Develop Reference

what does utag.DB mean?

I am stumped on figuring out what this means..
utag.DB
I am seeing it in a web page via the console. And I'm trying to figure out what it means. Any pointers are useful.

utag.db is a Tealium function for debugging. It is similar to console.log(which is non standard). It is enabled via a cookie that's set.

Caught you!!
You are curious about utag means you have implemented or trying to implement Tealium data layer in your portal.
Basically utag.db is used to debug tealium functionalities related to utag files. As rightly mentioned by #webanalyticsdood, it should be used instead of non standard console.log
That's fine but how do I and why should I use it?
Simple, set utag cookie to true in your developer console using following command
document.cookie="utagdb=true";
Let's try with following command,
utag.data
Whatever data you are passing on to tealium will be found inside utag.data. If you can't read your data based on conditional events, it won't be sent to Teamium, better go back and correct your code. Let's try another one.
utag.id
it will return id you've set for synching with tealium,
You can explore more similar stuff inside utag.js
PS: would suggest you to add tealium tag in your question.

Using JS (In FF-Pentadactyl), how to get a handle to site content like media players?

Using the Firefox Web Console (which can be brought up with control shift k ) I can easily access things like flowplayers.
jwplayer().play(), for example
The console even offers autocompletion suggestions for it.
What does the console do to be in that kind of, for my lack of words and knowledge, namespace?
I tried things like
content.document.getElementsByName('flvplayer').item(0)
Using Pentadactyls JS intepreter (accessed with :js)
This does seem to give me the player handle, or at least it prints out a <html:object> which corresponds to it.
Appending a .play() to it doesn't work, though. It's not a function.
What do I need to do to emulate the Web-Consoles way of doing it?
I realize that this might be a very spoonfeedy question, so if that is not acceptable then I'd still appreciate to get pointed into directions where I could possibly discover the solution myself by reading.
I tried searching for it myself but the terms seem to be quite ambiguous and I usually get results with people talking about their own sites, with scripts running inside of that 'namespace', not from outside like I am trying to do.
(Unless I am wrong about the concepts of inside and outside here.)
Cheers~~

The following command works for me; it defines the command ypl which
plays the YouTube video on the page
command! ypl open javascript:(function()
{content.document.getElementById('movie_player').playVideo()})()
Another example: this defines the ytr command which takes an integer argument and moves the current time position of the video by that amount in seconds
command! -nargs=1 ytr open javascript:(function(){var vid =
content.document.getElementById('movie_player'); vid.seekTo(vid.getCurrentTime() +
(<args>), true)})()
I hope that helps a bit. When I wrote those a while ago I may have tried :js and if it didn't work used :open javascript:....

How to access controls from a console

I tried to execute the following command from the console.
var subject = Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("subject");
That's the exact syntax I'm using in the web resource that I'm plugging in to CRM. However, I only got an error message saying that "unable to get property 'controls' of undefined or null reference".
I do understand the message. What I want to know is two-fold.
What syntax will work from the console (F12) to refer to the stuff on the screen?
Why doesn't it work the way I did? Where doesn ui come from?
I've checked that I can refer to both Xrm and Crm.Page but apparently ui is null (it's listed when I print out the contents of Page but sett to null).

I know this is a kinda old thread, but if you still getting that 'object doesn't support property..' error when executing the command from console, IE F12; try calling it from the frame i.e
frames[0].Xrm.Page.getAttribute("controlId").getValue();
In CRM 2013 it is a little different
frames[1].Xrm.Page

It's kind of tough to detect the frames across different browsers, so this little javascript can help you out:
for(var i=0;i<5;i++) //loop through 0 to 4
if(frames[i].Xrm.Page.ui != undefined) //check if undefined
{
Xrm = frames[i].Xrm; //assign Xrm
console.info("~: Xrm updated with frame " + i + " :~"); //show info
break; //breakout the loop
}
What it does ?
What it's basically doing is to loop through 0-5 to find frame where
Xrm.Page.ui is not undefined, once it gets it it assigns it to the Xrm and breaks the loop.
How to use ?
To use it just copy/paste and run in the browser console once per
session then after you can run/test all your Xrm codes form the browser console.

This works for me Xrm.Page.getControl("controlId"). It's just a shortcut for what you have already though...cant-disable-set-to-read-only-protect-gray-out-etc-a-field

In addition to what #Daryl said, I can add that I use different syntax. For some reason, I don't get his to work either. Might have to do with different browser version or something. Instead try to execute this, if you still can't get it to work (although I must admit that his is shorter = better).
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("lastname").getValue();
The lastname parts is tested a minute ago on creation of an instance of entity Contact. I just put in a breakpoint inside a script that is executed onchange and while broken-pointed, I entered the command above to the console.
If neither approach works for you, you've got some weird problem with your CRM or browser.

A reason some people need this information is to access their own code. If you need to access your own methods from the console, in 2011, any global methods (or namespaces) in your javascript were also in forms[0]. Obviously, this is a bad idea, just from a naming standpoint. In forms v6+ any global objects or functions are in an object called customScriptsFrame inside frames[0] (or presumably whichever frame the Xrm is found).
frames[0].customScriptsFrame.myFunctionName();

VERY confused - javascript not being executed - unless Console is turned on in Firebug?

I just started doing some Javascript work for a project, I do mostly backend work so I'm sorry for being new at this! Also, not using a Javascript framework because I want to learn about the fundamentals before making everything very easy for myself :)
So, here is my question/confusion: I wrote a little javascript that dynamically changed forms. This is how I called the code:
// loads the initial box
window.onload = initList(environment_box);
// loads artifacts on each change to environment select box
environment_box.onchange = changeList;
This worked like magic - in CHROME that is! I never noticed it wasn't working in Firefox (its just an internal tool, so I can assume decent browsers, but I figure hey, if its working in Chrome, it will work in Firefox!). So, I did some investigation, and it seems as though the code isnt getting executed in Firefox. I whipped out firebug and wanted to see what was going on.
The interesting thing was, when I enabled Console on firebug, my code got executed! I am very confused as to why, and I would much appreciate any help I could get. Thanks!
-Shawn

You are calling some method on console in your JavaScript is my best guess. Chrome has console defined be default, so it is not a problem.
On Firefox, however, there is no such global object (not without Firebug), so when you try to call a property on an undefined object like,
console.log(..);
it throws an exception which you are not catching, so the JavaScript execution halts.

You're probably calling a method of the console object which just doesn't exist by default in most web browsers. It may be always available on webkit based browsers (like Chrome) but with firefox/IE(/opera?) it requires an external add-on, either firebug or a javascript dependency.
Checkout things like firebugx which simply defines the most common methods of a console object as no-op functions.

What causes Google Maps javascript exceptions?

I pretty consistently get GMaps API javascript exceptions that look like the following:
Ve.k is null or not an object (FF & IE)
b.k is null or not an object (FF & IE)
a is null (FF)
a.$e is undefined (FF)
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'k' of undefined (chrome)
Often the exception occurs during an eval of some expression in javascript in the bowels of the GMaps API
Almost anything can cause one of these to pop up, displaying an overlay on the map or a mouse click event for example.
I've been scouring my code for some time looking for offending overlays, and event handlers, but so far no relationship found. I've had this happen on a naked map with no overlays or handlers active.
Certain versions of the API will not crash on certain browsers, but it's hit and miss and I still have this sinking susspicion that something in the environment is giving GMaps a hard time (eg. maybe Facebook Connect, Google Analytics, my code...)
Does anyone have a handle on what causes these?

After spending quite a bit of time rolling back operations that affected the map 1 by 1, I finally got to the line(s) that caused this problem.
First, if I removed the call to setUIToDefault() the problem went away, this was unacceptable to me both because I wanted the default UI and that's a lame way to solve the problem. So many more map operations later I came to the GWT calls:
mapWidget.setHeight()
mapWidget.setWidth().
For those not familiar with GWT these two calls will ultimately translate to the following javascript template call:
element.style['height'] = height;
where 'element' in this case is the div that contains the map and height on the RHS of the expression is something like "690px".
That was all it took to derail the maps API.
The fix? Setting the size of the map div prior to instantiating the map.
You tell me, bug in the maps api or just a major feature lack? I'm going to check w/ the maps folks.

Just the perils of using a minified, obfuscated Javascript library I am afraid. There is no discrete group of errors that result in the exceptions you are seeing, but you can be sure that they are a result of a bug in your own code. I use Google maps pretty extensively and have regularly seen these types of errors. In 100% of cases, the bug was mine.
If you post (either here or in new questions) specific examples of pages that generate these errors, we can check them out and hopefully fix them.

I would have to guess it would be your code (not to say your a bad programmer) or another library interfering. I've been using the Google MAPS API happily for about 1 year now* and never had the first exception. The only time I've ever gotten an error message was when I was adding the balloon thingy.
*The website looks like crap but it was a high school project for my county fair and I couldn't use any server side stuff.
Edit: After reading your comment I'm wondering if you included a proper DOCTYPE? Check and see if you have it.