Okay so most of you on this site are Real Estate Agents and web development is probably not your primary job function. You sit at the PC late nights and early mornings doing a little tweaking here and there, maybe some SEO work as you have time. You cannot always afford professional help from WB Consulting, we understand.
But, there are tools out there that can help you dramatically speed up your ‘tweaking’ process in what little time you have to do it. That tool is called Firebug. Here is a quick little tutorial on how to use Firebug and what it can do for you.
Firebug 101
Okay so, what is Firebug, without re-inventing the wheel here, below is a description of Firebug from Wikipedia.
Firebug is a web development tool that facilitates the debugging, editing, and monitoring of any website's CSS, HTML, DOM, and JavaScript; it also provides other web development tools. Firebug's JavaScript panel can log errors, profile function calls, and enable the developer to run arbitrary JavaScript. Its net panel can monitor URLs that the browser requests, such as external CSS, JavaScript, and image files. The net panel can display both request headers and response headers for each page asset; it can also estimate the time each asset took to load.
Firebug is free and open source; it is licensed under the BSD license. Firebug was initially written in January 2006 by Joe Hewitt, one of the original Firefox creators. The Firebug Working Group oversees the open source development and extension of Firebug. Firebug has two major implementations: an extension (add-on) for Mozilla Firefox and a bookmarklet implementation called Firebug Lite. A cross-browser version is in development. Currently, the Firebug add-on has over 3 million active daily users.
In addition to debugging web pages, Firebug is a useful tool for web security testing and web page performance analysis.
Get Firefox and Install Firebug – in 5 minutes or Less
Okay so now that you know what it is, and that it is only compatible with Firefox, we need to be sure you have Firefox. As a web developer, hopefully you already have Firefox, IE, Safari, Chrome and even Oprah, yes Oprah is a browser (http://www.opera.com/) not to be confused with Harpo’s Oprah :).
To get Firefox, simply open your favorite browser, and Google Firefox or Mozilla Firefox. Download it and install the latest version. No images here sorry, if you are tweaking sites in your spare time, you can handle this ;).
So now that you have Firefox installed, how do you get Firebug you ask, easy? Simply open Firefox if you don’t already have it open and click on ‘Tools’ then ‘Add-Ons’. You should see a page like this one below, image-01.
image - 01
At the top right of this page you see the Search all add-on’s area, type in Firebug. Once you find it, simply click on Install and if it says it needs to Restart Firefox, allow it to do so, click on Restart if needed.
Side Note: Once you get Firefox under your skin and see how truly cool it is, with its hundreds of add-ons, refrain from adding too many. Add-on’s slow down the browser in some cases and running a lot will hinder Firefox.
Okay so you have Firebug installed and running, you know this because you now have a little ‘bug’ at the top of your Firefox screen, like the one shown below in image - 02.
image - 02
Continued in Part 2, What can FireBug do to save me time?
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WB Consulting is a Web Design company servicing the Collin County area specializing in Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Mobile Web Design, Marketing, Social Marketing and Video Production. Want to know more about WB Consulting, visit our web site at www.webservicesdfw.com or contact us today at 214-449-0488.
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