Debugging jQuery

[Roel De Nijs]

Everybody who developed JS knows that debugging isn't easy. Thanks to Firebug life of a web developer has become a lot easier But you don't always have Firebug to the rescue (if you have to develop an inhouse application for Internet Explorer only for example). Does jQuery provide some debugging utilities/tools (something similar to log4j, like the console used by dojo toolkit), or are you stuck with the window alert?

And when I see jQuery snippets, they often (always) use chaining, for example:

$("div.contentToChange em").css({color:"#993300", fontWeight:"bold"});

Can this be easily debugged through Firebug and/or with the jQuery debugging utilities/tools? Or do you have to break it down in single lines to ease the debugging process?

[Gregg Bolinger]

Firebug itself provides logging support: http://getfirebug.com/logging

[Bear Bibeault]

I use Firebug and Firebug Lite, and HttpFox.

[Roel De Nijs]

As far as I know Firebug and HttpFox are add-ons for Firefox. Firebug Lite can be used with other major browsers like IE, but doesn't provide a js debugger.

So the question still stands (unless I'm wrong): does jQuery provide debugging utilities/tools when you have to develop js for IE only (because it's not publicly accessible and IE is the standard and only browsers used in the company).

[Bear Bibeault]

No.

[Eric Pascarello]

IE8 has a great debugger built into it. So many people have no clue that it is there.

IE8 runs as IE7

Eric

[Saifuddin Merchant]

There seem to be quite a few plugin's that integrate into firebug's console. I found a couple that (they say) work cross browser. Mostly something that emulate the console - http://sites.google.com/site/jollytoad/browsercompatibility and http://code.google.com/p/jquery-console/

But I guess between the IE7/8 debugger and Firebug you might not want to really look (much) at other tools!

[Gian Franco]

...have a look at the following How to Debug Your jQuery Code

The article explains in detail some debugging possibilities.

Gian

[Roel De Nijs]

Eric Pascarello wrote:IE8 has a great debugger built into it. So many people have no clue that it is there.

Indeed I didn't know that I developed an in-house IE6 web application 5-6 years ago and I know debugging the JS with Microsoft Script Debugger was most of the time really frustrating. Glad to hear they have a decent one now

[Eric Pascarello]

Roel De Nijs wrote:

Eric Pascarello wrote:IE8 has a great debugger built into it. So many people have no clue that it is there.

Indeed I didn't know that I developed an in-house IE6 web application 5-6 years ago and I know debugging the JS with Microsoft Script Debugger was most of the time really frustrating. Glad to hear they have a decent one now

If you have Visual Studio or visual web developer express you could always hook up IE6/7 into it and walk the code too.

Eric

[Himalay Majumdar]

IE Tester is another good tool. It allows you to test all IE versions in demand.

-Himalay