These days, the first thing I do when I get a new computer is install Firefox along with the DOM Inspector and Web Developer Toolbar plugins. Those tools, css reference documentation and a text editor is usually all I use for development and maintenance of web pages. I find the DOM Inspector particularly useful for debugging layout problems, as it lets you really drill down into CSS styles being applied to a specific element. I didn’t think that there was anything that could top the usefulness of that tool.
That just changed: I had a look at the Chromium developer tools today, and I can say that I’m really impressed. By accessing the menu -> Developer Tools -> JavaScript console, you get a window that has pretty much all the functionality of the DOM Inspector, but it appears much more usable. The highlighting is much more robust, and the css styles are shown in a more readable format.
My only problem is that my main home workstation is Linux, and Chromium on Linux is definitely not quite there yet (it causes my CPU to hit 100% when I try and use it). It’s something I’ll definitely keep and eye on, and I shall certainly keep a copy around on any Windows computers I work with.
Here’s a screenshot of the JavaScript console on Linux:
The windows version is much more polished, and you can see that they’re paying attention to this area of the new browser. I’m not dropping Firefox anytime soon. There are still too many other plugins I rely on, but it’s nice to have choice.
Renaissance Developer 