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Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

christianheilmann.com

81–90 of 108 posts

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as my understanding goes (which may not be very far at all), the common base seems to be Chromium. When I want to debug an HTML source (like the one in the article), VSCodium offers me Chrome or Edge as the base browser (none of which I have installed). I wonder why Brave isn't in there, since it's also Chromium-based.

Author here: The first sentence explains this. This isn't a "Here is what browser developer tools in each browser are like". If you look for news on each of them, check out the post of my colleague Patrick, which does an awesome job covering news in all of them: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/09/devtools-cross-brow...

Oops, seems my last sentence was badly worded. With “in there” I meant the set of browsers offered by VSCodium, not your article. Your article is fine and informative, except that the title makes it seem more general than it actually is.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#82
post #7

So this is basically a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge? Never used it, but it looks pretty much like chrome dev tools, which might be, because they just copied it, when they forked chrome/webkit? Well, why not copy what works, but is there anything edge dev tools are now doing better than chrome? (there seems to be a connection possible to VS code, is that useful?)

Author here. No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message. > This is a talk that I’ve given at CityJS this September. I am a principal product manager for developer tools in Microsoft Edge and these are things I enco…

"No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message."

I am pretty sure, private blog posts promoting your day jobs work, are beneficial to your career as well (and I can imagine it is encuraged). And the language used, "We are open to your feedback and many of the recent changes to the tools are direct results from demands from outside developers" sounds definitely official.

"I spent about 10 hours on the presentation and this morning about 3 hours turning the slides into this blog post. If my goal were to promote Edge, I could have done a much simpler, shorter and to the point post."

And I don't think so, because many people still have a bias against edge, who would have just skipped reading it, if it would be plainly stated, edge only. So burying the promotion inside some general useful tips, combined with what awesome plans you might have for edge dev tools - worked apparently quite well for promotion, but not for clarity.

Basically, what I am missing, was a paragraph like this:

"Microsoft Edge is a browser based on Chromium and we joined the project quite some time ago, fixing hundreds of bugs, making the developer tools themeable, localisable and accessible to assistive technology. All of these changes have been submitted back to the Chromium core, so that Chrome, Brave and all the other browsers based on the same open source project also benefited from that. We work closely with the Chrome team and share a lot of ideas and plans for the future of the Chromium platform."

And more importantly: to differentiate what of your "secrets" work everywhere. And what works only with edge. A normal technical blog post would have covered this, as they are usually neutral.

You are not neutral (and you do not have to be), but just tell me, why edge is superior and what does it do better. But maybe do so clearly.

"If you read the article, you might realise the things we're adding exclusively to the Edge devtools based on user feedback and demands, the focus mode and in-context explanations being one of the efforts, and the deep integration with VS code being another one."

So I did read most of the article, but this is my criticism. Finding out what of your features were edge only, was very hard - as it was not plainly stated. And if you read the comments here, that kind of confirms it. Lots of confusion and general web dev tips mixed with edge only stuff. That limits its usefulness.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they do not really advertise that fact and the codebase is not exactly the same, it seems. The mentioned vs code connection - and it seems, I cannot just edit edge dev tools with edge, something I can do in chrome.

I am curious why you can edit Edge dev tools with Edge. There is literally a part of the article where I show that this is possible with a screenshot showing it on my Mac.

"I cannot just edit edge dev tools with edge,"

I could not "just" edit it like I am used to from chrome - but apparently had to activate a experimental setting. Which you did explain in a video. Not text. I read text.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#84
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Missouri, in the deep Red Ozark Mountains in the SW part of it and I shared an article on that on FB in a local group. Our Governor really blew it on this one. Folks here will generally stand by their GOP Party and for the most part they never talk about Parson here but this really pissed them off. I was surprised by the comments and the number of them. They are pissed about the incompetence of those who bu…

FYI the P in GOP already stands for Party.

Isn't it a little strange that these red-staters don't even know their own name?

The lowercase "party" in my mind removes the redundancy as a class description for the collection of all political parties rather than as part of an abbreviated name for the one in question.

Unlike the "P" which stands for Preproccessor, in PHP.

Edit: whoops, they are both capitalized. Too bad I wrote with an ink pen.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which manual am I reading for learning everything there is possible to know about Console.log that > will mean I never have to turn to a search engine again (with console related questions)? https://chromium.googlesource.com/devtools/devtools-frontend...

that's an implementation. The most commonly used implementation but still an implementation, not the manual.

Fair enough. This is the version of the spec that is slated for release next year:

https://tc39.es/ecma262/

Interestingly, I cannot find the console methods in there. Perhaps they are not part of the spec? I remember when Javascript was new (before 2000) it was said that Javascript was unique among languages for not having the concept of input and output.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#86
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Missouri, in the deep Red Ozark Mountains in the SW part of it and I shared an article on that on FB in a local group. Our Governor really blew it on this one. Folks here will generally stand by their GOP Party and for the most part they never talk about Parson here but this really pissed them off. I was surprised by the comments and the number of them. They are pissed about the incompetence of those who bu…

FYI the P in GOP already stands for Party.

I LOLd out loud when I saw it

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#87

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/console/utilities... That's pretty great

That is a terrific link, thank you!

Is there any way to "narrow" the Elements tab to displaying only a portion of the HTML? For instance to narrow to the "div#content" element such that said element appears as the root of the Elements tab, decluttering the view from the parts of the page irrelevant to what one is working on.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message. > This is a talk that I’ve given at CityJS this September. I am a principal product manager for developer tools in Microsoft Edge and these are things I enco…

"No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message." I am pretty sure, private blog posts promoting your day jobs work, are beneficial to your career as well (and I can imagine it is encuraged). And the language used, "We…

I updated the article with a preamble and flagged up on each heading which browser supports what.

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's an implementation. The most commonly used implementation but still an implementation, not the manual.

Fair enough. This is the version of the spec that is slated for release next year: https://tc39.es/ecma262/ Interestingly, I cannot find the console methods in there. Perhaps they are not part of the spec? I remember when Javascript was new (before 2000) it was said that Javascript was unique among languages for not having the concept of input and output.

console is not part of the language, iirc it was first introduced by Firebug - or some similar debugging tool then every other environment implemented something with the same syntax for their environment but slightly differing behaviors since not a part of the standard (of course you can also find things in a standard that vary by implementation, but things that are not in the standard I distrust even more)

Re: Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for answering with an ambiguous answer. Of course I don't know everything about anything. That's why search engines were invented. I mean, even O'Reily doesn't know everything else there wouldn't be other authors! So, which manual am I reading for learning everything there is possible to know about Console.log that will mean I never have to turn to a search engine again (with console related questions)?

For what it’s worth, reading the ECMAScript spec was one of the best things I’ve done to deepen my work as a developer. It doesn’t touch on console commands, but these do: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/console/api/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/console https://nodejs.org/api/console.html It’s not that I’m just reading language docs all day, but I’ve found it to be a really productive u…

Thanks. However, that's 4 separate links that you've provided. (R)ead (T)he (F)antastic (M)anual suggests there is one to be referenced. It's not read a manual.

That's kind of the point. When it comes to programming, there is no single manual. You learn some basics, roll up your sleeves, and bang out code. You get to something you're unfamiliar, so you look it up. You learn something new. You go back to bang out code until the next "new". However, this time while searching, you read a different way of doing something you've done in the past that is "more better" or "less incorrect" or "more efficient". The thing to note, is not one of those websites visted and read are the same.

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