I finally got started on some script to make IE handle firebug debug calls (console.debug etc.) gracefully and to display what it could when I read that a new (and apparently much changed) version was soon to be available.

Then when I actually got around to downloading it I find that they now package firebug with a cross-browser javascript-only library. Including this in your development environment by including the ‘Firebug Lite’ script in your pages presumably works like my script by defining a console object and providing the same external interface to Firebug proper. This then allows you to test in IE without IE choking on undefined functions such as console.debug() calls.

I should have written this code ages ago as I would have saved time in not accidentally checking in Firebug calls which broke IE testing for QA. I am glad they have addressed this (even though I lost an afternoon writing some redundant code) and I am also really impressed with the latest version of Firebug.

I think it might be time to include a build step in my project to allow me to remove Firebug debug calls from production code (as well as compress our css/js)

If you haven’t already – grab a beta copy of Firebug 1.0 Beta

Stumble it!