Comments on: 5 things I’d love to see in Firebug

By: Firebug Decreases Blog Development Time » Left at Sunrise

Firebug Decreases Blog Development Time » Left at Sunrise — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:16:00 +0000

[...] But of course, don’t just take my word for it. Here are some other people’s thoughts on this wonderful little tool available here, here, here, and here. [...]

By: cosmix

cosmix — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:09:37 +0000

By: Sugar

Sugar — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:04:01 +0000

Don’t bleh me, you

I didn’t automatically tagged the colour picker as unnecessary with my above comment, you know.

By: cosmix

cosmix — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:07:43 +0000

But will we ever stop demanding for more after that?

That’s not exactly relevant to this specific request. It’s the wrong way to go about this, Sugar. As a web designer, I am sure you often you need to play around/experiment with colour combinations while editing CSS. A colour picker (for a designer, not a programmer) is a core tool and — it seems to me — a natural addition to Firebug, considering its capability to edit and instantly apply HTML/CSS modifications. Or, if you prefer, I find the lack of a colour picker kind of frustrating considering how good the extension is otherwise. And while some of us have become comfortable with hex colour codes over the years, a colour picker remains an oft used tool for a lot of designers. Bleh.

By: Sugar

Sugar — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:13:42 +0000

@ Joe: I guess that’s what I’ll do, Joe, thanks for your feedback.

@cosmix: That’d be a great addition too, I agree. But will we ever stop demanding for more after that?

By: cosmix

cosmix — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:24:16 +0000

What I’d like to see in Firebug is an integrated colour picker. That’d certainly help streamline the CSS editing workflow. And, yes, I know there are other extensions that offer that functionality; I’m referring to an integrated one. Preferably one that works in all three main platforms.

By: Joe Hewitt

Joe Hewitt — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:04:19 +0000

I’ll think about supporting a different shortcut, but in the mean time, you can configure Web Developer to change its Ctrl+Shift+C shortcut to something else to free it up for Firebug. Go to the “Keys” section under Web Developer’s Options dialog.

That’s what I’ve done, at least. I use Ctrl+Shift+C a lot and it’s in a really convenient place.

By: Sugar

Sugar — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 11:52:57 +0000

@ Tom: Unfortunately, ctrl+shift+c, as you said, shows my web developer’s toolbar CSS. Oh well, let’s hope for a different shortcut.

@ Joe: Thanks for your quick (nay, instant) answer. As Tom mentioned, unfortunately the auto-inspect shortcut conflicts with Web Developer toolbar “View CSS” one. Maybe it’s too much to ask, but every designer I know has both extensions installed, and we’d love a different shortcut!

I knew about the “Find Next” functionality, but I often find myself in dire need of a “Find Previous” one, since I keep typing Enter for at least a time more.

And I didn’t know about those parent/sibling shortcuts, thank you, it’s a blessing.

By: Joe Hewitt

Joe Hewitt — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:21:23 +0000

Hi Zaharenia! Let me answer some of your requests….

You can hit Ctrl+Shift+C to “auto-inspect”.

There is no “Find Previous” (yet), but you can hit enter to “Find Next”.

While inspecting, Ctrl+Up will select the parent tag, and the up/down keys will inspect siblings.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:19:52 +0000

You can do the auto-inspect thing by using cmb+shf+c on a Mac, or ctl+shf+c on Windows. It opens the Firebug pane and starts inspecting right away. Some times this shortcut conflicts with the web developer toolbar though and shows you the CSS

Hope that helps.

I would love to see your other requests happen too though they would be really useful.