---
title: "[CoolTool] ASP.NET Development Helper"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/5/23/cooltool-aspnet-development-helper.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/5/23/cooltool-aspnet-development-helper.html"
published: "2005-05-23T23:36:00"
updated: "2005-05-23T23:36:00"
tags: ["Cool Tools"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "If you're an ASP.NET developer - this tool should save you many hours of debugging and configuration testing. A LOT. It's a browser helper object for IE that shows you lots of interesting stuff about your ASP.NET page.…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# \[CoolTool\] ASP.NET Development Helper

By Roy Osherove May 23, 2005 In [Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

**Historical article** · Originally published May 23, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

If you're an ASP.NET developer - [this tool](http://www.nikhilk.net/ASPNETDevHelperTool.aspx) should save you many hours of debugging and configuration testing. A LOT. It's a browser helper object for IE that shows you lots of interesting stuff about your ASP.NET page.

_"love it when I get to kill two birds with one stone. So I decided to sit down and write a little browser extension to provide an indication of debug mode within the browser. The screenshots below show what I ended up with. You can_ [_download the binaries_](http://www.nikhilk.net/Content/Samples/WebDevInfo.zip) _and run this locally on your end..._

_As you can see from the screenshots, I went along and added in some additional tools such as the ability to hide trace information from the page (useful if that interferes with your page layout), and view it in a separate window, as well as the ability to see view state in a decoded form. The latter is especially useful for control developers to analyze their view state and control state usage. I already spotted a couple of things we could potentially pack better in GridView."_

(via [Dino](http://weblogs.asp.net/despos/archive/2005/05/12/406579.aspx))

## More in Cool Tools

[All posts in Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

- Jun 2, 2005

    ### [Oracle Tools for VS.NET](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/2/oracle-tools-for-vsnet.html)

- Jun 2, 2005

    ### [Ajax.NET - I'm impressed!](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/6/2/ajaxnet-im-impressed.html)

- May 5, 2005

    ### [Google Web Accelerator](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/5/5/google-web-accelerator.html)

- May 2, 2005

    ### [Regulator 2005 & GUI threads goo- news on both?](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/5/2/regulator-2005-amp-gui-threads-goo-news-on-both.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/