My goal is to be able to see which javascript functions have executed since the start of an audit. This is most comparable to me placing a breakpoint at the start of every method in every javascript file that’s loaded, and then writing down a list of all the functions who have a breakpoint that was hit.
Does this tool exist? If not, why do developers not need it? I find myself looking at a page, seeing ‘something’ happening, but not being able to get a handle on what is happening. In a large environment I could see this task becoming insurmountable.
Cheers
Yes. Firebug (for Firefox) is the most popular.
http://getfirebug.com/
Also, IE9 and Chrome… press F12 to bring up the developer window.
With all of the tools mentioned here you can set javascript break points, see the stack, and even profile your scripts.
Check out console.log to help you out –
http://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Console_API
Google Chrome’s javascript console (which is some nice visual profiling) –
http://blog.chromium.org/2009/06/developer-tools-for-google-chrome.html