When I first started digging deep into writing complex applications with JavaScript, one of the biggest hurdles that I had to overcome was figuring out how to debug my code. At the time, the tools available were (to say the least) lacking. Since then, the tools have improved dramatically.

With the pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 8 that are already out (the release candidate is the most recent version), web developers now have a solid way to debug JavaScript in the world’s most-used browser. In Firefox, Firebug still reigns as the best web development tool out there. Safari has its own set of developer tools, although they still aren’t widely available in the Windows versions of the browser (that is, unless you download a WebKit nightly – which you should do). And Opera has had pretty solid development tools for sometime now.

So, the state of web development tools is looking pretty good. Finally!

A List Apart just published a guide to advanced debugging of JavaScript. If you’re still trying to figure out how best to debug your JavaScript code, the article is a must read. It is the best overview of this topic that I’ve seen.