I spent a long time adding a lot of Javascript to our front-end. I did this all the while using FF (11.0). I just committed all the changes (which work fine on my local sandbox) to our dev server, and a QA tester noticed that an entire div is missing when viewing the page in IE 8.
This div does all sorts of fancy stuff with jQuery, allowing users to expand/collapse accordion panels, and drag-drop images from expanded accordions, etc.
It is 10 PM and I can't go to bed until I fix this break. I have tried using the IE Dev Toolbar that ships with IE (and is accessed via the F12 button), hoping it would catch some bad Javascript but nodda. Same for Firebug. The JS looks perfectly fine, it's just IE being stubborn.
What steps would SO take to start figuring out why IE won't display my jQuery-heavy div? It's really not as simple as backing out the changes one by one, because my code sprinkled and interwove functions and calls all over the JS page. Thanks in advance for any pointers or nudges in the right direction.
F12 Developer Tools
The F12 Developer Tools, when used properly, are generally speaking more than capable of finding odd problems throughout your code. You can audit your application to find long-running processes, add breakpoints and watch variables through the life-cycle of your page.
IE Compat Inspector(s)
Another great tool is the IE Compat Inspector, which will examine your code and look for any types of patterns or usage that might break your site in Internet Explorer. You can find this online at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/04/27/ie9-compat-inspector.aspx for Internet Explorer 9, and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/01/20/ie10-compat-inspector.aspx for Internet Explorer 10.
ECMAScript Compat Charts & Polyfills
Often times we mix up what features are supported by which browsers. It helps to keep a good compat chart handy, so you know if classList is supported in IE or not. If and when you discover that something isn't implemented in Internet Explorer, it's time to find a polyfill. Fortunately, there are many.
Web Debugging Proxies
These are just a few tools that you can use to trouble-shoot your site in Internet Explorer. Lastly is Fiddler 2 (a web-debugging proxy), which permits you to stand in between the client and server, tampering with data as it goes both ways. I typically use this to serve up custom files in the place of live server files when I'm debugging scripts. However, if you've got direct access to the server presently, this isn't all that necessary.
Related
For example, I found that calling something like this
document.getElementByID('myElement').value.trim();
crash in IE8 because strings don't have trim() in IE8. Is there any way (e.g. using some website in the internet) to run such short, one-off code to verify issues like this without having to find a computer with Internet Explorer?
I use Browserling all the time to make sure html renders properly. I know it does run javascript, but that's in the cloud. The paid version has a feature called "bug hunter" but I don't know exactly what it does. They have a 30 day money-back guarantee so it might be worth trying it for a month. Or you could email them and ask.
Use the Developer tools in the newer versions of IE.
Open IE (desktop mode) and press F12.
In the toolbar, you can select the Browser Mode and the Document Mode.
I am developing a web page primarily using Firefox. Often I encounter that my web page renders properly in Firefox but has some unexpected behavior in Chrome and IE.
Generally if its related to javascript, I usually open Developer Console in Chrome and see if there were any errors and that gives me a clue as to what might be wrong.
Unfortunately, I am generally lost if its a CSS related or HTML element issue.
In one particular case, I have placed a div inside a <td> and I am lost as to why the chrome cannot render it properly irrespective of the fact that firefox is happy and does not complain.
So my question is, how to debug issues related to rendering of HTML pages in Chrome and CSS and determine what might be offending.
My related question is, is there a guidelines to make my web page work in almost all the popular browsers with little effort? I am particularly thinking in terms of tool or process which will warn me of compatibility issues with my web page.
IE (Internet Explorer) and little effort doesn't match to each other, you have to invest more of your time and effort only for IE, illuminate IE and be happy, as a suggestion, use Twitter Bootstrap if possible, it's a ready and tested css framework (maybe framework is not perfect name).
Basically, as far as I know, only a css reset could be used to gain some consistency but still you have to test over different browsers because each has different rendering engine. If you want to keep IE in the list then test the layout for IE at first.
Only for the IE or Inconsistent Exposer (IMO) there is a developer tool available (IE Tester) to test layout (HTML/CSS) over different versions of IE and only works on Windows so it may help you a bit if you are Windows user. There is also an online tester available and sometimes helpful, it's browsershots.org.
Also IE has a debugger/developer tool and pressing F12 will bring it so you may see something like this:
Google Chrome has it's built in debugger/inspector (CTRL + SHIFT + I) and on Firefox you may use Firebug extension and these browsers are not dumb like IE and there are lots of debugging extensions available for these browsers for free, not worried about these good guys.
Generally speaking, IE users are dumb and used to see dumb things on their screen so I don't think too much about them because they really don't know the difference but as a developer you may need to think about it and in this case I would demand extra charge from my clients if they want me to make a site compatible for IE < 10 because it requires extra effort.
You dunno me ? Leh--hoo-zehar (Looser) IE am a legendhhh. Smooky...!
I am not aware of any tool that will warn you because there is no way for a tool to validate the result of what you desire.
As far as how to test HTML/CSS. Chrome supports the most HTML-5 and FF is a close second. If you develop in chrome it normally works in FF and via verse. IE is where the pain is. IE does not support all HTML tags and often will render things wonky. I normally create my webpage and focus on FF and chrome once I like the results I open IE and debug. 98% of the time it is CSS changes that need to be made. I debug CSS first and if I am not able to resolve it with CSS after a decent amount of work I will look into changing the HTML. I try to avoid changing HTML because you have to debug all other browsers again.
Styles and code developed in Chrome will generally work in Safari, Opera(same engine), and IE 10+ with few inconsistencies. You'll get a few rare positioning issues with some CSS3 specs in Firefox, specifically in background positioning. You'll also find some javascript issues unique to Firefox.
IE9 is generally a good sport and usually doesn't have too many issues. IE8 will have a few and they'll be significantly different based on the OS (as there are multiple versions of each IE and they all support different specs for Javascript and HTML) specifically you'll find lots of issues with XP IE8 and really shouldn't support it (Microsoft doesn't even want to).
For the most part you'll be developing to IE inconsistencies unless it's a CSS3 spec with the occasional javascript strangeness (which js frameworks generally can help with since a few of them were made with that goal in mind).
As far as tools, browserstack is nice but doesn't give you a lot of time. If what you're trying to use is modern caniuse is a good place to visit first. Almost all issues between non-IE browsers will be HTML5 or CSS3 specific though.
I am getting a very weird kind of error with IE9. When I use a DOMParser from within a jsp page on localhost, it runs perfectly fine and gives the proper result.
But Shockingly, when I use DOMParser inside a normal HTML file (Not on the server. From the file system), I get this annoying message of "DOMParser is undefined" .. What is this and how can I make it work? Thank You.
P.S. It works fine on FF and Chrome
I would say that this is almost certain to be the browser running in compatibility mode when browsing local URLs.
You can check this by opening the dev tools (press F12) and looking in the top right corner; if it says it's in IE7 mode, then you've found the problem. Switch it back to normal IE9 mode and it should come right.
IE7 didn't support the DomParser object, so if IE9 is in IE7 compatibility mode, it's natural that it will stop supporting it too.
Ok, so that's what it's doing. But why is it doing this? There is a config setting in IE (both IE8 and IE9) which specifies that the browser should fall into compatibility mode when browsing sites on the local intranet. The reason for this setting existing is to allow companies who have internal sites designed for older versions of IE to upgrade to a new version without breaking those sites. It's intended to make like easier for corporate types who would rather not spend money fixing something when the broken version is good enough.
But it's a pain in the rear for the rest of us.
Obviously, if your site is on the public internet, it won't be affected by this flag, except when you're trying to work on it from localhost on your own PC. Therefore, the solution for you is to simply turn off this config setting in the browser and forget about it.
Of course, the fact remains that users of IE7 will still have this problem with your site, as their browser doesn't support the feature you're using. You could just drop support for IE7, and tell those users to upgrade. But if you want to support IE7 users, I believe that Dean Edwards' IE7.js script allows the browser to emulate this feature (along with a bunch of other stuff that Microsoft forgot).
Hope that helps.
I received this error, "DOMParser is undefined", on IE9 and it turned out to be an add-on that was disabled.
Name XML DOM Document
Publisher Microsoft Corporation
Status Enabled
Tools – Manage Add-ons – Microsoft Corporation
I like to keep javascript debugging enabled in my browser so when I'm developing my own code I can instantly see when I've made an error.
Of course this means I see errors on apple.com, microsoft.com, stackoverflow.com, cnn.com, facebook.com. Its quite fun sometimes to see just how much awful code there is out there being run by major sites but sometimes it gets really annoyed.
I've wondered for YEARS how to change this but never really got around to it. Its particularly annoying today and I'd really like to know of any solutions.
The only solution I have is : use a different browser for everyday browsing.
I'm hopin theres some quick and easy plugin someone can direct me to where I can toggle it on and off based upon the domain i'm on.
Edit: I generally use IE7 for everyday browsing
Firebug lets you enable/disable debugging for different domains.
Script Debugging in IE7 is controlled by a registry key. (An addon could probably toggle it. I just don't know of any.)
So, how I handle this is to write a registry script to turn it on or off. Then, I put a link to those scripts on my windows quick-launch bar and change their icons to be more appropriate. Then, I can just click one of the links to turn on or off IE script debugging.
Turn Off:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Disable Script Debugger"="yes"
"DisableScriptDebuggerIE"="yes"
Turn ON:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Disable Script Debugger"="no"
"DisableScriptDebuggerIE"="no"
Firefox lets you use different profiles. Each profile can have separate preferences, themes and plugins. Start firefox on Windows this way: firefox.exe -ProfileManager to create or manage profiles.
I use Firefox and Webkit for web debugging and Safari for regular web browsing, however. Firefox is just better for web development, and I prefer Safari overall.
I keep those annoying popups on for Internet Explorer, and you're right. It's amazing how few developers ever bother testing their code in IE. As a web developer, it's sorta your duty, right? Seeing as how it still accounts for like 60% of traffic to most sites.
Anyway, in answer to your question, I simply switched to Chrome for everyday browsing, and only use IE for testing and developing.
You have two options.
Change and use a browser that allows you to have site specific configuration (check out Firefox with Firebug), or
Use different browsers for developing and everyday use.
CompanionJS doesn't let you toggle debugging on a domain basis, but makes the error messages less obtrusive for casual surfing, and makes script debugging in general more user friendly.
Chrome doesnt bug you unless you first open the javascript debugger window
If you want to test and debug JavaScript, Firefox and Firebug are unrivalled in terms of features and ease of use. Chrome is not as powerful as Firebug, no matter what anyone else tells you.
I use Firebug and the Mozilla JS console heavily, but every now and then I run into an IE-only JavaScript bug, which is really hard to locate (ex: error on line 724, when the source HTML only has 200 lines).
I would love to have a lightweight JS tool (a la firebug) for Internet Explorer, something I can install in seconds on a client's PC if I run into an error and then uninstall. Some Microsoft tools take some serious download and configuration time.
Any ideas?
You might find Firebug Lite useful for that.
Its bookmarklet should be especially useful when debugging on a user's machine.
Since Internet Explorer 8, IE has been shipping with a pretty impressive set of tools for JavaScript debugging, profiling, and more. Like most other browsers, the developer tools are accessible by pressing F12 on your keyboard.
Script Tab
The Script tab is likely what you'll be interested in, though the Console, Profiler, and Network tabs get plenty of use as well while debugging applications.
From the Script tab you can:
Format JavaScript to make it more readable
Move from source to source of various resources on the page
Insert breakpoints
Move in and over lines of code while stepping through its execution
Watch variables
Inspect the call stack to see how code was executed
Toggle breakpoints
and more...
Console Tab
The console tab is great for when you need to execute some arbitrary code against the application. I use this to check the return of certain methods, or even to quickly test solutions for answers on Stack Overflow.
Profiler Tab
The profile is awesome if you're looking for long-running processes, or trying to optimize your code to run smoother or make fewer calls to resource-intensive methods. Open up any page and click "Start profiling" from the Profiler tab to start recording.
While the profiler is working, you can move about the page, performing common actions. When you feel you've recorded enough, hit "Stop profiling." You will then be shown a summary of all functions ran, or a call tree. You can quickly sort this data by various columns:
Network Tab
The network tab will record traffic on your site/application. It's very handy for finding files that aren't being downloaded, hanging, or for tracking data that is being requested asynchronously.
Within this tab you can also move between a Summary view and a Detailed view. Within the Detailed view you can inspect headers sent with requests, and responses. You can view cookie information, check the timing of events, and more.
I'm not really doing the IE Developer Tools justice - there is a lot of uncovered ground. I would encourage you to check them out though, and make them a part of your development.
I would recommend Companion JS.
This is the free version of Debug Bar but I find it easier to use and have the features I need. Great to test little JavaScript snippets in IE the same way I do with Firebug in Firefox.
EDIT 5 years later: I now uses Internet Explorer integrated developer tools.
IE 8 is supposed to have better tools, but the IE Developer Toolbar is pretty good.
I use both Microsoft Script Debugger and FireBug Lite, depending on what I am debugging. Both are great tools- try them both out and stich with what you're comfortable with.
In IE8 just press F12!
Go to Tools->Internet Options…->Advanced->Enable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)
then attach Visual Studio Debugger when an error occurs.
If you're using IE 8, install the developer toolbar because it has a built in debugger.