I must admit that I find Chrome's devtools the easiest to use, but that's probably because it's what I'm most used to.

I work at a web dev company and there's a pretty obvious split between people who prefer FF or Chrome devtools. Every time someone says "but you can do this with x devtools but not in y devtools", it's met with a member of the other party saying something to the effect of "yes you can! it's here!". I think it's just a matter of opinion/what you're used to.

You can't get a formatted treeview of raw JSON post data in chrome inspector, only the response can be inspected in this way. Makes debugging broken uploads difficult at times. That's pretty much the only feature of firebug I miss.

The only chrome inspector feature I know of that firebug doesn't have a real equivalent for is the heap snapshot and compare tool. Really handy to track down memory leaks.

Other than that it's indeed down to personal preference.

The re-painted feature is a very nice idea. It will really be useful when you it's available in a number of browsers, so that you can compare the results.

I'd rather have a cross browser developer console. It would be easier to have the information in the same in format when debugging browser issues.

One thing I've found frustrating with Webkits console is the introduction of shortcuts recently (year ago?). In particular I'm used to hitting cmd-L to get to the onmibar but if I'm in the tools it does something else now (modal controla = bad).

Then I have to use the mouse, which makes me sad :(

ctrl+1/2/3 to switch between open tabs instead changes to different tabs is annoying too

We're going to remove that. :)

Or the ability to set our own hotkeys? Is this possible?

It's now removed. Over in a devtools experiment now.

Thanks for the follow up, using the dev build in Ubuntu 13.04 it works perfectly.

I am waiting eagerly for the network inspector.

Preview (nightly): http://bits.potch.me/netpanel.png

I like the look of that. It's compact and seems to use space more efficiently than Chrome's.

No it does not [1].

It's one of the reasons I don't like the FF dev tools: it looks nice, but in a useable setup it feels like this: http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05...

[1] http://i.imgur.com/DzOS7bB.png

The only difference I see is:

  * method and name column swapped
  * green/yellow status icons added (probably 200/304?)
  * dark color scheme vs light color scheme

Is there something I'm missing? Because it sure doesn't seem like the MS Word super-toolbar you compared it to.

Or is it the tab icons? Chrome recently disabled those by default, and I'd agree that they do seem like clutter.

Edit: Misread the comment you were replying to. I thought you were comparing the number of icons and tabs, but you're just talking about the size of the elements. Firefox is slightly larger, yeah.

There are imho unnecessary padding and huge font sizes. For example: http://imgur.com/Cvzky1K.png

1. Nice contrast, good padding 2. Why not the same padding as 1.? 3. To much vertical padding. Contrast: are those deactivated? 4. To much vertical padding. 5. Why is this font so huge?

Or why is this sidebar font so huge: http://imgur.com/DZO4l4D.png

But I have to admit, the situation got better not worse in the last versions.

But Chrome imho also has the smarter solution in the network panel: workflow over more panes. You click a request and you see the details in the main area replacing the waterfall, not adding another pane fighting for space.

[edit] All a little bit smaller on the left: http://imgur.com/DooYnFY.png

What's wrong with it? Honest question? I've used both a bit but I see no big discrepancies?

Breakpoints are limited - In chrome, I can watch for events and have it break on them. If I'm wanting to debug minified code, in chrome I make it readable and set breakpoints.

Would be nice to edit the JavaScript as well in the process of debugging it. JS Breakpoints currently (in nightly) block loading of the JavaScript file the breakpoint is in. The file is loaded, just not visible in the debugger.

From the tools, no way to see data like cookies or local storage (Cookies can be seen on the network tab, but it's not the same). Chrome has this in a Resources tab.

Chrome's timeline.

The style editing options in the inspector are limited. Sure, the style editor is a colorized text editor, but there is no easy way to edit styles as in Chrome. Chrome, I can set states and work with them without worry. Editing CSS is also easier with auto-complete. Basically, editing in CSS in Chrome is better than in Firefox.

There are a lot of little things. They are catching up. I can get some of these things in Firebug, but then I'd be using Firebug.

Finally, the console is limited. In Chrome, I can bring up the console on any section. This is important, as it lets me use the console while looking at the information I'm currently working with for reference.

There are things I like, and I'm looking forward to the day it's comparable and meets my needs.

"Would be nice to edit the JavaScript as well in the process of debugging it. JS Breakpoints currently (in nightly) block loading of the JavaScript file the breakpoint is in. The file is loaded, just not visible in the debugger."

This is huge for me, it makes debugging impossible when loading.

Each of the aspects you tackle are known and we are working towards improvements in each area. Even myself as a web developer I find things that we are missing - I understand your pains here!

Break on events and break on XHR is something we really want to have ASAP. I expect these will be among the first ones to land - from the things you mention.

Also, make sure you try the new net monitor in Firefox Nightlies.

> Also, make sure you try the new net monitor in Firefox Nightlies.

I do, and I love it. It's an excellent start.

Let me make it clear, I love what you guys are doing. It's wonderful.

In Chrome, you can choose to pause on uncaught exceptions, as opposed to all exceptions or none, which is the case in Ffx

For me the biggest problem is that it doesn't clear upon reload. Having to keep track of which messages/errors came from the previous page is really annoying.

Edit: Also, viewing objects is inferior compared to Chrome's tools.

We just changed the way you can inspect objects in the Web Console, check out a Firefox Nightly. For more details you can read:

http://www.robodesign.ro/mihai/blog/web-console-improvements...

Also, we have an open bug about clearing the web console after page reload. See:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=705921

You might want the ability to clear console on page reload as an option. It seems useful and people should be able to enable/disable it (or was it added to new nightly).

Okay, nice. Did you also remove the need for clicking those tiny arrows to expand?

Yes.

I'd go with that.

I can't think of any reason why I'd want to see the information from a previous load - I just want to see what's going on right now, clearly.

I can because I just found that very useful. Think of code that has an error in an window.onbeforeunload handler. By the time the console displays the error the page has switched. Without being able to view the errors from the previous page, this would have been impossible to catch.

I also think that clicking on the link to an error should go to the debugger panel, rather than opening the source in another popup.

This is already implemented in Firefox 22.

At first it felt significantly worse for me, but as I started using it there is no significant difference. Webkit's is prettier and I like the being able to refresh to clear it though.