Fiddler - Must Have for IE Development
October 9, 2007 | 3 Comments
If you do any web development for Internet Explorer, Fiddler is a must have application. Basically this is semi-equivalent to Firebug’s “Net tab”. If you have been using IE Developer Toolbar, this was a huge missing piece that can now be filled in.
Explanation of what it is from their site:
Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language.
Fiddler is freeware and can debug traffic from virtually any application, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and thousands more.
You should also check out the video tutorial.
Tags: fiddler, fiddler2, firebug, ie, internet explorer, web, web development
Why Safari 3 on PC? For the iPhone!
June 12, 2007 | 2 Comments
I love Safari on my Mac. It outperforms Firefox for me, the built in RSS support is wonderful, the tabs work better than any of the other browsers, and private browsing (better known as porn mode) can’t be beat. However… it’s really no competition for Firefox or Internet Explorer on the PC platform as an overall browser.
So.. why Safari on the PC? Does Apple truly believe they can compete with Mozilla and Microsoft? I’d say they are not that misguided…
Safari is now available on PC purely to test iPhone applications.
There are a lot of web developers who will be able to develop small applications to deliver through Safari on the iPhone starting on June 29th. Yet, a large majority of the developers will not have iPhones and don’t have Macs. This means Safari needs to be made available for testing on PC for those developers to add value to the iPhone. Although this would be made better if Apple cloned Firebug and rolled that in out of the box…
As far as actual browser usage, I would be shocked to see the web adoption pass 6% for Safari (Apple claims they currently get 4.9%). This may sell a couple more people on Macs, but Safari is not iTunes. It does not stand head and shoulders above competitor software. If they do expand market share in Safari and get a few more people onto a Mac, this is a bonus.
In conclusion… I’m glad to see Safari on PC. Hopefully more web applications will get tested with it… but don’t be fooled this is a move to bolster the iPhone, nothing more.
Tags: apple, browser, explorer, firebug, firefox, internet explorer, iphone, mac, macs, mozilla, osx, pc, safari, web, web application
My Web Development Toolkit
April 20, 2006 | 3 Comments
In addition to EditPlus as my favorite text editor, there are a few other tools I rely heavily on when doing web development.
The first is a simple tool, but one of the most valuable. Pixie is a utility for picking colors from various areas of the screen. It captures the RGB, CMYK, HSV, and most importantly HTML Hex values. With a simple shortcut key you can grab this value to your clipboard. It is extremely light and unbelievably useful.
Another common task I find myself repeating is measuring areas of the screen, primarily in pixels. For this I use JRuler. Again, this is a light utility that does exactly what it should without frills or excess.
To even my own surprise I find myself jumping regularly between Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox for browsers. However, if I’m doing and Ajax or general Javascript development, Firefox is the browser of choice. With that in mind, there are some must have extensions. You absolutely must get Web Developer and Firebug. These tools can strip hours off your overall development and testing time.
Tags: editplus, firefox, internet explorer, jruler, pixie, safari, web, web developer, web development
Firefox Form Difficulty
November 4, 2005 | 17 Comments
I had this form that I kept getting reports about it not working. I knew the form had not changed in over a year, so was confused by the report. I fired up Internet Explorer, tested it, it worked perfect. However, the form didn’t work at all in Firefox. Looking at it, it seemed pretty simple, so what was the issue?
So, I took the form and started some known array debugging techniques, mainly a simple print_r($_POST) which showed all the array elements with proper values in IE, but with Firefox they all had the default form values. Strange.
So, I copied the form out of the overall application, dropping included functions, libraries, and global variables. Just taking the standalone form and posting it to a PHP script that only print_r()’d the $POST array. Still did it.
It then dawned on me that I should try just a simple hand coded form unrelated to this example to make sure I didn’t have a flawed Firefox install, and in turn be certain it could process forms. Of course it could, this was good. Something was wrong with my form specifically.
I then boiled the form down to be extremely simple, removing various elements one at a time until the form functioned properly, which it eventually did. I had then narrowed it down to be related to the <input type=”reset” name=”reset” value=”reset” /> button. At this point I jumped to the conclusion that maybe Firefox had messed up the reset button implementation, so made a simple form using it, and it worked fine…
Now I knew the reset was related, but not the sole cause, so what was different? For some reason, the reset and submit buttons had a <label> tag around them. I know, this doesn’t make any sense, but it also shouldn’t cause this level of difficulty.
Anyway, here’s a simplified version of a troubling form:
<form method=”post” action=”show_post.php”>
<input name=”example” type=”text” size=”40″ value=”{something default}” />
<label>
<input type=”reset” name=”reset” value=”Reset” />
<input type=”submit” name=”Submit” value=”Submit” />
</label>
</form>
Test it out here and you’ll see what I mean (hopefully).