Firebug Lite
on a local file, suggesting the use of a local webserver and/or
pointing to a FAQ (which I'm writing).

Thanks for pointing this out. For now on, other users won't have
the same bad experience as you! :)

regards,

Pedro Simonetti.

[Krisztián Fekete]

Thanks, now it all makes sense :) Would it be possible to display a different message when such local file is opened and Firebug Lite is attempted to start? (instead of "Firebug Lite can't complete its activation because this page was open before the extension itself was enabled", this message confused the hell out of me ;)

[Pedro Simonetti Garcia]

2010/7/22 Krisztián Fekete <krisz...@gmail.com>:

> Thanks, now it all makes sense :) Would it be possible to display a
> different message when such local file is opened and Firebug Lite is
> attempted to start? (instead of "Firebug Lite can't complete its activation
> because this page was open before the extension itself was enabled", this
> message confused the hell out of me ;)

Sure. When I said:

>> I will include a proper message when you are running Firebug Lite
>> on a local file, suggesting the use of a local webserver and/or
>> pointing to a FAQ (which I'm writing).

I was talking exactly about this. ;)

I'll include something like:

"For security reasons Firebug Lite cannot run in local files.
For more info about how to work around this problem visit:

http://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Firebug_Lite_FAQ"

regards,

Pedro Simonetti.

[Krisztián Fekete]

Oh, it seems I accidentally skipped that part of your message :) Well, thank you for your excellent support and for Firebug Lite, it makes my life so much easier. You guys rock!