Javascript debugging

Firefox

Install Firebug

Important note about firefox3

Firebug isn't working properly in Firefox 3 beta (coming by default with Ubuntu Hardy).
We recommend installing firefox 2 separately to get a more stable debugging environment.  Below is a strategy to keep this firefox 2 installment completely separated from your distribution's defaults. (This involves adding a new user to ensure that the settings and profiles (kept in hidden files in the user's home directory) are not conflicting.

1. # adduser ffx2
2. download the tgz of ffx2 from http://getfirefox.com, and copy that to ~ffx2/
3. install the software as this new user 'ffx2'
1. $ su - ffx2;
2. $ mkdir local; cd local
3. $ tar zxvf zxvf ../fire*tar.gz
4. $ cd firefox
4. still as ffx2: create a fresh profile (ubuntu seems to populate it with some default settings only making sense to ffx3)
1. $ ./firefox/firefox --profileManager
5. add some useful start-stop scripts (so you don't have to change users to run ffx2)
1. $ vi .bash_aliases
   

     #launch ffx with param passing
     ffx2() {
       xhost +;  
       sudo su - ffx2 -c "export DISPLAY=:0.0; ~/local/firefox/firefox $* &"; 
     } 

2.   # kill it off in case it hangs
     kffx2() {
       sudo killall -u ffx2 -s 9 -r firefox
     }

Internet Explorer

option 1: DebugBar / Companion.js

Installation involves:

• Install Microsoft Script Debugger.
• And then Installing Companion.JS

option 2: Visual Web Developer Express

Installation involves:

• Download and (lengthy) install, plus a required reboot half-way.
• Registration (and getting a windows live id) to obtain a free key

Recommended usage trick from Bernie.