14 DAY TRIAL // The popular Firebug web debugging extension, that for a long time made Firefox the only viable alternative for web developers, may be facing an uncertain future, as its lead developer has announced that he will be ceasing development and has started working for Google this week.
John J. Barton has been leading development of Firebug for the past few years, as an IBM employee. IBM is the biggest corporate user of Firefox with some 500,000 people running the open source browser.
However, IBM has lost interest in the project and Barton is unconvinced that the small team can continue to develop Firebug to keep up with the latest technologies and Firefox's accelerated dev schedule.
"Monday, I start work on next gen Web dev tools at Google on the Chrome browser team. Consequently I will no longer be contributing routinely to the development and maintenance of Firebug for Firefox," Barton wrote.
"Now all of the browsers have (or will soon have) their own debuggers. Basing next gen work on Firebug is not practical. The pace of change in browsers is too fast for our team size. Firebug hasn't really been able to keep up with Firefox, let alone compete with other tools," he explained.
Firebug was a greatly appreciated tool for many years, but most modern browsers have their own debuggers now. Even Mozilla is adding more web dev tools directly to Firefox.
Google Chrome has the very powerful Developer Tools built-in, which Barton will be working on. Apple's Safari has Web Inspector, which is part of the WebKit development effort and shares with Chrome. The other browser makers have their own tools.
Meanwhile, Firebug developers have had a hard time keeping up and the tool is no longer the most popular. Still, Barton believes he may be able to contribute to the project, in one way or another, even as he joins Google.
Firebug is available for download here.