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If you write a lot of JavaScript, then you'll find Matthias Miller's website chockfull of useful information. And even better, he's put together two great tools.

The first is JavaScript Lint, a tool that analyzes JavaScript code and reports potential errors. Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine has similar functionality, which you can turn on by typing about:config as the URL and then searching for javascript.options.strict. However, JavaScript Lint detects more types of errors and is configurable. To give it a try, I ran it over the MapBuzz code base and was very impressed by the errors it revealed. I immediately added it to our automated testing processes (i.e., its spawned by a rake task now) and have come to depend on it.

And if that wasn't enough, Matthias has adopted a second tool, called Drip, that detects memory leaks in Internet Explorer's JavaScript engine. Memory leaks occur in IE because it uses COM based reference counting to delete objects. Reference counting is fast, and easy to understand, but does not handle circular object references. As you use your website in IE, Drip keeps track of these circular references. Once you're done, it prints out a report showing you where the memory leaks occurred.

Thanks for the great tools Matthias.