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[AJAX] [PROGRAMMING] Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

After talking with some developer friends, it seems that no one knew about the Developer Toolbar For Internet Explorer 6+. The toolbar is not as good as Firebug for Firefox, but it makes development a little bit easier for IE.

The toolbar has the following menus: View Dom, Disable, View Outline, Validate (A good laugh when I saw that), Images, Resize, Misc, and Show Ruler. (Sorry about the crappy compression I used on all the photos!)

This is the toolbar:

This is a screenshot of the DOM Explorer. (click on it for larger view)

Notice that it is undocked. The DOM Explorer can be docked at the bottom of the window too. (But that is not enough room for the detail panels IMHO). Also notice it does the highlighting in the browser. The calendar has a blue border.

This is a screenshot of the ruler with 4 "fun" colors!

The ruler seems to have some flashing issues when I use it. It blinks on and off when I drag and and hold the cursor over it! Other than that it is good for estimates.

There are a lot of other neat things I did not take screen shots of. List all the css classes on the elements, show the links full address, clear cache link, delete cookies, links to the validator services, and a lot more. It is worth the couple of seconds to download and install it. I have had no major issues yet with this beta 2 release running on IE 7.0.5700.6 other than the toolbar wanting to take up two lines and the flashing ruler I mentioned above. I had no crashes with IE 7 since I installed it a couple of days ago either (knocks on wood as I type this blog in IE!)

The toolbar has some neat features, but it still has a long way to go to win our hearts! If you would like to download the toolbar, you can get it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

Remember to check out the Ajax boot camp being held in Fairfa, Va: Camp Details

Eric Pascarello
Coauthor of Ajax In Action
Moderator of HTML/JavaScript at www.JavaRanch.com
Author of: JavaScript: Your Visual Blueprint for building Dynamic Web Pages

TrackBacks[0] Comments[4] Posted by pascarello on September 7, 2006 3:06:16 PM EST

Reply | Permalink Re: Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

I agree that the web developer toolbar of IE isn't nearly as great as Firebug, but the web develper toolbar came out before Firebug and I feel it's better than the default DOM Inspector in Firefox. I like the way it docks - in similar fashion to Firebug, but I wish it had an error console that would show you what's going on with the JS errors. I thought the ruler would be more useful than it has been for me which is kind of a disappointment. It just isn't percise enough. Everyone who develops for the web should have the Web Developers Toolbar and Firebug

Comment from Ryan Smith on September 7, 2006 5:58:40 PM EST

Reply | Permalink Re: Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Just Installed it. You just might have helped preserve my sanity the next time I have to debug on IE :) Thank a bunch, Eric.

Comment from Sonny Gill on September 7, 2006 9:27:28 PM EST

Reply | Permalink Re: Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

it doesn't have what I use the most in firebug -- the error/message console and the interactive interpreter. So it's just not useful for me :-(

Comment from Lalo Martins on October 16, 2006 4:52:10 AM EST

Reply | Permalink Re: Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Lightweight IE javascript console? : There are a couple of good "bookmarklets" and js file out there that emulate minimal features of the firebug/fox console. One is very simple one is - http://wish.hu/firebug-on-explorer

Now - I just have to figure out how to refactor it to set a variable somehow to let it accept all my console.debug(xyz) statements during production and just dump them in the trash instead of sending them to the popup.

Comment from Ashley Raiteri on November 13, 2006 4:06:19 AM EST

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