How to break Firefox
2009-01-26 11:07 am ∴ Rant ∴ by matt -

I don’t know how long this has been around (I think only since 3.x), but if you’re using Firebug…

  1. Open a site with javascript that you’re presumably trying to debug or are otherwise involved in some time sensitive development.
  2. Set a breakpoint in a script.
  3. Get the breakpoint to be reached, thus halting execution of the script.
  4. Find exactly what you’re looking for.
  5. Fix it in the code file you’re working on
  6. Refresh the page.
  7. Notice that none of the Javascript seems to be working — if the page even displays
  8. Remove the breakpoint and try again
  9. Copy the URL because you know you’re going to have to restart the browser
  10. Get a message about Firefox already running
  11. Open up your process manager and see Firefox using up 100% cpu and an enormous amount of memory
  12. End the process
  13. Start Firefox again
  14. Find out that your URL wasn’t copied
  15. ARGGHH

Note that this can be avoided by resuming the javascript engine before step 6 — but I never remember to do that.