1. You can already set up a local host on your machine to run tests. I thought that was standard practice.
2. I'm glad browsers are offering a similar solution which is easier to set up and useful for front end work. I just checked to see if Firefox has similar functionality, and it seems they support diffs for CSS only, but there is an add-on called Resource Override that appears to have similar functionality.
Yes, run your own local server. You used to be able to just save local copy and click on it. Chrome killed this, now you have to run your own infrastructure even when all you want is testing one letter change.
• Your local setup is likely different from production (not serving from production domains, not using image resize services, using different HTTP compression...)
• You might not be able to run tests on localhost, e.g. if you're an external consultant or working in technical SEO (who often want to give specific recommendations to devs as dev attention is scarce and expensive)
There are still some limitations of testing changes in DevTools:
• Testing a fresh load is a pain (need to clear OS-level DNS cache, need to clear the connection cache in Chrome, need to clear cookies/service worker)
• DevTools throttling doesn't represent server connections accurately (you need to throttle at the OS level for accurate data, which slows down your whole computer and requires admin rights)
WebPageTest [1] and my own tool DebugBear [2] now support experiments to make it easy to try out content changes in a controlled lab environment.
[1] https://product.webpagetest.org/experiments [2] https://www.debugbear.com/docs/experiments
It works well for me since I'm not allowed to export the production data onto my machine or testing environments for HIPPA reasons.
This is way better than reviewing an exception from obfuscated javascript (without sourcemaps) and trying to figure out where it occurred.
I think the key point is that by using overrides, he can basically implement a deployed change that uses production data, but without having any access or control over production infrastructure, and with no risk for other users.
Lots of folks have correctly pointed out that running locally is essentially a solved problem. He can do it against prod data, because he's overriding the prod configuration.
I've done exactly this for non-browser (and some browser) applications before (using local MITM proxies) but it's nifty that chrome lets you skip the certificate headaches and just loads a resource from disk.
Although I notice in general that this style of development (or its close friend REPL-driven development) is hard to teach for people heavily accustomed to print debugging or even TDD.
How universal is the drive to try to keep others from making needless mistakes?
[1] "FCP is " +Math.round((fcp + Number.EPSILON) * 100) / 100
That said, 95% of my usual problems can be debugged with the console. Often it is faster, easier to grok and does not interrupt flow as much as a forgotten breakpoint would.
console.time, console.count, debugger; (breakpoint set in code) and $0 (code ref to highlighted html element) are super useful as well. Usually that is enough before manually setting breakpoints
also nice to know: Safari is great for (offscreen)canvas debugging
Chrome DevTools has that issue since it's always changing, adding new things, and they're not discoverable/learnable from inside of it.
If you had a drawer of 50 kitchen implements, would you even think to search for the mandoline slicer if you didn't already know about it?
For what it's worth, I stick to server-side for most of my work. But occasionally I have to fix something on the front end - whether it be a UI issue in CSS/HTML or a real problem in Javascript. So a quick mention of those front-end tools available and what they do would be great. Thank you!
Because they suck. Afaik there is no way to setup triggers like
break if variable X created
break if variable Y >= 123
break before calling Z web api/method
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/javascript/breakp...
