Why is this thing on?
This is an all-too-frequent question many Firebug users have. It can be frustrating to look down in the corner and see an orange bug and not know how it got there. Now that the initial giddiness of releasing Firebug 1.3.0 has worn off and we’ve stood back and taken stock, there are a couple of annoyances.
First, if you make heavy use of the console API, specifically, wrapping its log() method, you may find your application throwing “this.notifyFirebug is not a function” errors and your log messages not appearing on the console. You can see the gory details and an explanation in issue #1347.
Second, you might have noticed the Firebug status bar icon in a state of permanent orange. Hovering over the icon tells you the version of Firebug (1.3.0) and nothing else. Before I try to explain why this is, there is a simple work-around: Use the “Suspend” feature on the status icon’s context (right-click) menu. That puts Firebug into a standby mode and turns off all features until you open it again.
The reason for the constant orange is that Firebug is using some JavaScript Debugger hooks to detect when scripts are loaded into a web-page. It uses these hooks to inject the Console object into the current web-page and that’s what allows you to use the API functions from your own web-pages. Because the activation of the JSD system is one of the checks Firebug uses to determine the state of that icon, it ends up being always orange. I’m not sure yet if you have to have the Console enabled for System or local pages for this to be the case, or if it’s a global thing. In any case, you’re probably seeing more orange bug than you ought to be.
This will be fixed in 1.4 as it uses a different injection mechanism method. Also, we’re going to be using that version to try a simpler activation interface that will hopefully be less consfusing than the current three check-boxed version. If pre-beta software gives you the heebie jeebies, fret not; we’re going to release a 1.3.1 shortly with a number of additional fixes baked right in. In the meantime, “Suspend” is your Friend.
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