Browsing Dirty

Raise your hand if you browse your site or web app in Internet Explorer with script debugging enabled. Not that any of you, folks, let it slide, but I’m amazed at how many web sites throw JavaScript exceptions right and left, to the point that you reach for the Task Manager and kill the iexplore.exe instance. You have to because there’s no escape from a gazillion prompts.

The reason I put myself through this is because I want to know if our product throws JavaScript exceptions. To me it’s a bug that needs fixing. I’m not looking at it as a standardista who wants perfect markup, but as a pragmatist.

Some people have no clue there’s such a thing as script debugging. To them these prompts are a major annoyance. And even if they don’t see a debug-yes-no prompt, the script fails quietly, something stops working and they have no clue what’s up either.

I don’t know if getting everyone to buy an iPod, convert everyone to Christianity, reach zero-bug count on a given project, or completely stop relying on imported oil is practical or reasonable. But eliminating JavaScript blow-ups is both feasible and necessary. Visual Studio helps immensely here. Bitch all you want (and I do it often), but VS is great at debugging JavaScript.