Ajax Bestiary: A Javascript Field Guide
 
Ajax Bestiary: A Javascript Field Guide
 
 

Entries from December 2007

Simplify Debugging With Firebug Lite

Posted by Don Albrecht

Firebug Lite in SafariMost of us are familiar with Firebug, the powerful & straightforward debugging extension for firefox.  You may not be familiar with it’s little brother, Firebug lite.

Firebug lite is exactly as it sounds, a light-weight firebug console for any browser.  Simply include the firebug script tag in any page and you’re console.log(); operations will work on any browser (IE, Safari, Firefox & More).  What’s more, if Firebug is installed in Firefox, it logs to the full Firebug console.  You can pull up the console by hitting F12 or CTRL + SHIFT + L at any time.

Don’t want to bother with hitting F12 every time you reload?  Just attach a debug=”true” attribute to the html element (<html debug=”true”> ).

But wait, There’s more.

Firebug Lite has an even littler sibling called Firebugx.  Replace the call to firebug.js with a call to firebugx.js and you neutralize any console calls in your code without having to hunt them down or find / replace.  Something that would have saved me a whole heap of trouble with the last BLT deployment.

Download Firebug Lite at:

http://www.getfirebug.com/lite.html 

Blueprint Layout Tool 0.3

Posted by Don Albrecht

BLT3

I’ve made some progress and BLT in the last week and thought it has reached a good point to release for feedback.

New Features

  • Border Support
  • All columns can be resized by clicking on them (even nested columns)
  • All columns can be selected by clicking on them
  • New Properties Panel
    • Control Border & Last attributes
    • Change ID on any div
  • Improved sorting

Please post your comments below.
Get it online here:

http://www.ajaxbestiary.com/Labs/BLT2/

Known Issues:

  • Interface doesn’t work well on narrow screens
  • Occasional problems with sorts falling outside of the page
  • Output needs dramatic cleanup
  • Files need minified & optimized to improve download time & performance
  • Issues remain with formatting & .png rendering on IE. I hope to address these ASAP.

This version has been tested in safari 3, FF 2 & IE 7. Please test in other browsers if possible.