Opera Dragonfly

Opera Dragonfly alpha 4 snapshot

By David Storey. Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 07:33:10

alpha 4, network inspector, Opera Dragonfly

We’ve recently released a snapshot of Opera Dragonfly alpha 4, to coincide with Opera 10 beta. One of the biggest usability issues with Opera Dragonfly has been that it did not select the active tab or window. This meant that the user had to follow a number of steps before they could start debugging. This was among the top user requests and has now been fixed for Opera 10 and Opera Dragonfly alpha 4.

Along with detecting the active tab, the UI has been improved to make it more intuitive and compact. In the detached mode all the tabs, windows, panels and widgets that are open (the debugging contexts) are available from a drop down at the top of the Opera Dragonfly window. In attached mode, where space is more of a premium, the same functionality has been added as a dragonfly button to the left of the detach button. The settings have been moved to a tab on the main Opera Dragonfly tab bar. You will notice that the Error Console layout has improved quite a bit, and shows collapsed by default. This allows you to have a quick overview of all the errors, unless you have so many errors that they scroll out of the viewport, but you are not creating that many errors, right? While the UI has improved since Alpha 3, you'll notice that the look and feel doesn't yet match the beautiful new skin created by Jon Hicks for Opera 10. Once the final Opera 10 skin has been finished we hope to start work on making Opera Dragonfly consistent with the skin.

The big new functionality for Opera Dragonfly alpha 4 is the Network Inspector. This gives an overview of all the resources that were requested by Opera for the active debugging context. You can break down each request to show the request summary, raw request and the request & response headers. Each request will show you how long it took to retrieve that resource, along with the total time taken for the whole page.

Although the new features and layout changes will be the most notable changes, there has been a huge amount of bug fixes since the last snapshot as we work towards making Opera Dragonfly more stable and closer to Beta quality. You can see all the changes by going to the change log.

I hope you enjoy the new release of Opera Dragonfly and Opera 10, as we work toward the next release and improving the product further.

Opera Dragonfly alpha 3, update 2Scope Protocol release: how the fat lady sings

Comments

fearphage # 3. June 2009, 08:16

Glad to see progress still being made with this core version.

Is the regression that pages reload when dragonfly is opened known? In many cases, this erases/removes/destroys the things that I am trying to debug. Just to be safe, I filed it as bug DFL-656 just to make sure it is known. Thanks again folks for the great work!

dstorey # 3. June 2009, 08:51

That can be disabled in the settings. It was done as it is needed for JavaScript debugging to work. Safari/Chrome have the same issue. They chose to force the user to do a manual refresh, which is what we did originally. Doing it automatically makes it easier to use but has the drawback you mentioned, which is why we have a setting. It is hard to say what the correct solution is. Firebug's solution is that it runs all the time, which isn't ideal as it slows down the browser.

SowingSadness # 3. June 2009, 09:34

Not enough content of query on Network tab. For example to ajax testing

fearphage # 3. June 2009, 10:16

Originally posted by dstorey:

Firebug's solution is that it runs all the time

This is ideal for some of us (who have requested this as a feature request). This would be a valuable option.

Originally posted by dstorey:

which isn't ideal as it slows down the browser.

If you use ff3.5beta with firebug 1.4x, you will see a completely new level configs to compensate all kinds of users. You can globally enable firebug and selectively per-domain disable it OR you can do just the opposite. I would love to have a similar level of control over dragonfly. I can't always get a page to break the same way consistently so I want to catch it while it's broken. Also keep in mind that some of us are willing to trade performance for functionality on a small scale.

drunkensurgeon # 3. June 2009, 10:44

Great job! Dragonfly is better and better with every release...

Chas4 # 3. June 2009, 15:06

tudsta # 3. June 2009, 15:10

I have really liked using the new Network Inspector in the past week or so.

DOM editing seems to remove the edited node when I click off editing mode, in this release. I sense an update coming.

Opera Dragonfly is hard to use when Opera is configured with "Show Images" set to 1 (show no images). Most icons are not visible.

When JavaScript is disabled, Dragonfly does not debug, which makes sense. It would be nice for Dragonfly to display some notification that JavaScript is off. Maybe even include a button to turn it on, if possible.

-

Opera Dragonfly video on YUI Theater:

http://yuiblog.com/blog/2009/06/01/video-mccathienevile-dragonfly/

Charles McCathieNevile presents a summary about the alpha version of Opera Dragonfly. He outlines the benefits of Dragonfly's "Scope".

jerobarraco # 3. June 2009, 17:33

:cofee:

FataL # 3. June 2009, 21:27

Originally posted by tudsta:

Charles McCathieNevile presents a summary about the alpha version of Opera Dragonfly. He outlines the benefits of Dragonfly's "Scope".

At least he admits that here are some drawdacks using JS widget approach to build developer tools such as Dragonfly (slowness is one of them). He also said only about one advantage of such approach -- open source (which itself doesn't mean any advantage).

jerobarraco # 3. June 2009, 22:39

(which itself doesn't mean any advantage).

exactly, it can be written in c++ and be open sourced anyway.
if it can't be implemented as a plugin,then the plugin interface is not very much intresting for me.

SpShut # 3. June 2009, 23:40

Is this release going to be available as a zip file at https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/zips/ or anywhere?

aleto # 4. June 2009, 07:34

SpShut, the zip is at https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/core-2-2/zips/

elyon # 5. June 2009, 22:12

I have a quick feature request that I wanted to ask. I use Dragonfly when debugging Flash projects, and it would be very nice to extend the HTTP debugger with a little more information.

Often times when I am working on a project that has to communicate back and forth with a server, I need to analyze the traffic between Flash and the server to find out what's going on in the background. The addition of the HTTP debugger in Dragonfly was very welcome, and it already has been a huge help to me. However, when you look at the raw data on an HTTP request, there is no way to see any POST variables. It would be awesome to be able to get this information as it makes such a difference in debugging these projects.

Thanks for your help, and thanks for this utility. I'm so glad I don't need to use Fiddler or Firebug anymore.

fearphage # 6. June 2009, 04:32

Does the current implementation of the http debugger show flash traffic? I thought it only showed http request and xmlhttprequest.

d.i.z. # 6. June 2009, 07:39

Flash does not connect to resources directly. It instructs browser to fetch something for it. So yes, flash traffic is logged too.

fearphage # 9. June 2009, 11:32

Thanks d.i.z. I was not aware. Thanks for the schooling

This would be quite useful.

SpShut # 10. June 2009, 22:37

Sorry if i'm writing it in the wrong place, but in opera 9.64 and the new release of dragonfly (1100-db900ad4733b) i can't select a window to work with. The button with a dragonfly doesn't work, in Opera 10b it works ok.

Also language detection in dragonfly doesnt work for me. My locale is be (Belarusian) and when dragonfly starts it throws an error to me that the file client-be.xml is not found, though in opera:config the address to dragonfly points to a file on my computer called client.xml. When i rename client-en.xml to client-be.xml dragonfly loads (but i cant select windows).

In Opera 10b it's the other way round. It tells that it can't find client-en.xml (and the locale in 10b is set to english).

aleto # 11. June 2009, 20:19

SpShut, are you running DF from a local repository? If so yo need different versions:

- Opera 9.6: https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/core-2-1/zips/
- Opera 10: https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/core-2-2/zips/

also delete any related cookies.

edvakf # 12. June 2009, 23:13

https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/weekly

is finished?

The documentation page <http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/documentation/> still has "To use the development branch, update the Developer Tools URL in opera:config to https://dragonfly.opera.com/app/weekly, and click the Save button."

kyleabaker # 23. June 2009, 05:29

Is this a known issue?

This window has no runtime

I'm unable to reproduce this, but the only way to get rid of it (read: fix) is to restart Opera (as far as I know).

DanielHendrycks # 7. September 2009, 17:51

After Alpha 4 (what it is now) will dragonfly become beta?

elyon # 28. September 2009, 03:08

So far the latest version of Dragonfly is working great! I love that the Network tab includes so much information now, and that it is possible to write new CSS properties and on the whole, editing them on the fly works great as well (on rare occasions I have to roll over the object for it to update its style)

Do you think it would be possible to add support for saving changes to style sheets? This would be an awesome way to implement changes to sites which I am working with locally. I would love to be able to tinker with all my styles in Opera then push those changes to my stylesheets.