Venkman is the JavaScript debugger component of the Mozilla Application Suite. It is also available as a Mozilla Firefox extension. Venkman is named after the character Dr. Peter Venkman played by Bill Murray in the movies Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II.

History

In 1998, John Bandhauer was in charge of creating the Netscape 4x JavaScript debugger. In order to keep things modular, he began by creating a mid-level JavaScript debugging API known as js/jsd. This API augments the existing JavaScript API, providing clients with a useful set of debugger functionality implemented in C. John then went on to reflect that API into Java, and create his cross platform front end, eventually producing Netscape JavaScript Debugger 1.0 and 1.1.

In April of 2001, Robert Ginda began work on a JavaScript debugger for Mozilla, called Venkman. Venkman builds on the js/jsd portion of John's 1998 work, exposing it as an XPCOM component. This allows the user interface be written in JavaScript and XUL, which allows Venkman to be fully cross platform.