I found a new tool yesterday that I hope solves a lot of my issues! Firebug Lite! If you are a developer, you are probably familiar with firebug for firefox already. It is a great tool for debugging just about all aspects of a web page.
I work a lot with JSF pages created using Java Pure Faces, so I do a lot of my CSS tweaking after the fact. We create web applications that will be used by just about anyone, and unfortunately, people still use IE6 (or IE at all). Firebug Lite allows you to add a debugging tool very similar to the Firefox Firebug tool into any browser by simply adding a <script> tag like:
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.2/firebug-lite-compressed.js'></script>
This is great! I just had an issue last week where I needed this, but I only discovered yesterday in a tweet on twitter (follow my tweets – @mpickell). The tweet directed me to tutorial9 where there is a nice write-up.
I’m really looking forward to using this tool, but I have found some issues with already. I haven’t seen these documented, and I am not sure if they are problems with my configuration, so I am interested if anyone else sees the same thing.
- I wasn’t able to get firebug lite working in IE6, and the CSS window on the right hand side didn’t work for IE7. These are probably my fault, because I tested them through IETester, and not real installs.
- I also tested in a full, normal install of Opera and had some issues.
- I still need to test Chrome and Safari, but i’ll post that when i do.
So this is a great tool to have available, and I’m sure upcoming revisions will fix the issues I saw. It is going to make life a lot easier.
software excogitation 