WebProNews

Tag: Chrome Developer Tools

  • Chrome Developer Tools Gets A Device Emulator

    It’s been said before that the Web is Google’s platform of choice. That’s why they created Chrome – it allows them to deliver the Web (and ads) to millions of people. Now they’re making the push for mobile and as such, the Chrome Developer Tools need a few updates.

    Google announced today that the Chrome developer tools now supports device emulation. This allows developers to test out Web apps on various browsers across a multitude of devices. Google specifically mentions the Galaxy Nexus and iPhone, but rest assured that a large variety of devices are present. The emulator also supports single touch event emulation for those building mobile applications on a desktop. You can access the emulator via the dev tools settings menu.

    Google has seen fit to update a few of the other dev tools available to Chrome developers. The Timeline’s Frame Mode feature now includes support for profiling Chrome’s rendering performance. The tool will allow you to clearly see any “janks” in a Web application. Here’s a Google I/O video on the subject:

    The dev console can now print a “user-friendly snapshot of the object properties taken at log time.” By expanding the object manually, you can see its live content.

    New dev tools wouldn’t be complete without some experimental features. Here’s what you can play around with in the new Chrome Dev Tools by visiting chrome:flags:

  • Snippets (essentially multi-line console on steroids)
  • Source mapping support for SASS
  • Native memory profiling
  • Geolocation / orientation override
  • FileSystem inspection
  • Canvas inspection
  • CPU activity in Timeline
  • CSS Regions support

    • It’s important to note that the above features are still highly experimental. Only experienced and professional developers should mess around with them for the time being. You don’t want to accidentally break something.

  • The Chrome Web Store Now Has a Developer Feedback Feature

    Anyone who has ever looked at the feedback for an app in any app store knows that it’s a jumbled mess of requests, praise, critiques, bug reports, hate, and confusion. Now imagine being an app developer and having to sort through all of that feedback to find something relevant to developing your app. The Google Chrome Store is no different, and developers on the new platform have had the same feedback problems as on other platforms.

    It comes as some relief, then, that Google has implemented a new developer feedback feature for apps on the Chrome Web Store. Users can now click on a developer feedback link and be taken to a form to fill out a bug report, ask a question, or leave a suggestion. These comments are well-organized and threaded for easy customer interaction. The announcement of the new feature came on The Chromium Blog, where Google Software Engineer Siddhartha Saha posted the details of the feature. From the blog post:

    This feature provides a clean separation between reporting bugs and compatibility issues to developers and the rating / comments users can leave in the store relating to the functionality and usefulness of a given app. The contents of the feedback forum are publicly visible to everyone, which helps to cut down on duplicate issue reporting.

    The new feature must still be enabled by developers through their Developer Dashboard. The option is now titled “Edit your User Feedback preferences.” Though it is unclear why the feature was not implemented as opt-out, Saha encourages developers to use the tool by placing links to the feedback page on their site.

  • Google Details Web Workers Debug Tools

    Google Details Web Workers Debug Tools

    If you develop for any Web browser, especially if you code in HTML5, you might be familiar with Web Workers. If so, you also might realize that it can be pretty challenging to debug. Google has now introduced new support for Web Workers debugging in its Chrome Developer Tools.

    As part of the new tools, you can use the scripts, timeline, profiles and consoles panels to develop for Web Workers. As far as debugging goes, there is now full support for dedicated and shared workers. There is a difference between the two that the Chrome team discusses.

    First up is the dedicated worker. All of them will be listed in the scripts panel, under the workers section. From there, you can open a new Developer Tools window that’s attached to the worker URL. If you find that something is amiss, you can pause the workers on start. All starting dedicated workers will now suspend operation before they can start chugging away. From here, you can jump in and see what’s wrong if there’s a cause for concern.

    The other workers, known as shared workers, are independent in that they can be used more than once on several pages. You can find these workers by using the chrome://inspect page. Next to each worker listed is an inspect and terminate URL. Clicking on inspect will open the Developer Tools to start the debugging process. If you just want it gone, click terminate to kill the worker.

    Another option available is to debug a shared worker initialization. You can do this by terminating the current worker while leaving the debug tools open. From there, reload one of the worker clients. The Developer Tools window will automatically re-attach to the new client.

    Google has some documentation up on the matter that should help you get started on debugging some Web Workers. If you need Developer Tools, you can obtain them through the dev channel release of Chrome.

  • Chrome Developer? Here’s A Google+ Hangout For You

    Google has been utilizing Google+ better than anyone. Go figure. Google’s use of its own social network, regardless of how much people are using it day to day, is proving to be beneficial to webmasters, web developers, marketers, etc. simply because Googlers constantly use it as a communication medium and a place for people to learn some good tips for getting more out of Google products.

    Last week, for example, there was a developer hangout for the recently launched Chrome for Android.

    Now, Google has posted a new Chrome Developer Hangout to YouTube. This one runs through Chrome Developer tools with Googlers Paul Irish, Pavel Feldman, Sam Dutton, Peter Beverloo, Alex Sexton and Paul Lewis.