Opera releases Dragonfly debugger

Opera Software has embedded a beta set of tools, collectively called Dragonfly, into its Web browser, aiming to help developers find errors in their complex Web pages, says PC World.

"Dragonflies eat bugs, and that is exactly what we want [Dragonfly] to do for developers around the world," said David Storey, an Opera developer relationship manager.

Dragonfly is the Norwegian browser maker's first open source project, writes The Register. The code has been open since the project's inception in 2008, carrying a BSD licence.

The tool only works with the Opera browser. When one downloads the browser, the debug tool loads automatically from the Web. It speaks to the browser via Opera's Scope protocol, which has also been open-sourced under an Apache 2.0 licence.

Dragonfly is not the first browser-based debugger. Mozilla, for example, offers Firebug, and Google's Chrome browser also features some built-in element inspection features as well.

Dragonfly also offers the ability to debug Web pages on smartphones, televisions and other devices, by hooking them up to the developer's PC.

According to The Inquirer, Opera has also given Dragonfly a sprinkling of newer Web technologies like an SVG Javascript library and Web Storage, which is built on an HTML5 API.

Javascript debugging lets developers use a wider range of toolsets to monitor and tweak their JavaScript code.