Visual Studio 2010 debugging Javascript with IE works but not with firefox or chrome. Any solution?

Question

I have been reading a lot of messages here at stack overflow and googling for some time without any luck. My problem is simple, I want to debug my application from visual studio using firefox or chrome, not IE, but I allways get same error at breakpoint when execute "Breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document". I have unchecked the disable script debugging in options, have added "debugger;" to the start of my javascript, but allways same error, Could anybody please help?

Thanks in advance, Mathew.

Answer 1

As to the exact error you're getting, I've found that happen sometimes when not all libraries are loaded at the beginning of debugging - they're loaded later, on-demand. If you open Debug / Windows / Modules you'll find out what's been loaded, and whether the symbols have been loaded. A quick way around them not being loaded for debug is to instantiate the objects in question early on in the code, so that they're pre-loaded and the debugger knows that you're going to want to be debugging them.

For launching a particular browser: Instead of using the "Start URL" option from the Properties page / Web tab, use "Start External Program." Provide the full path to the browser's .exe of your choice, specify the Command Line Argument as appropriate (e.g., http://localhost/MyApp), and it'll start things off.

As to debugging the JS, though, I'd agree that Firebug is a good tool, and much more helpful than VS's.

Answer 2

My understanding is that you cannot.
You'll have to use IE as your browser when you want to use VS as your javascript debugging tool. It's a bit of a pain in vs2010 and earlier as you have to change your default browser that fires up when you start debugging; "Attach to process" from debug menu and "Wait for a request..." under Start Options of the Property Pages don't cut it.
Fortunately, the current release candidate of VS2012 have a convenient dropdown that allows you to choose a browser to start debugging with directly on the toolbar. It's a really nice touch and I doubt it will be going away in the RTM version.

Answer 3

If you only want to debug Javascript, why not use Firebug in Firefox, and Developer tools in Chrome? These are the best JS debugging tools I ever knew.