Hi everyone,
In June I posted information about a number of developer tools, one of which was Ajax View. Ajax View, developed by Microsoft Research, can help improve a developer's visibility into their web application’s performance and behavior. Recently, the researchers building Ajax View – Emre Kıcıman and Ben Livshits – released a public version of the tool (licensed for academic or other non-commercial use) so I want to share a link and provide a little more information about it.
As shown in the demo from MIX07 and described in detail here, you can use Ajax View to profile a site’s JavaScript from your dev machine. Ajax View includes a few default instrumentation policies for basic profiling (timing based on before and after a function call in the caller, timing based on before and after a function call in the callee, etc.) but you can create a plug-in to track the JavaScript you’re interested in.
Ajax View is an HTTP proxy that instruments JavaScript as it’s served to the client based on a set of rules defined by plug-ins. The download includes a plug-in that contains a commented sample instrumentation policy. This design has a couple important effects:
Visit the Ajax View project site to download the latest prototype and try it for yourself.
We’d love to get your feedback on the kind of instrumentation you’d find useful. Let us know what data about your web application’s behavior would help you detect or debug problems. You can send feedback directly to the project team, or, as usual, comment on this post.
Thanks!
John HrvatinProgram ManagerInternet Explorer
Edit: Updated link for "send feedback directly to the project team"