AJAX programmers today have many tools available to them. Here’s a quick overview of some popular ones.
- Debuggers
Firefox – Venkman without a doubt is a must have for any serious JavaScript hacker these days. All the functionality you’ve come to expect in a debugger step in/out/over, set break points, trace the call stack, inspect variables, eval code on the fly; you get the picture. Up until recently Venkman only worked with Firefox 1.0.x, Joe Walker posted a version that works for Firefox 1.5.x.
IE – JavaScript debugging for Internet Explorer is a bit trickier. You can use the Microsoft Script Debugger or if you’re willing to shell out some cash Visual Studio offers a richer debugging environment.Mozilla
– Venkman ships by default with Mozilla, and provides a nice option for those who just want to get their browser and debugger combination in one shot. - Integrated Development Environment (IDE) The choice of editor’s or IDE’s is sometimes characterized as a war. Not to pick and choose but Eclipse has become a popular editor for many web programmers. It’s roots are with server-side Java code but more recently the Web Tools Platform (WTP) has come along and aims to change that perception. They’ve made signific progress over the past year, but at the moment Eclipse + JSEclipse is my personal choice. The JSEclipse plug-in has quick code-complete and simple, clear syntax highlighting.
- Syntax Checker JSLint – Slick syntax checker. Catches all those stupid mistakes, and helps enforce good programming conventions.
"JSLint takes a JavaScript source and scans it. If it finds a problem, it returns a message describing the problem and an approximate location within the source. The problem is not necessarily an error, although it often is. JSLint looks at some style conventions as well as structural problems. It does not prove that your program is correct. It just provides another set of eyes to help spot problems."
Those are some tools any JavaScript or DHTML programmer would be hard pressed to get by without.
Know of a tool or program that you’d have in your AJAX Toolbox? Post a comment!
Kevin Henrikson is a seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur with deep expertise in building productivity tools and scaling engineering teams. After serving as Vice President of Engineering at Instacart, where he led the Shopper & Fulfillment Engineering organization, he became the founder and CEO of Dust Labs. Prior to Instacart, Kevin co-founded Acompli, which was acquired by Microsoft; there, he led engineering for Outlook on iOS, Android, and Mac. Earlier in his career, he played key roles at Zimbra, contributing to its acquisition by Yahoo! for $350 million. Kevin is also the co-founder and former CTO of Alpha Brand Media, a digital media publishing company. As an angel investor, he supports entrepreneurs working on disruptive solutions in mobile, crypto, enterprise SaaS, and consumer internet sectors.
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One reply on “AJAX Developers Toolbox – Overview”
[…] Earlier I wrote about a few developer must have’s for AJAX coders. There are several useful plugins to Firefox that also come to mind. Venkman, the JavaScript debugger leads the list, but since I covered it here, we don’t need to list it again. […]