Hello.  My name is David, and I’m a FireBug addict.

Hi, David!

It all started innocently enough.  I was introduced to FireBug about a year and a half ago.  “Hey, try this Firefox plugin.  It’ll make your web development experience incredible!  And the download is free!”  Being a modern-day developer, I was willing to try new things.  I can always uninstall it later; I’m in control.  Or so  I thought.

At first, I just added some console logs to my code.  It was great!  It didn’t interrupt my “groove” the way that alerts did.  That led to color-coding: console.log, console.debug, console.error, nesting messages.  I was using more, but it made me more productive.  Then I started “inspecting” everything.  It was amazing!  Every detail, every attribute, every nested div!  And the styles became clear, too!  I knew exactly which style sheet was causing making that green background blue.  It was all sunshine and puppies until FireFox 3 came into the picture.

Sure, FireFox 3 was fast.  Blazing fast.  But in order to ride that train, I had to leave my beloved FireBug behind because it wasn’t “compatible”.  At first, I thought I could live without it.  I developed web sites for 7 years before FireBug came along, I don’t need to use it!  I found myself absently clicking on the space where the FireBug icon used to rest at the bottom of the browser window.  I even found myself booting up FireFox 2 just so I could get a console!  I was out of control.

Then, FireBug 1.2 went into beta.  And it was compatible with FireFox 3!  I could inspect all my elements!  Write to the console at blazing speeds!  Sure, I had to turn on the debugger for every domain, but with all the load time I’m saving, I barely noticed the inconvenience.

So in the end, I haven’t kicked my addiction, but I’ve learned to live with it; thanks to FireBug 1.2.

Get FireBug 1.2B1 at http://www.getfirebug.com/blog/2008/05/22/firebug-12b1/.