Chapter 5: Troubleshooting JavaScript Programs
In This Chapter
Understanding basic troubleshooting techniques
Installing and using Firebug
You’ve made it really far in this book and you’ve created a lot of web pages and done some programming too. Everything you’ve learned so far has been teachable. It’s been consistently possible to show an example and explain it. Now you’re going to get into something that doesn’t lend itself to teaching: good troubleshooting techniques.
Sure, certain aspects of troubleshooting are teachable, and this chapter shows and explains them. But even knowing these techniques won’t solve all the problems that you’ll encounter. It’s still up to you to apply the techniques here.
Employing Basic JavaScript Troubleshooting Techniques
The primary technique for troubleshooting technical problems is to stop. Stop what you’re doing and remain calm. We’ve seen countless very smart people falter when things go wrong — and things do go wrong.
So we repeat: The best piece of advice that we can give for troubleshooting is simply to stop and remain calm.
Once you’ve done that, look at the problem from different angles and reduce it to small parts. For example, you’ll ...
