Lead Firebug developer joins Google Chrome team

    John Barton , lead programmer at Firebug Working Group, said he will begin developing next-generation WebDev from the Chrome browser team on Monday. From this day, he will no longer participate in the support and development of the Firebug extension for Firefox.

    John says it was hard to take this step, given the huge impact Firebug has had on the Web in recent years. But now all browsers already have (or will soon have) their own debuggers, and it’s impractical to make the next-generation Firebug-based tools: “the speed of browser changes was too great for our small team”, and Firebug itself had to compete with other similar tools for Firefox. In addition, “switching from a desktop to a mobile version and from one hi-tech browser (Firefox) to three or more requires additional efforts from developers” and Barton had to rely on additional “sponsorship” resources of his former IBM employer. At Google, of course, it's easier to work.

    In a new place, John Barton will first deal with the completion of the QueryPoint debugger, and then the situation. There is a plan to get someone from the Firebug team to port the remote debugging protocol to Chrome.

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