Firebug for IE… a dream come true!

To most of you this is probably old news, but I would like to share it with you anyways. A little while ago I did a post of the capabilities of Firebug called, Firebug: A Developers Best Friend. The only problem with this Firefox extension is that you can’t use it in the most buggiest (thats a word?) browser of all, Internet Explorer – right?

Wrong! Firebug has a lite version that can be used in any browser! Obviously it isn’t as functional as the Firefox plug-in, but it helps out none the less. Some things you are normally used to doing in firebug will not be as easy, such as disabling CSS rules and the handy inspect is less functional.

There are 2 ways to activate Firebug for ie:

Including an external JavaScript File
Using a bookmarklet

External JavaScript

All you have to do is add the following to your head tag

<script type='text/javascript'
        src='http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.2/firebug-lite-compressed.js'></script>

Bookmarklet

Draw the following link to your bookmarks toolbar!

Firebug Lite

Have you used Firebug for IE? What are your thoughts?

Written by Brenley Dueck

13 Responses to “Firebug for IE… a dream come true!”

Djed Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 am
You might also try Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E59C3964-672D-4511-BB3E-2D5E1DB91038&displaylang=en
Marcelo Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:09 am
You can achieve part of firebug’s functionality by means of IE Dev Toolbar.
It isn’t as complete as Firebug, and I haven’t tested it on IE7, but it has saved me lots of times in the past.
Guillermo Guerini Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:32 am
I just don’t know web developers are still using IE. Really.. I can’t understand. So many excellent browsers like Firefox, Safari and now Chrome that follow the standards, are more security and etc. Ok, it’s a good news but… still…
Maybe with IE 8 we can change this scenario but it is still in beta and the other browsers are getting better and better.
Thank you anyway.
admin Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
@guillermo
personally I use Firefox for all my designing and surfing not IE. I simply brought this up as a way to debug your web pages in IE when they look fine in Firefox.
Joren Rapini Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Nice post, this is news to me! Much better than that IE developer’s toolbox.
Joren Rapini Says:
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
@Guillermo
we still have to design for IE6 and IE7 because according to the W3C statistics, both of those still make up 46% of used browsers. If you ignore IE, then you are making a website that is not usable by a huge percentage of your client’s customer base. Firebug is here to help developer’s troubleshoot, so that doesn’t mean it is the developer’s browser of choice.
Phil Buckley Says:
January 24th, 2009 at 10:35 am
If you keep supporting IE6, people will keep using it – it’s a terrible situation to put us in.
Every designer/developer hates IE6, I personally no longer make any specific hacks for it, and let my clients know.
I do my best to write code that doesn’t look bad in IE, but if they can’t get their box model in line with the rest of the world, that’s their problem.
I’ve written more about why YOU should stop supporting IE6 here: http://www.1918.com/2009/01/why-you-should-stop-supporting-ie6/
admin Says:
January 24th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I kind of disagree with this as 20% of the world still uses IE6 and almost 50% use IE6 or IE7.
This seems like too large of an audience for me to leave out.
sotos Says:
January 24th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Very nice bookmarklet and post.
Yes, one of my 2 computers has Windows 2000, and I am stuck with IE6(if there was only one software company in the world, MS). Why not try to “upgrade” it somehow with third party tools, it’s mine. Let it be bookmarklets, so?
I everyday see people with XP who use IE6, now that’s not clever.
By the way, I have written an article just about this matter(in greek) where I provide this bookmarklets page link(not mine but the site is credible and old)
https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/
tj mapes » Blog Archive » What I’m Reading (weekly) Says:
January 25th, 2009 at 7:33 am
[...] Firebug in IE… a dream come true! :: Brenelz’s Web Development Tips :: Winnipeg Web Developm… [...]
social bookmarking service Says:
August 26th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I’m using firebug in firefox n it’s awesome, But I wonder how to setup firebug lite for IE6 n IE7. Does anyone know ?
pakistani web design Says:
January 21st, 2010 at 9:10 am
Hi, I dont know what is happenning I’m using IE 7 with firebug but some tabs will appear firebug and some tabs arn’t show firebug there is no icon for firebug. pls advice
Matt Alexander Says:
August 14th, 2010 at 3:43 am
@Guillermo Guerini
You are obviously not developing public websites for a living. If you were and you decided to say “Sorry, but I don’t test sites in IE” you would quickly find that no one would hire you anymore.