Chrome
extensions
have revolutionized the way we interact with the web today, offering a myriad of
tools
and
utilities
that enhance our browser's functionality. Among the
top chrome extensions
lies the Adobe Experience Platform Debugger, a versatile
chrome extension
, rated 3.57 out of 5, that has garnered considerable attention and positive user feedback. Let's delve further into the reasons behind its high rating and the features that make it a must-have
browser
tool.
Known for its robust functionality, this chrome extension comes with a fresh yet familiar design, giving an intuitive and natural debugging experience. It offers more space for debugging, as the new navigation bar auto-collapses when the Debugger gets too small, ensuring enough space for your debugging tasks. One fantastic addition is the ability to see your data layer changes on a timeline alongside every Adobe network call, making it easier to debug your data. Additionally, you can toggle the diff viewer to understand your data layer's progression across the event timeline.
The Chrome extension also comes with a lock feature that allows you to stay connected to the current tab in focus without losing the context of the page you're debugging. It also presents in-context implementation health checks powered by Adobe Experience Platform Auditor to ensure your Adobe implementations are healthy.
Arguably one of the best features is its flexibility in testing Launch and DTM. The Debugger allows you to inject Launch embed codes or replace or block both DTM and Launch embed codes. Moreover, it offers a user-friendly dark and light mode switch for easy viewing.
User Reviews and Feedback
Users like Brandon Pack and Mindy Pack have praised the interface's cleanliness and the support for Adobe Experience Platform WebSDK. They also appreciate the data layer tool for tracking changes. Other users like Aaron Hardy and Justin Grover have expressed love for the update, praising the insight into how their data flows through Adobe's servers and the Edge Trace feature, respectively.
However, the extension has not been without critique. Users like Julian Maffioli and Metroland
Media
have voiced concerns on the extension's speed and the order in which the parameters come, respectively. Marcus Hallin also reported issues with events not populating in any module.
Final Thoughts
Despite a few challenges, the Adobe Experience Platform Debugger emerges as a top chrome extension worth attention. With its user-friendly design and an array of tools for debugging, it offers substantial value to every user. As the world continues to rely heavily on digital platforms, such browser tools become all the more crucial for seamless browsing and debugging experiences.
10 Reviews For This Extension
Used to work (for analytics debugging). Now it doesn't The old Experience CLOUD debugger worked great. Then Adobe added new features (bloat) to create this new Experience Platform Debugger and now you have to scroll down, past all the unwanted detail to get to the actual data you're interested in (page name, eVars, props, etc). There's no filter or sort available, so just endless scrolling. Then (Sep 2023) they added a (unwanted) 'Jump to most recent' button and broke it completely. It currently doesn't record the page view on each new navigation and it regularly shows single characters for the variables so it is completely unusable.
When this extension is running, it inserts several <script> tags BEFORE the <head> tag which seems to break tags that are loaded after this happens if they are using the insertBefore() method (which most tags do). The result is half of our tags from Data Collection get loaded and the rest just silently fail. Disable the extension and they all load perfectly fine. This is unfortunate since the only thing I find useful with this extension is being able to load a specific library for testing. So I keep it around for when I absolutely need it. Then I forget it's enabled until I run into a situation where I notice a tag isn't firing. Clunky and cumbersome.
Adobe being Adobe, I use this extension almost daily and it crashes and it is super slow, it even slows me down at work because of the ineptitude of this extension. 0/10
Used to work great, stopped working in the past couple days now nothing populates the analytics
The new visualizations for hit tracing are very cool and extremely useful. Support for the Web SDK is also much appreciated.
Cleaner interface compared to the older version and I appreciate support for the Adobe Experieince Platform WebSDK. Data Layer tool for tracking changes is also very useful.
Pale comparison to the Experience Cloud Debugger Tool.... I mean it's "nice" that you decided to add in more data into the visualization, but it's mostly useless and all at the top forcing me to scroll significantly for every page to get to what I need to test... I also like that some of the bugs have been addressed from the old tool. However, the order that the parameters come through is strange, and now that you can only see content from one tab at a time (preventing proper comparison of different environments, or even testing the same environment through multiple tabs and comparing page to page - I get that they are trying to "clean up" the visualization but it's now too segmented) the tool is cumbersome and no longer suits most testing needs.... Unless this tool picks up it socks, I will continue using the old Cloud Debugger, and if this tool is still like this when the old one is deprecated I will go back to using my browser's Network panel. I would be happy to chat with the development team on my thoughts, and maybe propose more controls over what is shown and how, since I also realize that how I use the tool could be different than others so options to change the behaviour could suit everyone.
The latest update is great! I love how it shows me how my data is flowing through Adobe's servers.
Love the Edge Trace capability in the logs along with all the new features.
Great new design and I love the support for the new products!