FireBug: Awesome JavaScript Utility
The one problem with Ajax-enabled applications is that it is difficult to know what is going behind the scenes. It is even more difficult to know what happened when something goes wrong. Your activity indicator image keeps spinning, but the nothing seems to happen on the page. FireBug will help you figure exactly what went wrong and where.
What Is FireBug?
FireBug is an extension for Firefox 1.5 that was created by Joe Hewitt and it helps with the debugging of JavaScript and Ajax. FireBug includes a DOM inspector, a JavaScript console and a command-line JavaScript interpreter, all in one. We're mostly interested in its ability to log Ajax requests. The current release of FireBug is 0.3.2. The 0.4 version is currently in alpha and includes a JavaScript debugger. The addition of the debugger will make FireBug even more useful and harder to live without.
Installation
You need Firefox 1.5 to use FireBug. Even if your primary browser isn't Firefox, it is worthwhile to have Firefox with the FireBug inspector installed on your machine just for the purpose of debugging. Installation is very simple. Simply go to http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug and click the large "Install FireBug" button and follow the directions. After installation you'll need to restart Firefox for the extension to complete installation.
A Brief Tour
After reopening your browser, you can change FireBug's visibility by using Firefox's view menu bar at the top of the screen, or by ...
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