The State of Frontend Error Reporting: A New Approach
As web applications become increasingly complex, understanding and addressing errors has become a major challenge. Traditional error reporting tools were designed for server-side errors and later adapted for frontend applications, but they only solve part of the problem. These tools often produce noisy alerts with too many false positives, and they don’t capture enough context to help developers understand complicated issues.
The Unique Challenges of Frontend Errors
Investigating frontend errors is a different process from investigating backend errors. Server-side code runs on a single platform, whereas frontend code runs on multiple browsers and devices. The state of a frontend application can be highly complex, coming from various sources such as memory, local storage, and APIs. This complexity makes it difficult to gauge the impact of an error on the user.
A New Approach to Frontend Error Reporting
To address these challenges, we need a new approach to frontend error reporting. Two years ago, we started thinking about what the perfect frontend bug report would look like. We wanted a report that would collect basic information like stack traces and metadata, but also provide a way to see what actually happened. Our solution is LogRocket, a tool that reproduces an issue as if it happened in your own browser.
How LogRocket Works
At the center of a LogRocket error report is a pixel-perfect video that accurately captures what the user saw on screen. We instrument the DOM to record the HTML and CSS on the page at the time of the issue, without any performance impact. We also record console logs, JavaScript errors, stack traces, network requests, and custom logs. Our deep integrations with libraries like React and Angular allow us to log actions and application state.
Benefits of LogRocket
LogRocket allows developers to quickly understand what went wrong and how to fix it. By watching the video replay, developers can see if an exception actually affected the user and figure out what happened by reviewing network requests, logs, and application state. LogRocket also helps support teams quickly understand what went wrong when users ask for help, eliminating the need for screenshots, logs, and steps to reproduce.
Beyond JavaScript Exceptions
While monitoring and fixing JavaScript exceptions is crucial, most problems users experience aren’t explicit code errors. UI glitches, slow performance, broken interfaces, and confusing UX all negatively affect user happiness and the bottom line. LogRocket’s telemetry allows us to detect these issues and surface them to developers, giving them confidence that they’re shipping high-quality code.
Our Mission
Our mission is to surface all frontend problems that negatively affect users. We’re working with a select group of customers to detect performance issues, broken interfaces, confusing UX, and more. If you’re an existing LogRocket customer or want to start working with us, get in touch to join the beta.
The Future of Frontend Development
The shift toward rich single-page apps has improved user experience quality and developer productivity, but it’s also introduced new challenges. Existing tooling is not yet sufficient for teams to have confidence in the frontend code they ship. At LogRocket, we’ve taken a big step toward a solution, but there’s still much work to be done. If you want to help define the next generation of tooling for frontend developers, we’d love to meet you.