Opera Dragonfly emerges from pupa

Browser maker Opera has released an early version of a tool to help developers debug web pages. It hopes Opera Dragonfly will assist developers in making the experience of surfing the net consistent across web-enabled mobiles, desktops, and consoles while prompting the adoption of open standards. Opera Dragonfly is designed to …

[Anonymous Coward]

firebug

So it's pretty much the same as firebug?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks good

This looks like it's a keeper. Most of my dev/debug needs are met by Firebug and the invaluable Web Developer Toolbar extensions for Firefox but at first glance this seems to have a much cleaner and logical UI and workflow.

Being able to browse the source with an expandable element tree and view the applied styles and it's component inheritances for a given element looks like a great time saver.

[g e]

Firebug beater?

Will be interested to see what this is like as I rely heavily on the truly superb Firebug in Firefox for these kind of features currently. If it's even just 'as good' as Firebug it'll be fantastic.

Whenever I have to view a site in IE for test purposes I always feel like I've slipped back into the early 1400's technology-wise when I want to find out why a webpage doesn't behave in Exploder.

Still M$ assures us that IE8 will be perfect; a work of technical standards-adherent art that will exude beauty and put all other browsers to shame.

I believe them absolutely. After all with near infinite money and resources they'd be idiotically incompetent if they couldn't achieve that.

Oh. Hang on...

[Pete]

@ Dave

Well firefox ripped off everything Opera does, so fair game, some of it goes the other way :D

[James Howat]

Yeah, a bit like Firebug

Only more of it, officially supported, available in the latest betas, and can attach to remote instances of Opera, such as on mobiles and consoles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet complete

This is very early in development and doesn't have all the planned features yet, apparently.

And it can do remote debugging so you can debug sites on your phone. I don't think Firebug has that.

Also, it seems to crash less than Firebug :D

[Chris Miller]

P'edants corner

Dragonflies don't pupate, they have a nymph stage that, far from being a static pupa, is one of the most fearsome* predators in your local pond.

OK, back to the geek stuff

* Well, it is if you're only a couple of cms tall.

[Mark]

Seems to eclipse Firebug

Can do everything Firebug can, and more, including debugging remote devices like Opera Mobile.

Very nice.

Yet again, Opera leads, everyone else follows..

[Robert Long]

Nice

I've had this loaded for about a week and didn't know!

[Kanhef]

Not bad

Though OmniWeb already has everything but the script debugging. Pretty darn spiffy DOM inspector and all.

[Havin_it]

Remote what now?

I must be terribly dense, but what on Earth is this "remote debugging" about, and what is the advantage?

I'll take a guess that your desktop Opera somehow connects to the phone (wifi/Bluetooth or so...?) while it's browsing a page and gets ferried the information. Or does the data get bounced off Opera's servers, like everything you browse in Opera Mini? More explanation would be welcome.

I like the idea, but I'd sooner have an emulated phone setup on my desktop to work with (used to do this with the Sun J2ME SDK), otherwise you'll still be doing a lot of pissing about with fiddly buttons just to use the browser on the phone.

The dev tools will be very welcome anyway. Firefox has Firebug, Web Developer and many other, lesser but useful, extensions. IE even has the Developer Toolbar, though this would be much more valuable if it told you _why_ the DOM was behaving with the insanity of bat ordure... Now all we need is Safari or another WebKit-flavoured browser to float a similar offering and I will be a happy bunny.

[James Howat]

Remote debugging

The basic idea is that Opera has built a protocol called Scope for communicating with the browser process, getting the DOM information, etc. This protocol is now built into the Opera core, so it can be connected to from remote machines by TCP/IP. So your first guess was correct.

It also means that if other browsers develop Scope server add-ons, you will be able to debug all of them with one tool.