Team Ravenglass

Here is a neat Javascript tool that I recently discovered: Firebug Lite – a Javascript library that integrates Firebug into the DOM of any browser (like Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari).

You can integrate this right into any of your pages by including the line

OR, the method I prefer so far, you can include this URL in a bookmark and run it on any page by just clicking the bookmark. You can get this link by either dragging the following link to your Toolbar Firebug Lite or manually adding it as a bookmark.

You can also use it offline by downloading the Javascript source files and including them from your sites directory. To get these files, go to this link and follow the instructions under "Using Firebug Lite Offline".

You can use this tool to analyze the DOM, modify CSS on the fly, etc. Firebug lite supports most of Firebug's console commands (console.assert, console.group, console.groupCollapsed, console.groupEnd, console.profile and console.profileEnd).

The one big downside to this is tool is that the console does not seem to record AJAX http requests as it does in Firebug for Firefox. The good news is, there is a work around for this – you can download Fiddler2 and watch the http traffic through that. If you highlight the http request in the main section then go to Inspectors > Web Forms you can see the form values that were posted. You can also see what the server returned if you look under Inspectors > Web Forms > TextView.

So far, I have used this tool to modify CSS and analyze DOM elements, with ease. I have also used this in conjunction with Fiddler2 to see what errors were being returned from an AJAX call. I am also unusually excited for my next Internet Explorer Javascript Error to debug so I can really test out this nifty tool!

'Til next time, Bridget

This entry was posted on December 10, 2009 at 6:50 PM and has received 454 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.