free javascript debugger for internet explorer

As I’m developing the new website for LAb[au], which, if all goes well, should become a quite ambitious and explorative application, to demonstrate the transversality of information through non hierarchical but relational indexing, thus breaking the linearity that is still today plaguing the way we use the hypertext.

Anyway, the application is built with jquery, an outstanding javascript library that, among other features, eases the task of making your code work well across the multiplicity of browsers. Until…

Until you try Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and you found out the old bastard chokes puff puff on line 3168, with one of those cryptical debug messages Microsoft loves to throw at its end users. And of course there is no line 3168. So there i spent my day in search of a usable javascript debugger for Internet explorer, something like firebug for Firefox, but for IE. I tried microsoft Script Debugger, which is free and nice, but does not play well with IE 7. There is also the Internet Developer Toolbar, but it does not help with javascript errors.

Finally i found the killer, free extension for Internet Explorer, developed by Nikhil Kothari at microsoft, the Web Development Helper.

Web Development Helper is an Internet Explorer plugin that provides a set of useful tools to both Ajax/JavaScript developers as well as ASP.NET page and control developers.

For client-side script-based development, Web Development Helper provides HTTP tracing capabilities, as well as much improved script diagnostics, and tracing facilities, as well as an immediate window.

For ASP.NET developers, when developing against your site on your local development machine, this tool provides the ability to view ViewState, ASP.NET trace messages, contents of your cache etc.

Thanks Nikhil!

PS: here is a nice list of other tools to help with internet explorer javascript debugging