Debugging tool for Chrome Extension notification window - javascript

I created a notification window using the Chrome Extension API:
var notification = webkitNotifications.createHTMLNotification("notification.html");
notification.show();
Also there is an external notification.js for all the scripts I would like to run in the notification window (Since the manifest version 2 discourages inline javascript). Everything works fine except I couldn't open developer tools for the notification window to inspect the page. I can do it for the background as well as the popup pages, so not sure if I didn't find it or I simply can't inspect notification through the developer tool. I know I can send messages between background and notification so that outputs show up on the console, but it would be nice if I could inspect directly.
Thanks much!

Navigate to chrome://inspect/ and you can see all the pages that can be inspected. Under the section "Extensions" you should be able to see your notification page and you can inspect it.
Adding this answer for completeness, because #JJin's answer may had been working before but not in Chrome versions 24 and 25.

After some experimenting I accidently found that the developer tool is available for the notification page. The trick is to
fire up the notification window first and keep it on;
navigate to chrome://extensions and notification.html should appear alongside the background.html or whatever name the background page's name is,
as shown in the screenshot:
Make sure the notification window is on otherwise the notification.html would disappear.

Related

How to open a browser app which is listed in chrome://apps

Chromium-based browser has the apps page at chrome://apps
There are some apps that I have installed into it. Is it able to launch one of them from JavaScript somewhat just like opening file selecting box?
I can open chrome://apps by setting this URL in to a link, but how about a single app?
Copied from: Open Chrome in a new window (Chrome app)
Sadly, there's no way to do that I know of.
Using window.open in an app's context is a bit of a hack, but results in the URL being open in the user's default browser (not necessarily Chrome). There's no control as to how the browser chooses to open it.
There's a Chrome App-specific API that was created specifically with "open a page in Chrome" in mind, chrome.browser. However, it still doesn't provide an option to open in a new window.
The closest you can get is to create your own "browser": an app window with an in it. Then you have full control over the presentation, but it's not integrated with Chrome's profile and may require additional work to implement things like dialogs and browser controls. See the Browser sample app and documentation.
You may need the app id which you can then append to the URL. I am not entirely sure how you would find but if you go to the apps page on chrome, drag the icon of the app to the search bar in the browser, you should get the full link.
For instance, I dragged the Google Slides Icon onto the search bar and it gave me this url chrome-extension://aapocclcgogkmnckokdopfmhonfmgoek/main.html. So, you may give it a shot! Try to open the chrome apps page, then drag the app you want to open in new tab onto the search bar.
Hence, using Javascript:
window.open("chrome-extension://aapocclcgogkmnckokdopfmhonfmgoek/main.html", "_blank");
Opens Google Slides App in a new tab.

Chrome Extension: If my app does not have a default_popup set then I am not able to view Inspect Popup. How to debug?

If my Google Chrome extension does not have a default_popup as I need to use chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListenerwhich is not called if the property 'default_popup' is set in mainfest.json file.
Problem
As shown in screen shot given below the inspect popup is disabled which is the key to open the dev. console for the extension.
How to debug?
Open the Extensions page of Chrome (chrome://extensions/), and enable developer mode if you haven't done so already. Click the link next to "Inspect views" to inspect your extension's background page.
Note that your extension's background page is not the same thing as its popup. Inspecting the popup and the background page of an extension that has both will give you two completely different inspectors!
Each html page your extension loads needs a separate devtools instance.
You can find all inspectable views at "chrome://inspect"
If you want to break on uncaught exceptions and the devtools are not opened yet, you can use a function wait_for_devtools to delay your startup function (e.g. after window.onload or document ready)

Why is the Firefox debugger not showing full source code?

I am trying to debug a web page in Firefox v42.0 Windows 10, where that web page goes through a proxy server and has code injected into it inline via <script>...</script> (not including a separate .js file) by the proxy server. When I right-click View Page Source, I see the original page plus the code I expect to see injected (and which is actually running). I also see the injected content in the DOM view of the Inspector tab. And it is also visible in the Network Tab in the Response section. However, when I view the same page in the debugger, the injected code is not visible, as if the page were not running through the proxy server.
Furthermore, if I insert a debugger; statement in the injected code, I do hit the breakpoint, but in the Firefox debugger tab it tells me I'm on line 550 of a file with only 173 lines in it according to Firefox. So I can not step through the code.
When I do the same thing in Chrome, I see what I'm expecting, which is the injected code in my page, and I am able to debug this code without problem.
I have cleared my cache to no effect. I looked at the Network tab and everything looks as expected there.
How and why is Firefox not showing me the actual page in the debugger tab (matching what's in View Source or the DOM view), and not letting me step through the injected code?
There are a few bugs in Firefox that can cause this that I've encountered myself:
A local caching issue which can be solved by first closing the dev tools window, hard-reloading the page (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R), then opening the debugger again.
Trying to debug a tab in a container, but the source is showing the page as it would be outside a container. See bug 1375036). This particular case should now be fixed.
Similar to the previous point, the debugger source showing you a slighty/completely different document to the one that's actually currently rendered by the browser. This is due to the fact that the debugger does not have access to the original markup & inline script the browser used to render the current page! Apparently designed that way to be memory efficient, but seems to ignore the fact that a developer wants to use the memory for storing the source, because they want the actual source. See bugs such as 1060732, 1149835, and 1472581.
If this is happening to you try debugging in the default/no container, or just do it in Chrome 🙁. If you can't debug in another browser, at least try a fresh profile before you "refresh" (nuke) Firefox as others suggest. You can do this from the about:profiles page (address must be typed manually or bookmarked), or by opening Firefox with the -P flag and creating a new one. To use those flags, run firefox -P --no-remote from a *nix/Mac terminal or C:\Program Files\Firefox Developer Edition\firefox.exe -P --no-remote from the Windows Run dialogue; the --no-remote flag is not required but allows you to run the new profile alongside your main one, and disregard links clicked in other programs.
The below worked for me
Copy url from address bar and close the tab.
Open the url in private mode, the debugger shows the source.
Close private window and open in default mode, the debugger shows the source now.
Try to refresh Firefox:
"Refresh Firefox
Click the menu button and then click help.
From the Help menu choose Troubleshooting Information.
Click the Refresh Firefox button in the upper-right corner of the Troubleshooting Information page.
To continue, click Refresh Firefox in the confirmation window that opens.
Firefox will close to refresh itself. When finished, a window will list your imported information. Click Finish and Firefox will open."
Check this for more information:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings
I had the same problem. I solved it following these instructions.
I had a similar issue, but this was due to the index page redirecting to a subdirectory. The subdirectory contained the index.html with the javascript include files. The src files only got displayed only when an error occurred. To get around this, I cleared all my cache and I went directly to the subdirectory.

Extension .js files don't show up in Chrome debugger

When I right click on the icon for my extension-in-development and click Inspect Popup (or when I click the icon and choose "Inspect Element") and look under the "Sources" tab, my .js file is nowhere to be seen - only a long list of inspect-able files like apitest, devtools, json_schema, etc. I can, however, find the code through the Elements tab by following the link in the .html file, but that doesn't bring to anywhere where I can actual debugging.
I've also loaded the "Hello, world" extension that Google's tutorial provides, and when I Inspect that one, its .js file is right there. I can't imagine what I've done differently from the tutorial example to cause this.
It's Chrome version 22.0.1229.94 run in a Linux VM. If there's any more information I should be providing, please let me know.
Type location.reload(true) in the console.
http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tut_debugging.html
If I understand your question right,
Under the sources tab, there are two more tabs, one says Sources and the other says Content scripts. You need to click on the content scripts tab, and there you will find what you are looking for.
Okay So I figured it out, simply click on you extension icon, and a little dialog will pop up, then right click on it and click on inspect element. You can figure it out from there I reckon. (My other answer would be good if it was a content script, but this is a popup script.)

extension using background, content and devtools together

I've been trying to figure this out from the docs and samples but there just isn't enough there yet (or maybe I'm missing something?).
I want to create a devtools panel but I still want access to the inspected window's dom like I get in content scripts. Right now my option is eval something in the context of the inspected window, but i would really rather not do that if I can avoid it. If I can just use a content script along with my devtools page/scripts that would be idea, but it doesn't seem to be working like I expect that it should - i can't seem to use the background page to send messages between my devtools page and my content script.
Also, is there a way to get those cool dom subtrees to display like they do in the elements panel or in the console along with the awesome hover/highlight feature?
UPDATE
So I can connect to the content script from the panel page by forwarding the tab id of the inspected window and pulling that out in my background page. So I have to do this
// devtools.js
chrome.extension.sendMessage({
'to': chrome.devtools.inspectedWindow.tabId,
'message': 'whatever'
});
and
//background.js
chrome.extension.onMessage.addListener(function(message,sender,callback) {
message.from = sender.tab.id;
chrome.tabs.sendMessage(message.to, message, callback);
});
And my content.js script gets the message just fine ... and i thought that the sender's tab id would work to send things back from the content script, but it doesn't. The background script gets the message but the devtools page never gets it back.
I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to properly debug devtools extensions as well. The content script can log to the page's console and the background script logs to the background page that you can inspect from the extensions page, but where does the devtools page log to?
The code I was originally testing works fine now with Chrome 26+ ... I think I was doing something that should have worked but didn't at the time that caused the behavior I was seeing.
#Konrad Dzwinel's comment was very helping on debugging devtools and noting that fact that this method actually should and does work. Thanks!
Just a quick update from 2016 (and Chrome 54+) for anybody who could also struggling debugging DevTools extension:
After adding custom DevTools pane successfully and showing Angular2 app in it, I found that the extension isn't connected to the page DevTools console and sources. Hitting on the page DevTools window F12 as suggested above doesn't work (have no idea if it's Chrome itself of some problems in my system), the page DevTools window is closed. But pressing Ctl+Alt+I on the page DevTools window opened one more DevTools window with the custom pane application sources and console attached.

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