I'm not a Windows Phone developer, and I want as little to do as possible with anything related to Microsoft. Nonetheless, I need to get my mobile web app running properly on Windows Phone 7. What debugging tools are available for the platform? Something like the Webkit developer tools or Firebug would be ideal, either from the phone itself or more likely, remotely debugging from my computer.
If such a thing doesn't exist, I'd settle for being able to read Javascript error messages, and view the contents of variables using alert() or similar. At this point, all I know is that my JS is failing: I don't know where or why, let alone how to fix it.
My dev computer is running OS X, and I'd really like to be able to use these tools from OS X if possible. Assuming that debugging tools exist (which I really hope they do) are they designed for Windows only? If so, does anyone know how well they would work with Wine or similar?
EDIT: I have a physical Windows Phone 7 device, so I can use that. However, alert() doesn't seem to be working, which is why I'm posting this question. Does alert() normally work on the WP7 browser?
You'll likely find the Mobile Perf Bookmarklet to be the easiest all-in-one tool for testing any mobile device.
Works well on the iPhone/iPad/Samsung Galaxy Tab in my testing so far.
Quote:
It displays a menu with links that load other bookmarklets including Firebug Lite, Page Resources, DOM Monster, SpriteMe, CSSess, and Zoompf.
Unless you have a Windows Phone 7 device, you will need to run Windows in BootCamp and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools in order to test in IE on the emulator. I don't know about Whine, but I ran into major problems trying to test in Parallels - so based on my experience, I suggest keeping it as simple as possible.
There is no console in IE on the phone, so you will need to use alert, like you suggested, or just write text to a div on your page as a custom console.
If you really want to code in OS X (which I definitely understand), using a separate machine for testing IE in the WP7 emulator is going to be your best bet.
EDIT: I just tested alert and it did work fine on my Windows Phone. My guess is that a syntax error is preventing it from calling.
The following may be interesting
Simple IE debug tool for Windows Phone
Supports
Html traversing
Html node styles, properties, metrics
Reading console output
Executing js on device side from console (including intellisense)
Dynamic script injection - ability to debug live sites
Not supported
js breakpoints
Just wanted to add a note to say that full JavaScript debugging is possible now with Windows Phone 8.1 and Visual Studio 2013 Update 2. Full details are available at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2014/04/04/diagnosing-mobile-website-issues-on-windows-phone-8-1-with-visual-studio.aspx
I realize that this doesn't help the versions referenced in the original question (WP7), but I'm hoping this will help people who may find this question and are running a more recent version.
Something that has worked for me, is to test my mobile pages through the Windows Vista built-in Internet Explorer browser.
It comes with a script debugger ( which you have to enable in Advanced Options tab through the Internet Options menu ), and it seems that it gets really close to the Internet Explorer Mobile implementation.
Another tip would be, that, instead of using window.alerts, you can also use document.write or set output to a div content.
I'm using this hack to have console.log send info back to the server (it uses window.fetch, which I'm polyfilling, but could use xhr instead) https://gist.github.com/wheresrhys/bf93057ee3a594454582
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 was wondering if there are any useful tools people have found to debug javascript on an iPad which is not jail broken. It is an iPad supplied for work so jail breaking is not an option. Through some tedious steps I have gotten firebug-lite working on the iPad but my debugger statements in the javascript are not being hit. There is also no capability that I am seeing to set breakpoints as you can traditionally with Firebug.
I also have Safari's debug console open but that is fairly useless for what I am trying to accomplish.
Thanks for any ideas.
Did you look at webkit remote debugging protocol? It seems they know people want a debugger for their iPad but still no real world native iPad remote debugger is available out there.
But don't get disappointed, there is a tool called weinre that doing what webkit folks willing to do in the future right now!
Update:
By release of Google Chrome for Android phones remote debugging and tablets debugging mobile web apps is no pain anymore. You will need an expensive Google Galaxy Nexus phone with ICS on it to do it. But future is bright! Check out the video demo here:
weinre is Web Inspector Remote. Pronounced like the word "winery". Or
maybe like the word "weiner". Who knows, really.
For those coming to this question from Google, there is now a Web Inspector available in iOS Safari (scroll down to "Safari on iOS"). Note that it requires a Mac computer to use.
Have you tried Firebug Lite?
I haven't used it on the iPad, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
I'd probably set a conditional include based on if a query param is set - for instance (php)
<?php if(isset($_GET['debug'])): ?>
<script type="text/javascript" src="firebuglite.js"></script>
<?php endif; ?>
Try iDebug. You can direct download it from AppStore onto your iPad. Here's the AppStore Link.
I have recently written a tool for showing console logs in a movable/resizable "window" (actually a div). It provides similar functionality to Firebug's console but you can see it over your page on a tablet. Tablet/Smartphone/Phablet Debug Console
You can also use Firefox's built in WebIDE with Valence
Plugin your device > in Firefox click on the spanner icon > find WebIDE > under "OTHER" click on "Safari, Firefox, and other WebViews on iOS"
[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozilla-introduces-the-first-browser-built-for-developers-firefox-developer-edition/
[2] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/webide-lands-in-nightly/
[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Valence
There is actually a way to debug a website in Safari on iOS using Firefox WebIDE on a Windows machine. I wrote an answer at https://stackoverflow.com/a/35714835/306179 further describing this solution, as it was not necessarily straightforward to set up and use. It does not provide all the Developer Tools you would expect from, for instance, Chrome's DevTools suite, but it at least gives the Console, Inspector, and Debugger.
If you have an Apple Mac computer, you can connect it to your iPad.
First you must ensure that you have the Web Inspector enabled ("Settings > Safari > Advanced" and turn on "Web Inspector").
Then connect your iPad to your Mac via an USB cable.
After that I can choose in the "Develop" Menu of Safari to debug the website displayed on my iPad/iPhone.
Source of images and original information:
https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/quick-tip-using-web-inspector-to-debug-mobile-safari--webdesign-8787
Not sure if I'm allowed to re-post my answer from another question, as it's often frowned upon, but in Debug iPad Safari with a PC I posted 3 options of JS console and logging tools that can assist with troubleshooting issues on iOS devices, with screenshots and sample code snippets. One of these is an open source tool I built myself, but the other two are probably even more advanced.
They all make up for the lack of a proper Javascript console and error log in iOS. There's also some additional tools mentioned in the link above. The answers there are likely relevant to this question also.
You can try using Firebug Lite as a bookmarklet. You should be able to use all features without changing the code of your app as Jesse suggested. See this link.
I have an iPad running some Javascript in a webview, but sometimes it just refuses to work. Does anyone have a way to debug this kind of issue?
You can use bookmarklets to run things like firebug lite: Check the following article for links to how to make bookmarklets installable on mobile safari as well as links to firebug lite.
http://community.godaddy.com/library/setting-up-a-debugging-environment-on-the-ipad/
Recently with the new iOS 6 you can turn on remote debugging and analyze your project with Webkit Inspector on Safari (but only with a Mac, because you must have safari 6.x).
This method would not work on the first generation of iPad too, because they're not upgradeable to iOS 6.
The question is one year old and obviously it wasn't available at the moment. I'm posting it so that someone who come up here could know it.
Info: http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/iphone-5-ios-6-html5-developers
Another tool you could try is adobe shadow.
Simply enable js console
I asked a question yesterday that has gone unanswered. So I will just ask this:
What advice can you give me about Android 2.1 Web Browser and Javascript? How do you debug errors? What things do you avoid doing? What things do you make sure to do?
In a lot of ways, the Browser behaves like Mobile Safari on iOS devices. I need help with what makes it different from iOS devices.
The Android SDK is freely available, and includes an emulator that will allow you to run the browser that comes with the OS. So, you can test your site directly in an emulated device, if you don't have a device available.
There are some features for debugging via the SDK as well, see here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/debugging.html
Surely if it works in firefox etc and you have no errors via firebug then it should be fine. But you could try using firebug lite to debug any errors.
I know it this works even in IE6 so it should work in the Android browser.
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.