Stubbing out the console object so Firebug statements can be left in place

Okay, so you love the Firebug Console, and related output to the console tab within Firebug.  Don't we all, however there is a minor problem in leaving in all your log, and debug (etc) statements, and that is the fact that the console object doesn't exist in other browsers, or Firefox without Firebug.  You will want to put the script segments below into a file that is called before other scripts on your page.

First, I create a simple stub function off of the existing Function class, this allows for a single point of reference for empty functions, without generating a new Function instance for each method it gets used as.

//define a single reference for an empty function
if (typeof Function.empty == 'undefined')
    Function.empty = function(){};

Now we can create a simple console stub, if it doesn't already exist.

//stub out firebug console object
//        will allow console statements to be left in place
if (typeof console == 'undefined')
    console = {
        "log": Function.empty,
        "debug": Function.empty,
        "info": Function.empty,
        "warn": Function.empty,
        "error": Function.empty,
        "assert": Function.empty,
        "dir": Function.empty,
        "dirxml": Function.empty,
        "trace": Function.empty,
        "group": Function.empty,
        "groupCollapsed": Function.empty,
        "groupEnd": Function.empty,
        "time": Function.empty,
        "timeEnd": Function.empty,
        "profile": Function.empty,
        "profileEnd": Function.empty,
        "count": Function.empty
    };