Chrome DevTools, a web developer's best friend.
Updated January 20, 2020
Chrome DevTools, a web developer's best friend.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Chrome DevTools
I use Chrome DevTools every day in my current position. It's great for testing my javascript, writing experimental in the console, testing various CSS changes, and occasionally making live edits to local javascript source files. It is being used by the developers in my department who write front-end code. Chrome tools provide us as developers a way to test code and make changes without having to edit the original source code.
- DevTools gives you a console for writing javascript code to interact with or change the behavior of the page you are currently working. This is particularly useful when debugging code.
- CSS edits. The ability to change the style of dom elements and see the effect those changes have in real time without having to switch to your editor, make the changes, and reload the browser window saves a lot of time.
- Providing a way to set javascript break points so you can see the runtime values of a variable.
- The network tab is also a life saver for inspecting what assets are being loaded on the page and in what order they load, how long they take to load etc...
- It would be nice in the elements panel, if clicking on a node scrolled the screen to that node. On some large pages its easy to get lost in the code and not know where the element you're inspecting resides on the screen.
- It would be nice if, in addition to the console, there was a panel that behaved more like an editor instead of a command prompt. It may seem trivial but it would be very helpful when writing multi-line functions.
- One major positive impact that using Chrome DevTools has on business is the ability to test your page on multiple devices, screen sizes, and user agents. You can do a lot of QA testing from chrome and that saves time.
- Since DevTools is a free product that comes bundled within another free product I don't see any negative impact that derives from its use.
- FireBug
The only other comparable product I've used is FireBug, which is good but not quite as fully featured as Chrome DevTools in my opinion. It does a lot of similar things but it isn't built into the browser, it's an add-on that must be installed, updated, and if you decide you want to use it you have to reload the page. This may seem like a small thing but it can be very frustrating when you're in the middle of debugging.