Tag: Web Design and Development


Aug
2015

The importance of turning on debugging

categories: Skills
Debugging a php script with emacs in geben mode.
Debugging a php script with emacs in geben mode. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was recently testing some wordpress plugin code for an upgrade. As part of my testing, I turn on debugging to see if any errors or warnings show up.

Imagine my surprise when several errors appeared, many of them deprecation warnings. After troubleshooting to determine the source of the errors, I discovered it was coming from the theme I was using.

Without turning on debugging, the site appears to behave normally, which is problematic. One of my objections to many languages and frameworks is that they hide problems from the developer. In many cases, for example, deprecation warnings don’t mean much—except they’re a ticking time bomb. At some point in the future, the code is going to break. Better to fix it now while it is easier to do, than scramble to diagnose and fix lots of code just after an upgrade.

In the case of WordPress (or PHP in general), it would be helpful if the admin area showed everything – bugs and warnings. For novice admins, of course, this would be a support nightmare, as they would have little clue what was going on. The upside is (hopefully) sloppy coders would fix their stuff promptly. Nothing will get a plugin/theme pulled faster than getting an error right after installing it.

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Oct
2012

Flashback: Skip Intro for flash introductions

categories: web development

Remember when flash introduction pages were all the rage? They were ‘cool’ from the web designer‘s standpoint, but utterly annoying and off-putting to the visitor. Fortunately, most people figured out that people visited their site for the content, not the snappy graphics (unless it was a gallery site), and certainly not for the mandatory intro pages.

Yet, some people still haven’t gotten the clue that the 80s called and they want their flash intros back.

xkcd: the seventies called

For those who remember with revulsion, here’s the old SkipIntro parody. The site is long gone, but it would be a shame to let it fade away!

SkipIntro

(click the ‘play ball’ to start)

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”static” fversion=”8.0.0″ movie=”https://www.neonrocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/skipintro98.swf” width=”600″ height=”500″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Get Adobe Flash player

[/kml_flashembed]

If you haven’t clicked on it, do it now! Relive the pain of the never-ending flash intro to the sound of weird indian music and gunfire!

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