Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / JavaScript / June 2006

P4tryk wrote on 29 jun 2006 in comp.lang.javascript:

Why would you want ot debug IE7?

Let MS do it, it is not called a beta as a joke.

Hi Patryk,

I do not know of a debugger for IE7, but the following approach has always
worked for me:
- Buy Dynamic HTML, the definite reference from O'Reilly.
(I have second edition, if third comes out, use that of course.)
- develop on Firefox, it has many nice plugins and a working Javascript
console that nicely prints all errors it encouters with usefull comments,
unlike IE-JS-'console'.
- Then test on IE*

The book gives you:
- A good understanding of JS and DOM/JS interaction
- for almost all functionality it mentions FireFox/NN and IE support as well
as DOM-version
- lists possible bugs/features.
- many examples
- a 'common API' that works in IE and FF.

So develop in FF, if it fails in IE* look up the functions and look for
alternatives. Or better, look up the functions first before implementing.

A nice side effect is that your code will actually work in FF too. :-)

This approach has never failed me. (Knocks on wood)

Regards,
Erwin Moller

PS: IE7 is still beta, right? This means you may encouter even more
errors/features than you are used to.

Hi,

If you mean a JavaScript debugger, then you can use Visual Studio 2005,
it's so far the best script debugger I tried (including Venkman, which
is as efficient but less user friendly).

If you don't want to pay for Visual Studio, and don't have access to it,
I think you can also debug JavaScript using Visual Web Developer 2005
Express Edition, which you can download for free. I didn't try it though.

HTH,
Laurent