BUG: Client-Side Breakpoints in Active Server Pages Are Not Hit with Internet Explorer 5 Installed

View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q233035

SYMPTOMS

If Internet Explorer 5.0 is installed, when automatically debugging an Active Server Pages (ASP) page that has client-side breakpoints, the client-side breakpoints are not hit. Both breakpoints set in server-side code in ASP pages and breakpoints set in client-side code in HTML pages are hit.

Back to the top

CAUSE

In order to hit embedded client-side breakpoints, two things need to be set:

The Web application must have debugging turned on in the Internet Service Manager.
The ASPCLIENTDEBUG cookie must be set for the Web folder.

Visual InterDev is setting the cookie in the "<username>\Cookies" folder but Internet Information Server is looking for the cookie in the "default user\Cookies" folder.

Back to the top

RESOLUTION

There are multiple workarounds for this issue:

After you have started the debugger and the ASP page has come up in your browser, from the Running Documents window, double-click your page, which shows up under the Microsoft Internet Explorer process. Set your breakpoint.

Put a stop (VBScript) or debugger (JavaScript) statement in your client-side code. For example:

<SCRIPT Language="VBScript">
  Stop
  'Code to be debugged follows this comment
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT Language="JavaScript">
  debugger
  //Code to be debugged follows this comment
</SCRIPT>

Manually attach the debugger. For more information on how to manually attach the debugger, see the following Knowledge Base article:
196378 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196378/EN-US/ ) HOWTO: Debug ASP Applications Manually Against Windows NT 4.0 Web Server
NOTE: In order to debug the client-side code, you will also have to attach to the appropriate Iexplore.exe process.
Uninstall Internet Explorer 5 and revert back to Internet Explorer 4.0.

Back to the top

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Back to the top

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

Add a new ASP page and replace the text with the following text:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" Content="Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0">
<SCRIPT ID=clientEventHandlersJS LANGUAGE=javascript>
function button1_onclick() {
	alert("hello world");
}
</SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<INPUT type="button" value="Button" id=button1 name=button1 LANGUAGE=javascript onclick="return button1_onclick()">

</BODY>
</HTML>

Set a breakpoint on line 7 (the alert statement).
Right-click the new ASP page in the Project Explorer and select Set as Start page.
From the Debug menu, select Start.
Once the page has opened in Internet Explorer 5, click the button and notice that it does not break into the client-side code.

Back to the top