Often cited as the most allusive language within its natural
setting, JavaScript has always evaded me as well. Notoriously client-sided,
JavaScript’s methods and objects have been a miss-or-hit when being implemented.
But we hunters of the Internet have a new weapon to track JavaScript down, to
discover its predatory methods and capture its… umm, objects. Okay, hunting
aside, check out this Firefox add-on, Firebug. After install, just pop-up your
Firebug window, click on the “script” tab, use the drop-down menu to select a JavaScript
source listed for the currently viewed webpage, and debug. Just like any debug
utility, click on the left-hand side of the code and a breakpoint will appear.
Reload the page and start stepping through from that breakpoint, methods and
objects will appear in a window within Firebug, as well as the “step-out”, “step-over”,
and “step-in” debugging commands. The JavaScript will elude us no longer, we
the hunters of the internet…
