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Using Mozilla in Testing and Debugging

Posted by michael on from the everything-looks-like-a-nail dept.

Henrik Gemal writes "In this article I will describe some very cool features in Mozilla which will enable you to quickly find and debug errors in your web site and web applications."

3 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Testing with mozilla by mwhahaha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I normally use mozilla when I'm doing web development, however I still have to run throught he site in IE. Mozilla has great development features, but I have found that IE has bastardized HTML. Mozilla also has it's issues with tables (I'm currently having issues with non wraping text rows) and Horizontal rules (for some reason it just won't display on certain pages). You should see the code to get around the nonwraping text, my god it's horrid. Another thing is that Mozilla's javascript is slightly different than Microsoft's. I have found that IE 5.0's implementation is different than 5.5 and 6.0. Mozilla will also let you get away with certain variable addressings that IE will choke on. Mozilla is great, but you still have to use IE at some point. IE still forces us to do stupid things :[

    1. Re:Testing with mozilla by the-matt-mobile · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would love to have something like a "stringent" mode while developing web pages (ala browser producer error instead of trying to render the html)

      You can use XHTML and then use any XML parser to check your page. If it doesn't parse, it isn't valid.

      If you're used to writing nasty HTML like <b><i>example</b></i> then you'll probably complain the XHTML feels a little too stringent, but once you get used to it, designing your page just feels so much nicer.

  2. Validity checker and indicator by Alderete · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd really like to see a simple plug-in that adds only one visible element to the standard interface, a smiley/frownie face, ala iCab, that indicates whether the HTML of the page actually validates to the DTD declared in the document itself. Clicking on a frownie face would bring up a list of validation errors. This would be a great tool for site developers, making mistakes quickly visible.

    It would be an even better tool for standards evangelism if it was included in the default installation of Mozilla/Phoenix. Then you'd turn the entire population of Mozilla users into nitpickers, who would hound site developers about lack of standards compliance.

    From personal experience, nothing makes you fix problems faster than users regularly sending you e-mail about things that are broken. So making it obvious when things are broken would lead to more feedback, and more feedback would lead to more standards-compliant websites.

    Which would be good for Mozilla, and all other browser developers who work towards standards-compliance.