How to check the css display value (block, inline, etc) for element in Firefox Web Developer tool? - firefox

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.

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firefox: take screenshot programmatically

It's possible to take screenshots of web pages in Firefox using the developer toolbar. Is it possible to do this programmatically too, e.g., from the command line? I've tried with Selenium, but with no luck.
edit: I know it's possible to take screenshots using Selenium, but this only gets you the full screen. Using the developer toolbar in Firefox, one can use CSS selectors to select only parts of a page, which is what I want to do (and forgot to specify, sorry). What I've read online is that Selenium cannot access the developer toolbar because it's not part of the DOM.

How do you view HTML entities in Firefox Developer Edition's inspector

Firefox Developer Edition was showing HTML entities (e.g. ) in the DOM inspector. For some reason it stopped. I've created a fresh Firefox profile but I still can't see them. Anyone got any ideas how to view them in Firefox?
#luke-h I'm fairly certain it makes sense to piggyback https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1256756
I just did.

Implementing Firefox Extension vs Implementing Chome Plugin

I have worked on a chrome plugin for one of the cloud based product. For The Chrome we have used third partly JS libraries like BackboneJS etc. Now I have to design a Firefox Extension, I am trying to figure out how much code we can reuse. Apparently spending few hours with Mozilla Developer site it seems like for Firefox Extension we have to use XUL for the UI. Not sure if we can use the html and javascript functions from Chrome App for the Firefox Extension, or what would be the approach to estimate the effort. My Understanding is that we have to do it from the scratch since like Chrome in FF we dont have concepts like background page etc.
There is nothing inherent that prevents you from implementing a UI in HTML/JS. You might have to wrap it in an XUL <iframe>, or <browser> (potentially other elements) within a <window> (Firefox will open pure HTML).
The key issue regarding extensions is that they execute in an elevated security context vs. webpages. As such, they have the ability to affect a much larger range of things in the browser and on the users system. When <iframe>, or <browser> elements are used, they have a property type which defaults to having the contents operating in the elevated security context. The default value is type="chrome" which makes the content opened be in the extension's higher security context.
Additional docs from MDN regarding security concerns with opening content in <iframe>, or <browser> elements which is not sourced from your extension distribution: Security best practices in extensions and Displaying web content in an extension without security issues
As to your JavaScript: You should be able to re-use a significant amount of it. At a minimum, the logic. Obviously, there will be more significant differences in how you accomplish interfacing to the aspects of the browsers which are not covered under standards documents (e.g. DOM manipulation should be very close, just as it is for webpage JS).

WebKit shell browser for internal web application

I am creating an in-house web application that I want to run in a WebKit shell browser on the Mac. I searched and came up empty. Basically, I want the site rendered and shown in a window with no chrome for navigating to other pages, bookmarks, etc. Seems to me that there should be a relatively easy way to get something like that up and running in Xcode, but alas I don't know how. The more barebones the better. Anybody know the answer?
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but you could use a WebView. The content is rendered by Safari/WebKit.
As for chrome, if you just put the view, that's all you'll have. You can shape the rest of the User Interface however you'd like.
Apple's documentation has a couple of examples using WebView... Should this solve your problem.
Did you take a look at the phonegap mac project.
Its a full screen webkit without any chrome in which you can put your html / css / javascript to run:
https://github.com/callback/callback-mac

Debugging Websites in Various Browsers

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.

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