Firebug, once the most preferred development and debugging tool for the web developers, may become irrelevant soon. If you take a look on Firebug’s usage stats, you will be surprised to see that there is a significant drop in the number of users over the past few months.
Click here to see larger view of the above screenshot, or see live usage stats on AMO here.
There may be many factors behind this change. First of all, Firefox itself has lost a significant fraction of browser market share because of the Google Chrome. Chrome has native support for powerful and integrated developer tools, which does not require installation of any extension or plug-in.
Moreover, Firefox team is working on a new project “DevTools”. This project is aimed to bring various development and debugging tools in Firefox. Starting with Firefox 6, a new “Web Developer” menu has appeared in Firefox with the tools like Scratchpad, Web Console etc. Upcoming versions of Firefox have many more such tools like Style Inspector and Editor. Read this article on Webmonkey to know more about these tools.
Earlier, the lead developer of Firebug project, John Barton, had left the project to join Google. On that time, Mozilla announced to support Firebug directly.
I believe that with the introduction of new native developer tools in Firefox, Firebug will just become irrelevant.
I see all those nice boys and girls took time off to be with friends and family instead of debugging web applications. Just like last year!
You be good, and next year Santa will bring a book on seasonally adjusted statistics. Ho, ho, ho!
I don’t think that Firebug is going to die soon. I agree with you that Firefox has introduced many built-in tools for the developers, and Chrome’s dev tools are very impressive – but Firebug is here to stay.
Yes, I think santa claus is mostly right here. That drop looks like it is just the holiday season kicking in. If you look at the complete data set, the same time in ’09 had almost the same drop rate as this year, but it is the largest drop in usage so far. Do this again in July and see if you premise still holds.
@John
Have you seen the new DevTools in Aurora? Specifically, the 3D and Web Console? Everything Firebug had is now in Aurora without the need to install plugins. The only shortcoming I can see at the moment is the Web Console’s ‘Logging’ feature doesn’t have the same at-a-glance usefulness of FB’s ‘net’ panel, but that will almost certainly change in the near future.
Since the new, integrated development tools currently very nearly mirror the best of what Firebug has to offer in addition to the new enhancements recently released (3D, Web Console Logging), the need for installing a separate plugin is rapidly diminishing (IMO it’s gone already).
You essentially have a scenario where Mozilla will make a choice between fully committing to FF DevTools or devoting some effort to maintaining what is essentially an abandoned, duplicate project. I think it’s clear that the new DevTools will win the favor of both end users and Mozilla itself.
As far as Chrome’s tools, they are currently and clearly the superior utility set. Especially if you install the fantastic Speed Tracer and Proxy Switchy plugins.
I’m in a noisy environment right now so it’s hard to concentrate on making fully coherent sentences, but I think the gist of what I’m trying to say has been gotten across.
Happy new year!
Link to what Eric said about Santa Clause being correct about this particular dip:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/statistics/?last=365