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Seeking Good DHTML Debuggers?

Posted by Cliff on from the tracking-down-DOM-bugs dept.

christodd queries: "After years of programming in PHP and C++, I've finally delved into the world of Javascript and DHTML. The biggest hurdle I have come up against is the various web browser DOMs. I find that I spend much time googling for variable names, and guessing which variables do what. My favorite tool is a good debugger, and this is where I'm having problems. There is a commercial product by Netscript due out this quarter for $190.00, and there is a very young open source project at BiteSizeInc, but I have yet to find anything production quality. How does everyone else debug browser DOM issues?"

3 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Venkman by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How well does it do at finding things that are going to mess up Internet Explorer? Some of us can't pick and choose what browser our customers are going to be using, you know.

  2. Re:alert() ... it's your best friend by seanmeister · · Score: 2, Interesting

    alert() *is* pretty handy for JS debugging, but these bookmarklets make it even more...um... handier.

  3. Re:Not true. Care to share what you're smoking? by arkanes · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The fact that you rant without listening to what other people are saying (see your previous rant against roll overs for an excellent example, because you jumped on a high horse without thinking the problem through) also rather detracts from you point.

    Not to mention that XHTML isn't some magic potion that'll make your site work properly. CSS and stylesheets are great for that sort of thing, but the various cross browser issues force all sorts of hackery that reminds me a great deal of the stupid crap we did to work around bugs in table rendering in the 90s (@import to "hide" from old browsers? Bah). At the sites that oh-so-helpfully explain these tricks sound so proud, as they talk about the advantages of web standards.

    Yes, I know that using tables for layout is evil. Of course, theres a variety of layouts that CSS is simply incapable of, and the cross-platfrom CSS you need to properly implement even some relatively simple layouts is far larger than the comparable table code, and it'll work (not even degrade to simple text, but actually WORK) on non-CSS compliant browsers, and it'll render faster (and often in a more user-friendly manner) than the CSS...

    I use CSS alot for effects and styling. It's really handy for some layout stuff (like a static menu). It's makes a great addition to a table based layout, where you used to have to play games with single pixel cells and whatnot. But it's a nightmare for overall layout. Call me when CSS 3 is finalized and has at least 80% support in all major browsers.