At the Forge - Firebug

which, on the Linux Journal home page, produces the following form header:

<form id="cvb_form" action="/" method="get">

Firebug also has extensive capabilities for monitoring functions, setting breakpoints and profiling functions. Go to the Script button, and you are greeted by the source code for an included JavaScript file. (You can change the file you're looking at by choosing from a menu.) Pointing to a line of code with the mouse cursor brings up information about the current state of those objects.

Clicking on the code allows you to set a breakpoint (including a conditional breakpoint) to copy the function (useful when trying to communicate with other programmers or even when writing a column about programming) or to handle a breakpoint by continuing or stepping through the code.

To find out which JavaScript functions have been taking the most time, and which are invoked most frequently, use Firebug's profiler. It's amazingly simple to use. Click on the Console/Profile button, and then go about your business, using the Web site as much or as little as you want. When you click the Profile button again, Firebug reports the number of times each JavaScript function was called, the time each call took and where each function is defined.

Finally, the Net button makes it easy to keep track of any Ajax calls embedded in the page. Clicking on Net and XHR produces a graphical indication of the Ajax calls that have been made on this page, as well as how long each took to execute. If you are developing an Ajax application, this is the best way to find out where your bottlenecks are.

It's rare for me to call a product revolutionary, but I am sorely tempted to do so in the case of Firebug. It puts a lot of information in one nicely designed, easy-to-use package. The ability to interact with my packages has a vaguely Lisp-like feel, in that I'm suddenly interacting with a live environment. Firebug has given me the ability to “see” what my pages are doing and to better understand them.

Firebug has become an indispensable tool in my arsenal, alongside the Web Developer extension. In this way, Firefox is beginning to demonstrate that it is indeed a platform for Internet applications, rather than merely a Web browser.