the weinre experiment - WEb INspector REmote

For the last few months, one of the things I've been working on is an experiment called weinre, which stands for WEb INspector REmote. The basic ideas are:

• reuse the existing Web Inspector UI code, implemented in HTML, CSS, and JS
• get that Web Inspector code to run as a plain old web page
• have that Web Inspector code debug a web page running in another browser window, perhaps on another machine

You might ask - "Why?" The answer is, largely: mobile. How am I supposed to debug mobile web apps on an iPhone, Android device, or similar? Today the answer is: painfully. Tomorrow the answer should be: via a nice debug user interface like Web Inspector.

The source and an executable demo are available on WebKit's wiki, currently at the bottom of the Web Inspector page:

• https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebInspector

I have an introductory write-up of the experiment at my web site, and it's also included with the source and executable demo:

• http://muellerware.org/papers/weinre/manual.html

If you are truly lazy and don't want to bother with those, but can afford 3 minutes for a demo movie, you can watch it on YouTube. Best viewed in 720p (HD) in full screen mode, if your browser supports that.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmFrFEGInU

Let me emphasize that this is an experiment. Although parts of it do work, as shown in the movie, it's a bit unwieldy and insecure to use as a production tool. I was at a good place to stop, and so thought I'd archive the wad up for other people to experiment with.

So, what's next?

• Security, as noted in the write-up, is a big concern of mine. Must do something there.

• Remove the requirement for the separate agent/server. Meaning that one of the debug client or the debug target should act as a server to it's peer. Or perhaps both debug client and debug target should be able to act as the server. Or use some other whacky IPC mechanism.

• Formalize some structure around the messages sent between the target and client. Today the messages sent between the debug target and debug client are very specific to the Web Inspector implementation. It would be nice to have something less specific. One of them things called an A-P-I.

• Not sure where my time is going to be spent over the next year, but it might not be here, so the answer to "What's next?" might be: "nothing, from me". But the tea leaves seem to be reading: "remote web debug".