Google vs. Firebug Console - arguments.callee

Round one: Gmail

It all started with GMail. The scary red bar at the top of the screen that proclaimed Firebug's debug console doesn't play nicely with others. That's fine, they give you the option to hide the message if you really need the console open, and tell you how to disable it for only GMail's site if not. No harm, no foul.

Aw, GMail. Why so serious?

Round two: Google APIs

As I began to use the various Google APIs, I noticed something strange. While scripts on the page were loading, I could send debug info to the console just fine. However, if I opened Firebug once the page was done loading, window.console didn't work as I expected. On a mashup for a client at work, it appeared window.console had been overwritten by an anonymous closure. Take out the Google script, and you get back your console. Huh. Well, "console" is such a generic name, I guess naming conflicts are to be expected when you apply something like that to the global namespace. No harm, no foul.

Round three: Et tu, forward-facing apps?!

The Google Map API destroys window.console during page load. Long story short: If you use a Google map on your personal site, you cannot debug it during page load using Firebug's JavaScript console. What about the Google maps homepage? Well, apparently one of their own developers fell into this trap:

No debug for you, Google dev.

What's Google's problem with the debug console? Don't Google and Mozilla like each other anymore? Oh, maybe not.

Tags

javascript