JavaScript Debugger and Developer Tool
Thursday, June 26th, 2008Life as a modern web developer would not be bearable without a decent debugger tool such as Firebug for Firefox. It allows you to debug your JavaScript, inspect XMLHttpRequests, the DOM, CSS, and edit them.
While I love Firefox and Firebug, there are other browsers out there that I also have to develop for, the dearth of decent debugging tools these has often left me grumbling and lamenting.
But on one of those procrasting whims, I started googling. And much to my suprise I discovered that the latest version of Opera, 9.5, comes with a built in debugger called Dragonfly.
Dragonfly is only in beta, but what it offers so far is very promising indeed. It may not have all of the features that Firebug currently has, but it is certainly a very useful tool as it is. With the addition of this feature to Opera, the browser is now a serious contender as a developer tool. One thing that was a little annoying, was that Opera's Dragonfly web page doesn't clearly state that, you only need to be using the latest browser, and can activate it under the menu option Tools / Advanced / Developer tools.
My curiosity then led me on to look at Safari next. And yes, there appears to be a similar tool also, but after server attempts at following the instructions from multiple websites I can't activate it. The steps one has to go through to enable it are counter intuitive. With both Firefox and Dragonfly, they are easily accessible via a menu of icon. So I've given up on Safari's development tool until they make it easier to access.
Now there is one browser yet to mention, and I hear the collective groan, Internet Explorer. Once the darling, it is now the millstone around the necks of developers across the world. For years they have had a developer tool in beta, that just has never progressed anywhere. It doesn't even offer an integrated JavaScript debugger.
The future of browsers is becoming very competitive again, with those clearly moving in the right direction, the others that need to pick up their game or be left out of it.
