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Cover image for Edge DevTools for Visual Studio Code V2
Christian Heilmann
Christian Heilmann

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Edge DevTools for Visual Studio Code V2

Screenshot of the V2 version on action

The V2 version of the Microsoft Edge DevTools for Visual Studio Code extension is now live. We've worked hard to make the current feature set more stable and introduced new ones.

Console Integration - makes it easier to use console.log() or interact with the document right from the developer tools. We found the old integration to be flaky and hard to find in the Output panel.

Console integration in the extensioon

CSS Mirror Editing - making sure that none of your tweaks in DevTools get lost. This is now out of experiment and doesn't use up as much screen estate any longer. You can enable and disable it in the Styles tool.

New interface to enable or disable CSS mirror editing

Live issue reporting of problems in your code. If you have any code that is a problem you will see a wavy underline on it. You can hover over it with your mouse or use the Problems panel to learn what is wrong and how to fix it. We've updated the issue engine to make sure you get the latest and will soon offer ways to customise the issues you'd like to see. For now, we've removed Internet Explorer error reporting as it may rest in peace.

Live issue reporting flaging up a problem in the source code

🆕 Screencast with emulation features - we added a brand new browser preview that doesn't only give you the browser to interact with right in the editor but also offers various ways to emulate different environments. On the bottom of the browser preview you get a toolbar with various options:

The new emulation bar of the browser preview

First is the device list. You can select from a wide range of different emulated devices.

Device list showing various mobile phones and tablets

If you don't select a device but choose Responsive instead, the browser will take up the whole available space. You can also define a viewport size using the form and rotate the viewport with the double arrow.

The magic wand menu allows you to simulate various CSS media queries, like print mode, dark/light mode or even simulate a forced colours (high contrast) environment. If you want to know more about forced colours, check this incredible article

The CSS emulation showing the document in forced colour mode with the menu offering other emulations

The last menu (currently using the eye icon) allows you to simulate different visual impairments, like seeing the page in a blurred fashion or in different "colour blindness" emulations.

The page being displayed in a blurred fashion and the menu offering more visual emulations

🆕 Sourcemap support for styles - means you can now debug the styles of Sass/React and other abstraction apps without leaving Visual Studio Code.

For lots more details you can also check the Changelog

Getting started with sourcemapped styles debugging

We've covered this here before when we asked for feedback, but now this should be much easier. If you open the Terminal you can do npm i and npm start to build your App and run the server. In this example, the app is now available at http://localhost:3000.

A demo react app with the terminal open

If you click the Edge icon you get the option to launch an instance of Edge or Generate launch.json file. Click the latter.

The generate launch.json button in the extension

This generates a launch.json file in a .vscode folder of your app with all the correct settings. Find all the instances of url and change them to http://localhost:3000:

Animation showing where to change the url of the app

Save the file and press F5. Visual Studio Code will start the debugger and open a browser window with your app and the developer tools right inside the editor.

Visual Studio Code starting the debugger and opening the developer tools and the browser preview

If you now edit the styles of any of the elements of your app, you don't only change CSS files in your project, but also their scss source files or modular styles.

Demo showing how changes in the developer tools now affect the source files, including Sass files and module scoped CSS

For this to work, you need to set up sourcemaps correctly in your project. As we assume this to be problematic for some people, we have an issue open in the extension repo where you can find help.

Top comments (1)

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pcjmfranken profile image
Peter Franken

This extension has slowly grown into one of my favourites for front-end work. Quite the hidden gem too, which is sad considering most of its features are so high-leverage!

Same subject different topic:
Not expecting a response (best to avoid awkwardness at work heh), a read-over would be appreciated.

Developing on Edge is increasingly turning into a slow and frustrating experience. All those new extensions being enabled by default, the constant pop-up reminders about how great the built-in password manager is, unannounced feature flag removal/renaming/nonfunctioning, requiring root install on Mac, the apps ever increasing download size, etc.

I was thinking we could really do with a stripped-down webdev edition Edge that is otherwise on par with the normal consumer version.