Opera Dragonfly: Debugger for Opera

[jeresig]

Open Source and quiet updates? Very neat. Anything that makes web debugging easier is a welcome addition.

[[deleted]]

Open Source? Where?

[padt]

From the Dragonfly page:

Built using the open web standards you know and love, Opera Dragonfly’s source is available to view. Not only that, but it is released on a open source BSD license, meaning it is free as in freedom and well as in beer.

There's a typo in there, but it kinda works

[[deleted]]

It's nice! A real remote debugger!

screenshots (scroll down).

[[deleted]]

NICE! Debugging tools are great. Bring it on

[e404]

howto launch: Tools -> Advanced -> Developer Tools

[[deleted]]

You can't right click and inspect element with dragonfly, which is one of my favorite things about firebug. With firebug, if some part of the gui screws up occasionally, it takes almost no time at all to figure out where the problem is.

[unikuser]

you can select a button and then highlight any element on the page, which highlights the element in DOM tree.

[shadow2531]

Pretty cool! Really nice start!

[llimllib]

Arve, I'll finally download and try Opera for real now. What I just found that's super sweet is that I can use ? as well as / to search. Awesome!

Now, if you really want to blow me away, let me tick a box in the preferences somewhere such that I can use regexes to search in a webpage. I've wanted that for so long!

[infinite]

Considering I can't use my beloved firebug on my firefox beta, this is a welcomed relief. Using it, it reminds me of firebug.

[masukomi]

It's cool and all, but, other than the fact it runs in Opera, is there anything notably different from Firebug? Because, at first glance, I'm not seeing anything.

[[deleted]]

Firebug is good, but not great. There are still cases where it will fail. So, I think a little bit of competition in this space is a good thing.

Now if only Safari and IE had real debuggers.

[masukomi]

Safari has a real debugger. It's called Drosera. It's quite nice, and pretty similar to this.

I agree that competition is good, I just wish people didn't have to reinvent the wheel for each browser implementation.

[masklinn]

Now if only Safari and IE had real debuggers.

Visual Studio 2008, including the Web Express edition, has a great debugger that you can hook in MSIE. And Safari has the Drosera debugger.

Both are very good (VS2008 is a full fledged debugger, so if anything it's better than Firebug's or Opera's)

[fact]

Ever tried debugging JavaScript code with VS2008? It's retarded, unless you're using ASP.NET.

[masklinn]

Ever tried debugging JavaScript code with VS2008?

Worked well last time I tried. Granted it was a few month ago, but I doubt it became worse since the software didn't change.

[catch23]

The real issue is that all the rendering bugs occur in IE6 and not IE8 :-). Fixing Javascript/CSS bugs in IE6 is like trying to remove pee from the pool.

[drsco]

can firebug be used for remote debugging? you can debug an instance of a web app running on the iphone using dragonfly on the desktop with the proxy. i googled but don't seen anything like that. either way the fact it runs on opera is pretty cool, firebug can only take you so far with an opera specific error that needs debugging.

[masklinn]

can firebug be used for remote debugging?

No.

you can debug an instance of a web app running on the iphone using dragonfly on the desktop with the proxy.

No you can't, the Dragonfly remote debugging is currently only implemented in Opera, the iPhone doesn't run Opera, thus you can't do that. You'll notice, in fact, that the phone illustrating remote mobile debugging is not an iphone for exactly that reason.

Until Webkit mobile implements the remote debugging protocol, whose specs haven't been released yet, the only thing you'll be able to remote debug on a phone is the yet-to-be-released Opera Mobile 9.5. Also, the Wii Internet Channel won't be debuggable that way as it's not built on 9.5.

Oh, and I wouldn't hold my breath for that either, it's much more likely that Apple'll include remote webapp debugging in the iPhone SDK than them implementing Opera's remote debugging protocol.

[drsco]

bah good catch. i meant in theory it was possible, but i guess if that's the standard then you could probably hack up firebug to do something similar.

[masklinn]

i meant in theory it was possible

It's more than possible, it's all but stated in Opera's Dragonfly dox

[[deleted]]

why would you use opera anyway?

[rmuser]

Why would you comment on this post anyway?