FireBug Lite messageQueue null

Question

I'm trying to get FireBug Lite working with IE7. Given this code (and nothing else):

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://getfirebug.com/firebug-lite.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../../css/third-party/jquery.ui.all.css"> This is a test! 

...I get an error at Line: 8180, 'this.messageQueue is null or not an object' and the console does not appear.

If I remove the CSS file reference, it works fine. Also, this CSS works fine with FireBug under FF and GC.

The CSS file is a recent download from jQ's web site and contains nowhere near 8,000 lines (after expanding all @imports), nor does any of the code accessible to my web server contain the token 'messageQueue'.

I don't have any IE plugins (that I am aware of) and have never used any sort of MSMQ products on this PC.

I also tried random things such as switching the order of statements, loading jQuery's regular .js files, using the FireBug bookmarklet instead, etc., all to no avail.

Any advice?

Answer 1

This is a known bug that affects IE7 (and IE8) and is being tracked on the firebug issue tracker.

This is still an issue on all channels (Firebug 1.4 stable/debug/beta/developer).

Disclaimer: If you're going to use these methods, please subscribe to the discussion about this bug and make sure you stop using this contrived one either when it's fixed, or Firebug 1.5 comes out.

If you need to use firebug now, you could use firebug 1.3. This method I can't find documented anywhere...

<script type="text/javascript"     src="https://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.3/firebug-lite.js"></script> 

A better approach would be to use Firebug 1.3 as a bookmarklet. I've hacked up this bookmarklet URL based on the firebug release archive:

javascript:(function(F,i,r,e,b,u,g,L,I,T,E){if(F.getElementById(b))return;E=F[i+'NS']&&F.documentElement.namespaceURI;E=E?F[i+'NS'](E,'script'):F[i]('script');E[r]('id',b);E[r]('src',I+g+T);E[r](b,u);(F[e]('head')[0]||F[e]('body')[0]).appendChild(E);E=new%20Image;E[r]('src',I+L);})(document,'createElement','setAttribute','getElementsByTagName','FirebugLite','3','releases/lite/1.3/firebug-lite.js','releases/lite/latest/skin/xp/sprite.png','https://getfirebug.com/','#startOpened'); 

Just dump it into your 'links' bar using the above in the URL field.

Answer 2

One possible cause of this: if there's no stylesheet or CSS style data. No idea why.

If there is no CSS and you're seeing this error, add some and Firebug Lite might just work again.

---

For example, this JSbin, with a token CSS rule, works with Firebug Lite in IE8:

http://jsbin.com/etecub/5/

Code: http://jsbin.com/etecub/5/edit

---

This JSbin, identical but with no CSS rules, fails to load Firebug Lite in IE8 with the error 'this.messageQueue' is null or not an object:

http://jsbin.com/etecub/6/

Code: http://jsbin.com/etecub/6/edit

---

It seems like it doesn't matter if the rule is actually applied or not (e.g. http://jsbin.com/etecub/9 works fine). If you've got a stylesheet attached and see this error anyway, and the above doesn't work, maybe try adding a <style> block to the document with a CSS rule or two.