In my last post I talked about what tools I use to make coding in JavaScript easier. Today I will write about tools I’m using to develop the actual code and find answers to confusing problems.

Most of the code is written in Visual Studio.NET 2003. I also use it to debug the code running in IE. It doesn’t support intellisense for JavaScript, but it provides nice highlighting. It automatically generates list of all functions in the current file making it easier to jump around the code. It’s fast, or at least faster than any of Java based editors with similar features. Best of all it has a built-in powerful debugger that makes it easy to start debugging away if I can’t understand why something is happening in an unexpected way.

I also want all of my code work in Gecko (it's an engine used by Mozilla, Firefox, and other browsers) and to verify that it does work correctly in it I use Firefox. All unit tests have to pass in both IE and Gecko, which can be a complicated task sometimes. IE and Gecko react differently to certain code. Some difference can be very small, but implications can be big. To dig into the code while it’s running in Gecko and see what’s happening for myself I’m using Verman JavaScript Debugger. It is not as easy to use as VS debugger, but can stand up to the task of learning the browser behaves certain way. It actually helped me solve some complex problems that I would never figured out with out it.

Most of the time I can’t remember every little detail about the language and libraries I’m using. I know the syntax, but I often forget about methods and properties of built-in objects. To find more information on what I need to know I use couple of sources. Most of the time I search MSDN which has a very nice section on JavaScript development, as well as IE DOM. However as I’m also writing for another browser I’m using Mozilla DOM reference to figure out how to do something in Gecko. These two sources are not always enough to learn everything I need to know. In rare cases when I need even more information I fall back on Google and other sources. There are too many links to write about today so they will get their own dedicated post.

On rare occasions I need to quickly open a script or text file. To read it I use Notepad2. It’s great and is probably one of the most useful tools in my arsenal. It’s very quick, supports text formatting and highlighting and is free.

This is it folks. At some point I will make a post with a references to all of the tools I've encountered that I think could be used to solve some specific problems, but everything I wrote about in this and previous posts I use on daily basis.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve my everyday development life I would like to hear about it.