I’ve been working on a number of projects recently, and a thought occurred to me: How in the world could I do my job without Firebug?
Now, I’ve known for years now that Firebug is like the single best web development tool available. I use it extensively on every project that I touch, be it professional or freelance.
The funny thing is… not every developer uses or even knows about it! I can’t imagine trying to debug CSS or JavaScript without it, namely because Firebug is so painlessly simple to use.
I was on a conference call the other day with an outsourced developer, and we were talking about some CSS issues that his team was facing. During the screencast, I opened their test site in my browser… and within seconds I had pinpointed the exact line in their CSS file causing the problem. The developer (who shall remain nameless) was floored.
I think I was more confused by the fact that no one on this guy’s team was using Firebug. Maybe I’m just enlightened (or spoiled), but in an age where technology is always changing and becoming more complex one would hope that programmers used the best tools available.
I do, however, have a major issue with Firebug — it’s only available (as fully functional) on the Firefox browser. I work in a corporate environment, and the majority of corporate employees use either Internet Explorer (using Windows) or Safari (using Mac).
There aren’t really any good tools for IE that do anything close to what Firebug can do. As a web developer, I make sure to thoroughly test my code across the major browsers — but isolating CSS and JS problems can be a major pain in the arse.
The bottom line: use Firebug.
About Arthur Kay 
