I'm trying to fix some JavaScript bugs. Firebug makes debugging these issues a lot easier when working in Firefox, but what do you do when the code works fine on Firefox but IE is complaining?
you can also check out the IE Developer Toolbar which isn't a debugger but will help you analyze the contents of your code.
Visual Studio will help with the debugging
Fiddler should help analyse the traffic travelling to and from your browser
You can try Firebug Lite or use Visual Studio to debug the JavaScript.
Since Internet Explorer 8, IE has been shipping with a built-in tool-set for debugging, troubleshooting, and generally helping in development of your pages/applications. You can access these tools by pressing F12 while in the browser.
HTML Tab
The HTML tab will let you peek into the DOM as the browser understands it. As you select elements from the HTML view, their styles will be detailed on the right, with individual rules have the ability to be toggled on and off. You can also modify rules, and determine whether the styles on the element were inherited, or assigned explicitly. Additionally, you can even tell which .css file they originate from.
There is a bit more you can do in the HTML tab, such as review and modify attributes on elements, and even make changes to the layout of the element from within the layout section. Additionally, you can make changes directly to the markup to quickly test out some structural ideas.
Script Tab
For resolving JavaScript issues, you can watch the Console and the Script Tag. If your script stumbles across an a call to an undefined method, you'll be alerted within your console. The console also lets you run arbitrary JavaScript against your page, if you want to toggle items on or off, or try bind a handler to a button.
The Script tab great as well as it will format your JavaScript for you, allow you to insert breakpoints, step in and over code blocks, and watch variables over time.
If you've used Firebug, or even the Webkit Inspector, the F12 Developer Tools in Internet Explorer 8+ should be pretty familiar to you.
Firebug lite doesn't work too well for me. The Developer Toolbar just isn't good enough. There really is no great solution.
Or IE Developer Toolbar
Have a look at DebugBar. License is free for personal use
For the DOM Inspector, try the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.
For the Net tab, try Fiddler.
For Javascript debugging, try Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition. (Or a higher edition of Visual Studio)
Also, try DebugBar.
Visual Studio 2008 can do JavaScript debugging, you have to go to IE's Tools->Internet Options->Advanced and uncheck 'Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)' in order for the browser to bubble up the errors it detects.
Once you're in Visual Studio you basically have it's entire debugging arsenal at your disposal. It's not as integrated as Firebug, but it is way better than anything we used to have.
i think it is better that you first install the ie core addon in firefox then load the page with ie addon and press f12.
good luck.
Make a bookmark in the favourites bar, and put this address as the URL:
javascript:(function(F,i,r,e,b,u,g,L,I,T,E){if(F.getElementById(b))return;E=F[i+'NS']&&F.documentElement.namespaceURI;E=E?F[i+'NS'](E,'script'):F[i]('script');E[r]('id',b);E[r]('src',I+g+T);E[r](b,u);(F[e]('head')[0]||F[e]('body')[0]).appendChild(E);E=new%20Image;E[r]('src',I+L);})(document,'createElement','setAttribute','getElementsByTagName','FirebugLite','4','firebug-lite.js','releases/lite/latest/skin/xp/sprite.png','https://getfirebug.com/','#startOpened');
Then navigatge to the page you want and click the link. Firebug Lite will/should open up...
The IE8 beta comes with what I think is the IE Developer toolbar, but it seems to be a lot more powerful than the last time I tried the toolbar on IE7
I'm guessing this question was posted before the IE8 final came out, according tho some of the answers.
These days, IE8's inbuilt Developer Tools are great; and while the JS debugging isn't as useful as Visual Studio the Dev Tools in general much better than Firebug in my opinion. Between that and the Compatibility View Browser Mode I can handle all my IE6 development needs.
I found a solution to this problem, you could simply stick this tag to the page you are trying to debug and it will open firebug:
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://getfirebug.com/firebug-lite.js"></script>
Explanation from https://getfirebug.com/firebuglite#Stable
If you're a serious Front-end Developer, give AJAX Edition a test run:
http://www.compuware.com/application-performance-management/ajax-performance-testing.html
It's a free tool that allows users’ to understand what is causing performance and functional-related problems in modern AJAX/web Applications.
In IE, go to MenuBar->Tools
Select Debugger Tools
Hit F12 and enjoy.
It is far from Fire Bug, but suitable for some quick help
There is always a way how to get around this issue, watch the video and you will be able to install firebug in 2 mins.
install firebug on ie
Good luck
Related
I can debug with IE without any problem, but when I try different browsers code is not stopping on breakpoints. I hava a project that is currently not compatible with IE. I'm using OpenJSCAD as a dependency in my project, therefore I need to debug on Chrome or Firefox.
Is it possible to debug Java Script with Visual Studio 2015 on Chrome or Firefox?
You can absolutely do it, however it is a bit tricky to do. In the toolbar, click the button to get the dropdown of browsers to debug with and then click "Browse with...". Click "Add...", set Program to wherever Chrome is on your machine and set Arguments to --remote-debugging-port=9222. You can also set Incognito as I have to ignore cache but it is not required.
Important! Chrome cannot be started before, Chrome needs to start fresh from Visual Studio otherwise debugging won't work.
After this goto "Debug" -> "Attach to Process..." -> select the chrome instance with the title of your project or similar and then click Attach.
If everything works you can now Debug your Javascript in Visual Studio and use all Chrome features as well.
Note that when you have attached to the process you can't just stop
debugging without terminating chrome.exe. However you can get around
this by clicking "Debug" -> "Detach all".
Javascript debugging in visual studio is not possible when we use non IE browser as debugging browser. The developer tools available on non-IE browsers are the first alternative(F12) to the JavaScript debugging.. If they are still not helping, the one should look for third party tools like https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/features/#JS_debugging
More Info on Debugging
I had this problem... And I realized what was happening, it was in my web/javascript App. I had an ahref link target='_blank', which created a new window out of the debugging process. So when in the new window no debugging. When in original VS window debugging works. Either temp disable the target _blanks, or hand change the URL in your current window.
Remember to set the Select "WebKit Code" as the "Attach to" option.
Also, to avoid having to start a fresh chrome every time I use Chrome Canary as the target process.
One thing I find annoying with this is that breakpoints placed in the original .js source files are ignored as VS creates "dynamic" script files in which the actual debugging is performed, I wonder if these can be synced somehow?
I have some code that I thought I had written so that it would play nice on IE. But apparently it does not. I use IE8 for my testing and get quite frustrated with the built-in debugging 'tool'. I found that firebug has a javascript tool that debugs for IE but I have to click it for every page, wait for it to load and then test my script. Is there a way to make IE ALWAYS load the firebug .js file? I tried searching for way to set up a custom header file for my IE installation but was unsuccessful.
Is there another tool out there that would be better/easier to use? Another way to test scripts for IE compatibility?
IE7 and 8 provided the IE developer toolbar. This is similar to firebug for DOM inspection, script debugging and style tracing.
Edit:
For IE 8, the toolbar is already packaged with the browser:
The Developer Toolbar is not compatible with Internet Explorer 8. Please use the developer tools included with Internet Explorer 8. Press F12 or click the 'Developer Tools' entry in the Tools menu to begin using the tool. Click here for more information on IE8 Developer Tools.
You can also use Visual Studio and attach to the process in question, then just debug in VS. Pretty good debugging tools, and lets you debug IE6 as well.
Try my log4javascript, which is a logging library that works in every major browser, including IE 5 and later.
see my question on title.
note that I understand how to debug javascript in any browsers (including IE 7++) other than IE 6.
IE Developer Toolbar really good to have for any developer.
IE Developer Toolbar
Microsoft script debugger can provide a bit of information.
But in general - it's a pain in * * *.
Last time figured out what's wrong by gradually commenting out javascript code. :D
You can also use firebug lite.
Personally I'm a big fan of FireBug Lite which is perfect for IE.
Firebug is an extension for Firefox, but what happens when you need to test your pages in Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari?
The solution is Firebug Lite, a
JavaScript file you can insert into
your pages to simulate some Firebug
features in browsers that are not
named "Firefox".
Firebug Lite creates the variable
"firebug" and doesn't affect or
interfere with HTML elements that
aren't created by itself.
Firebug Lite has helped me out quite a lot =)
This question already has answers here:
Closed 14 years ago.
What are your favorite JavaScript debugging tools besides Firebug?
Thanks,
Eric
Duplicate: JavaScript Debugger
For IE, Developer Toolbar.
For Opera, Dragonfly.
For cross-browser log output, Blackbird (though it currently has some CSS class naming issues that need to be resolved).
I use the Web Developer extension -- for DOM/CSS stuff, but usually related to JS. For stuff that works in FF, but not in IE I debug in Visual Studio. I've also got the Developer Toolbar installed in IE and have the Develop menu turned on in Safari.
EDIT: There's also Venkman.
alert FTW!!!
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is definitely one that rocks on IE for web development debugging. It's better for DOM inspection and browsing than firebug in my opinion and much less powerful when it comes to javascript.
Google Chrome also comes with some handy little developer tools, especially for javascript, just use Page Control (the page icon beside address bar) -> Developer and you'll see a javascript debugger there.
Opera has yet another developer menu: Tools -> Advanced -> Developer Tools (http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/).
My favorite is a combination of IE developer toolbar for HTML+CSS and Firebug for JavaScript and other stuff that's a little more sophisticated.
I'm working on a .NET 3.5 website, with three projects under one solution. I'm using jQuery in this project. I'd like to use the Visual Studio JavaScript debugger to step through my JavaScript code. If I set a breakpoint in any of the .js files I get a warning that says:
The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document.
How do I fix this? I'm guessing that Visual Studio is having some trouble parsing through some of the jQuery code. I will try to replace the minimized version of jQuery.js with the expanded version, but I don't think that will fix it.
I was experiencing the same behavior in Visual Studio 2008, and after spending several minutes trying to get the symbols to load I ended up using a workaround - adding a line with the "debugger;" command in my JavaScript file.
After adding debugger; when you then reload the script in Internet Explorer it'll let you bring up a new instance of the script debugger, and it'll stop on your debugger command let you debug from there.
In this scenario I was already debugging the JavaScript in Firebug, but I wanted to debug against Internet Explorer as well.
Make sure you turn on script debugging in your internet options. And if you think it's on, double check it.
I had the same issue, but I solved it by changing my browser settings in Internet Explorer. Go to menu Tools -> Internet Options, select the Advanced tab, then make sure that both "Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)" and "Disable Script Debugging (Other)" are unchecked.
Also, I needed to set Internet Explorer as my default browser, which is normally set as Firefox. To do that, in Visual Studio just right click on any browseable file in Solution Explorer and select "Browse With..." Select Internet Explorer and click "Set as Default".
I'm not sure if there's a way to get debugging running with other browsers, but it wouldn't surprise me if Visual Studio only plays nice with Internet Explorer.
Also, you may need to do "Attach to process" and add IExplorer.exe to get the debugger to start.
I would suggest using FireBug for JavaScript debugging. Give it a spin :)
I finally found the answer to this I think.
When you attach your debugger to the iexplore.exe process, you need to make sure you select "Script" as one of the debugging choices.
It's the button in a red box here: Screenshot of Select Button in Attach to Process Window
Then on the next screen, choose Script: Screenshot of Select Code Type window
This will warn you that you cannot debug Managed and Script at the same time, but that should be fine because your managed code is your server code and you attach to the web process (aspnet or w3wp) instead.
You'll know you did it right because VS 2008 will load ALL the script documents pertaining to that page (inline stuff, eval stuff, etc.) in Solution Explorer.
You'll have full access to the DOM, the immediate window will work, etc. It's pretty slick.
One other thing you might look for is a syntax error in your JavaScript code. That is what happened to me today. No symbols would load because I had one too many parentheses in my code. The IntelliSense barely registered the error. Once I fixed the syntax error, everything worked normally.
All of these answers are correct, but there is one more thing to check. Until yesterday I was always able to debug my JavaScript code from inside of Visual Studio (2012). I had added a Silverlight project to the solution, which turned on the Silverlight Debugger. This was my problem.
On the property page for the web application -> Start Options -> at the bottom of the page be sure that "Silverlight" is unchecked. Actually, I have only ASP.NET checked and now the debugger goes through Visual Studio.
Unchecking it and now the debugger stops on the "initialize" function as I wanted.
The solution for me was to update the IE from version 9 to 11. Hope it helps to someone. Peace!
You have to wait for the IDE to parse the JavaScript code. Just wait a while and you should see the JavaScript code change color. You will then be able to add breakpoints.
I had the same annoying issues on Visual Studio 2013, and JavaScript development without a debugger is just suicide.
All I did to fix it was to right click the break point red dot -> Disable Breakpoint and then right click again -> Enable Breakpoint.
This made the debugger work on JavaScript like a charm again.
This can also happen when your solution has multiple web projects, even if they're being served from a different ASP.NET Development Server (WebDev.WebServer40.exe) instance on different ports.
If running two or more web projects within your solution and you have multiple script files with the same name at the same place in different webs, the development web-servers may serve up the wrong file, causing this problem.
In my case, deleting the extra copies resolved the problem.
I sometimes have this problem with external JavaScript files - it is caused by the browser cache holding onto an old copy of the file. Forcing a refresh of the page linking to the JavaScript code solves the issue in this case.
Of course, make sure your debugger is attached to the correct browser process. ;)
This is perhaps glaringly obvious, but I stumbled over this for a second, so perhaps others will too. I didn't have Internet Explorer set up to handle HTML/HTTP, and hence it was not launched when I pressed the run button in Visual Studio.
Instead, I was starting Firefox. I went to Start Button | Default Programs, set all the defaults for Internet Explorer, and then debugging started working in Visual Studio for me without any other fuss.