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Web developer tool secrets that shouldn’t be secrets

christianheilmann.com

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

#91

Post by HWR_14 »

dylan604 wrote: post #27
HWR_14 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm trying to head off the fact that nobody reads docs, but will head straight to a web search. Is that why everyone loves SO? I've found it so hard to get questions answered on there. Most answers I find are just regurgitations of documentation, which is just annoying when you are asking about an obscure edge case.

I can't speak for everyone, but...sometimes it's easier to ask a question in a search bar than heading off to the docs and navigating their menus in order to find where in the docs you need to be looking. Maybe SO links come up first, maybe the actual docs do. However, with the back-n-forth exchanges, it is sometimes easier to grok an SO link than dryly written docs. The first example jumping to mind is AWS related q…

The search bar is more convenient, and sometimes the docs are hard to find. That said, I find a lot of docs are quite easy to read, and often have to take the second step of omitting SO or otherwise restricting the search to docs and kicking myself.

Some documentation is wonderful. I try to use documentation quality as an important consideration when choosing software.

The AWS docs have big issues, but they are similar to the big issues with SO - it's so easy to find old documentation. Also, they are horribly organized.

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

#92

Post by UnFleshedOne »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #62
chriscodepo8 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. This all applies to Edge, too. I am also a huge keyboard fan and user and the command menu is incredibly useful. As to bringing Overrides to the main browser interface and not only to developer tools, I'd love to do some more research on that. We are not seeing much use of overrides at all and they are a pretty niche use case. That said, I see far too many people and companies resorting to browser extens…

"As to bringing the Overrides to the main browser interface and not only to developer tools, I'd love to do some more research on that." To a curious user who is not a "developer", "Developer Tools" is just more browser options. What tech companies want to everyone to forget is that any person who has no interest in working as a "developer" for a "tech" company can use the exact same software including all of its fea…

Eh, you can't reconcile 'nobody reads all that text on dialog boxes' with 'using names like "Developer Tools" just drives people away who are not interested in being labeled "developers"'. I seriously doubt people care all that much about what menu labels say, as long as they are roughly descriptive. What next, making some menu items pink because women are shown to be less likely to press on them? This way lays madness.

You have a good point about not needing to explain how all that stuff works, because developers are expected to seek out and read documentation and tutorials.

Making tools more accessible in that sense necessarily makes them less powerful, and there is too much dumbing down going on as it is...

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

#93

Post by dotancohen »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #89
dotancohen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I see, thank you.

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

#94

Post by MonaroVXR »

dotancohen wrote: post #67
MonaroVXR wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with carpenters? I see a lot of references to it.

Carpentry is an ancient profession, and still respected to this day. Though modern carpentry is a complex profession akin to engineering, it is colloquially viewed as simple enough for laymen to understand its concepts and tools. Additionally, carpentry as a hobby is relatively popular both for its practicality and its relatively low bar of entry, with much room to develop and expand.

I see, I had something completely different in my head. Never googled the word "Carpentry" but I see the simularities.

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

#95

Post by MonaroVXR »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #46
MonaroVXR wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with carpenters? I see a lot of references to it.

I personally like to find parallels between trades and crafts to help connect my thoughts and experiences to the more abstract world of software. I started my life in carpentry and joinery so it seems to be where my mind finds it’s foundations when thinking in systems and patterns.

Nice, do you recommend some books or YouTube channels for this?

Also: I had something completely different in my head and I didn't check Google for it. But I do the simularities right now.

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

#96

Post by hutzlibu »

chriscodepo8 wrote: post #88
hutzlibu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Thank you. That adds a lot of value in my opinion.

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

#97

Post by amatecha »

chriscodepo8 wrote: post #56
amatecha wrote: post #36

Here's a really obscure one which I've never heard anyone mention, except the first time I heard about it: In the JS console: $0 is a reference to the currently-highlighted element in the DOM Inspector (at least this is the case in Firefox, Chrome and Edge, haven't tried others). Very handy for quickly evaluating or operating on an element you're looking at :)

Author here. There are even more. $0 is only the current one, but you also have $1 to $4 as a history of the last ones/ I like that $_ is a reference to the last result of what you did in the console. I documented most here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/devtools-gui...

Nice, that's great to know! Thanks for capturing them on that page. BTW I've followed you on Twitter for years. Always lots of neat tips and interesting topics -- thanks for that! :)

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

#98

Post by chriscodepo8 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #83
chriscodepo8 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still want to understand the issue. The Sources tool is the same in Chrome and in Edge. And if you undock the devtools and you press CMD+Shift+I (or CTRL+I) on either Chrome or Edge you get a second DevTools instance to debug the first one. If you use a workspace, you edit files externally in either Edge or Chrome as they are the same thing. There is no difference in either of these use cases. What use case are you finding where it is different? I'm really confused.

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

#99

Post by chriscodepo8 »

tempodox wrote: post #73
hutzlibu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I do enjoy technical PR blog posts and also in this one I found interesting bits. What disturbed me was, that the title said "web developer tools secrets", while in the text it is specifically microsoft edges web developer tools. This style of language I do not like so much. There is too much agenda in it, in my taste. As this seem to imply, there are only one web dev tools - the ones that comes bundled wi…

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.

Oh, I think I understand now. You mean when you use the debugger in Visual Studio Code the target browser dropdown only shows Edge or Chrome and not Brave?

That is weird and I wonder if it has something to do that brave hasn't got the CDP methods turned on that allows other software to remotely control it.

In essence, the debugger spawns a new instance of the browser and controls it remotely from VS Code, much like automated test tools do. It would be interesting to hear from Brave if there is interest in showing up there, too.

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

#100

Post by hutzlibu »

chriscodepo8 wrote: post #98
hutzlibu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I still want to understand the issue. The Sources tool is the same in Chrome and in Edge. And if you undock the devtools and you press CMD+Shift+I (or CTRL+I) on either Chrome or Edge you get a second DevTools instance to debug the first one. If you use a workspace, you edit files externally in either Edge or Chrome as they are the same thing. There is no difference in either of these use cases. What use case are you…

"And if you undock the devtools and you press CMD+Shift+I (or CTRL+I) on either Chrome or Edge you get a second DevTools instance to debug the first one. "

Not for me on a vanilla edge instance. Pressing Ctrl + Shift + I closes the dev tools completly, no matter where the focus is. (on Win 10, german localisation, Edge 95.0.1020.40)

But it works like you describe (and how I know it) on a vanilla chrome dev instance.

So is there maybe some hidden setting, one needs to activate first?

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