Windows Developer Power Tools

22.5 Debugging Web Pages at Runtime with DOM Helper

Troubleshooting web pages often involves hours of trial-and-error work trying to resolve irritating issues with CSS rules or a page’s document structure. DOM Helper is an IE Explorer bar tool designed to help resolve issues with a web page while the page is live on a server.

DOM Helper enables you to pinpoint exactly where your page is going wrong by allowing you to view and dynamically modify its Document Object Model. You can also make changes to the CSS and view the effects of the modifications as you make them.

DOM Helper also gives you the ability to incorporate your own .NET assemblies to provide custom functionality. You can avoid the hassle of writing your own Explorer bar and instead inherit a class and focus on the functionality you want to create.

Today, more and more designers are creating sites that rely heavily on well--structured HTML and CSS to position and display the elements on the page. Internet Explorer has many positioning quirks that can easily be resolved by changing just a few CSS rules and DOM properties; with DOM Helper, this is easier than ever.

Dynamic HTML adds additional complexity to the picture as IE creates new DOM objects on the fly. DOM Helper assists the developer in debugging by exposing the DOM structure with these dynamic objects included.

DOM Helper at a Glance
Tool	DOM Helper
Version covered	1.0.1 ...