Firebug Comes of Age
Joe Hewitt's Firebug addon has always been high on my list of favourite developer tools. Now that he's released version 1.0 I think it's been pushed to the top of that list and become an absolute can't-live-without bit of kit. Not wanting to rest on his laurels he's completely re-written the whole plugin. And it shows. I like it so much I parted with some cash and donated to the project. It's easy for us Brits to look quite generous at the moment, what with the "two dollar pound".
It's hard to explain why it's such a useful addon. While I could easily list the features I like, this doesn't explain when it's useful. If I get chance any time soon I'll describe a typical scenario in which it's invaluable and show how I use it.
Whereas I used to develop in IE and test in Firefox later I now find myself tending to work the other way round because of things like Firebug.
So, go and get it. Find a spare half hour today and have a play with it. Like all software the best way to learn is to press all the buttons and see what happens. As the documentation is thin on the ground this is the best way only way right now.
Skip to the 
You can subscribe to an individual
About coding with IE, it is worthwhile to mention that you can actually use the console.log() calls with other browsers thanks to Firebug lite : {Link}
14 days ago Joe Hewitt asked the community on his blog if they would mind paying for Firebug ($15-25 range). Even if a lot of users were more than glad to pay for this incredibly useful tool, Joe decided to keep it free. What a nice guy. Respect.
Firebug was the only tool that helped me find some DIV's with competing z-indexes. Basically a DIV that was hidden but prevented the clicking of a button under it. Dynamically altering the DOM using Firebug helped me find the issue.
I combine Firebug with Chris Pederick's Developer Toolbar.
Thanks for mentioning the new version. It looks relly cool! Your link points to the old Firebug install button. Here's the link to 1.0: {Link}
Put simply, I don't know how I lived before Firebug!
I had been using a lash-up of Console, the Venkmann debugger and a whole heap more. After Jake's big-up I've binned them. Now Firebug installs :-).
Once I found out about the debugger keyword thanks to a brief tutorial -> {Link}
Oh, and congrats to Jake & Karen on little Felix