DebugBar 5.4.1

Redmond-based software giant Microsoft offers its customers the Internet Explorer (IE) browser to let them surf the web and take in all the information available online. The regular computer user is satisfied by what Microsoft’s IE browser has to offer – the computer user that wants to speed up web dev productivity on the other hand may not.

Luckily enough, there is a simple solution for such a computer user: a plug-in. To be more specific, an Internet Explorer toolbar called DebugBar, developed by Core Services (the download weighs in at less than 1MB by the way, so the download should complete in a blink).

This application comes with a DOM inspector, a HTTP inspector and a JavaScript inspector along with a HTML validator. After installing DebugBar it will show up in Internet Explorer as a toolbar with an esily-resized, simple dropdown menu and tabbed interface. From that toolbar you can access all the functionality and powerful features DebugBar has to offer.

You can do a lot of things with DebugBar. You can for example check the coding of a webpage, look for script errors, and detect other bits and pieces that haunt web devs. To see info about the currently displayed webpage, you need only press a tab. You can also use DebugBar to view DOM tree and modify tags attributes and CSS attributes. Or you can view JavaScript functions, Ajax Code, HTTP requests, cookies, and more.

What I consider to be this application’s most useful feature is the dragable target that searches for information about a specific element displayed on the webpage. DebugBar helps you out by highlighting whatever it discovers while you drag the target.

DebugBar is a powerful tool for web site designers and web developers. A definite must have.

Pros

• No charge for private or educational use
• Numerous useful tools
• Data is presented in an easily understandable spreadsheet format
• Color coded HTML commands
• Send a screen capture of a webpage by email simply by going through a few mouse clicks

Cons

• None that I could think of

DebugBar has been reviewed by George Norman on 17 Mar 2010. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated DebugBar 4 out of 5 stars, naming it Excellent