Title: Webkit catching up with Firefox and Firebug
Author: Alex Kirk
Published: June 21, 2007

---

# Webkit catching up with Firefox and Firebug

June 21, 2007

[Webkit](http://www.webkit.org/), the rendering Toolkit that powers [Apple’s Safari](http://www.apple.com/safari)
web browser, is getting a lot of love lately ([iPhone](http://www.apple.com/iphone/internet/),
[Windows beta version](http://webkit.org/blog/106/it-is-alive/)).

But for developers it was always hard to debug and inspect your web applications
running in Safari. With [Drosera](http://webkit.org/blog/61/introducing-drosera/)
a decent debugger exists since June 2006 (for Webkit only so far, though — it’s 
not going to happen with Safari 2).

And now, the (already existent, but somewhat [weird looking](http://www.theappleblog.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/webkitinspector.jpg))(
Web) Inspector got a makeover:

![Webkit: New Inspector](/wp-content/webkit_newinspector.png)

This is a big step, giving web developers not only the chance to precisely identify
why this or that DOM element is shown in the way it is, but it also allows a look
into how the web page loads, much like [Firebug](http://www.getfirebug.com/) on 
Firefox.

As a neat extra, you can view how your components add to the loading time of the
page.

![Webkit: Transfer Time](/wp-content/webkit_transfer_time.png)

Even though Webkit is in some ways just mimicking Firebug, it is a good step for
future web development on Safari. Even more as the new Webkit builds contain less
than the usual number of browser quirks that make programming Safari difficult in
the Ajax world.

The [Webkit nightly builds](http://nightly.webkit.org/) provide the new feature 
by a right click on the page, selecting “Inspect Element”. For more info, see the
blog post on [Surfin’ Safari Webkit blog](http://webkit.org/blog/108/yet-another-one-more-thing-a-new-web-inspector/).

Finally one more pic, because it’s quite beautiful :)

![Webkit: CSS/DOM](/wp-content/webkit_css_dom.png)

safari, webkit, nightly, inspector, firebug

[Web](https://alex.kirk.at/category/web/)

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