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10 Important Things In Cross-Browser Development

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 22:54:57 +0000

1. Always test in FF, IE7, Safari, Chrome and Opera the smallest HTML, CSS and JavaScript changes. Hitting F5 and testing the changes in all 5 takes less time than debugging, fixing or refactoring later. That’s learnt the hard way. Even when under pressure and tight deadlines - always do it. Let your manager know that it is a ‘must-do’ step which cannot be skipped.

2. Get IE 6 on board. While they say it’s dead, it’s still very popular (~13% in Australia). I know many developers skip IE6 testing because it’s hard to find a machine with IE6 installed. However, Microsoft gives you a neat and easy (also free of charge) way to do that:

Download and install Microsoft Virtual PC
Download Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image with IE 6

There is a VPC for Mac users, but I don’t know anything about it, so cannot recommend.

3. Forget about IE 8 for the next year or two. It’s good to test if you have free time available, but it’s a waste of time if you are under pressure.

4. Even if you support IE only, still do the testing for other browsers. The requirements may change and the amount of work to fix the issues can become crazy pretty soon. And these issues are very difficult to fix and difficult to test. Also not so many developers are willing to do such things, so for managers and architects it makes a lot of sense to make cross-browser testing not optional, but a mandatory procedure for both developers and QA engineers.

5. Don’t rely on IE 7 “compatibility mode” it is not working as you would expect. Now Microsoft creates another problem for us with these compatibility modes. You can get a bug report describing “IE 7 issue” because someone tested the application from IE 8 using the compatibility mode and you waste hours trying to reproduce it on IE 7.

6. QA engineers always need to do cross-browser testing after they detect an issue. A developer can save a lot of time if she knows exactly that the problem exists only in a specific browser. Make it mandatory for QA person to implicitly confirm that the issue is not a problem in other browsers (if this is the case).

7. Never rely on QA people (and end customers) in finding and testing such cross-browser issues. They might help you, but you are the only one to see the problem right away and fix it without doing another expensive cycle. QA teams even in the best shops regularly fail to do such testing.

8. Some people are trying to build ‘pixel perfect’ sites. Don’t do it. Let managers and business people know unless they want to pay crazy money for development and maintenance, “pixel perfect” stuff is not going to work in real life. If you need ‘pixel perfect’ solutions, choose another technology (flash, silverlight, whatever…) not HTML with CSS. I would love to tell a bit more about “IE6 1px misalignment” bugs I have been assigned to, but maybe in another article

9. Use cross-browser reliable JavaScript framework even for the simplest things, such as getting element by id or setting element’s style attributes. The world’s best teams put years of work into the code, you would be crazy not to use it.

10. Intel engineers cannot tell how efficient the assembly code is by just looking at it, it needs to be actually executed and benchmarked, and these people are very smart. Don’t ever expect to know how your front-end thing gonna look like. Always do the testing. Test, test, test…

Usage Share of Web Browsers in Australia

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:55:33 +0000

I have seen the access statistics from one of the largest ISP in Australia. It almost duplicates the wikipedia’s information:

However the numbers are a little bit different:

First of all, the small number of chrome and safari browsers is a suprise, not a big one though. Also the IE still has the biggest share in the market, which comes as no suprise to me. Also the IE6 still holds a significant position (~13%) and must be taken seriously for the next year or two.

sleep() function in JavaScript

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:17:54 +0000

JavaScript doesn't have a handy sleep() or wait() or delay() function to pause the execution for a few seconds, so we can use setTimeout() function to emulate such behaviour. It's not straightforward and may require you to refactor the workflow, but it's delaying the execution and is really simple:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

setTimeout(start, 1000);
var i = 0;
function start() {
console.log('i am here ' + i);
i++;
setTimeout(start, 1000);
}

JTidy and UTF-8 (international characters)

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:55:59 +0000

To make JTidy work correctly with UTF-8 strings and process international characters in a proper way, use the following code:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

Document doc = Tidy.createEmptyDocument();
try {
doc = tidy.parseDOM(new InputStreamReader(IOUtils.toInputStream(html), "UTF-8"), new NullWriter());
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
log.error(e);
}

iPhone fring calls work only for WiFi

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:10:51 +0000

What a pity! I was really disappointed today - it appears you can't make fring calls (SkypeOut or SIP calls) while you are not using an available WiFi connection on iPhone. After my good old Nokia E71 it looks really weird. We got a new 32 gig iPhone 3GS for my girlfriend and I was thinking about getting the same toy when my current plan is over. But that fact turns me away, sorry apple

PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:03:12 +0000

If you are getting this exception from your Java program using HTTPClient library, that means the site you are trying to connect to has a test/self-signed or invalid certificate. The easiest way to workaround this problem is to grab InsecureSSLProtocolSocketFactory and InsecureTrustManager from HTMLUnit project and before making a request use this code:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

final ProtocolSocketFactory factory = new InsecureSSLProtocolSocketFactory();
final Protocol https = new Protocol("https", factory, 443);
Protocol.registerProtocol("https", https);

Skype doesn’t want my money

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:43:49 +0000

I used skype-out extensively last month. I used to pay with my Visa credit card all the time and had no problems. Then Skype refused to process it saying I paid too much or something like that. I switched to PayPal. After a few hundred bucks it said I can't use PayPal anymore. The other means of payment are unknown to me and I am just lazy to investigate and get into another crazy payment systems. I switched to 12Voip for now. Looks good, also works from Fring client via SIP thingie.

New Skype Client Sucks

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:53:39 +0000

What are those yellow dots that don't let scroll the chat window? Such a pain. And in general, the client app is getting worse. I wouldn't complain, but I am in fact paying 20-30 bucks per month for skype-out thingie, so I guess I have a moral right to complain Need to get an older version and downgrade.

Enterprise Software Without the BS

admin — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:41:24 +0000

A known author of many java and flex-related articles Yakov Fain has published a book named "Enterprise Software Without the BS". This is a fairly light yet a bit sarcastic (ok, ironic) reading about the software industry. It is available free of charge on his website. Highly recommended!

Java Geek Humor

admin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:23:33 +0000

I've come across a really funny dialog here:

- I am looking for a downloadable java written practical test. We are in the process of employing some new staff and we need a test of some sorts to gauge the skills.
- Hey pls let me know ur company name....
So that I can also apply...
- Upon reviewing your posting record we recommend you apply to
www.mcdonalds.com