Is there a way to enable the IE8 Developer Tools from inside WebBrowser control in a .NET application

Question

If you have IE8, you may have noticed a really handy feature that MS has added. Hit F12 and Developer Tools, a firebug like debugger, pops up. This is extremely useful for debugging purposes, and i'm wondering if there is a way to pop up the Developer Tools from a WebBrowser control inside a .NET application.

My situation is this: I have a C# application that has an embedded WebBrowser control. The C# app and the DHTML web browser contents communicate with each other using the ObjectForScripting (C# side) and window.external (DHTML side) interfaces, so in order to test/debug/troubleshoot the full functionality, i need a way to trigger Developer Tools from within the WebBrowser control. Up to now we've been limited to using Firebug Lite which is severely limited or triggering a step debug session of the javascript using the 'debugger;' js, but now we're getting to the point where those options becoming a real hassle and don't allow the full features that we would get out of having something like Firebug or Developer Tools at our disposal.

What I'd really love to do is to be able to pop up Developer Tools from inside my WebBrowser control while the app is running, but I haven't found a way to accomplish this yet.

Has anybody else ran into this issue and found out if there's a way to make it happen?

Answer 1

I believe the developer tools are implemented in the IE host (iexplore.exe), not in MSHTML itself. Obviously the hooks are there for it, but I don't think you can get to the UI and stuff from the control.

Answer 2

There isn't a way for the embedded hosts to use the built-in developer tools. But if you want to debug you should still be able to, you can attach visual studio / windbg to your app, at worse you could insert breakpoints with the "debugger" keyword. In VS you might have to select script from the "select..." menu under "debug these code types".