iPod Touch Developer Debug Console

I just acquired a 16GB iPod Touch at Best Buy in Langhorne, PA. They had over 20 of them as far as I could see. They just opened an Apple store there so maybe the BB's with Apple stores get them first. I think I was probably the first one to buy because I happened to walk by as they were counting them. One less I guess now.

Anyway, I have several iPhone web sites that I'm developing/running and I've found that debugging the sites is a little difficult. I use Coda on my macbook to do the majority of the development and Aptana with Firebug to debug the sites. It works FAR better than what I was doing. I had been using Visual Studio 2005 on my Dell Lattitude D820. The macbook make things much easier but I still have to test/debug on the actual iPhone using Alert messages to return info.

The iPod Touch changes this. There is a feature, that I'm sure will be coming to the iPhone soon, that is called the developer console. You need to turn it on in the Settings on the iPod Touch. Here are some pictures to walk through the process....

The iPod Touch.. differences are: On button on the top left, headphone jack at the bottom right, no volume buttons, slightly smaller than the iPhone and about 1/3rd thinner.

The settings screen for the iPod Touch

The developer link on the Safari Settings screen

Turn on the debug console with this toggle switch. It' the only thing there..

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When you slide down the address bar, the debug console is shown. I happen to have 5 messages.

When you go to the console, the list of errors are shown. You can filter by html, javascript, or CSS.

uh oh!!! The following code failed to detect the iPod Touch automatically. Looks like there will be a lot of
changes for all the current iPhone Apps

if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('iPhone') != -1) {
document.location = "iphonerevu.htm";
}

The iPod Touch user agent string is similar to the iPhone except it says "iPod" instead of "iPhone", AppleWebKit is 420.1 rather than 420+, and "3A100a" Safari rather than "1C28 Safari" on the iPhone.

That's it for now. I'll be working on getting the User Agent better documented and add another post.

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