Software is hard

• Published:March 16th, 2010
• Comments:1 Comment
• Category:Firebug, Planet Mozilla

Have you ever had a feeling that there is a missing option you would like to see in Firebug? Well, there is a chance it's there and you just didn't know about it.

In order to keep the UI simple (and we all know options are evil), some options/preferences doesn't have its own UI representation and are accessible only through well known about:config page in Firefox. Some of them really deserve being hidden, but I think there could be some you can find useful.

Since revealing these preferences from source code is quite tedious task, I did it for you and put together a list that summarizes those available in Firebug 1.5.

Note that one of the efforts of Firebug team is having a stronger sense of which features Firebug users actually use. In this particular case, it could reveal the fact that some hidden preferences are often changed and they could eventually made it into Firebug's UI (and vice versa). See more about Firebug user survey (so far still in academic phase). What do you think about this way of providing automated feedback? Could this help us to improve Firebug? (please reply here or on Firebug group)

Preferences

extensions.firebug.sourceLinkLabelWidth [number, default=17] Maximum number of characters for a source link displayed for a log within the Console panel. This limit helps to avoid layout problems in case of long file names.

extensions.firebug.console.logLimit [number, default=500] Maximum number of logs displayed within the Console panel. This limit avoids memory consumption if a page creates large number of logs.

extensions.firebug.replaceTabs [number, default=4] Number of spaces that should be used to replace tabs found in JavaScript source. The replacement is done within the Script panel.

extensions.firebug.net.logLimit [number, default=500] Maximum number of requests (and history entries) displayed within the Net panel. This limit avoids memory consumption if a page executes large number of requests.

extensions.firebug.netDisplayedResponseLimit [bytes, default=102400] Limit for a response displayed for a network request. This limit avoids Firefox UI freeze in case of large HTTP responses.

extensions.firebug.netDisplayedPostBodyLimit [bytes, default=10240] Limit for a posted data displayed for a network request. This limit avoids Firefox UI freeze in case of large HTTP posted data.

extensions.firebug.netPhaseInterval [milliseconds, default=1000] This period of time is used by the Net panel waterfall graph to group requests within a time (see more).

extensions.firebug.sizePrecision [number, default=1] Number of displayed decimal places for any size info displayed within the Firebug UI (used e.g. by the Net panel). Allowed values: -1 (size displayed always in bytes), 0 (no decimal places), 1 (one decimal place), 2 (two decimal places).

extensions.firebug.netParamNameLimit [number, default=25] Maximum number of characters for URL parameter name or header name displayed within the Net panel. This limit avoids layout problems if the name is too long.

extensions.firebug.cache.mimeTypes [string, default=""] List of additional HTTP response mime-types that should be cached by Firebug (separated by space). By default, Firebug is caching only textual (javascript, html, xml, etc.) mimeTypes. These responses are consequently displayed to the user if necessary (as responses within the Net panel or javascript source within the Script panel).

extensions.firebug.cache.responseLimit [bytes, default=5242880] Maximum size of a cached HTTP response (within internal Firebug cache). This limit avoids memory consumption.