Enhanced developer tools in WebKit

The latest Nightly Builds of the open source WebKit browser now include a new Web Inspector for developers that resembles the Firebug de-bugging plug-in for Firefox. Once installed, developers can access this feature by checking "Show Develop menu in menu bar" under the Advanced tab in the Preferences.

The Web Inspector lets developers, for example, edit or add new attributes to a note. Additionally, developers can create or modify existing CSS Rules and Selectors, which the project believes designers and developers will find useful for new and existing designs.

The Storage Panel, previously called the Databases Panel, now lets developers monitor DOM Storage areas with live updates, making it easier to monitor changes without having to manually refresh the view. Cookie information is viewable and can also be modified or deleted.

The WebKit Web Inspector also displays Event Listeners. A new Sidebar Pane called Event Listeners, lists events by type, such as onclick, onmouseover and so on. Filters are available in the Gear Menu to let users see only the listeners registered on the selected note or the entire event flow.

Other changes include syntax highlighting for JSON and CSS, conditional breakpoints in the JavaScript Debugger and new and improved ways for debugging AJAX applications.

The WebKit browser engine is currently used by, for example, Apple's Safari web browser, Google's Chrome web browser and the included browser in Palm's WebOS. WebKit Nightly Builds are available to download for Mac OS X and Windows. WebKit is licensed under the LGPL and BSD licenses.

See also:

• WebGL introduces 3D to the WebKit browser engine, a report from The H.
• WebKit adds support for WebGL, a report from The H.

(crve)