Jan Odvarko

I'm doing the same, with https://httptoolkit.tech/: the core features are free, but there's advanced extras that require an active subscription.

I'm this exact case you cover: it's a powerful developer tool that's very connected to the network & captures the traffic of many of your other apps & devices. It _must_ stay up to date, or users could be at serious risk. Holding back updates from users would be irresponsible. I've noted this in the past, but never really spelled this out fully, and it's important context, thanks!

For cases like ours, the upside of freemium over simple paid software though is that the end of the subscription doesn't completely shut down a user's life (unlike totally losing access to your IDE, or your cloud data), and you do need to ensure that. Instead the free user limits are put back into place, but those should generally make workflows inconvenient or less effective, and not catastrophically blocked.

In my case, for example, free users lose the ability to import/export collected traffic, but the exported HTTP traffic is in a standardized format anyway (HAR: http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/har-12-spec/). Some automated built-in tools go away too, but manual workarounds exist for free, for immediate & short use cases. Those fallbacks & that portability ensure nobody is ever totally locked up by the end of a subscription.

It's a very delicate balance (they need to be limited a bit, or nobody buys anything!) but it's been working well for me…

> Firecookie http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firecookie/

Built into the Webkit Developer Tools

> Firequery http://firequery.binaryage.com/

jQuery objects visualisation (in console and inspector) are in the Developer Tools, rest is not (though the injection is a bookmarklet/browser extension away)

> Firepicker http://thedarkone.github.com/firepicker/

Missing indeed, Opera's Dragonfly has a color picker but the webkit devtools don't.

> Jsonview http://jsonview.com/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ddngkjbldiejbheifcmnfmmfiniimbbg

https://github.com/rfletcher/safari-json-formatter

> Colorzilla http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hmdcmlfkchdmnmnmheododdhjedfccka ?

This is very cool, solving some issues I no doubt many people have when writing tests against a (fast-)moving target. I'll definitely give it a try in my next project.

I looked through the codebase, and noticed that this uses a custom data format to persist HTTP requests and responses in local storage. I'm not sure if it's technically possible in all circumstances, but I think it might be valuable to have requests and responses be stored as HAR 1.2 [1] when possible, so that the trace can be used by other tools [2] to aid in debugging, verifying and analyzing behaviour as well as perhaps automated creation of load/performance tests.

[1] - http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/har-12-spec/

[2] - e.g. https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/har_analyzer/

There's also Firephp for getting the server to send additional trace data:
http://www.firephp.org/

EDIT:

Also, this article has a good overview of multiple Firebug extensions:
http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firebug/list-of-firebug-extensions/

I know some people who love PixelPerfect for transferring Photoshop mockups to CSS.

Also one of the comments mentioned widerbug which I might try now that I have this weird 18.4" laptop:
http://www.command-tab.com/2008/01/19/widerbug-widescreen-firebug/

Firebug with

Firecookie http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firecookie/

Firequery http://firequery.binaryage.com/

Firepicker http://thedarkone.github.com/firepicker/

Jsonview http://jsonview.com/

Colorzilla http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/