Category: Technology

Ran into a really bizarre bug today.

There is a lot of chatter about the form.submit() functionality in jQuery on its API page. There’s also some results you’ll find on StackOverflow and the like about the functionality just not working. Two interesting bugs seem to be cropping up here…

1) An input field with name or id of “submit” seems to somehow break the functionality of the submit function.

2) It didn’t work at all for me in IE. I didn’t have any of the problems that were pointed out in the thread there, but nonetheless, it continued to throw an error in IE. Which got me thinking… how do folks debug JS code in IE? I would love a legitimate way to walk through and debug JS code without needing to buy Visual Studio.

Anyway, the solution of finding the submit button and clicking it as opposed to submitting the form fixed it. Final code looks like:

$(“#signupForm”).find(“button[name$=’submitBtn’]”).click();

Very weird given that I’ve never had an experience like this in jQuery, which I think is a huge compliment to the library.

I’ve been working on the content pages at work for the last few weeks, and it makes me wonder how people can work with CSS everyday without going bald (good thing I had already lost all of my hair). The inability to create a consistent user experience across web applications has got to be one of the largest dead weight losses in productivity and efficiency in the web industry. Not finding a solution for this, and a solution which is accepted industry wide, is just going to create a workplace for mediocre middle men whose sole purpose is to make sure that IE looks like Safari (or maybe I should say WebKit to include all WebKit based browsers) looks like FireFox. These people should not be in the industry because this problem should not exist in the industry.

(On a side note, this was a problem for Javascript, and the solution has been to build frameworks so that one isn’t working directly with the browser implementations themselves. I haven’t done the work to try and understand if there are CSS frameworks which mimic this, but please let me know if there are)

My specific problem was probably a bit of an extreme case. I often wonder when doing this work if there is a best practices to all of this, and if I’m just missing it. I’ve often made my way over to QuirksMode to see, but I’ve found that it’s often non-comital at best. But, back to the case at hand!

I was working on our new Platform page, and we were adding a call to action button (the Getting Started button that you see on the right hand side of the page). I have the image above it laid out in its own <div>, and I thought that I could put the call to action button underneath it, add appropriate padding, and the two columns which make up the content section of the page would be all lined up. Result…

Now that’s a surprise! I think the first thing that I needed to change was to set the image width and height explicitly instead of in the CSS selector. This helped things in IE, but ended up changing nothing for FireFox. Safari saw no difference. The irony of it all was that there’s no such thing as a FireFox specific stylesheet in our ecosystem.

I’m sure that if we were to do browser detection and build out a full HTML+CSS site, then we could do have a FireFox specific stylesheet for these nuances.

Nothing I tried using a two column layout worked. I finally ended up taking out the two buttons from the bottom of the content section, and creating a footer <div> which aligned the two buttons as we wanted. This was the cross-browser implementation that finally worked, but either my lack of knowledge or the quirks of an imperfect system really drove me batty on this one.

It’s really frustrating to me that doing something ever so slightly differently leads to such drastically different results when dealing with software. It’s true that software engineers (if you’re curious about the treatment of the word engineer, then just call me on TokBox me and I’ll explain) tend to be the harshest critics of software, and that it’s hard to impress someone who thinks that they know how to do it better. Every software engineer thinks that they know how to do it better.

With that disclaimer, I want to complain a bit about some behavior that I found in working with Ant.

I don’t know how to do Ant better than the creators of Ant have. It’s not my favorite tool, but if I had to use makefiles, then I would stop developing code. I don’t think whether I use hardtabs or softtabs should determine the validity of my code. That, however, is a different rant. However, I was very surprised to find that when using the <foreach> tag in an Ant script, that it doesn’t inherit the properties that have been set so far. Instead, you have to expressly define what properties to pass into the <foreach> tag. As an example:

target: buildinfo
<property name="tokbox.build.num" value="${current.time}"/>

target: getcssfiles
<foreach target="compile-css" param="the_file">
    <path>
        <fileset dir="${localedir}">
            <include name="*.css"/>
        </fileset>
    </path>
</foreach>

The <foreach> loop doesn’t know that the tokbox.build.num property exists. Every other target does, but the <foreach> doesn’t. However, if I were to add:

<param name="tokbox.build.num" value="${tokbox.build.num}" />

into my <foreach> loop, then it not only knows the build number, but everything builds! The final code ends up looking like this:


<foreach target="compile-css" param="the_file">
    <param name="tokbox.build.num" value="${tokbox.build.num}" />

    <path>
        <fileset dir="${localedir}">
            <include name="*.css"/>
        </fileset>
    </path>
</foreach>


While the pundits were relatively correct in pronouncing the death of CES, and trade shows in general, those who didn’t make it out to this year’s trade show really missed out on what was probably the top show in the last 3 years.

In truth, it’s really difficult to go to CES every year, and expect to see something new each time. I just don’t think that the industry moves that quickly. This is also why most feel that Apple pulled out of its relationship with the MacWorld conference. It’s just too hard to come out with something amazing year-in, year-out on such a tight schedule. However, the benefit of going every year is that you really start to notice when amazing, cool things are coming down the pipe. Case in point, when I met up with fellow NCSU classmates Jordan O’Mara and Win Bassett a few years back, they had discovered a game called “Guitar Hero” which they immediately fell in love with. The rest, as they say, is history!

What were this year’s gems?

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t get to spend as much time at the trade show as I would have liked, and so I’m sure I missed a lot of stuff. With that disclaimer, here are some of the really cool technologies which I saw that I think will make big splashes in the years ahead.

• BUILT

These guys aren’t a technology, but instead a way to make your
technology look good. I think it’s really interesting that everyone has
the exact same computer, and that there isn’t a larger push by the
masses to be unique. Are unified, recognizable computers the “uniform”
of this generation? Is the thought that I can’t make myself different
or everyone won’t know that I have a Mac, and that makes me cool? Lame.
Anyway, these guys had some really good computer covers, iPod holders,
etc. for all of your digital gear.

• Microprojectors

This was by far and away the coolest thing that I saw. The days of clunky, A/V club driven projectors seems to have come to an end. The quality was good, but not great, but yet the thought that the full projector get up can be miniaturized to the point where it will fit into your backpack just seems awesome to me. I was most impressed by 3M’s product, though there were some Asian companies which had products that seemed to be close in the race. The main features to look for are

• Luminance
• Battery Life
• Size

And for some pretty obvious reasons, size really matters in this regard! My prediction is that within 3-5 years this technology will be embedded into your smart phone, and you will simply bring your presentations/movies to class, work, community theater, and project away.

• 3D TDV Television

A really cool, though still somewhat gimmicky, technology which I discovered was 3-D television. It was quite spectacular to see some technologies created in real time (which is what Sony was doing), and other companies such as TDV Technologies using the glasses, also real time, and providing an out of TV experience. I’m not really quite sure what the use case is today, but I’m imagining a scenario where I can walk into the 3D projection from my screen and watch as Shawne Merriman breaks through the line, and turn around and watch him sack Peyton Manning. That, I would buy.

• NetBook Computers

The Intel booth was highlighted by the rise of NetBook computers and their ATOM processor. I think that the ultimate goal for NetBooks is truly having a portable document, e-mail, and basic browsing machine for situations, such as travel, where you probably aren’t doing truly intensive work. I’m just not convinced that it’s for me as the machine I have already does quite poorly when I try to get work done. Nonetheless, everything seems to be included (optical drives, webcam, and the standard array of USB slots). Also, you can’t disagree with the argument that you’re paying for exactly what you’re getting, and so I see the value for the heavy traveler.

• iClubby Ergonomic Workstation

This was just really, really cool. I took a photo of this because I almost couldn’t believe it. The focus of Gravitonus seems to be accessibility, but they’ve also made quite the fashion statement when it comes to “Pimping My Workstation”. Check out the photo, and the link, but I think as ergonomics becomes a bigger, and bigger, issue in the technology workplace these out of the box approaches will become more and more popular. I’m not quite sure what the pricing is, but that’s probably the limiting factor right now. Nonetheless, this ranked extremely highly on my coolness radar at CES 2009 this year.

• OLED Technology

The OLED technology which was in the Sony TVs was unbelievable. The colors are ridiculous, and they could be the thinnest monitor-like device I’ve ever seen. Just a few years ago, the push amongst the TV Manufacturers was size of the screen, contrast, true 1080p, and now it seems to be thinness, as this was on display in many places. However, the OLED screens at Sony were hands the ones I found to be the most unbelievable. The width of my thumb was probably 4x wider than the entire television. Just awesome!