Let’s start to mix commercial metaphors: this is not your father’s Firebug Lite!  More than just a console, this Bug is completely tricked out with HTML, DOM, CSS, Script and XHR (XMLHtmlRequest) inspectors.  There’s even a JavaScript console.  All this comes with a much slicker presentation, as well, making it nearly as useful as it’s big brother on Firefox.

The Firebug Lite web site has complete and simple instructions for embedding it into your pages, but if you don’t want to go to all that trouble (or you’re just snooping around on a random cool page), you can use Firebug Lite anywhere with this cool bookmarklet from the Get Firebug Lite home page. Just drag the link to your bookmarks, and away you go! Go ahead, click it. You’ll get all the Firebug Lite goodness right here on this blog!  For those of us who have to use a proxy server to do our work, you can still use the bookmarklet by adding two domains to your exceptions: *.getfirebug.com and *.appspot.com.  In IE6, you can find this in Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections (Tab) -> LAN Settings -> Advanced.  Why they hosted the image and the script on different domains, I don’t know, but you need to add both for a working Firebug bookmarklet. 

Firebug Lite is no longer the wobbly toddler of a debugger with unsure steps and limited functionality; he’s grown up into that awkard teenage phase.  Pretty soon, he’ll be asking for the keys to the family browser.  It’s almost enough to not make you miss all of Firefox’s cool developer plugins.  Okay, maybe not, but it sure beats the pants off of the IE Developer Toolbar!

• Streams Flash video
• View video files on your home computer as well as TiVo programs
• Support for multiple video sources from the same TyStreamer installation
• Cool new Web 2.0 user interface using jQuery!
• Streams to the Nintendo Wii’s Internet Channel!

Firefox 3.0

We’ve got a release date! Mark your calendars for this Tuesday, June 17 to download the final release of Firefox 3.0! This is an important major release for the Mozilla organization that keeps Firefox at the front of the pack for both performance and standards compliance! Check out some of these new features:

• One-click site info
• Better malware protection
• Better and clearer ssl error pages
• Better zooming
• Improved Mac, Windows and Linux (gtk) integration!
• Tab saving!
• Resumable downloads
• Improved SVG and CSS rendering
• Better memory management
• Massive speed boosts in javascript!

And so much more! By the way, did I mention the massive speed boosts in Javascript processing? It’s true! Just run any Javascript-intensive application in FF2 and FF3 to compare. G-Mail, Google Documents, TeamSite, Toyota Dealer Locator, whatever. You’ll be blown away.

Internet Explorer 8.0 beta

IE8 is starting to shape up into a decent offering from Microsoft! With an emphasis on performance and standards compliance (wait, this is a Microsoft browser, right), IE8 is definitely looking to be the most developer-friendly browser from Microsoft to date. We were all worried when it was first announced that standards-compliance would have to be opted-in on a per-page basis. But they’ve since backed off of that after listening to the developer community and the new standards-compliance mode will be the default. In addition to their new-found love of internet standards, IE8 also introduces “WebSlices”; a new widget format for the browser. A new beta version of IE8 is expected in August, but you can check out Beta 1 at the IE8 Developer Preview page.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx

Safari

It’s been a pretty big year for Apple’s flagship browser, Safari. Based on the open-source WebKit project, it’s come a long way from it’s humble beginnings as the popular Linux web browser, Konqueror. Now up to 3.1, Safari has been leading the pack in both performance and standards compliance. They released a Windows version (though not without some controversy). Safari was the first browser that users could download (albeit as a nightly beta) that passed the new Acid 3 browser compatibility test, beating Opera to the punch by only a few days. (See the Opera post below for more details.) At the WWDC conference this week, Apple introduced the first developer version of Safari 4.0 which, in addition to Acid 3 compatibility, includes a new and faster Javascript engine named SquirrelFish. That’s right, SquirrelFish. You got a problem with that? I didn’t think so. I haven’t found any direct comparisons on the web yet, but it will be interesting to see how SquirrelFish measures up to SpiderMonkey (the current Javascript engine for Firefox) as well as Tamarin, which is speculated to be the engine for Firefox 4.

Safari is also one of the first browsers to begin supporting HTML 5, which, among other things, includes <video> and <audio> tags for inline media. Also on Safari’s slate is CSS special effects. All those cool effects that you get from Javascript libraries like Script.aculo.us, jQuery UI, dojo and others are supported in the browser using css and styles. This makes for some smooth effects that even the fastest rendering engine can’t beat.

And lest we forget, Apple’s Safari is the default browser in the iPhone and iPod touch! Apple has raised the mobile browsing bar so high that most “mobile browsers” can’t even be considered web browsers any more.

While security is pretty tight with Safari and Apple is usually pretty quick to patch things up, Safari is not without it’s problems. The so-called “carpet-bomb” attack allows a malicious web site push potentially thousands of unwanted files to the desktop. While the user still needs to execute files that have been pushed, it can still be a hassle to have to clean up the mess, and some experts have speculated that a dual-pronged attack against Windows Safari users could have Safari downloading files and IE executing them, all without user interaction beyond visiting a web site. While scary, this hasn’t yet been seen in the wild and definitely shouldn’t overshadow the other accomplishments that Apple has achieved with Safari.

Opera

Last but certainly not least, we have Opera which released version 9.5 today. Opera has been a long-time flag-bearer for the web standards cause. They’ve also been a huge player in the mobile browsing market, bringing “real” web browsing to mobile devices long before the iPhone stole the thunder with Mobile Safari. (I personally use Opera Mini 4.1 on my BlackJack smartphone.) Opera was also the first browser to pass the previously mentioned Acid 3 test. WebKit followed a few days later, but Opera’s version wasn’t available for public download. The new 9.5 release achieves an 83/100 on Acid 3, the best score to date for a final release browser. Opera 9.5 includes the following new features:

• Really fast rendering of HTML, CSS and Javascript (hmmm… I see a pattern forming here)
• Improved malware and phishing detection and prevention tools
• Improved bookmarking tools
• Skinnable interface

Opera has also released Dragonfly, a debugging and development tool for Opera. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s great to see other browsers starting to include development tools on par with Firefox’s FireBug and Developer Tools extensions, which still set the bar for in-browser developer tools.

And let’s not forget that it was Opera that pioneered tabbed web browsing, which forever changed the way we (or at least I) surf the web!

*Whew*! That’s a lot of browsing! And we have to support them all! Luckily, with a trend towards standards compliance and performance, browser makers are making things a little easier on us Rich Media Technologists.

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/.

Of course, what you really want to know is whether or not this release is compatible with the $.string plugin, and the answer is yes!  (Really, I’m sure that’s what was on your mind.)

This is a very serious matter.  I’ve never been a coffee drinker, so my morning pick-me-up was traditionally a tall glass of Mountain Dew.  After some minor health issues started popping up, I decided to cut out soda pop from my diet, or at least the high-fructose corn syrup variety.  As I searched for an alternative, my wife suggested looking at Trader Joe’s for an alternative.  They carry a lot of organic and healthier “alternative” products, so we went and checked it out.  Lo and behold, there were the Trader Joe’s brand energy drinks in Orange Passion and Wild Berry flavors.  I picked up two of each to try them out, and have been buying them ever since.  Now it looks like I’ll have to start that search all over again.

I would urge anyone looking for a good energy drink to try Trader Joe’s brand, if you can still find it.  Let the store management know how much you like it and tell them to send the message on up the corporate food chain.  Drop them a note on the Trader Joe’s web site asking them (nicely) to continue producing the product.  Hopefully, they’ll see reason and continue making this fine product and keep me from falling asleep during my morning status meetings.

The dotString home page can be found at http://www.stilldesigning.com/dotstring/.  jQuery ports over all of Prototype’s String functions.  (Except for toArray, which is just an alias of JavaScript’s split function.), and it does it “the jQuery way”.  i.e., without extending JavaScript’s built-in prototypes.  It’s not that I necessarily think that extending prototypes is good or bad; it’s more of a “when in Rome” kind of thing.  Most functions are completely rewritten due to inner dependencies within Prototype, but some are near-direct copies of Sam Stephenson’s (Prototype’s esteemed author) original code, and credited as such.  The library weighs in at 5k compressed, and if you really want to extend the String prototype, it can do that, too.  Documentation can be found on the dotstring home page and more completely in the comments of the uncompressed library.

Pretty cool, eh? I submitted a patch via Trac for version 2.3.3 back in February, and updated it today to be compatible with 2.5.1. Well, if the Milestones on the ticket are to be believed, the plan is to incorporate this feature into version 2.6. If you can’t wait that long to pimp your login page, you can get the patch and sample login.php theme page from the Trac ticket. Just patch wp-login.php in your WordPress folder and drop the login.php file in your theme.  Use your own css to style the form, and the new login page will pull in your theme’s header, footer and sidebar, just like any other page.

UPDATE: Looks like they didn’t like the approach that I took for the patch, so they’ve pushed this feature back to 2.7 to give it some more development time.  To each his own, I guess.  I’ll be reworking this patch and resubmitting soon.