A couple of useful testing tools I thought I’d share:
The latter seems a little buggy, but still easier to use than removing and installing different Flash versions yourself.
I recently attended a code review at Wharton. We’ve put together some code reviews at my job, but I know that Wharton has been doing formal code reviews for years and I wanted to check out their process to compare notes. For this particular code review they were looking at a small ColdFusion application developed using Squidhead.
Continue reading Code Reviews
I’ve been using ColdFusion to generate and mail iCal (*.ics) files. This should be a cinch, as they are really pretty simple text files. However, when I receive the file in Microsoft Outlook 2007, I have no options to add it to my calendar and I see the following message: “As the meeting organizer, you do not need to respond to the meeting.”
This is peculiar, as my address is not the organizer specified in the iCal file, it is only the recipient of the iCal attachment. I’m going to keep looking into it, but I thought I’d mention it here in case anyone else is running into the same issue.
The two functions I’ve found online to assist in generating iCal files are:
I have been lately working with a Movable Type install on an SSL-enabled server. In IE, I keep getting pesky warning messages:
This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items?
I disabled Javascript and the error messages are gone, so I figured the culprit must lie somewhere in the Javascript. One particular file, JavaScriptFlashGateway.js, contained
flashTag += 'codebase="http://download.macromedia.com ... ';
I’m going to see if updating that will address the issue, but I have a feeling there may be other issues. Has anyone else run into this? My Google searches have been coming up empty.
The development team where I work is going to start tracking the time spent working on each project. Although in some ways this feels like a bureaucratic hassle, it will be useful as far as justifying our existence and provide some ammo for why we shouldn’t tackle every suggestion that crosses our desks (e.g. the “trivial tweak” that actually take 12 hours to implement).
Continue reading Time Tracking Software
I’ve received several e-mail messages over the past couple months letting me know that the desktop magic eight ball application I created for a beta version of Adobe AIR no longer worked.
Naturally, it wasn’t the highest priority on my to-do list, but I finally decided to get around to it. But I kept getting an error message: “no such file C:\air\eightball\in”
Continue reading Adobe AIR and digital certificate password length
How does keyword density in the title tag affect search engine placement? On Facts about Title Keyword Density, it says that Live.com rewards high keyword density in a title tag, whereas Google.com punishes high keyword density in a title tag.
I don’t really care about search engines other than Google. I’ve heard SEO experts claim that Yahoo! and MSN/Live still contribute a fair number of clicks, but that’s not true according to my server stats. I’d like to find out if Google really does punish keyword density in a title tag.
I created 3 similar pages for a fictional person, whose name currently return zero results in Google. Using the name as the search term, there are 3 different keyword weights.
This may not be the best test methodology, but at least it’s a start. In a few days, I’ll see how Google ranks them. Any opinions on how the pages will rank?
I lost a lot of time yesterday thanks to tracking down an alligator in an import utility. There was one itsy-bitsy little function that wreaked big havoc, thanks to a confused gator that didn’t know which way to look.
That’s right, there was a < when there should have been a >. (Or since it was ColdFusion code, there was a LT where there should have been a GT.)
The import utility was developed by a guy with a masters degree in computer science, so it just goes to show you that no amount of expertise can prevent such an error (or, quite possibly in this case, a typo).
It was an easy fix, of course, but fixing all the data that had been incorrectly imported in the past took a bit longer. It cost me a few hours, but that’s better than causing a credit crisis. Either way, it reinforced in my mind the idea that we could use some unit testing around here. Sure, it might take a little extra time to write the tests, but probably less than the amount of time I spent hunting down the pesky little gator and fixing the mess it left in its wake.
I have seen numerous instances lately where a web application requires the user to look above the form or content to instigate the next step.
Examples:
In the latter 2 cases, one could argue that the button placement is similar to what a user would expect to find in a desktop application, such as Microsoft Word. But it isn’t a desktop application: it’s a web app, and users expect to find form/page actions at the bottom of the form.
You could also argue, in the last case, that the user may want to make a quick edit to the name information without editing all the details. Therefore, it is more convenient to put the “Save” button at the top. That’s fine, but why not offer 2 “Save” buttons, and put one in the spot where user’s most expect it?
It seems like I’ve worked on a lot of applications lately that involve time slots: room reservation systems, appointment schedulers, and so on. One thing that tripped me (and some other developers) up at first was checking for conflicting time slots. It turns out, there are a variety of possible conflicts:
There are 5 unique conflicts possible, and it seems like I’m always forgetting one.