firebug

This week we're going to start on a new subject: 'Locate equipment, system and software faults' (also known by its friends as ICAT4221A). You can read the gory details on the Training Packages Unwrapped site

If you've started doing any of the JavaScript challenges you should have plenty of material that needs troubleshooting :-) what I would like to do here is introduce a tool that will help with your fault finding.

It's a firefox extension called firebug - you'll need to install it and restart firefox before you can continue. Then have a look at the following couple of movies:

• Joe Hewitt (the developer) showing it off to the folks at Yahoo, and
• a guide to JavaScript debugging using Firefox and firebug

Once you've seen these, try setting a breakpoint and stepping through some of the JavaScript code you've written so far. Once you've gotten the hang of it, try introducing an error or two to see how firebug reacts.

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Image: 'Grumpy'
www.flickr.com/photos/95118988@N00/217217600