Comments on: IE Alternatives to Firebug

By: php programmer ukraine

php programmer ukraine — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:33:55 +0000

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is already lunched:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

By: Jono Brooks

Jono Brooks — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:01:24 +0000

has anyone tried the firebug ‘lite’ script that is recommended on the firebug site? any thoughts?

By: Gerard Finnerty

Gerard Finnerty — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:01:06 +0000

Matthew is right (so is the article author), as a professional developer, you need to ensure your work is correct across all browsers. I run multiple instances of ie (5–7), firefox, safari and opera on the QA PC and similar on the mac.

All development work is done in firefox and checked in ie and safari as work gets completed, not just because of firebug and the many other development tools that make for a smoother workflow, but because it follows w3c standards much more closely than ie.

If your markup/code is inline with standards, then the differences across other browsers can be isolated much easier and faster than developing in ie and trying to get that looking good in firefox.

Just because ie is still considered by many to be the most widely used browser doesn’t mean you should do your dev work in it.

By: Mathew

Mathew — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:04:28 +0000

I feel its best to cater for all browsers rather than just 1. I mainly use firefox and firebug but you want your app to work cross browser. which is why debugging in IE is required really if you want happy customers

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:02:25 +0000

@ PAT (7): I completely agree that IE is still the dominant browser and we shouldn’t ignore it; however, developing in IE has a major drawback: there are a lot of bugs in its interpretation of web standards. This could cause problems when a more standards-compliant browser engine — like, hopefully, IE8 — becomes the most-used.

Better to code for standards in Firefox (or your choice of alternative), then make exceptions in conditional comments for IE. Much less risk of seeing your site behave strangely in future.

By: Play Games

Play Games — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:28:40 +0000

I find it easier to debug in firebug that the ie equivalent. Unfortunatley I still have lots of users using ie6 instead of ie7.

By: Pat

Pat — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:44:53 +0000

Actually I choose to develop in IE because, hey guess what, it’s still the most widely used browser out there. Perhaps if you just dabble in web development you can afford to have some kind of moral objection to IE. Since I do this to generate income, I’ll cater to the largest customer base, thanks.

By: Chad

Chad — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:23:57 +0000

WTF are you guys talking about Fiddler is nothing like Firebug. Please use a product and know what it does before you talk about it.

By: Phill Brown

Phill Brown — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:39:22 +0000

This is informative, exactly what I was looking for.
I have the unfortunate task of tracking a bug in ie,

I miss firebug already!

By: Guy Whitfield

Guy Whitfield — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:01:05 +0000

Fiddler and DebugBar get me most of the way there when bug fixing in IE.

It’s amazing to thing of a time before Firebug, I positively evangelise it to all new/young dev’s I meet. Saves so much time in the long run.

That being said, Safari is lagging on this front, the Develop option in the tool bar is woefully underspecced.

Nice post.