I am quite sure that with the good old Firebug, it was shown in the Layout tab, together with the box-sizing property.
Is it possible to tell in the Web Developer too? There is a Box Model tab which is quite similar to the Layout tab of Firebug, but it does not show this information.
Btw: I thought the built-in Web Developer was built on Firebug, but when reading about it it actually seems that they are two quite separate things.
That feature is currently only available in Firefox Nightly.
In IE8 the sidebar disappears. Same in IE7. Any thoughts on how to bring the sidebar back?
http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/f28f91bf169e4cc94377c50d5ef081b6dfad35fe
http://thetrafficticketman.com/scott-markowitz/
Internet Explorer sadly does not support much of CSS and HTML and js... In other words it's just a very broken browser that needs to be updated. You cant fix it unless you specially create new scripts/CSS to work with only internet explorer users.
Although this may not be as big of a problem because: many people just don't use internet explorer anymore..
I have C# MVC web app that has some textboxes that in IE9 you can enter in text, but you can't highlight via the mouse or via holding shift and the arrow keys.
I've looked around on the web and i've found other people experiencing this, with no solution.
One site i found claimed it was an issue with IE9 on pages that make multiple AJAX calls, which my site has but, removing AJAX really isn't a solution.
Is there a way via code or via settings in IE9 so that users can highlight text in a textbox? Or is this an outstanding bug in IE9?
Edit:
The website works perfectly fine in chrome
Turns out it was a rogue jquery statement that was
(.someClass).disableSelected()
that was disabling selection on every single textbox in my site. The kicker being that IE and Chrome handled it one way and Firefox a different way making it seem like a different bug
I had the same issue.
Select Tools on the IE bar / F12 developer tools. under the tab ( Document Mode IE9 standards ) check marked Alt+9. Closed the developer box. Closed IE9 opened it back up and everything worked as it should.
Hope this helps.
I really dislike Firefox DOM Inspector. Is there one that docks to the page so I don't have two separate windows and also highlights the box/margins/padding like Chrome/Safari does? I can't find one.
Firebug is the best tool for web development missions:
http://getfirebug.com/
Once you get used to it, there is also a (Lite) version for Chrome:
http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/chrome/
Recent versions of Firefox have it built in. Here is how to open it:
Ctrl+Shift+i (Windows)
Command+Shift+i (OSX)
References
Firefox Tool Shortcuts
I am having my first foray into website design and I am learning a lot. I am also now seeing why web developers are not a huge fan of developing for Internet Explorer. Nothing seems to work how I expect. However, since the website has to work cross-browser, I am spending time looking at it in Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Something that is very non-obvious to me, however, is how to tell where problems lie in the website.
For example, the layout of one of my pages forces a footer to the bottom of the page. It looks great in Chrome and Firefox, but there's something broken in IE that make the footer align to the right (and cause a horizontal scroll to appear). I have played around with the code, but nothing really is responding to how I want in IE (even though it does in other browsers).
Are there any tools that can help "debug" the problems on a web site so fixing it is more than just a trial-and-error approach? Thanks.
One of my favorites that works in all browsers is X-Ray. You simply stick the link on that page into a bookmark and it loads some external JavaScript on top of the page you're testing. It reveals a bunch of parameters about the DOM object you click on, as well as its hierarchy in the model.
As for your specific footer problem, I would look to a potential lack of clearing of floats and divs that are wider than their parent containers somewhere up the line.
There are frameworks like GWT, ext-js, YUI which hide a lot of the browser bugs from you. But today (near the end of 2009), there still isn't a good, realiable way to narrow down browser issues and to fix them.
PS: I'm collecting tools that help during debugging here: Which tools do you use to debug HTML/JS in your browser?
I assume you have checked that your code is valid, with
HTML validator, for example: W3C Markup Validation Service
CSS checker, for example: W3C CSS Validation Service
And, of course, you should have correct doctype in your html file. Without doctype, some browsers go to quirks mode to emulate bugs in old browsers.
A cross-browser JavaScript library, like jQuery and its UI components, can be very helpful in avoiding idiosyncrasies between browsers. Microsoft provides the IE Developer Toolbar, it's not quite as easy to use as Firebug, but can still be very helpful. A Just-In-Time debugger like MS Script Debugger or Visual Studio are also a time saver.
I like Firebug for Firefox
and IE8 has Developer Tools from the tools menu and IE Developer Toolbar for older versions.
Chrome has similar tools from the page menu.
All of which allow you to see elements on the page as they are rendered in their specific browsers, which I usually find very helpful in debugging browser specific problems.