Flex Builder 3.0 sneak peek: debugger tooltips
In a way this is a small thing, but it is certainly one of the most-requested debugger features, and I’m relieved that this is finally in the product: debugger tooltips. It really should have been in Flex Builder 2.0, but it didn’t make it in due to time constraints.
So you’re debugging:
You want to know the value of ‘i’:
Flex Builder is smart enough to figure out, from context, what expression you probably wanted to see, which is often more than just the single token under the cursor. In this example, when you hover over picDimension, Flex Builder is smart enough to realize that what you probably actually want to see the value of is picDimension[i], not just picDimension:
picPos[i] is an instance of class Point:
In the above screenshot, we didn’t automatically show you picPos[i].y, because there is an easy way for you to get that yourself, by hovering over the “y” at the end of the expression, as shown here:
If you hover over the “length” part of the expression “gallery.photos.length”, we figure out from context what you are looking for — you want gallery.photos.length, not just some global called “length”:
You can select an expression and hover over it:
Finally, in all of the above cases, if you right-click, there is a new “Watch” command, to add the expression to the Expressions view. As with the tooltip, it figures out from the current context what expression you probably wanted to watch:
And in case you missed it, Ted has been posting other sneak peeks all week.
Now that’s cool. Even the little things that add up.
Congrats on getting this in. I had heard it was on the stretch list for 3.0 and I’m really looking forward to being able to use it. Will it be in the upcoming beta 1 release?
Yes, it will be in the upcoming beta 1 release.
:-) That might be the most exciting feature for me yet - especially with the way the variables list performs on the Mac in Eclipse!
THANKS!
Hang on to your seat, Mitch — the upcoming public beta doesn’t have any debugger performance improvements yet, but if you could see the build that’s on my machine right now, it might make you very happy…
This is just awesome! Thank you so much! Just wanted you to know that we appreciate your work :)
YAY! I am so glad that this has arrived, I have been waiting for this feature along time. I also agree that it should have been in version 2.0 as well!
Does Flex builder have the feature of changing syntax coloring? Or is it going to be a "hand job" as it was in FB2?
Thanks
Hi Dennis,
I’m not sure. Please log an enhancement request at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex
[...] In addition, Mike previewed the changes/additions in the upcoming FlexBuilder 3 release such as: + Debugger tooltips + Right-click "Watch Expression" + Hierarchical variables view + Faster stepping + No-launch [...]
Mike,
At Max you mentioned that FB3 could hide private variables for faster debugging. Is there a way to set that as a toggle - so that you could see the privates if you wanted to?
Drew,
Actually the toggle is not for faster debugging — it is for simpler debugging. Since the list of members in the built-in Flex classes is so long, the purpose of this toggle is to make the list of members shorter, so that it is easier to find the ones you usually care about.
To toggle this, go to the local menu of the Variables view (the down-triangle) near the upper right of the Variables view), then Flex > Show Inaccessible Member Variables.