What Debugger/dev Environment do you use?

[ealbers]

I've been playing with the ext2.1 lib for a bit...and I was wondering what everyone uses as a development environment which supports Ext2.X and allows good debugging?

I'm just using a slickedit editor and a web page to test, but I'd like a good debugger with breakpoints/single step ...

[OutpostMM]

The Firebug extension for Firefox is the best browser debugger I've seen. I just use a text editor (ConTEXT in my case) to write the code and Firebug to make sure it works in Firefox. Opera also has some developer tools (although it's rare to have it work in Firefox and fail in Opera), and IE has DebugBar, which isn't all that great but it's better then IE's default error reporting, which apparently calculates file line numbers based off of cosmic rays and Powerball drawings.

[Frank]

It seems that Firebug out of control sometimes.
For more reliably, MS Script Editor might be better.

[Animal]

Firebug is the best tool out there. It is the key to getting your app working!

[wm003]

I use Dreamweaver for coding and in/out checking system to dev/qa system.
And Firebug to test the JS-code deeply.
In Addtition i check all js-code with jslint. This eliminates most of errors that occur in IE only which does not have a usable js-console. (afaik)

[TommyMaintz]

Aptana as editor and Firebug as debugger. Btw, firebug 1.2b is out and so far it works great, even in Firefox 3rc1. http://www.getfirebug.com/releases/index.html

[OutpostMM]

I've tried Aptana, I thought it would be useful to have some IDE features like code completion for Ext, but it's way too slow for me. Is there something like Aptana that's not written in Java? The vast majority of Java applications I've used have left me with a bad impression. I love ConTEXT, but it will never have a feature where it will be able to suggest code for a specific thing like Ext.

[Eric24]

As near as I can tell, Aptana is essentially their "version" of Eclipse. If so, from the trends I've been seeing in the industry, Eclipse will soon be the only option available (other than MS Visual Studio)...

[mystix]

@outpostmm: tried @eric suen's spket (www.spket.com)?

@eric24: i should think intellij would be a worthy (albeit costly) contender. i personally use it and find it light years ahead of eclipse in terms of speed and functionality.

[Eric24]

Animal,
Question about Aptana+Firebug+FireFox: I have not quite figured out how to get useful information from Firebug on certain kinds of errors. Specifically, Firebug will show you a line of JS deep in the Ext library, without enough traceback or other details to figure out what actually caused the null reference or whatever. Do you know of any good resources for learning "better debugging with Firebug"? And, is there any sort of "IDE-integrated" support for Firebug with Aptana (one of the things I miss about other IDE environments--like Delphi or Visual Studio--is that the debugger is tightly integrated with the source code in the IDE, and can generally take you right to the offending line of code...is this even possible with JS?)
--Eric

[dj]

Eric,

with Aptana (+ an Aptana version of FireBug) you can debug your JavaScript files with the standard Eclipse Debug View. So debugging is fully integrated in the IDE. With Aptana Pro debugging even works the same with IE.