Firebug

Raised as a usability problem by 38 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2008–2022), in 29 threads.

People raised many different problems with Firebug, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 39 complaints

Modal interface and confusing labels make debugging tools hard to use together2022-08-09
Firebug is hard to use now that current Firefox lacks its features and is hard to install2017-11-26
Opening it locks up the whole browser for several seconds and slows other tabs2016-12-20
Can't tell when the debugger has paused the page, so clicks appear ignored2015-10-28
Source dropdown is unwieldy and useless for sites with tens of scripts2015-06-02
Firebug's interface seems dated compared with Chrome and Firefox dev tools2015-06-02
Opening Firebug pauses all page activity for several seconds2014-07-22
Viewing request data requires clicking through log entry, then network panel, then another click2014-06-11
Firebug is too slow to use2014-06-10
Close button sits on the left, unlike other plugins, so users keep misclicking2014-06-10
The interface is off-putting and works worse than Chrome's dev tools for CSS tweaking2014-05-07
Firebug is slow, and switching between tabs with it open is painful2013-11-05
Constantly selecting elements and manually editing CSS properties is sluggish and tedious2013-11-01
Firebug is very slow to interact with2013-10-08
Spent 15 minutes unable to find how to attach Firebug2013-08-22
Firebug is slow and laggy to use2013-08-14
Feels slow and clunky, held together with duct tape, hard to use2013-07-25
Felt clunky to use compared with Chrome dev tools2013-05-21
Panels must be activated and page reloaded; JS file dropdown is unusable for large projects2013-03-18
Firebug feels slow and clumsy to use compared to Chrome dev tools2013-03-11
Firebug is still really slow to interact with2013-03-05
Firebug is so slow the commenter switches to Chrome2012-10-09
QA staff must hunt down and install multiple separate add-ons to get a working debugging setup2012-07-20
Firebug is heavy on performance and memory and less usable than Chrome dev tools2011-11-28
Code typed in Firebug isn't saved, so crashes or misbehaviour lose it and it must be copied out2011-09-14
Firebug is so slow to use that it's frustrating2011-04-05
Inspect button often does nothing, so user must click it several times2010-03-01
Crashes, hangs, and breaks at wrong source lines, especially with large scripts2010-01-20
Firebug has become noticeably slower with each recent version2009-11-03
Crashes constantly and is unusable with many sites2009-08-15
Text no longer auto-adjusts to readable size; must redo mouse gestures each time returning to page2009-07-24
Console.log randomly stops working until Firefox is restarted2009-07-24
UI keeps changing repeatedly, so the familiar layout is no longer easy to use2009-07-24
Console often fails to evaluate code and shows a reload message that never fixes it2009-07-23
Inspect link's icon keeps changing, making it hard to recognise2009-07-23
Every upgrade moves controls, forcing users to relearn the UI; inspect button hard to find2009-07-23
Inspector stops updating console and console becomes unresponsive, requiring tab reopen2009-07-23
Console stops catching errors when Firebug is minimized; inspect feature mostly broken2009-07-23
Firebug is very slow, so extra features are unaffordable2008-08-28