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Web Development Helper

A browser extension to provide tools for the Web developer including ASP.NET page and control developers.

A few weeks ago, I got a question about the WebResources feature not doing its expected client-caching as described. It turns out the application was in debug mode. With that context, I was discussing with couple folks here, how it would be nice to be able to tell the developer that the app or page was being run in debug mode in the browser. At the same time, I also wanted to learn a bit more about browser helper objects for some other v-next related thinking.

I love it when I get to kill two birds with one stone. So I decided to sit down and write a little browser extension to provide an indication of debug mode within the browser. The screenshots below show what I ended up with. You can download the binaries and run this locally on your end.

As you can see from the screenshots, I went along and added in some additional tools such as the ability to hide trace information from the page (useful if that interferes with your page layout), and view it in a separate window, as well as the ability to see view state in a decoded form. The latter is especially useful for control developers to analyze their view state and control state usage. I already spotted a couple of things we could potentially pack better in GridView.

Obviously this is just a start for this kind of a tool. What kinds of features do you think would be helpful? Also do you like seeing this kind of information alongside the page in the browser? Or would you prefer some other type of visualization?

Update 5/12/2005: Dino reported back that this extension seemed to break themes. It turns out IE doesn't like the css file if server module included a cookie for the .css file. I have updated the module to restrict itself to .aspx pages for now.
Update 5/19/05: Three new features added in version 0.6. More details here.

[ Tags: asp.net | javascript | ajax | xmlhttp | debugging | utility | browser helper ]

Posted on Wednesday, 5/11/2005 @ 4:42 PM | #Projects/Programming

Comments

98 comments have been posted.

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 5/11/2005 @ 4:51 PM

By the way I should mention, the browser extension creates a bar, as well as an additional button. If you've customized your IE toolbar in the past, you'll need to actually go back and customize the toolbar to get to the button to show up. The button is enabled when the page you browse has associated developer information; otherwise it becomes disabled.

Kevin Dente

Posted on 5/11/2005 @ 5:14 PM

Very cool. How about a Firefox extension version? ;)

Just out of curiosity - how do you determine on the client side whether the server is running in debug mode.

Kevin Dente

Posted on 5/11/2005 @ 5:17 PM

Oops - I just realized that there's a server side component to this, which answers my question.

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 3:17 PM

Richard has a Firefox version of this tool (http://blogs.aspadvice.com/rbirkby/archive/2005/05/12/3536.aspx). The thought of doing a Firefox version did cross my mind, but I didn't find any reasonably good docs on Firefox extensions and XUL... so that idea was sent to the backburner.

Kevin Dente

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 4:43 PM

Wow, cool, that was a fast port! I too have been stymied by the poor documentation around Firefox extension development. One of these days I'll get around to figuring that stuff out.

John

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 5:58 PM

I'm afraid I'm still in the ASP.NET 1.1 world (at least until the next version gets released. Would it be at all possible to have a version compatible with that?

David Taylor

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 9:07 PM

Hmmm...Got it working in IE but cannot see any information. Everything installed alright though...Just does not seem to be picking up the servers side.

Does it work with Cassini (Visual Web Developer Web Server) or only IIS? I am not currently using IIS as the IIS module to change from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2 has dissapeared since I installed Beta 2 (I have had a few whidbey betas installed on my machine...)

So doesn't seem to be working...but I like the concept.

David Taylor

David Taylor

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 9:14 PM

Another idea.....

Given Windows Forms 2.0 is supporting a web browser component (that uses IE anyway), why not just build a "custom" web browser within Visual Web Dev (at least V.next) that supports a whole bunch of cool developer debugging features within the custom browser.

That way you are not mucking around with BHO and COM, you can do the whole thing in .NET using Windows Forms 2.0 and provide a developer centric web browser.

I realize that does not solve your problem about "leaving BHO" for features of the V.Next of ASP.NET...But it is a good idea.

Your custom Windows Forms web browser could even have a nice plugin architecture that allows "secure" .NET assemblies to be dynamically downloaded from the web server and appear as widgets within the web broswser....Think of that, any ASP.NET Control could include an attribute pointing to another DLL that can be dynamically downloaded by the special web browser to provide a sensational development / debugging experience.

Just some thought....

Sean M

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 9:40 PM

I created a 1.1 version. I haven't tested it at all. So it probably doesn't even work, but it is a base to build on:

http://www.arcturus.com.au/DevInfoModule.zip

RichB

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 10:55 PM

Sean,

I've tested your HttpModule against the Firefox extension and it works (in .Net v1.0 no less!)

David Taylor

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 11:19 PM

Hey...let me improve on my idea.

Given the improvement with Windows Forms 2.0 and the ability to do much more in the sandboxed environment required by apps running that were downloaded from remote untrusted webservers....You could have a special URL like this:
http://www.mysite.com/myapp/debug.axd

When this URL was hit, the Http Handler could sniff the browser and see if .NET 2.0 is installed. If .NET 2.0 is available it could return a custom web browser (completely build in windows forms 2.0) which has all kinds of sexy debug utilities that help while you are using your site. The browser would be served by the ASP.NET itself. This could work remotely on any machine that has the 2.0 framework installed.

The main point here is that the improvements made to Windows Forms 2 (ie the web browser control), and the ability to do more without needing special permissions....opens up doors to the ASP.NET team.

Anyway...all interesting ideas.

RichB

Posted on 5/12/2005 @ 11:47 PM

David,

Nikhil's code is written in WinForms 2. In fact, it requires .Net Beta 2. If you try to install in one of the previous previews you get:

LoadLibrary("nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll") failed - This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

This message came from regsvr32 trying DllRegister with .Net v2.0.40607.0. All of the UI you see in your browser is .Net code. Although I haven't done it myself, you should be able to run WinSpy over the sidebar and see all the WinForms classes.

Richard

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 5/13/2005 @ 7:55 AM

A few responses:

- We did discuss the possibility of browsing pages in a development browser, inside VS itself, when I demo'd the thing internally. The primary concern with this approach is if the browser leaks memory (which it can with bad script), or crashes (say it loads a bad activex control), it would bring down the whole VS shell. I believe there is a way to browse within VS today - its just not the default - though at that point you also loose the ability to do a BHO type of extension to the browser. Though the point about downloading custom assemblies applies equally to an external development browser - agree there. We did in fact discuss the idea of a development browser as well - though I think its barrier to adoption would be that its just not IE, which people are used to. Just a gut feeling...

- It should work with both cassini apps and IIS apps. Basic requirement is that the apps are using .NET v2.0... though it looks like Sean has created a v1.x module. Next time I update things (with say a feature to enumerate and manage what is in cache), I'll put out sources for the module - so it can be ported to v1.x.

- I am not sure you can use the webbrowser control in a partial trust environment/sandbox. Though I haven't verified it.

Sean M

Posted on 5/15/2005 @ 5:34 PM

Any chance of posting the Browser component code too, or is that not able to be ported to 1.x? I'd really love this tool for our 1.1 development too!

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 5/15/2005 @ 10:43 PM

Sean, I haven't posted the code for a couple of reasons: It does some wacky stuff to mix native and managed pieces of code, that I wouldn't exactly call "recommended." Secondly, the tool uses some UI code from another product, and am not sure I can simply post it just yet.

On the subject of porting, the native hosting code uses Whidbey CLR APIs and on the feature end, I've just added some new functionality to the tool today, that makes it still more tied to Whidbey... so in short it will very likely be hard to port to v1.1 (unfortunately) ... atleast while keeping feature parity or the current form.

Sorry!

Sean M

Posted on 5/19/2005 @ 10:07 PM

Cool, no worries then! :)

Alec

Posted on 7/25/2005 @ 7:43 AM

Many people compress their viewstate using GZip (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/Default.aspx). Would be great to support viewing of compressed viewstates. Perhaps MAC hashed viewstates as well?

Keith J. Farmer

Posted on 8/1/2005 @ 12:27 PM

Would this work with x64 version of IE as well?

Rahul

Posted on 8/1/2005 @ 5:17 PM

Hi I have both .net 1.x and .net beta 2, will this work with .net 1.x web application or it will only work with .net 2.0 web applications
thanks

Robert Nguyen

Posted on 8/7/2005 @ 9:51 PM

I got it working in Beta 2 and I love it. Thanks

Kaan Öztürk

Posted on 8/11/2005 @ 12:59 AM

@David

How did you get your webdevhelper running? I have the same problem. Everything installed successfully. In IE I also see the icon, but when I click it, nothing opens. I also have tracing on. I use IIS.

I have the latest VS2005.

James Spibey

Posted on 9/2/2005 @ 2:40 AM

I see that the BHO object requires .NET2 to be able to function but does the HTTP Module require .NET2? If so, would it be possible to provide a version of the HTTP Module for version 1.1? That way I could just install the .NET2 runtime on my dev machine without having to install VS2005

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 9/7/2005 @ 8:47 AM

Both BHO and HTTP module should require only .NET2 - they shouldn't require VS2005 to be installed. The server module could be written against v1.1, but it doesn't help, because the BHO's implementation of view state decoding for example, is in sync with the .NET 2.0 implememtation.

By the way, watch this space - some cool new updates are in the works and nearing completion!

Paul Eaklor

Posted on 9/20/2005 @ 8:02 PM

I know I missed something simple. How did you get your webdevhelper running? I have the same problem. Everything installed successfully. In IE I also see the icon, but when I click it, nothing opens. I use IIS on Windows 2003 server Enterprise SP1. IE version 6.0.3790. I have the latest VS2005 Beta 2.

Are their any browser specific setting that need to be enabled for BHO's to work correctly?

Daniel Fisher(Lennybacon)

Posted on 10/9/2005 @ 7:54 AM

RegSvr32: nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll was loaded, but the DllUnregisterServer entrypoint was not found. This file can not be registered.

any ideas?

Denkai

Posted on 10/17/2005 @ 12:17 AM

Seems the download link is broken?

Daniel Walzenbach

Posted on 10/17/2005 @ 7:11 AM

Hi,

I'd really love to test the Web Development Helper. Is there some way to download the project? The download link seems to be broken.

Thank you!

Daniel

Paul Dykes

Posted on 10/19/2005 @ 7:05 PM

Nikhil, will software run in the Visual Studio 2005 Web Developer Express (VWDexpress) ?

Paul

cowgaR

Posted on 10/22/2005 @ 11:48 PM

Any chance of compiling it against RC0 version of .NET20, (mistakenly named RTM) build 2.0.50727 ?
I know that .NET 2.0 final is there in a few weeks, but then again, who is still working in beta 2?

You? OH, ok ok I am quiet =)

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 11/12/2005 @ 12:04 PM

The latest update adds support for .NET v2.0 and VS2005 RTM, along with a couple new features. Enjoy!

Joseph H

Posted on 11/17/2005 @ 8:29 AM

This tool looks great and I'm looking forward to using it. Thanks for taking the time to develop it.

I'm having trouble with step 3 of the installation. I don't have a web.config file in %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215\config. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Joseph H

Posted on 11/17/2005 @ 8:36 AM

Sorry, I just noticed that I have version 2.0.50727. I found the web.config in the corosponding file. Thanks again for the utility.

William Robertson

Posted on 11/18/2005 @ 2:25 PM

Nikhil, Does this tool at all run on IE 7? After regsvr32 it does not show in my View -> Toolbars.

Mercdev

Posted on 11/18/2005 @ 11:50 PM

William: It's in the Tools menu under the "Windows Update" entry :-)

JOSE

Posted on 11/19/2005 @ 8:21 PM

couldn't get it to work with IE 7 Beta 1 for XP SP2. I get the toolbar button (always enabled) but nothing heppens when I click it on ASP.NET 2.0 websites (on localhost). is there anything i can do to get it to function in IE 7 Beta 1?

Jose

Posted on 11/20/2005 @ 6:43 AM

i installed the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en) and the Web Development Helper began to work! Why might this be?

Toby Henderon

Posted on 11/23/2005 @ 3:04 AM

Nikhil,

Thanks for this tool, it is brilliant !
It's making my life a whole lot easier.

Just one thing on the screen shot functionality, which is great. If the page title has invalid filename characters in it, your plugin errors. Example page would be this one as you have a : in the title.

Just run something like this - fileName = Regex.Replace(fileName,@"[\\/:*?""<>|]", "") - across it to clean up the filename before calling save.

Thanks again for a great tool !

oVan

Posted on 11/23/2005 @ 12:34 PM

I'm having problems installing this new version:
C:\Program Files\WebDevHelper>\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\gacutil
.exe /i nStuff.WebDevInfo.dll

Microsoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility. Version 1.1.4318.0
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1998-2002. All rights reserved.

Failure adding assembly to the cache: Unknown Error
---
I see no gacutil in the \v2.0.50727 directory, which is the RTM version (?). Can someone help me out... with the previous versions I had no installation problems.

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 11/24/2005 @ 1:35 AM

Toby, good suggestion. Will look into it for the next build.

oVan, gacutil.exe is installed when you install the .NET SDK. For me, its installed into "Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin".

Jose, not sure about IE7. Will need to install it, and see whats happening one of these days.

oVan

Posted on 11/24/2005 @ 2:02 AM

Thanks, that did the trick. This info, although very obvious, would be useful in the readme-file.

Rick Strahl

Posted on 11/26/2005 @ 2:15 PM

Nikhil,

I haven't had any luck in getting this to work. Everything seems to register fine and I see the menu option on the tools menu, but beyond that nothing happens. Not even sure what I should be looking for. Server2003 SP1, IE 6.0. I'm assuming the module and GAC registration for is optional, so the issue appears to be with the BHO? Any ideas what to check?

noobix

Posted on 11/29/2005 @ 2:52 AM

hi,

please tell me how I can the tool to work. I'm seeing an "web development helper" on the Tools menu but
clicking on it does nothing while browsing aspx pages. Am I still supposed to do something else?
What is "associated development information"? Thanks for any help.

Bruce

Posted on 12/1/2005 @ 2:49 PM

H just get this message when using with 1.1 -- "The format of the file 'nStuff.WebDevInfo' is invalid". The 1.1 version of the HttpHandler by Sean M works, but I dont get the viewstate decoded, which is why I wanted the tool in the first place :-( Any one else got it going or is it just my setup?
BTW, great idea and very usefull, I just wish there was not so many variants that stop .Net code working.

Maestrocity

Posted on 12/2/2005 @ 9:35 PM

Also check out the tools at http://www.ieinspector.com. It does pretty much the same thing and has an excellent ui, but not the ASP.NET specific stuff and costs money.

Rhywun

Posted on 12/2/2005 @ 10:00 PM

I have the same problem as some others - everything appeared to install correctly but nothing happens when I click the new button in IE. (using .NET 2.0 and Cassini)

dfaithen

Posted on 12/4/2005 @ 12:01 AM

Install the IE developertoolbar as Jose did above. it solved the problem for me as well. Not to mention it is nice to finally have a dev toolbar in ie to compare to firefox.

MoonWa

Posted on 12/12/2005 @ 7:16 AM

How do I install the firfox version?

MoonWa

Posted on 12/12/2005 @ 7:18 AM

How do I install the firfox version?

Jinglecat

Posted on 1/3/2006 @ 1:11 AM

hi, Nikhil,The tool looks so cool!
Unfortunately, I couldn't register the nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll, but the nStuff.WebDevInfo.dll is ok! I have tried to install it on more than three PCs hosting windows xp sp2. However, everytime the error should be sush as: LoadLibrary(" nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll") failed, the application can't be started up because it isn't configured right. Install it again to repair the problem. I'm from China, so I'm assuming the issue appears to be with the Chinese Edition Windows since i'm not sure whetht the great tool supports any other languages other then English.
Any idea is appreciated!

ronam hajile

Posted on 1/6/2006 @ 6:45 AM

Your tool is very cool...

I was excited to see the screen capture capability, but for some reason when I used it the bottom section of the screenshot is black. The top looks great, but it is what I could have captured with "Print Screen".

Have you ever ran into this? Any ideas how I could fix it?

Thanks for all your hard work. Great tool!

Max

Posted on 1/11/2006 @ 6:55 AM

Could not get the thing to run, added :
<add
name="DevInfo"
type="nStuff.WebDevInfo.DevInfoModule, nStuff.WebDevInfo, version=0.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8fc0e3af5abcb6c4"/ >

to my web.config (both in my app root dir and in the .Net dir...)
followed the readme.pdf carefully,
I just don't see anything happening, too bad because the
tool looks very usefull !

BTW, I would sugggest putting the Readme in TXT format
rather than pdf, it make copy&paste possible !
(pasting configs is so much less error prone than retyping them !)

Thanks

I'm running on dotNet version : v2.0.50727...

max

Posted on 1/11/2006 @ 7:12 AM

Ok, I got the thing to work, I had not seen the option "Web Development Helper"
in IE's Tools menu (or maybe it started to work after I installed IE developer tool bar...).

Anothet problem I'm having : the ASP menu (the one where I can see the view state)
is disabled ! (grayed out)... How can I get this to work (inspecting the viewstate is what
I wanted from the tool in the first place ...)

Thanks

Shahed

Posted on 1/11/2006 @ 8:45 PM

hi Nikhil,
great work, brilliant. This is really a great tool.

I faced one problem with the DOM Inspector. It works fine but I can not inspect an element in focused status. because, when I select a div and click the DOM Inspector to refresh the 'Selected elements', div lost focus.

is it possible to put the DOM Inspector in auto refresh mode. Like when I select an element, it will auto refresh (lets say, refresh every second) and show the current property values of selected element ?

Thanks a lot for this great tool.

Shahed

Roman

Posted on 2/6/2006 @ 8:47 PM

Hi Nikhil, thank you very much, I installed Web Development Helper, but it wasn't working (I push the button on the toolbar - nothing happens) until I installed Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar as Jose (11/20/2005 @ 6:43 AM) suggested. Strange ...

Roman

Roman

Posted on 2/7/2006 @ 12:47 AM

Hi there! It's me again ;-) I found a small bug in Web Development Helper. While trying to save a screenshot I got this exception

************** Exception Text **************
System.InvalidOperationException: File Nichiro-info | Home is not a valid file name.
at System.Windows.Forms.SaveFileDialog.RunFileDialog(OPENFILENAME_I ofn)
at System.Windows.Forms.FileDialog.RunDialog(IntPtr hWndOwner)
at System.Windows.Forms.CommonDialog.ShowDialog(IWin32Window owner)
at nStuff.WebDevInfo.UserInterface.PageTools.PageTasks.CapturePage(IWin32Window owner, IBHOUserInterfaceSite site)
at nStuff.WebDevInfo.UserInterface.BHOUserInterface.OnCommandPageCaptureScreenshot(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEventInteractive(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

You are trying to use page title as a file name without checking for the invalid path characters, in my case page title is "Nichiro-info | Home".

Thanks,
Roman

davidw

Posted on 2/9/2006 @ 11:25 AM

How come none of my comments show up?

I have installed the app sucessfully, other things work fine, but the items under ASP.NET are all disabled, why does that happen?
I am using latest 2.0

It is a great app, please help me to use it.

thanks

Marco

Posted on 2/10/2006 @ 1:25 AM

I see that someone has posted an asp.net 1.1 version? I assume it's only necessary to have a httpmodule for 1.1. Can you publish the source (of the httpmodule) to so that we can convert it into an 1.1 module?

ps. assuming that the IE addin (2.0) will work with a "1.1 backend"

Thanks
Marco

Mashama

Posted on 2/23/2006 @ 10:03 AM

Very interesting. Perhaps you should start a project like this for Java Servlet/JSP development. ASP is for people with money, what about the people without money? Or is your ultimate objective a capitalistic one? Either way this is great. Good job!

Rohan Patel

Posted on 2/24/2006 @ 9:07 AM

That`s very nice. it seems good one for tracing . Good job.

Gaurav Mathur

Posted on 3/7/2006 @ 9:17 PM

I found this tool quite interseting and useful. I used it on my 2.0 web apps. I would also like to use it on my 1.1 apps. Surely to use the viewstate and other httpModule related features I need to have the BHO compatible to decode FX 1.1 encoded viewstate. Can you provide the binaries for 1.1 also.

jagadish

Posted on 3/8/2006 @ 3:09 AM

its really good .

Dave Smulders

Posted on 3/8/2006 @ 4:00 AM

I have seen this tool in action on the Microsoft DevDays 2006 in the Netherlands and was eager to get my hands on it since it provides much needed tools for web development.
However, trying to install the client tools, I get the following error:

LoadLibrary("nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll") failed - This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

It throws the same error when trying regsrv32 with the /u option. Any ideas?

Hans Dingemans

Posted on 3/8/2006 @ 1:33 PM

Installed as suggested in the pdf (gacutil, web.config, regsvr32). Clicking the button in the toolbar has no effect, as mentioned by several others. Installing the IE Developer toolbar as suggested works for me, but I guess this is completely different software though similar functionality, right? Am running IE6 on WXP SP2. So how can I (and others) get Nikhil's software to work?

Daniel Fernandes

Posted on 3/13/2006 @ 12:59 AM

New version coming ? I'm getting HTTP 500 (what's wrong with 404) trying to download binaries and view screenshots.

Christiaan

Posted on 3/21/2006 @ 10:34 AM

Same here, it seems that I cannot download the binaries?

ailleresc

Posted on 3/23/2006 @ 2:13 AM

Does the tool work for IE 7 Beta 2 (7.0.5296.0) ?
I have done succesfully the installation on RTM (in v2.0.50727 web.config rather than the v2.0.50215 mentionned in readme) and there is no tools or button in my IE.

Thanks.

ailleresc

Posted on 3/23/2006 @ 6:10 AM

It works on IE 7 after restart Windows.
Very helpfull for debugging my code when using Atlas.
Thanks for your tool.

JF

Posted on 3/26/2006 @ 10:28 AM

I installed the web development helper tool successfully, and couldn't get it to work until I installed "Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar" from microsoft as described by some other comments. The debugger tool worked well then.

After playing around with the tool for a few minutes my javascript in IE stopped working all together from localhost (not sure about other sites, but they don't seem problematic)! Simple javascript things like alert('test') would not even fire locally from my asp.net applications.

If I create a basic .html file, with an alert in a script tag, drag it to IE... then I get an IE security prompt about running active scripts... and if I approve the JS alert will work. Doesn't work in my aspx at all though.

IE has javascript enabled in Advanced Options, I've been through those.

I tried removing all signs of this web developer helper and IE Developer Toolbar install, but it didn't fix the problem.

Any ideas?

mp3 blog

Posted on 3/27/2006 @ 5:29 AM

nice to hear you again Nikhil.
keep a good work with your blog.

xeon77

Posted on 4/3/2006 @ 11:18 PM

It seems working fine with both IIS 6 and Web Developer 2005 Express Develpment Server on port - 4081, great tool.

Joel Rumerman

Posted on 4/21/2006 @ 11:10 AM

The link for the binaries seems to be broken ... any ideas?

Thx.

Varun

Posted on 4/25/2006 @ 9:32 AM

Hi I am trying to work with Web Developer Helper but I unable to execute the command
gacutil /i nStuff.WebDevInfo.dll
It is giving me error that there is no such command as gacutil.Please help me

Varun

Posted on 4/25/2006 @ 9:35 AM

I am having problem running an ASP.net page I dont know why?When I run the url on the broweser I am getting a page displayed a lot of charachters some are spoecial characters and somr alphabets and some weired characheters.Please let me know if you can tell what can be the problem.

Joel Rumerman

Posted on 4/26/2006 @ 9:37 AM

Nikhil,

I had been using Fiddler ... I made the switch last week and I don't know how I ever developed against Atlas without your tool. Thanks!!!!

One suggestion, when viewing the ResponseContent of a page in the details window. Can you include the ability to have a "select all" command using Ctrl-A? Ctrl-C works for copying out of the window, but it's a small pain for me to select all the text using either the keyboard or the mouse.

Thx, Joel

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 5/13/2006 @ 10:31 PM

Its been a while since I have gotten to work on this tool. I've been pretty satisfied... ummm... amazed at the response. Seems like I'll need to keep this up... definitely have a few ideas... hopefully will find the time required. :-)

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback in terms of features so far. In the short term the thing most people hit is installation. IE/Explorer cache information about plugins on startup, so you need to close IE upon installing, and potentially kill explorer.exe (or just restart the system - haven't tried log off/login - it may also work).

Shane Milton

Posted on 5/19/2006 @ 6:52 AM

I'm definitely a fan of this tool. It's nice that it has some overlapping features as what Fiddler has with the HTTP logging - will allow me to fire up Fiddler less often (it's sometimes problematic as a proxy server and usually things break after a period of time running it).

Between this and Fiddler, client-side debugging is becoming MUCH easier for us all. :)

Pavan

Posted on 5/19/2006 @ 7:10 PM

I tried to install this on a Vista build with a Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727.

Two problems:
One - ASP.NET 2.0 allows us to work with out a bin directory right?
So, can I still just create a bin directory and put the nStuff.WebDevInfo.dll in it?

Two - When I tried to regsvr32 nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll
I got this pop-up:
[Window Title]
RegSvr32

[Main Instruction]
The module "nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll" was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80004005.

For more information about this problem, search online using the error code as a search term.

[OK]

Gena01

Posted on 5/30/2006 @ 1:53 PM

I have finally managed to install and get this tool to work. (had to reboot)

I also found some bugs in the current version:
- DOM Inspector:
- If i select the dropdown from "All elements" to "Selected element" then all I get is some <b> object and some text inside. I guess this was never implemented or I am not sure how that's supposed to work, cause I always get the same thing.
- If i type in an ID or element in the combo box to filter by and hit enter then I get an annoying beep and nothing happens. I need to press the button right next it for it to work.
- While running some tests and switching from Console to HTTP logging screen I got an exception. Not quite sure why, something about index being out of bounds. I need to try and reproduce this one. I am still testing the tool. so I'll report some more once I spend some more time on it. Thanks a lot for this great piece of software.

An jali Shivastav

Posted on 5/30/2006 @ 8:58 PM

Great site.................

Rakesh

Posted on 5/31/2006 @ 2:57 AM

The 'Show View State' option is disabled. What do I need to do to get it working. I installed this tool only to look at the view state.

Thanks

Ziemowit

Posted on 6/6/2006 @ 2:33 AM

First - great tool. I don't know why I didn't use it before. You need better marketing :)
Second - problem. On site I'm working on I have a number of Response.Redirect() calls. Whan I have HTTP Logging turned On this is not working and I'm getting "The page cannot be displayed" error. What can cause this behaviour. If you need more info to solve this, please drop me a line.

Cheers

Drolevar

Posted on 6/16/2006 @ 4:38 AM

I've got problems downloading this tool - 'Service not available'. Could anyone send it to my address - drolevar_at_gmail.com?

ahmed al bagalaty

Posted on 6/20/2006 @ 4:12 PM

its a perfect web development Helper

howard xu

Posted on 6/22/2006 @ 9:04 AM

Installation is fine and button is showing on toobar in IE. But when I click it, Nothing happend. I have both 1.1 and 2.0 framework on my machine.

Can you help me?

Peter

Posted on 6/27/2006 @ 10:47 AM

Wonderful tool, thank you.

Two requests:

1) Allow for copy operations when viewing the header info.

2) Allow for specifying iframes to monitor.

Thanks again.

Amit

Posted on 6/28/2006 @ 9:42 AM

I'm able to bring up this tool in IE for sites that are hosted on localhost but not on localhost:1234. In other words, for ASP.NET 2.0 sites that are running on the Visual Studio web server (Cassini?) this tool doesn't show up. You probably have an explicit check for "localhost" only and not the port number. If I'm right, can you fix it? I would really like to use it while I'm developing.
Thanks
Amit

marco

Posted on 6/28/2006 @ 4:48 PM

Hi,
I like the tool. It's pretty smart. Everything works fine but for some of my site during the navigation I got [only if logging is one] a page not found response. this happens when the navigation link is to page with some query stiring [.../mypage?qs=1&qs2=2]

Any idea ?
thanks

Moshiur Murshed

Posted on 7/14/2006 @ 3:06 AM

I can't make it work in IE 7 beta 3. Any suggestions or help.

Robert

Posted on 7/17/2006 @ 1:46 PM

The exact same problem that Peter Posted on 6/27/2006 @ 10:47 AM , but am using version dated 07/09/2006
After registering IE extension (nStuff.WebDevInfo.BHO.dll) the Web Helper button appeared on the tool bar, but when I pressed it - nothing happened.
I did not install nStuff.WebDevInfo.dll to the GAC just into Application BIN and changed local web.config not the global one.
I also have 2.0 and 1.1 frameworks on my machine.

Any suggestion ?
Thanks.

Aharon Haravon

Posted on 7/18/2006 @ 6:03 AM

I liked the idea of having the debugService.inspect method, only if you (Nikhil) could display the object in the object inspector window in a more Atlas friendly way... For example, for all get_/set_ method pairs display the property type and value, show the base classes, implemented interfaces... Ultimatively, having something like a VS object browser would be highly usefull for debugging client side Atlas based applications.

Vadim

Posted on 7/20/2006 @ 1:27 PM

After installing and working fine (I had to reboot the server) when I view my website in the browser on the server I noticed that it crashed my website if I try to view it from a client workstation. See below for the error. When I removed the addition to web.config file that I had to do for the instalation of WebDevHelper my website started to work again.

Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
nStuff.WebDevInfo.DevInfoModule.OnApplicationEndRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e) +57
System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +92
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +64

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.42; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.42

nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan)

Posted on 7/24/2006 @ 10:58 AM

Wow... i was searching this stuff.... for a long while...
thank you for your gr8 tool...

Alexander van Doormalen

Posted on 7/24/2006 @ 11:25 AM

When are the asp.net menu items enabled? I enabled tracing and its outputing it to the page. Also a .DEVINFO cookie is set by the httpmodule (=[debug][trace]). I really want to use the viewstate decoder.

shin myung seok

Posted on 7/25/2006 @ 7:21 PM

Wow... i was searching this stuff.... for a long while...

wj

Posted on 7/26/2006 @ 4:45 PM

Goood!i want to try it.

Nigel Roach

Posted on 7/28/2006 @ 3:08 AM

The link to download the binaries is broken. Does anyone have a copy they could send ?

Anonymous

Posted on 7/29/2006 @ 1:43 PM

Also can not download; additionally image links are not correct either. looks like a bug in the links or the site layout or some such.

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 7/31/2006 @ 3:13 AM

I have revamped my http://projects.nikhilk.net site to add bug tracking lists, discussion forums (and a wiki which I'll use over time to better talk more about the projects). The site runs on Sharepoint 2007 beta, and additionally I am also new to Sharepoint itself (it is nice to use something built on ASP.NET though :-) ... so if things aren't working for some reason, just use my contact form.

The bits are now available through that site. I still have to fix the images... will do so shortly...

Over the next day or so, I'll be closing the comments on this post. If you think there is a comment here, where you asked for a bug fix, or provided feedback, now would be a good time to test out how well the bugs list works on the new site by adding your entries there. It will hopefully provide a much better tracking mechanism.

Thanks for all the comments! Looking forward to more conversation ... perhaps a bit more structured.

The discussion on this post has been closed. Please use my contact form to provide comments.

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The content on this site represents my own personal opinions and thoughts at the time of posting, and does not reflect those of my employer's in any way.