Override window.alert

By  on  

For years the only bit of feedback web developers could get was via alert("{str}") calls. These days we have the web console but, in rare cases, we don't have a console and alert calls are our only window into a value at a given time.

One problem: if an alert sneaks into production code, your site looks like it's been hacked. Your site looks like it's malware! To prevent any of those issues, you can add this snippet to your production build:

window.alert = console.log

This tiny line of JavaScript could save your site from catastrophe. There are many cases for overriding native functionality and this is a great example!

Recent Features

  • By
    5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  Can you blame us though?  We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    PHP Woot Checker – Tech, Wine, and Shirt Woot

    If you haven't heard of Woot.com, you've been living under a rock. For those who have been under the proverbial rock, here's the plot: Every day, Woot sells one product. Once the item is sold out, no more items are available for purchase. You don't know how many...

  • By
    MooTools Fun with Fx.Shake

    Adding movement to your website is a great way to attract attention to specific elements that you want users to notice. Of course you could use Flash or an animated GIF to achieve the movement effect but graphics can be difficult to maintain. Enter...

Discussion

  1. jonathan santos

    it’s an interesting idea, and I’m not saying the world is perfect, but if instead of using this to avoid pushing debug code onto production, how would I go about testing for stuff like alerts and other weird edge cases

  2. Mr P

    In older IE browsers the browser will crash if console.log is called when the debug window is closed. Will this work then?

  3. dev

    override window.alert in IE for logggint using $.ajax to call WebService or REST API ?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!