Book Review - Firebug 1.5: Editing, Debugging, and Monitoring Web Pages

One Minute Bottom Line

Review

Here are the table of contents for this book: 

• Chapter 01: Getting Started with Firebug
• Chapter 02: Firebug Window Overview
• Chapter 03: Inspecting and Editing HTML
• Chapter 04: CSS Development
• Chapter 05: JavaScript Development
• Chapter 06: Knowing Your DOM
• Chapter 07: Performance Tuning Our Web Application
• Chapter 08: AJAX Development
• Chapter 09: Tips and Tricks for Firebug
• Chapter 10: Necessary Firebug Extensions
• Chapter 11: Extending Firebug

The book's teaching approach is well done. It covers the most important topics needed to quickly learn how Firebug works together with HTML, DOM, JavaScript, CSS and Ajax. You will learn how to edit, add, remove in real time or on the fly with the source code. You will clearly see how Firebug makes your development for the Web easier. The book also includes valuable images about the manipulation and edition of your source code through HTML, DOM, JavaScript, CSS.

The book includes concrete and well explained theories, a good amount of code snippets, easy step-by-step instructions, and images to give a better idea about what you should expect. It even gives an overview of some third-party tools and includes Performance Tuning, which is important. 

What I liked:

• Not heavy theory, you can read the entire book comfortably. 
• Simple code.
• Well use of step-by-step instructions for specific configuration, manipulation, edition, addition, removal of source code on the fly. You can also see how it is reflected in real time in a composite window (source code, output result).
• You quickly learn how to work with Firebug.

What I disliked:

• Deeper coverage of the last chapter, Extending Firebug, would have been helpful. I think that a more realistic example is necessary to add. 
• The chapter on Performance Tuning is not very deep either. It is short and only teaches you how to use the tools. I think it should also teach you how to improve and fix your code. It would have been helpful if examples were included.