Firefox 4 ‘Heads Up Display’ for Web Developers

When I wrote Firefox 4 begins to take shape, Heads Up Display (HUD) — for web developers wasn’t there, it was pushed in days after the post.

Heads Up Display is supposed to, (as presented on the projects page)

Create an interactive Console to help web developers understand everything that happens during the creation of a web-page. Console entries will be time-stamped objects representing errors, network traffic, JavaScript events, DOM/HTML mutation and logging output. The Console will also have an interactive command line for evaluating JavaScript against the current webpage and an interactive Workspace window for entering and evaluating larger blocks of code.

Above all this ‘interactive console’ will replace the existing ‘Error Console’ window that is still present in Firefox 4.0, provide an
interactive JS editing environment, a rich logging experience for web developers, and a simple object inspection (either via console or separate UI).

As Firefox 4 approaches its first beta, more information on this major update will be pouring out, come back for more. Also expect new features, and lots of polishing. HUD is present in both Linux and Windows builds of Firefox 3.6 Alpha 6. Keep an eye on the project at Firefox/Projects/Console