Firefox 6 is set to make its move from beta to final release this week, and we'll look at the latest version once it's official, but in the mean time the Mozilla Devtools blog has posted details on a new feature for JavaScript developers: Scratchpad.
If you're a JavaScript developer you probably use tools like web console or Firebug or some combination of both to test and debug your code. Both are handy, but both are primarily line by line tools, what do you do when you want to test massive scripts?
Firefox's new Scratchpad is different from Firefox's other JavaScript dev tools in that it is just, as the Mozilla Blog puts it, "a text editor that knows how to run JavaScript." Scratchpad gets its own window and makes life much easier when you've got a long script to debug.
To use Scratchpad, head to Tools >> Web Developer >> Scratchpad, which will bring up a new, smaller window with a rudimentary text editor in it. Write your code, select some (or all) of it and then select one of three options from the Execute menu: Run, Inspect or Display. Scratchpad can also save your scripts or even load external JavaScript files.
Scratchpad is never going to replace your favorite text editor, but it just might make it a bit easier to test long scripts in the browser. For more info on everything Scratchpad can do, head over to the Mozilla Devtools blog.
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