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What is the closest native code development/debugging experience you can get for Javascript/HTML5/CSS on Mac?

I've been a developer for a long time and I've been in and out of web development for years. As far as I know this is an elusive question. Lately I have developing in Xcode in Objective-C and am seeking a development environment that as closely resembles that experience (Xcode), in terms of modern IDE features like a debugger with breakpoints, inspection, code completion/intellisense, etc.
I have done some JS development before using Text editors/Firebug, but I do not think this is adequate. Javascript is flakey in general and I'm looking for a more quality experience, a comprehensive development environment (for Mac) that will provide a great experience for developing HTML5 / CSS3 / Javascript (with libraries such as JQuery) / AJAX apps.
Can anyone with time spent enduring the suffrage of Javascript development and debugging point me in the right direction for tools to make this experience better? Thank you

I would try Dashcode. It's the best IDE I've seen for front-end web development on Mac, it's free, and it includes a separate editor for mobile sites, if you need that. Hopefully it works well for your purposes.

I'm developing Frontend related stuff for several years on Mac now and I fall in love with codA from panic software as IDE.
http://panic.com/coda/

Does someone have a recommendation for an editor that will provide feedback during execution and allow you to preview a page while working on it?

I need something I can use to see variable values etc. during execution for debugging JS and HTML

You can debug Javascript using firebug.(firefox addon)

The Big 3 Browsers (IE, FF, and Chrome) all have tools & add-ins that will let you do rich debugging and drill into the HTML, DOM, and CSS. I use all 3 and find that each one has its strengths.
However, if you can afford it the best editor in my opinion is Visual Studio 2010.

I'm really enjoying using the Cloud9 Ide for doing work where I need integrated debugging and step-by-step code execution in my server side javascript. Cloud 9 is free and browser-based, it's worth checking out if you're serious about javascript development.
If I need that for client-side script, then I've found the debugging tools and REPL in chrome to be more than sufficient.

What tools should I have as my core set for developing javascript?

I have been developing ASP.Net applications for quite a few years, and I have always avoided learning JavaScript. Now I have been diving in and trying to learn as much as possible.
As a .Net developer I rely on Visual Studio heavily. What I am wondering is what tools, as a JavaScript developer, do you guys rely on heavily to develop JavaScript? I have just discovered FireBug which is awesome. What other tools out there am I missing that are a must have?
Thanks!

Yes, Firebug is awesome. Be sure that you are aware of the profiling capabilities in there. Also, there is a new testing framework called FireUnit that works with Firebug as well.
I like Textmate for Javascript editing on my Mac. Aptana Studio (stand-alone or as an Eclipse plug-in) is really good too.
I've been meaning to try test-driven-development in Javascript with the YUI test library. It promises to be like NUnit/JUnit for Javascript, which would be great.
Check out JS lint.
If you're interested in Aspect-oriented Programming, look at AOP in Javascript from Dojo.
Lastly, for some good information about the current state of Javascript engines (cool stuff like TraceMonkey) and future directions, check out this episode of HanselMinutes.
Enjoy!

Firebug is pretty much the best. You'll need some solutions for IE too.
See this link: Debugging JavaScript in IE7

Visual Studio 2008 - has JavaScript
intellisense and integrated Js
debugging capability
FireBug - a
must have for any web developer
FireBug Lite - "The solution is
Firebug Lite, a JavaScript file you
can insert into your pages to
simulate some Firebug features in
browsers that are not named
"Firefox"."
JsLint - gotta make
sure what you're writing is of
decent quality, and JsLint will help
you do that

Other useful tools:
packer really good JavaScript compressor.
Web Developer extension for Firefox
JsUnit unit testing framework.
SeleniumIDE feature, user interface and acceptance testing.

Lately, Visual Studio itself has improved considerably in its JavaScript support. For example, IntelliSense is now available for JavaScript in VS2008, including for third-party libraries such as jQuery.

Why not continue to use the Visual Studio for convenience and download jQuery with intellisense support.
Scott Guthrie has a post on how to do it
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/21/jquery-intellisense-in-vs-2008.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx

Palm Pre and Visual Studio. Possible?

The development experience for the Palm Pre sucks, to say the least. At best you are working on JavaScript in Eclipse with the Aptana plugin. The intellisense you get is really, really dismal. You have to be looking at the documentation every 5 seconds.
I was thinking, Visual Studio really excels at JavaScript and intellisense. Has anyone succeeded at writing Palm Pre code in VS2008 with intellisense, which would require hooking in Palm's Mojo Library?
Is there a known way to hook in 3rd party non-source libraries to JavaScript in Vs2008?

I've been looking for alternatives to Eclipse, too, but so far it does not appear that anyone has done it. For myself it felt like too much work, so I just switched to working with several terminal windows open and a browser window to the documentation.

I'm a long time eclipse user but was disappointed in the eclipse environment for Pre - especially after using the Android SDK which hooks nicely into eclipse (then again the dev environment is Java there).
Have you tried Komodo? I switched over to it and the autocompletion is nice and the webos addon does a decent job. I don't have the professional version so I can't comment on the debugging capability which I'd love to have.

If you can tell VS08 you want to load the Mojo.js stuff, then it should work. I think you should be able to configure any custom tools you need for building etc. as well.
Personally I'd recommend you check out JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA. They have really good JavaScript support and I've used it with some Pre-stuff as well.

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What do you suggest for JS development IDE. Is there something similar to VisualStudio IDE, so I can run/debug my application in it?

At JetBrains we've just developed lightweight HTML/Javascript/CSS IDE WebStorm that includes very smart JavaScript Editor with DOM-based autocompletion and HTML5 API support.
It allows you to debug(breakpoints supported) and run your scripts directly from IDE.

A few options:
Visual Studio 2008 (including VWD Express, http://blog.berniesumption.com/software/how-to-debug-javascript-in-internet-explorer/)
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Notepad++ (or any other text editor), Firefox and Firebug

I think IntellJ's JavaScript support is excellent, just like everything else that they do.

Netbeans 6.x and Firefox+Firebug
In the past I used Aptana Standalone or as a Eclipse plugin. The Pro version has some nice addons like the embedded IE (to the always embedded Firefox) and debugging support for both browsers.
I found after hours of testing, that Suns Netbeans is the best PHP and Python IDE for Windows and Linux. I was surprised that also Javascript support can hold the candle to Aptana.
So Netbeans is my recommendation (not only for Javascript).
Give it a try, its free!

I've found Aptana Studio to be good.

I tend to recommend more and more Netbeans that has not been proposed yet (I am blind sometimes). Netbeans is developed by Sun and support not only Java but also a few other languages (PHP,Ruby,Python, Javascript).
I use it for a while now and I am very satisfied. It is fast, provides code completion and integrates easily major JS libraries (Prototype, YUI). It has also a debugger that you can tied to FF or IE.
Try it you won't be disappointed!

Here's a good list of IDEs you can use for writing JavaScript:
http://www.programmerfish.com/top-8-ide-integrated-development-environment-for-java-script-html5-ajax/

Nowadays I am using JetBrains' PHPStorm and I can easily say, this is the best editor I've ever tried. Comes with lots of features that I have not seen at other editors like,
find a word in a directory (grep equivalent)
extended and useful intellisense feature with multiple files and parent classes
internal GIT support
a tree view for application structure
an awesome version history support that works with GIT and your local history. This is very useful when you want to take a look at a GIT untracked file, you can see all history details of the file for weeks.
with a great addon named CSSXFire that works with Firebug and tracks the CSS changes and import them to editor and allows you easily reproduce the same changes that you've done in Firebug CSS Console. This is really awesome
another useful feature is, when you want to delete or rename a file, editor searches the file has been used in this directory and notifies you. This is called safe-refactor
intellisense for files, while you typing a css background-image, a src or an href attribute
Sometimes I deal with PHP so I prefer PHPStorm, so Front End Developers should prefer WebStrorm that is specialized for us.
I think, every FE Developer should try PHPStorm or WebStorm with Firefox and Firebug.

Komodo IDE (or the free Komodo Edit if you can live without an integrated debugger) are pretty nice.

I tried few IDE last week and NetBeans is my winner. It got silent upload option for file upload in background. And very good code completion, folding, etc.

Here is my experience with the applications based on Extjs in UI with Java as server side language. I am a big supporter of open source technologies/products.
I so far I have used Eclipse, Netbeans, Webstorm and notepad++ with some added plugins.
And I feel Netbeans is best in terms of Syntax highlighting and formating. It recognizes missing commas, global variables, duplicate keys for object literals in a very impressive way.
Almost similar things can be achieved by adding some pligins like Spket in eclipse too, but it asks for licence when you go for advance level of settings.
If you are not so much concern about an integrated environment with web server then Web storm is best in all the aspects, but the biggest drawback of it is, "Its paid". ( Even if it asks for 1000 Rs ).

Firebug and a good syntax highlighting text editor is about the best combo. It's not necessary to add in much else. With just this combo you get:
Ability to set breakpoints
Inspect objects
Traverse the DOM
Alter CSS rules on the fly
See network traffic/responses
Evaluate and substitute code on the fly in production
And there are tools which add on to Firebug:
YSlow - Determine "why" your page is slow
Fireunit - Run unit tests
One of the advantage of Javascript development is that it's flexible and you can get instantaneous feedback while developing. I see no reason to get in the way of that by adding an IDE which includes a "deployment" step.

Notepad++ comes with built-in javascript syntax highlighting and JSlint plugin is very handy. IMHO for debugging there is nothing better than Chrome developer tools or Firebug.

This page reviews the most advanced Javascript IDEs (in terms of refactoring and intellisense anyway) :
http://blue-walrus.com/2013/08/review-javascript-ides/

Eclipse and JSEclipse plugin and of course Firefox + Firebug the ultimate duo. You'll find this development setup satisfactory.

Aptana is a great IDE as it will provide intelli-sense for CSS, javascript, html, java, etc. The debugger gives you the choice to run in FF or IE and is a full featured debugger. The community edition allows you to run a server side javascript as well. A very solid and feature rich platform for free.