As good of a browser as Firefox is, it's still missing some essential tools for developers. Of course, with the many extensions available, those holes can usually be filled in pretty easily. Firebug is one of those extensions that has been an important part of my debugging process for months now. It overcomes some of Firefox's major weaknesses: Javascript debugging and a view of the XmlHttpRequest object so you can see what's really going on behind the scenes.

You gotta hand it to Joe Hewitt. He's just taken the wraps off of the beta version of the 1.0 release, and it seems that he's managed to take a great tool and make it even more amazing! We still get access to the same great debugging as in the past, but now there's even more good stuff to be had! You can view and edit the CSS and HTML of a page and view your changes live, inspect the Document Object Model of all the objects loaded in the page, execute javascript on the fly.. plus what I think is the coolest: the Net view which allows you to see exactly how long each element and script in your page is taking to load. Very, very cool! Never have all of these tools been so easily available all in one place, and best of all, it's free and open source!

For those of you using an alternate browser like IE or Opera, there's even a lite version available.

Head on over to GetFirebug.com and get it while it's hot! Good work Joe!