Firebug is a Firefox extension that helps with debugging JavaScript and Ajax applications. It allows inspection of DOM elements, JavaScript debugging, monitoring of network activity, and editing of HTML and CSS. YSlow is a Firefox add-on that grades the performance of web pages and identifies ways to optimize pages to load faster, such as using CSS sprites, gzip compression, browser caching, minimizing HTTP requests. The presentation demonstrated how to use Firebug and YSlow to debug scripts, monitor network activity, and find ways to improve page performance.