Firebug and other Programming Tools

Let's talk about the tools I use when writing script for Canvas. My favorite is Firebug. What a great program this is! It works well with Firefox and I see where they have a version for Chrome as well.

Programming without Firebug would be a nightmare. It allows me to step through my code and watch the values of variables change as I move from line to line. I can set breakpoints that let me jump quickly to the functions that I am working on.

There is a DOM tab that let's me see all the blood and guts. I can view all the locally stored variables, even the individual bytes that make up an image. These are a great help.

Firebug is free, but there is a 'Donate' button. I think after you have worked with Firebug for a short time you will agree that a donation is in order. I did.

For some time now I have been using Coffee Cup as my HTML Editor. It has served me well. As you can see by the image at the right my version may be a little old.

Coffee Cup has a preview tab that has worked well for general HTML pages, but it doesn't work with Canvas. This is no big deal, though. It forces me to save my work before I can test it in Firefox. That means when something crashes I've never lost my work. [Yes, you can actually crash your web browser, especially if you screw up a loop and your script runs away from you. I've even had to reboot my computer!] I must say, that ctrl-S has become such a habit that I find my self using it in other programs where it is NOT what I want to do.

While studying programming for Linux I saw a video on YouTube where the guy was using an editor that allowed him to collapse functions. Oh, I wish I could do that. Once your code gets lengthy it would be great to hide the stuff that is running right and only see what you need to work on. If any of you know of an editor that would do that, please let me know.

And, as I'm sure you have gathered, I also use Firefox as my main browser. I have IE on my computer but that just makes me want to cry. I know a lot of people use it, because it was on the computer when they bought it.

Any serious programmer can't simply ignore IE. My canvas web app is just now in beta mode, so I will ignore IE for a little longer and then spend some time with it.  I have a hunch that it won't take too much effort to wrestle into working with the project.

If you want to write games for the web, animated web apps, take a look at my project and watch this blog for more information. Remember Canvas Games work on PCs, Macintosh, and Linux. That is a lot of platforms that you can program for all at once.

C U Again Soon