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.

While that’s cooking, Firebug 1.4 is going into its 7th alpha with even more tasty goodness included in the Net panel — we’re considering renaming it to the Honza panel, or maybe just putting an icon of Honza’s face in there. It’s got that much Honza in it. Also, John Barton has added some new Script panel improvements and performance enhancements. Scrolling should be even smoother and there’s a new “break-on-next” debugging feature which, at the moment, as almost sure to break things in new and exciting ways. Feel free to try it out at the usual place: http://getfirebug.com/releases/firebug/1.4.

John Resig and Honza have been working on getting Fireunit ready for prime-time as well. Over the next month, I plan on integrating that with some revamped build scripts to get our unittest environment running.

Now I’d like to reintroduce the Firebug Development Blog. It’s been freshly reminted and the links should finally work again on the getfirebug.com website. Expect updates from the team about new features and usage tips as well as developer-related information like API changes. If you’re into Firebug, you’ll want to add that feed to your reader of choice.

• Firebug 1.3.0b2 is available on getfirebug.com
• Discussed Honza’s awesome improvements to the Net panel
• Discussed John Resig’s further efforts on FireUnit and NetUnit integration
• Starting to push new code to 1.4 branch, 1.3 for bugfixes and cleanup only.

That’s the short version.

The longer version includes some good discussion about the net panel improvements, including some ideas for color improvements and drawing MozAfterPaint events on top of time-lines. We’re starting to see some additional load events super-imposed on the network traffic now, so the term “Net panel” is probably going to be replaced with something like, Construction Timeline in a later version. I don’t know what that name will be yet.

Resig’s improvements to FireUnit include a test-runner mechanism for running through a set of chrome files containing unittests. He’s also making good progress on integrating Honza’s NetUnit tests which will include the httpd.js server for hosting locally stored tests. We’re getting that much closer to having a usable unittest solution.

That’s not to say that we have full unittest coverage yet. I spent a couple of days messing around last week trying to write some Script panel unittests but ended up scrapping them because I coded around the thing I was trying to test. It was educational at least. I’ve moved back to working on rewriting some of the packaging tools so we can have a saner, cross-platform mechanism for building the extension and stripping out all the debugging and tracing code. Hint: It will probably be written in a language named for a certain non-venomous snake.

Not mentioned in the bullets, John Barton has moved Chromebug into the google code repository we’re using for Firebug. Feel free to check it out and give it a whirl. We should be much closer to having Chromebug in a usable state where Firefox and extension developers can start using it.

Oh, and one last thing: For all you testers running nightlies, we’re going to bump the MaxVersion on Firebug to 3.1 so you can start re-enabling your compatibility checks. Note that Firebug 1.3 on Firefox 3.1 will be considered experimental and useful for testing purposes only. We know there are problems, but we need to track them down and fix them in Firebug 1.4. If you encounter a problem, do a search in our Issues database and if you don’t find it, file it!