FlashTracer for Firebug

FBTracer in action

Recently I decided to write my old flash tracer firefox extension from scratch because I found it not really useful (at least for me) and too “expensive”, moreover when using firebug at the same time.

So I made a quick test to see how much was hard to create a new panel inside firebug to display flash tracer.
This is the result of what I did right now. It does not have all the features of the old extension, it just display the flash traces. Anyway it is actually in early stage development, updates will come during next days.
Here the instructions and the download link (remrmber to install the flashplayer debugger and firebug first!):
P.S. It has been tested on osx snow leopard and windows 7 right now.

FlashTracer 2.1.0

Thanks to Chad Upton who sent me some suggestions on how to improve FlashTracer I recently updated this extension adding some new features beside those already installed.
Now it is possible to define rules ( using the options panel ), which allow you to style the output messages (defining font-weight, font-style, color and text underline); they can work also like a filter to discard all the messages which don’t match the rules.

Here a screenshot of the new rules panel:

I also took advantage of this update to write the extension from scratch. It was my first extension and so the code wasn’t so clear, moreover I learnt how to use xul commands and observers.
I tested this extension on Vista, Ubuntu 7.10 and OSX 10.4. Here some screenshots of the running extension on those different OS:

Note. In some case you should first remove the mm.cfg file first. In Windows and linux it is placed into the user folder, in OSX you can find it under “/Library/Application Support/Macromedia”

Install now
P.S. Remember that you need the flash player debug.

UPDATE: A new flash tracer called fbtracer has been released. This new extension is integrated into Firebug. Read more here

FDTracer

Click to see a preview
Andrew has just posted on his blog FDTracer, a FlashDevelop plugin which does more or less the same of my Firefox FlashTracer plugin.
Once you’ve installed the .dll plugin remember to change the plugin settings and insert the correct path of your flash player log path. ( Read more here )

Remember also that you need, like for FlashTracer Firefox addon, a debug version of flash player. It can be downloaded here


					

FlashTracer 2 for Firefox 2.0.*

I dont know what happened to the link of my FlashTracer extensions on Mozilla extensions page.. it simply has been removed.
It’s a while I don’t visit the mozilla developers corner and so I dont know the reason.. probably I had to update the extension for the final release of Firefox2, and they removed the link from the database..

Anyway, now the developer area is inaccessible until they release the new addons site. For this reason, for who want to download again the flashtracer extension can use this link:

http://www.sephiroth.it/firefox/flashtracer

I’ve also added my site as updateURL for this extension, so I dont have to care anymore about mozilla  changes on their site…
The extension itself has no new features, just some little changes and an help panel too. I’ve added the possibility of open the flashtracer in a floating window, as someone requested.

P.S. Remember that you can find all the Adobe Flash debug player versions here:  http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

UPDATE: A new flash tracer called fbtracer has been released. This new extension is integrated into Firebug. Read more here

Install FlashTracer on Linux

Recently Adobe released the final version of flash player 9 for Linux, fortunately thay also released the linux debug version, so the Flash Tracer extension can be installed now on linux too.

First of all Download the Linux debugger and standalone players and install it.
Then download flashtracer.xpi (updated version for linux only) and install (usually download and then drag on FF).

Restart Firefox and open the FlashTracer panel using Tools->Flash Tracer.
Browse to a flash website with some traces enabled and you should alreay see some text in the panel. Otherwise set in the flash tracer option the output file to this folder:

/home/{username}/.macromedia/Flash_Player/Logs/flashlog.txt

* replace {username} with your account name.
Now I can see all the traces (and lot of warnings, more than on Windows) on my Firefox in Ubuntu.

My first Firefox extension! (FlashTracer)

Ok, it does nothing particular new, but it’s my first one 🙂

What it does?
If you have a flash debug player version you will see in the firefox sidebar all the swf trace output while running any of the swf in a browser window.
I have to say thanks to jayjam (Giuseppe Montemurro) who talks about the mm.cfg file yesterday at the From A to Web Adobe conference. I’d never read about this cool feature of the debug players.. and so I decided to make it as firefox extension.
I took 1 hour to make the XUL and js files, while the .xpi package was driving me crazy!.. the documentation is really terrible for my point of view.

Download and install FlashTracer from the Firefox extension page.

UPDATE: A new flash tracer called fbtracer has been released. This new extension is integrated into Firebug. Read more here

P.S. If you’re running the new 9,0,28 Flash plugin probably you noticed this extension wont work anymore. Adobe changed something and the plugin doesn’t read as previously the mm.cfg file so I’m invetigating on it. In the meanwhile you should tell the extension to point to this file: C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs\flashlog.txt.

For mac osx it should be: username:Library:Preferences:Macromedia:Flash Player:Logs:flashlog.txt

Using this path the flash tracer works again.

For discussing about this extension please use the forum instead of the comments here 🙂