But first, we’d like some feedback on a little feature introduced with this version. “Minimize to status bar” is the new little down arrow next to the “Open in New Window” and “Close” icons on the tab strip. On the Mac, it looks like this:

Clicking that down arrow will drop the currently open Firebug panel into a new icon on the status bar and leave everything running. This sort of approximates the old behavior where you could turn on Firebug and still close the window and receive updates on the console and net panel, but not requiring a separate window to be active. There was some discussion in today’s meeting about the ramifications of this behavior. I think the biggest contention was having multiple icons on the status bar. As you minimize more Firebug panels, you get more icons. This could look a little strange, but on the plus side, you get a visual indicator of how many Firebugs are actually running.

So, if you’re into testing bleeding edge debugging software, install this into a testing profile and try it out. Leave us a comment here or on the Firebug discussion page.

I would also like to note that auto updates to the 1.4 alpha line should be working again after a somewhat embarrassing typo made by yours truly to the install.rdf file. Thanks to “geki007″ for finding the error!

Firebug 1.2.1 is not compatible with Firefox 3.1.

That bothers me, but not half-as-much as it probably bothers you, the person trying to debug some web on the latest, fastest, state-of-the-art Firefox (that kicks ass and is really cool and will make you more popular). But don’t fret! It won’t be this way for long. I’m hoping that today or tomorrow we’re going to release Firebug 1.3 on AMO!

Firebug 1.3 is not compatible with Firefox 3.1.

No, I’m not kidding. It sort of works, but there are a number of issues with it. It was never intended to work with Firefox 3.1 and as such, there are some known and probably many more unknown problems.

Let me say what I should have said at the start of this post: If you want to use Firebug with Firefox 3.1, you will need to use Firebug 1.4. Get the latest version from the releases directory and install it up. No compatibility override required. Don’t let the alpha version tag frighten you, it’s really quite decent.

Details about the different versions available on getfirebug.com’s releases page. Worth a read to see all the cool new features that have gone into these upcoming releases.