Javascript best practice: handling Firebug-specific code

Question

Firebug is certainly a wonderful tool for javascript debugging; I use console.log() extensively.

I wanted to know if I can leave the Firebug-specific code in production.

Answer 1

been bitten by this before. Ideally all the console.log statements need to be removed before production, but this is error prone and developers invariably forget or only test in FF + Firebug.

A possible solution is to create a dummy console object if one isn't already defined.

if( typeof window.console == 'undefined'){
    window.console = {
        log:function(){}
    };
}

One word of caution: It used to be the case for Safari on 10.4 that any call to console.log would throw a security exception as the console object is a reserved object used in the Mac OS Dashboard widgets. Not sure this is the case anymore, will check tonight.