The Messiah of Debugging

You know what Im talking about…

In Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft was kind enough to introduce Javascript Debugging. That’s right people! Gone are the days of the 5 million alert(‘your text here’) boxes to try and figure out what the hell is going on with the custom, propietary javascript control you were unlucky enough to inherit in a support project.

I thought I would share with you all the (wonderfully) basic steps in enabling javascript debugging on your machine.

In Internet Explorer, click Tools -> Internet Options.

Click the ‘Advanced’ tab (because developers are advanced users… right?), and untick the two boxes ‘Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)’ and if necessary, ‘Disable Script Debugging (Other)’. Click the Apply button and restart IE.

Now, you will see little popup boxes every time javascript falls over asking if you want to debug (and that’s in ALL websites), so no doubt it will drive you crazy to the point where you want to turn it off again. :)

I know I did…

But thankyou Microsoft for giving us the tool to truly make our lives easier… Its about bloody time! And the bonus? It actually works as you would expect it to work… you get most of the functionality of the normal .Net debugger (intellisense, viewing variables via hover etc), but in javascript. I think im in heaven…

Til next time!

Note: You must have admin privileges to disable these options, as well as having Active Script Debugging installed on your computer. Active Script Debugging is usually automatically installed with Office or VS.NET. Alternatively, you can download Microsoft Script Debugger from the MSDN website.