Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Mozilla squashes Firebug in favor of native Firefox debugger

news
Oct 24, 20171 min

The Firefox browser’s Firefox Developer Tools is how developers should test web applications and HTML issues instead

beetle firebug
Credit: cocoparisienne

The Firebug web development tool, an open source add-on to the Firefox browser, is being discontinued after 12 years, replaced by Firefox Developer Tools.

Firebug will be dropped with next month’s release of Firefox Quantum (version 57). The Firebug tool lets developers inspect, edit, and debug code in the Firefox browser as well as monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in webpages. It still has more than a million people using it, said Jan Honza Odvarko, who has been the leader of the Firebug project. Many extensions were built for Firebug, which is itself is an extension to Firefox.

Mozilla began migrating Firebug features to the built-in Firefox debugging tools in 2016. Core Firefox developer tools include a page inspector, web console, JavaScript debugger, and network monitor. 

The goal is to make debugging native to Firefox. “Sometimes, it’s better to start from scratch, which is especially true for software development,” Odvarko said. To try Firefox Developer Tools, you can download Firefox Quantum: Developer Edition or update to the current Firefox browser. Mozilla provides guidance on migrating from Firebug to Firefox Developer Tools. 

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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