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Comment by elisee | Hacker News Reader

I have found the Chrome dev tools to be much better usability-wise than anything Firebug had to offer. I also find it suspicious that Firebug is so heavy in terms of performance & memory, compared to the always-enabled chrome dev tools.

Anyway it's good to see Mozilla is investing in this area by integrating tools right in the browser. Keep it up!

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Interesting. I have found Chrome dev tools to be much harder to use with all the icons colorless and looking the same I always have to hover to find out what are they doing. The watch window for script debugging is also done better in firebug.

However, Chrome's developer tools do work better - Firebug sometimes closes spontaneously.

I actually thought the same before I took a long, hard look at Chrome's dev tools one day. If you're used to Firebug, everything should be nearly identical, however, the snappiness of Chrome is significantly different (at least as of 1.8.3 and 1.8.4). I remember, however, the UI feeling quite different a versions ago, but I don't use Firebug as regularly as the Chrome developer tools.

Also, this especially goes for frontend and javascript devs, having the Javascript console mapped to ESC on Chrome on every tool tab is a huge feature.

Aside from that, though, I feel that for most developers the differences are nearly negligible (though I obviously cannot really speak for "most developers"). I'm curious to see if I'm completely wrong on this.

I generally agree. The primary thing I find myself going back to Firebug for is debugging ajax calls, since I get the fully expandable request / response info inline along with console output. Chromium can show that an ajax call was made inline, but the link goes to the Network tab, and unfortunately doesn't auto-select the referenced call.

Holy crap, I think Chrome can do that, too.

I upvoted you because I agreed; AJAX was what I went back to Firefox for.

However, a different comment in this thread mentioned the Chrome Developer Tools preferences (a little gears icon in the bottom right corner), which I'd never noticed before.

Sure enough, clicking it revealed the options 1) Log XMLHttpRequests and 2)Preserve log upon navigation. Checking those (which were unchecked by default) gave a HUGE amount of info on the AJAX calls that I just tested.

Maybe it's not what you're talking about, but it was a big find for me.

That's exactly what I was referring to.

You can set it to add a line to the log when ajax calls are made, and fortunately a trace for where they are made from, but you have to go to the Network tab and click on the actual request to see the details. Clicking the link within the console output provides will take you to the tab, but not the request.

It's close - but not quite there. I prefer having it all in one place, but just having the link lead to the actual Request on the Network tab would be great.

I often have the network panel split with console, which gives access to everything. You can limit the network calls to XHR as well if that's all you're looking for.

A quick google shows that there's still no way to disable browser cache in Chrome. How do you work around that problem? Or is it already fixed?

Open the preferences, lower right hand corner icon that looks like a gear, and select the "Disable cache" option under Network.

Open dev tools, click on the gear in the lower right, it's an option in the overlay menu.

What I miss most about Firefox isn't Firebug but Web Developer Toolbar. Chrome inspector is very comparable to Firebug but the Chrome version of Web Dev Toolbar is buggy and limited.

There are so many useful tools built in (e.g. ruler, view ancestors/descendants, live edit CSS) that I can't bring myself to fully switch to Chrome.

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