As a result, I’m now using Eclipse PDT with Xdebug and Xdebug Helper (Firefox extension). Now I don’t understand how I used to debug my PHP programs before!

After proper configuration (I’m using local Apache, but it is also possible to debug remotely), my work flow is rather simple:

• use my web-app as usual, e.g. tweaking and testing here and there
• if something server-side goes wrong: click the XDebug helper icon in Firefox, and perform some server-request action (e.g. load a page)
• debugging is started in Eclipse PDT, where I can step through the code, set breakpoints, and examine all variables
• as soon as the problem is fixed – click the XDebug helper icon again to continue using the site normally (w/o invoking the debugger)

It takes some time to get used to, but then it’s a breeze.

Some advice:

• don’t use apt-get/aptitude to install Eclipse; it will be much easier both in the short and long run to use some all-in-one package from the Eclipse PDT site; all you need to do – download, extract, run!
• before actually starting to do anything, tweak the eclipse.ini file by increasing heap size from 40 MiB (default) to some larger value (I used 128MiB). If you don’t do this, then at some point your debugging will become painfully sloooow, and then you’ll start getting tons of “out of heap memory” errors, each one suggesting that you quit Eclipse immediately
• install XDebug with apt-get/aptitude – worked perfectly, and there’s /etc/php5/conf.d/xdebug.ini not to mess with php.ini
• do read XDebug guide for PDT 2.x (I’m assuming you got the 2.x version); it should be the only document you will really need to configure everything

I only wish Eclipse was faster – that is, written not in Java but e.g. C or C++.

When right-clicking many links in FF3/IW3, it quite often happens so that a random action is performed instead of opening the context menu (bug report).

One of the solutions work-arounds (suggested by Andre Pirard) is to slow-right-click, that is to hold the right mouse button down until the menu actually appears, then – and only then – release it. Or, you can even slow-right-click, move the pointer over the desired menu item, and then release – that will perform the desired action in a single long right click (instead of more common single right click with a following single left click.)

Alternative workaround (found at the bug report page): install the mouse gestures add-on, and restart firefox. Tested: works for me.

This bug/behaviour is otherwise unsolved.

Update: as suggested by Donny Kurnia (based on the recent post by Hobgoblin), the simplest and the most correct way to fix the problem for FireFox/IceWeasel is to go to about:config and set toolkit.networkmanager.disable to true.

The simplest workaround for Pidgin is to open Accounts -> Manage, then remove and then set again the checkbox near the account you wish to get connected. This has to be done every time you start pidgin .

Below you will find other (worse and obsolete – for FireFox/IceWeasel, but good for Pidgin) solutions.

Little research had shown that the simplest solution is to disable FireFox’s/IceWeasel’s feature to auto-detect if Internet connection is available: go to about:config, find browser.offline-apps.notify and set it to false. After this, FireFox/IceWeasel 3 will no longer try to check if you have Internet connection. (this was wrong, and here is why: kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.offline-apps.notify)

However, this is not a good solution, because auto-detection generally improves user experience (e.g. by automatically using cached page versions for tabs open at startup). The actual reason (in many cases) is the network detection by the NetworkManager – it reports “no connection” although connection is present (bug report).

The simple solution (and, possibly, the best solution for Pidgin) is to disable (or even remove) NetworkManager. On Debian, this can easily be done by following these steps:

1. sudo aptitude install sysv-rc-conf
2. sudo sysv-rc-conf
3. find the service named network-manager, highlight it in the 2nd column (for runlevel 2); press – (minus) to stop the service, then press space to uncheck it (thus disabling automatic start), then press q to quit sysv-rc-conf

This should have an immediate effect, but Pidgin restart might still be required.

Another simple solution (without disabling/removing NetworkManager) is to disallow NetworkManager to notify other desktop applications about the presence of the internet connection (slightly edited; note: might be no longer a good option for Debian Squeeze, but should still work for Lenny):

Open the terminal/konsole (Applications–>Accessories—>Terminal), and type gksudo gedit /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf (note: path might differ for your Linux distribution – try locate NetworkManager.conf). Then replace all lines

< allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/ >
with
< deny send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/ >

Save the changes and either reboot or just stop/kill/restart the running instance of NetworkManager. This change will stop NetworkManager from notifying FireFox/IceWeasel and other desktop applications about the presence/absence of internet connection – and FireFox will no longer start in Offline mode.

(Thanks Nikitas350 from Ubuntu forums for this fix.)

The even better solution would be to make NetworkManager detect the availability of connection properly. However, I did not dig deep enough to find how to do that – comments and better solutions are welcome.

One of the more complicated solutions (and still not a perfect one) was also found at Ubuntu forums (slightly edited for contextual clarity):

I am using USB modem to connect to internet and the Offline mode issue was also bothering me after upgrading to Firefox 3.

The solution I have found was: disable Network Applet from System -> Preferences -> Sessions, and add the following lines to the file “/etc/network/interfaces”:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Thus, I guess, Firefox believes that eth0 (i.e. ethernet card) is active, although Internet connection is established via ppp0 (i.e. USB modem).

If you want something more strict/official-looking, try maxfox II or maxfox II graphite – I enjoyed these two a lot, currently maxcfox II is on the only computer which doesn’t have ColorGnome