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Web Developer 1.0

A year in the making, I am pleased to finally announce the 1.0 release of the Web Developer extension. This release contains a huge number of new features and bug fixes.

Some new features to look out for are:

  • Display Element Information
  • Display Ruler
  • Edit HTML
  • View Document Size

Other notable new features are support for opening the current page in another application through the customizable 'Tools' menu and viewing the source in an external editor through the customizable 'View Source' menu.

Please see the updated documentation for more information.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of the extension you are strongly recommended to uninstall the extension before upgrading.

If you are having problems after upgrading you should uninstall the extension in safe mode and then re-install.

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90 Responses

  1. Keep up the good work! This is an exce­llent tool, although it’s fin­ding too many mis­ta­kes in my designs :( lol

  2. More like YEARS in the making. Con­gra­tu­la­tions Chris! Web­Dev is a lifesaver.

  3. :) Brilliant.

    ‘Edit HTML’, what with Edit CSS I see Live deve­lop­ment If these fea­tu­res could be added to the top of Fire­fox rather than the side Live Deve­lop­ment would be pos­si­ble. Currently it pushes % off side­ways which make it impos­si­ble to be sure that everythings right.

  4. I am loo­king to improve the side­bar fea­tu­res in a future release to allow doc­king to any side of the brow­ser as well as floa­ting windows.

  5. Thanks for your work — Web Deve­lo­per is a great tool. Perhaps the most use­ful tool I’ve found in 8 years of web development.

    Gene KohliJanuary 1, 2006 @ 04:23
  6. Thanks for the job. :)

  7. Whow.… thx Chris!

  8. Keep up the exce­llent work!

  9. The most inte­res­ting tool for my fire­fox, hel­ping me to fix many pro­blem in IE too! I LOVE the “View style infor­ma­tion”!
    The new “Dis­play Ele­ment Infor­ma­tion” works great but, if I can sug­gest, will be VERY use­full if the click on the Chil­dren or Ances­tor ele­ments lis­ted will make something like open the DOM Ins­pec­tor on the selec­ted ele­ments.
    I talk as a dummy-users, I don’t know how this will be dif­fi­cult, but exten­sion like Ins­pect Ele­ment do this, and I find this fea­ture use­full as far as Web Deve­lo­per too.
    Again thanks!

  10. There are so many use­ful impro­ve­ments in ver­sion 1.0 (Dis­play Table Depth, View Docu­ment Size, Dis­play Line Gui­des, …) — marvelous!

    The BEST exten­sion to Fire­fox — really. And the most impor­tant tool for web­wor­kers, too.

  11. Hands Down, the best fire­fox exten­sion I’ve got.

    Thanks for pro­vi­ding this to the community.

    AnonymousJanuary 2, 2006 @ 09:18
  12. Keul — This is a good idea and I’ll look into it for a future release.

  13. Holy CRAP. I thought this exten­sion was essen­tial before. Kudos upon kudos to you, sir! This is marvelous.

  14. If I down­load the loca­li­zed ver­sion of Web­De­ve­lo­per, I obtain ver­sion 0.9.4 ins­tead of 1.0

  15. knocte — This is because the exten­sion was relea­sed less than 48 hours ago so there are no trans­la­tions for it yet.

    The down­load is labe­led as 0.9.4 and I will replace it with the 1.0 release when I have some translations.

  16. Then me and my l10n group (NAVE: http://nave.escomposlinux.org/) can con­tri­bute. We will con­tact you.

  17. Fan­tas­tic! Many thanks for such an essen­tial tool for Web developers.

    SimonJanuary 3, 2006 @ 02:35
  18. I love the Web­De­ve­lo­per exten­sion. The 1.0 ver­sion, — seem to have a pro­blem when run­ning together with Gmail. I am not able to open attach­ments recei­ved in Gmail. When unins­ta­lling the 1.0 ver­sion, and reins­ta­lling the. 0.94, — everything works fine.

    I miss the “Clear Ses­sion Coo­kies” func­tio­na­lity in ver­sion 1.0.

    Geir A.

    Geir ArnesenJanuary 3, 2006 @ 03:02
  19. Hey, this is a great tool, I use it every day!

    –but i too miss the “Clear Ses­sion Coo­kies” — it made tes­ting sites that uses coo­kies much easier. Now I need to close the brow­ser (all tabs) to see the changes

    Søren TJanuary 3, 2006 @ 07:02
  20. Sweet! I wasn’t expec­ting to finally be able to hover from menu to menu just like that, so that’s a plea­sant sur­prise… wor­king with Web Deve­lo­per just got a bit fas­ter. :) Exce­llent work, Chris!

  21. An FYI — Fire­fox just noti­fied me that an update was avai­la­ble for your tool­bar. Howe­ver, after I ins­ta­lled it, I had to reins­tall Fire­fox because I lost all func­tio­na­lity of it. I couldn’t type a url, my book­mark tool­bar disap­pea­red, and no home­page pulled up on launch. After the re-install of Fire­fox things seem back to normal.

    I DO greatly value your exten­sion! Happy New Year!

    MilouJanuary 3, 2006 @ 08:17
  22. Thanks a million!

  23. Great work. Well worth the wait. Some of my favo­rite new fea­tu­res inc­lude: Edit HTML, Out­line Posi­tio­ned Ele­ments, View Color Infor­ma­tion, View Docu­ment Out­line and Source and View Gene­ra­ted Source. As a result of the added fea­tu­res I can get rid of nume­rous other exten­sions and bookmarklets.

  24. Milou: same thing hap­pe­ned to me, but after 3 Fire­fox res­tarts everything wor­ked fine…

    Oh, and thanks for all the work on the exen­ten­sion Chris!

  25. I had FF1.0.7 english Win­dowsXP. I upda­ted to WebDeveloper1.0 using the inter­nal update tool. All went fine and I res­tar­ted Firefox.

    Then I could do nothing. I could see menus, tool­bar and address field. But clic­king menus or address field did nothing. It was like some hid­den glass was on top of the brow­ser win­dow stea­ling all focuses.

    I could use right-mouseclick to open con­text menu. Reins­ta­lled FF1.0.7 did not help. Wor­ka­round:
    * Star­ted in safe mode: firefox.exe –safe-mode
    * Unins­ta­lled Webdeveloper1.0
    * res­tar­ted FF and all is fine now.

    Other exten­sions I have:
    Dom Ins­pec­tor 1.0, Live HTTP Hea­ders 0.11, View Coo­kies 1.5, View­Sour­ce­With 0.0.7.8, Adblock 0.5.2.056

  26. Fixed FF1.0.7 free­sing pro­blem:
    * Star­ted in safe mode: firefox.exe –safe-mode
    * Unins­ta­lled Web­de­ve­lo­per 1.0
    * Close Fire­fox
    * Start fire­fox in nor­mal mode
    * Ins­ta­lled Web­de­ve­loer 1.0 again
    * Res­tar­ted Fire­fox and now it seems to work ok.

    So maybe Web­de­ve­lo­per autoup­date is not recom­men­ded, must first unins­tall old ver­sion then ins­tall new one.

  27. Geir — The exten­sion works fine with GMail for me. I would sug­gest unins­ta­lling and re-installing the exten­sion or trying it under a clean profile.

    Geir and Soren — ‘Clear Ses­sion Coo­kies’ is still avai­la­ble, but has been moved to a new ‘Coo­kies’ menu. If you are not seeing this menu then please read the FAQ.

    asdf — I think the auto-update works much bet­ter in Fire­fox 1.5, but if you are having pro­blems please read the docu­men­ta­tion for trou­bleshoo­ting recommendations.

  28. Kudos. The best Fire­fox exten­sion for any web deve­lo­per out there, it’s a must.

    Howe­ver, the editCSS/HTML seems a lot slo­wer than pre­vious ver­sions. Also, it would be nice to have the option to open the editCSS/HTML in a new win­dow or tab, ins­tead of side­bar, as this res­tricts the size of the site/is small to edit in.

  29. trovs­ter — Please see my pre­vious com­ment about the side­bar. As for per­for­mance, there are no major chan­ges that should have affec­ted the speed — you could try twea­king some of the set­tings for the side­bar in the options.

  30. I ins­ta­lled the new ver­sion this mor­ning, and now Fire­fox won’t start in regu­lar or safe mode. Any ideas? Do I need to reins­tall everything!?

  31. Just a quick note of thanks — WDT is the gold stan­dard for HTML/CSS/HTTP troubleshooting.

  32. Dan — The exten­sion should not be able to stop Fire­fox star­ting in safe mode. Make sure you have no copies of Fire­fox run­ning in the back­ground and then run again in safe mode.

  33. Gree­tings from Rus­sia :)
    Thanks for a pretty hard job. We all sure appre­ciate this.
    A few notes:
    – it would be nice to inc­lude 1024×768 to the Resize options.
    – disa­bling ima­ges was bet­ter in the pre­vious ver­sion. One extra click is nee­ded now.
    – disa­bling ima­ges w/o refreshing the page would be splen­did.
    – ele­ments should be out­li­ned with dif­fe­rent colors (ex. abso­lute — red; fixed — green and so on)

    Thanks for the work again :)

  34. Great work with this update Chris. I’m only an ama­tuer web deve­lo­per making pages more for myself than anyone else but your exten­sion is still really use­ful. Howe­ver I also have some bad news to report: The rip-off is back, with the same sto­len icons and the same copied-verbatim fea­ture descriptions.

  35. Flack:

    - The resize list is con­fi­gu­ra­ble so you can add it your­self — please read the FAQ.
    – Disa­bling ima­ges is under an extra menu, but this was done for con­sis­tency as part of the menu reor­ga­ni­za­tion.
    – Unfor­tu­na­tely disa­bling ima­ges is an inter­nal fea­ture to the brow­ser and requi­res a refresh. Any change would be a change in the brow­ser not the exten­sion.
    – I’ve added the uni­que colors for the ‘Out­li­ned Posi­tio­ned Ele­ments’ fea­ture to the to-do list.

    Ian — I had noti­ced that and will be con­tac­ting them about it again.

  36. - My bad, sorry.
    – OK, roger that. But still it was more usa­ble ;)
    – Yup, I see. But may be there could be another way? Like “Make Ima­ges Invi­si­ble” with dis­pla­ying the alt-text.
    – Great!

  37. THANKS! This is awesome!

    I ran into the same issues that Milou and Kent did. I had to res­tart Fire­fox in Safe Mode just to be able to use the brow­ser. Fixing this is sim­ple: when I read the ins­ta­lla­tion docu­men­ta­tion, I rea­li­zed I nee­ded to unins­tall the pre­vious ver­sion of the tool­bar. Howe­ver, the first time through I had no rea­son to read the docu­men­ta­tion since I hadn’t run into pro­blems yet. ;)

    Chris: Would you be so good as to men­tion on the main WDT page the fact that current users need to unins­tall first? I figure it could save some peo­ple a lot of confusion.

  38. *Dona­ted*
    Thanks bro.

  39. aliotsy — I’ll update the page with a note about this.

    Dus­tin — thanks! :)

  40. Hi there, thanks for a great extension!

    I use the View Source but­ton alot since I’m in a help chan­nel for #CSS. Pro­blem is that you have chan­ged the View Source but­ton to make me click twice to see the source, this makes is unless imo, since I can easi­liy rightc­lick anywhere and select view source there… Anyhow, you pro­blably think I’m lacy but is there some way I can manually change this in just my version?

    HuvetJanuary 3, 2006 @ 17:59
  41. Thank you for Web Deve­lo­per exten­sion, it has saved me con­si­de­ra­ble time and my sanity on a num­ber of occassions.

  42. Huvet — The but­ton has been expan­ded for the extra fea­tu­res such as ‘View Frame Source’ and vie­wing the source in an exter­nal edi­tor. There is no way to change this just for your version.

  43. Bri­lliant work as usual Chris, thank you so much for this outs­tan­ding extension.

  44. Bri­lliant exte­nua­tion… I have become so depen­dent on it, I have dif­fi­culty deve­lo­ping web­si­tes without it!

    Any­way, going along what “Huvet” was saying… On the options, “View Source” page, would it be pos­si­ble to have a tick box to con­vert the “View Source” menu back into the sin­gle but­ton — those new fea­tu­res in the menu are great, but I per­so­nally pre­fer the sin­gle click.

    Also, I know I have the book­marks menu, but it would be really good if the links to the W3C docu­ments came back… having all the web dev stuff together really helped.

    Any­way, you amaze me again, I did not think it could get any bet­ter… but it looks like there is allot for me to play with today (yay).

  45. Awe­some job on this exten­sion, Chris.

  46. I can’t get it to work pro­perly. :(
    I star­ted in Safe mode, deins­ta­lled, ins­ta­lled 1.0, but simply none of the options work. Only view source, about the likes.
    Disa­ble sty­les do not work, Out­line XX ele­ments (I tried seve­ral) anything I clic­ked in Infor­ma­tion menu.

    Any ideas? I rever­ted back to 0.9.4. which works fine.

    (my pre­vious com­ment sea­med to be made too early :( , based on fixed list)

  47. Down­load error. Any ideas?

  48. YewWWW!!!

    Thanks for this. You make me work har­der — or bet­ter — not sure but either way this exten­sion is a must have if your a web desig­ner. *5 stars* in my book.

  49. A heart­felt thanks for a job well done. You made my life easier, more effi­cient, and ove­rall, happier.

    Thanks!

  50. Alek­san­dar — My only sug­ges­tion would be to try the exten­sion under a clean profile.

    Alex — Please read the ins­ta­lla­tion trou­bleshoo­ting sec­tion of the documentation.

  51. Thanks so much for this, Chris. I love the new edit HTML fea­ture, as well as… well, all the others. I think your exten­sion also con­ver­ted someone from Opera to Fire­fox today (quite unintentionally).

    You rock. Keep up the good work!

    Joshua WeldersonJanuary 4, 2006 @ 13:54
  52. Fan­tas­tic! Just when we thought that this exten­sion couldn’t get any bet­ter, you go and outdo your­self with ver­sion 1.0. All those extra fea­tu­res, with the bri­lliant Edit HTML fea­ture too. How long I’ve been loo­king for that feature!

    *Please* keep up the inc­re­di­ble work!

  53. I would like to join the throngs applau­ding your work. My abso­lute favo­rite fea­ture is View Gene­ra­ted Source — indis­pen­sa­ble in trou­bleshoo­ting scripts that write to the page.

    I am about to donate, and I was going to ask you: all these peo­ple who thank you, do they also donate? How are we users doing in sup­por­ting you?

    D’de

    Davide AndreaJanuary 4, 2006 @ 17:22
  54. Davide — As for dona­tions sup­por­ting me…let’s just say I won’t be quit­ting my day job any time soon! :)

    Howe­ver, I have had about 15 peo­ple donate since the release and those dona­tions (along with yours) are greatly appreciated.

  55. Ben,
    Just so you know, those two are bud­dies any­way, so that post you lin­ked was all in good fun as they’re ‘ol time buddies.

    I per­so­nally know Wally as that type any­way. He’s a good friend of mine as well.

  56. WOOOOOOOOW !!!!!!!!

    The best just got bet­ter!
    Its the first exten­sion I reach for, almost always spots the flaw first, is a pain in the a## for poin­ting out the bad stuff.… but you end up with a per­fect page!

    Steve BJanuary 5, 2006 @ 02:02
  57. Thanks for your replay Chris.
    I have to agree with Craig a check­box in the options would be a great addi­tion in the next ver­sion. I can’t belive this minor issue is anno­ying me so much but it does.

    HuvetJanuary 5, 2006 @ 03:42
  58. The exten­sion is great! Easy to use and very power­ful.
    Is it pos­si­ble to edit the HTML of a frame? I tried seve­ral ways, but I always got the source of the fra­me­set to edit.
    The tool­tip of all the menu items of the web deve­lo­per tool­bar is the last tool­tip that was dis­pla­yed in anywhere Fire­fox (except tool­tips of book­marks) — if I look at the tool­tip of “CSS” (in the tool­bar), every item has “CSS” as tool­tip, if I look at the tool­tip of the reload but­ton I get “reload page” as tooltip.

    Windows-ZerstoererJanuary 5, 2006 @ 04:12
  59. The Web Deve­lo­per Tool­bar is a great tool that is a must have for any web desig­ner! Keep up the great work!

  60. Ins­ta­lling 1.0 broke my Fx 1.07. Menu and address bar inac­ces­si­ble, no home­page loa­ded, you can­not do anything.

    I had to start in safe mode and deins­tall 1.0 right away.

    Could this be a sign that it’s high time I upgra­ded to Fx 1.5?

  61. Huvet — I’ll think about some sort of com­pro­mise, but this is cer­tainly not a high-priority for me. The key­board short­cut is a solu­tion in the meantime.

    Windows-Zerstoerer — Please see the known issues about ‘Edit HTML’ not wor­king with fra­mes and this forum topic about the tooltips.

    Paul — Please see the note at the top of this page and the mul­ti­ple forum posts about how to fix this.

  62. Awe­some job, I love the gui­des and the ruler– nice work!

  63. I love this exten­sion. I’ve just star­ted to mess with CSS/HTML about 2 months ago. This makes lear­ning so much easier! Thank you, please enjoy my very small donation.

  64. I can’t tell you how use­ful i find this exten­sion exten­sion I seriously use it about 20 times a day and have got­ten every deve­lo­per I know hoo­ked on it.

    Carl BackstromJanuary 5, 2006 @ 20:38
  65. Ever­yone who builds web­si­tes needs this tool. Total genius.

    I have a fea­ture request: is it pos­si­ble to simu­late not having flash ins­ta­lled — “Disa­ble Flash”? It’d be mucho use­ful for tes­ting Flash detec­tion scripts.

  66. Just in case you have not heard it enough, con­gra­tu­la­tions and thank you on a job well done. Unless I’m mis­sing it somewhere I do miss the CTRL + SHIFt + U for the View Source, I keep hit­ting it and then rea­lize that it is gone! Thanks again.

    mightybsJanuary 6, 2006 @ 08:30
  67. Chris!!
    I must say, Web Deve­lo­per is won­der­ful piece of art­work, soft­ware, wha­te­ver cate­gory it is.
    Rulers and Gui­de­li­nes are ama­zing
    Thanks

  68. I’ve been using your Web Deve­lo­per exten­sion since 2004, and it is hands down the most use­ful Fire­fox exten­sion out there. I wouldn’t be able to do my job without it. Thanks for all of your hard work! :)

  69. Tom — Please see the to-do list.

    mightybs — Someone else noti­ced this and I’m not sure what hap­pe­ned to the short­cut, but I have added it back in to the patch release I am wor­king on.

  70. The release is simply superb, and I’ve been using this for nearly a year now. What I love about this soft­ware is that any user can grow with it over time.

    I was won­de­ring about the base href that gets thrown in to the code. Is that a neces­sity for web­de­ve­lo­per to ope­rate? The only rea­son is that I was whip­ping together some code for an Ebay lis­ting to then throw into the Ebay desc­rip­tion, but Ebay won’t accept anything with a base href in it. I obviously just edi­ted that line out and moved on, but it would be nice if it wasn’t there to begin with.

    But if it is a neces­sity, then I can cer­tainly live with it.

    Thanks again.

  71. AG — The base href is a known issue and I’m loo­king into a way to fix it.

  72. Just one thing to say: IMPRESSIVE ;)

    A really need for any web­de­ve­lo­per. Keep on the good work!!

    Gree­tings from Spain.

  73. Just another thank­full mes­sage for this

    GREATEST exten­sion

    sztoszJanuary 9, 2006 @ 13:48
  74. Great tool for web deve­lo­pers, a must have!

    derekJanuary 9, 2006 @ 23:01
  75. I know it’s been said many times before but it needs to be said…

    Cudos on the best and most use­ful — by far –exten­sion avai­la­ble for Firefox.

    One fea­ture request I have is to incor­po­rate a “find” tool­bar within the “Edit CSS” and “Edit HTML” side­bar. Much like the bar that shows at the bot­tom of the browser/document pane when you press CTRL/CMD+F.

    Keep up the good work man! If you need a hand with anything let me know, I would love to lend a hel­ping hand.

  76. ChadL — Search is already on the to-do list for ‘Edit CSS’ and I’ll add it for ‘Edit HTML’.

  77. Same pro­blem — ver­sion 1.0 doesn’t work, nothing except View Source and Resize works, no CSS, Forms etc… Deins­ta­lling doesn’t fix the pro­blem. Reins­ta­lling back 0.9.4 works, 1.0 ver­sion not. Any ideas? I am using 49 exten­sions, it would took an hour to get it run­ning a clean install…

  78. Chris, just to let you know — I reins­ta­lled Fire­fox com­ple­tely (thus star­ted with clean pro­file) and ins­tall went fine. I have no idea what cau­sed the pro­blem in the ori­gi­nal install.

    WDE is defi­ni­telly worth more than these 5mins it took me to deins­tall and get all my exten­sions and theme back. Great stuff you have here. I never gave a donate so eagerly.

  79. Peep — If unins­ta­lling and re-installing does not work then my only sug­ges­tion is to try with a clean pro­file, sorry.

  80. :) I saw the list after I pos­ted. Thanks!

  81. Thanks for con­ti­nuing to work on this exten­sion. I made a small dona­tion through Pay­Pal, hope­fully others will do so as well.

    Fea­ture Request: Disa­ble Flash

    BrianJanuary 12, 2006 @ 00:32
  82. Brian — ‘Disa­ble Flash’ is already on the to-do list and thank you for the donation.

  83. This is the most fan­tas­tic exten­sion I’ve seen added to Fire­fox! Thank you so so so much for a tool that is actually something I can’t do without. In fact, I’ve got this on com­pu­ters where the user isn’t even a Web deve­lo­per. I would surely donate if I was an adult (I’m just a geeky teen) and my parents allo­wed me to.

  84. ABSOLUTELY AWESOME — How about find func­tio­na­lity in CSS edit side­bar? CSS could be rea­donly and when you click on a par­ti­cu­lar rule set it would open up in its own tex­ta­rea for edi­ting. I really don’t know what the best way of imple­men­ting this is…or even if it’s possible.

  85. Just wan­ted to know if you got a little something if someone clicks on the Goo­gle tool­bar on your home page and then ins­talls it. I don’t have the tool­bar yet and will click from your page if it’s good for you. ~margaret

    MargaretJanuary 13, 2006 @ 15:56
  86. Mar­ga­ret — Yes, I get a small refe­rral fee if you click and ins­tall from the Goo­gle button…so click away! :)

  87. Hi Chris!
    Phe­no­me­nal tools — thanks!
    I didn’t follow ins­truc­tions for upgra­ding — uninstall/install.
    On Fire­fox I just selec­ted the Web Deve­lo­per and clic­ked the Update button.

  88. Bravo! Con­gra­tu­la­tions! You made THE tool for web development.

    GabrielJanuary 24, 2006 @ 08:23
  89. Great work. Keep on going.

    AlanMarch 15, 2006 @ 23:34