Firebug – Firefox’s Web Developer Tools

If you do any web development you know how hard it can be to decipher what is going on in someone else’s page you’d like to – let’s call it “emulate”. You also know how painful it can be to decipher layout issues like “why do I keep getting a scroll bar when all of my content appears within the browser window?”.

These issues are even more painful when AJAX is involved – because view source becomes useless.

Firebug is the only tool you’ll need to help you navigate those issues. I’ve only been using it for 2 months – and while I’m not a “web developer” strictly speaking (and maybe that is the point) it has become invaluable to me.

More from Wired and Webmonkey below:

On the surface, the Firebug extension for the Firefox browser is a simple page inspector. But lift the the hood and you’ll find a powerful code debugger and a variety of site-testing tools. Best of all, Firebug is just as extensible as the browser it plugs in to. Web developers can start cleaning up their code by following Webmonkey’s introductory guide to all things Firebug.


[From Get Started With Firebug, Firefox’s ‘Killer App’ for Web Developers]

Adobe Open Sources (parts of) Flex

Adobe announced last night that they are open sourcing big parts of Flex (scoop by Robert Scoble).

You can see the video interview on Scoble’s blog for detail.

Link to Scoble’s Blog Entry

There are two ways to look at this announcement:

1) Adobe is using this as ammunition in it’s war with Microsoft… Specifically to attack Silverlight prior to release.

2) Adobe is refining their business model in this space to focus on Rich Internet Application platforms (Media Server, Apollo) and less on the revenue generated from the developer tools.

While I love the anti-Microsoft hype as much as the next guy… having an understanding of Adobe’s business practices leads me to believe this is more about a refinement of the business model and less a reaction to Silverlight.