javascript bugs bug me.

Michael A Cochran

Am I the only guy who wishes some of our fellow web coders would be a little more persistent about eliminating their javascript bugs on the popular websites. You know, the ones that pop up three or four popup dialogs per page refresh when you have debugging enabled in your browser? As a developer, I always have javascript debugging enabled in my browser. Surely I'm not the only one. Those silly little scripting error popups get irritating after a while - especially when you open several tabs at once like I always do when I read the Code Project Daily News articles. Now, I know most of these errors are from the ads and because I have my popup blocker turned on but - gee whiz kids - can't we get those guys to get rid of their js bugs? Speaking of javascript bugs, am I also the only one to have had Google rendered completely unusable because of javascript errors? I can't click a single link in the search results. MAC

Ennis Ray Lynch Jr

I think a lot of the bugs are causes by different implementations of js. It is such a pain to eliminate all errors and warnings in all browsers.

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Christian Graus

Are you using Netscape 1.0 ?

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

Michael A Cochran

Nope. IE7. MAC

Marc Clifton

Michael A. Cochran wrote:

am I also the only one to have had Google rendered completely unusable because of javascript errors?

Yes. :) Maybe the problem is not with the websites *cough* Marc

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Shog9 0

I use a separate browser profile for editing and debugging my own pages, and so don't really notice errors on pages when i'm just browsing unless i go looking for them.

Michael A Cochran

Pretty sure it's google code. if(window.google)window.google.report=function(d,c){var a="";{if(window.google.pt){a+="&srt="+window.google.pt;delete window.google.pt}if(window.external&&window.external.tran)a+="&tran="+window.external.tran}{var e=document.getElementById("csi");if(e.value)return;e.value=1}var b=d.t,f=b.start;delete b.start;var g=[];for(var h in b)f&&g.push(h+"."+(b[h]-f));if(c)for(var i in c)a+="&"+i+"="+c[i];(new Image).src=["/csi?v=3","&s=GWS&action=",d.name,a,"&rt=",g.join(",")].join("")};google.timers.load.t.xjs=(new Date).getTime();google.timers.load.t.ol&&google.report(google.timers.load,{ei:google.kEI,e:google.kEXPI}); The "window.external.tran" evaluates to null in a script debugger. It's clearly buried in a google code snippet. It might be caused by something I've turned off for security or privacy reasons (for example) but still, a simple null check would eliminate the error, avoiding the error popup and allowing the link to work. Ooo, wait... Still getting popup errors but the search result links look to be working now. Maybe the links were broken as a side effect of the "forward slash glitch". MAC

Steve Westbrook

For quite a while, slashdot would greet me with precisely three js errors every time I loaded it. They seem to have fixed it now, but I do wonder how many developers find the easiest way to fix javascript bugs is to turn off error notification. I mean, it's a site about technology, primarily computer related, and I get no love. Y'all.

ToddHileHoffer

As an asp.net programmer, I find the javascript bugs very, very annoying. Our payroll application made by JDE that have to use to fill out my time sheet. I have to keep clicking no to debug. I always fix my javascript bugs, but honestly I try to write as little JS as possible. I just write simple functions here and there. 99% of the javascript I use was written by someone else or is part of a framework (Telerik, AJAX, etc...). It is damn annoying how many websites do not clean up their javascript. It is just laziness.

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Shog9 0

Michael A. Cochran wrote:

The "window.external.tran" evaluates to null in a script debugger.

There's a check before it is accessed:

if( window.external && window.external.tran )
a += "&tran=" + window.external.tran

So it really shouldn't be throwing an error. FWIW, here's your code snippet pretty-printed:

if(window.google)
window.google.report=function(d,c)
{
var a="";
{
if(window.google.pt)
{
a += "&srt=" + window.google.pt;
delete window.google.pt
}
if( window.external && window.external.tran )
a += "&tran=" + window.external.tran
}

  {
     var e= document.getElementById("csi");
     if(e.value)
        return

Michael A Cochran

Yeah, probably. Web development is surely one of the more mentally painful and frustrating fields of computer science. It can sometimes take days to do something in a web environment that would take 5 minutes in a WinForm environment. Try doing something like grab handles on an asp.net web page that uses webparts and making it layout correctly on even just the big three browsers (IE, FF, Safari) for example. Ouch. MAC

Michael A Cochran

But it is. And it's the check that fails. Technically, (and I wasn't trying to fix their code for them) it isn't a null reference exception. The error is "Element not found". Still, no doubt something that could be trapped and properly handled. MAC

Shog9 0

Michael A. Cochran wrote:

Still, no doubt something that could be trapped and properly handled.

Hard to say... window.external is (Internet Explorer's) means of exposing a host IDispatch[Ex] interface outside of the DOM to scripts. I have no idea what sort of extension provides tran, but if it isn't there (or is broken... or has been replaced with something else... and that something else is broken...) then all bets are off - it could be valid for the check and invalid for the access.

Michael A Cochran

Yeah. What set me off this evening is both CIO.com and zdnet.com throw several errors each. These two sites are often referenced in the Code Project daily news email. When I read this email, I always just click all the links I want at once, opening them in several tabs. With the script errors, you literally have to flip back and forth between the tabs, finding and clearing the error popups. It's a pain but I've been putting up with it for months. Guess I must have had a bad day today to make me say something about it. :-D

Jim Crafton

I'm pretty sure "Web development" and "computer science" in the same sentence is an oxymoron[^]!

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Michael A Cochran

I don't know what trans is either. But try...catch would probably catch it. Or they should find some other more reliable way of doing whatever it's doing. And this just started happening a few days ago. So this is fresh functionality. Google worked fine for me before so do I need whatever this is? Seems not. :~ So why not spend a little time and make sure the code works without irritating little popups? There's gotta be something they could do.

Jim Crafton

And people bitch about STL code being unreadable.

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Jim Crafton

You can solve part of your problem by skipping CIO.com and zdnet.com altogether. You'll get more informed news at uncov.com and theonion.com.

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Shog9 0

Michael A. Cochran wrote:

So why not spend a little time and make sure the code works without irritating little popups?

Beats me. Maybe it's working for them?

Shog9 0

;)