Skip to content

Web Inspector and Firebug rock web diagnostics

This is probably old news for web propellor heads out there; but if you are diagnosing website problems you should be using Firebug for Firefox and Web Inspector for Safari. They are amazing tools for measuring download times for every object on a page, analyzing the objects on that page, figuring out where the objects are coming from, and getting much smarter about your website design.

Firebug is a simple Firefox plugin; download and install can be done inside Firefox; you then restart Firefox and click the little bug icon down in the lower right corner to activate the debugging tool.

Web Inspector is integrated in every recent copy of Safari, you run a command line to enable the tool:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true

Once enabled, you can mouse over any web object in your browser and right click or hover to get a drop down menu, from which you select “Inspect Element” and then dig around in the Inspector for your tools.

I am sure there are similar tools for OmniWeb, Opera, Chrome, and even Internet Explorer; but I have no experience with them yet…

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *