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Comment by oneandoneis2 | Hacker News Reader

I have to be honest - I find the developer tools a pain: They aren't even close to replacing Firebug, yet they're more obtrusive. So I can't stop using Firebug, and I can't remove the unwanted built-in menu options.

So for me personally, what I'd really like to see is either one of:

- Match Firebug feature for feature

- Allow for the dev tools to be completely removed from the interface

Sorry, but it really does come down to those two: Whilst the Dev Tools can't replace Firebug, I won't use them. So either allow me to get rid of them, or allow me to switch 100% to them.

Sorry it's not more constructive, but I've no interest in having to juggle between two different debug tools because they both have awesome features. So I don't care what amazing new stuff you might be lining up, I won't use them until all of the functionality I use in Firebug is also available in FF's builtins.

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> They aren't even close to replacing Firebug

That's why we still work on Firebug :)

> yet they're more obtrusive

It should be better in Firefox 21.

> I can't remove the unwanted built-in menu options.

Firebug allows you to do that. But seeing the number of comments about this specific issue, I think we can do something smarter.

> Sorry it's not more constructive

It's actually a great comment :)

> That's why we still work on Firebug

To be quite frank, this is really ridiculous to me. Why in heck are there TWO separate developer tools for one browser that are both in-house? Supporting both tools means that neither one moves as quickly, and there's a ridiculous amount of confusion as to which one to use.

Imagine the noobie developer that has cut their teeth on the elegant Chrome dev tools. Now they need to do some Firefox compatibility work and the first thing that happens when looking at the documentation they see both "Firefox dev tools" and "Firebug" being referenced, each with different use cases and slightly different functionality.

I don't think any other issue is matters as much until you can solidify your efforts and officially support just one set of tools. Once you do that, then I think it's worth talking about all the other improvements that need to be made.

> To be quite frank, this is really ridiculous to me. Why in heck are there TWO separate developer tools for one browser that are both in-house?

I tried to clarify this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5326873 - let me know if I can clarify further.

That still doesn't why there are two separate developer tools. Is there something that an in-house tool tied into firefox is capable of that is impossible for a plugin to achieve?

Firebug isn't in house, it just has contributions from Mozilla employees.

More than 2/3 of work on firebug is done by 1 mozilla employee, and there 2-3 other people we contribute to firebug from time to time. So it's pretty much in house.

IMO starting complete rewrite of firebug, in form of devtools, was very wrong. 2 years ago firebug was order of magnitude better than chrome devtools. Now it can't keep up with chrome. But firefox devtools only starts to become barely useful, If all that work have gone into improving firebug, Firefox would be ahead of chrome now.

If Firebug isn't in house then I have no idea how a Mozilla employee could justify working on Firebug while their own "official" dev tools still has such a long way to go.

Why do both Firebug and the built in tools exist, if you guys are committing to both? Why not just put everything behind Firebug?

One thing I don't like about the Firefox debug tools is that they are split up into different tools. Developer Toolbar, Web Console, Debugger, Error Console. Why do we need all these to be separate?

> > I can't remove the unwanted built-in menu options.

> Firebug allows you to do that.

Please please tell me how to do this. I want the "Web Developer" menu gone. I want Firebug as a first-class entry in the Tools menu again. And while you're at it, it would be really nice to have "View Source" and "View Page Info" in the View menu again.

Perhaps I'm a little bitter, considering I saw the DOM Inspector ripped out of Firefox, relegated to Firebug, kicked around, and now that Firebug is awesome, I see weird versions of a Firebug subset getting in the way. Why couldn't it be part of the browser, and why not just put Firebug in the browser if you want it back in?

I couldn't agree with this more. I work primarily in Chrome and find it very frustrating nowadays when I have to switch to Firefox to debug. Back in the days when Firebug was the only show in town, I loved working in Firefox. Dev Tools gets in the way.

I appreciate the flashy experiments like Firefox Command Line but there's little chance of them entering into my everyday workflow unless I have the chance to learn them properly. I won't get the chance to learn them properly until I reach for Firefox as my main development browser.

On another note: The Chrome Network panel is invaluable to me and streets ahead of the Firebug Net panel. I find it hard to explain why I prefer it as the features are fairly similar, but the experience is much better. Maybe it's about the layout and clarity vs. density of information.

Just wanted to follow up this comment by saying that I've been playing with the latest Firefox nightly this morning and it's much more inline with what I want out of a browser's inbuilt dev environment. I'm really impressed.

Two things that still stand out as lacking when compared to Chrome are the JS console output and the Net panel output (really hate those popup windows).

But these things can be ironed out. Well done for getting Firefox moving in the right direction.

Couldn't agree more on this.

My needs exactly.

Firebug has a "disable built in tools" feature that prevents Inspector from loading already.

Btw this is done by opening about:config and setting devtools.inspector.enabled to false

Firebug key is "extensions.firebug.hideDefaultInspector"

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