What is firebug you ask? It really might turn out to be the best web development extension for Firefox ever made. This is a must have that no Web developer should do without. I’m serious – you need Firebug. Since I have been more active on the web development scene, I have used only two tools to create, interrogate and fix web sites. Firefox and it’s Web Developer extension, and UltraEdit, the king of all text editors (in my humble opinion.) Occasionally I will use TopStyle to more in depth css design, but after my most recent rebuild I have not installed it and have never missed it.
Firebug lets you view and edit the HTML and CSS of any page. It tells you exactly which CSS rules affect the styling of the element you select in the style inspector – not only which rules affect it directly but also which rules it inherits properties from. It lets you edit anything and toggle CSS on and off, with the results immediately showing on the page. It allows you to actually view the javascript that is loaded via an server side include, which the Web developer extention do not do.
That is only a very small portion of what this extension can do, and it is pretty much the best tool I have ever used. Given the fact that I have really only been playing with it for a few weeks and I’ve really barely touched the full capabilities of what it can do. Oh did I mention it is FREE?
Go get it and let me know what you think…
Get Firebug: http://www.getfirebug.com/
I’ll be upgrading my grid server to Php 5 and reconfiguring my php.ini file over the next few days… I’m sure I’ll screw things up a few times but I hope the end result will be a performance boost!
I began the process of migrating my site to Media Temple’s new (gs) Grid-Server hosting plan. It’s faster, more scaleable, better, stronger, etc, etc. I’ve been waiting for this for a while now, as I have a few clients that want sites and I was waiting for Media Temple to roll this out before we began the process. We will see how it goes, but it should be just what the doctor ordered.
So as of October 19th my site is now running on Media Temple’s new Grid Server back end and everything went pretty smooth for the most part. Wordpress tranfered over perfectly but Gallery2 did not. My data directory (i.e. the one that has all the photos and videos in it) did not come across (at least I couldn’t find it) but I’m sure the folks at MT will fix me up soon… The performance of my web site has suffered a tiny little bit (I use fasterfox’s built in page load timer as a benchmark) but I have not turned on my RR container and have spent no time tweaking things such as my php.ini file and other toys I never had before. Overall it went very smooth and I’m sure things will get better, as more people migrate over and MT platform’s get’s more mature…
As of October 20th, MT has helped me work through my issues (yes they were my issues really and one I figured it out it was easy to fix) and now everything is fully functional again… Yahoo!
So our web monkey has gotten busy and my developement site is finally back up and running. You can find it here. Here’s some interesting facts I discovered about the name of my development site.
Tsedang is a capital city of Lhoka prefecture in eastern Tibet, and literally means “monkey’s playground”. It is the third largest city in Tibet and monkey’s are still present in the city today. Tibet creation myth tells how, in a cave at the back of a small mountain in Tsedang, a saintly monkey and an ogress gave birth to the Tibetan people. Their early history including the reigns of some 30 semi-mythical kings, and the mild weather and fertile land of the region gestated the great Tibet dynasty. Consider this your history lesson for the day…