Never Make Assumptions

I just ran into a bit of a surprise while doing some development work. I began the project with cross-platform/cross-browser in mind, but as it turns out, safari on a Mac isn't acting the way I wanted it to.

I'm using a bit of prototype.js, behaviour.js, scriptaculous.js, and a big chunk of my own code. I don't actually know what the problem is at this point - whether it has to do with xmlhttp requests, xml parsing, or object manipulation. Had I been paying attention during my development cycle, it would have been a lot easier to narrow down the scope of the problem and perhaps change the way I was attacking certain problems along the way.

I guess that means "oh well" for me. Time to hit the drawing board again.

It is a good lesson, and one that I learned long ago and completely ignored. In my own defense, the Mac in my house belongs to my children and I never really considered it a development resource. But let me tell you - playing around on that thing for half an hour really makes me wish I didn't have so much time and money invested in the Windows world. Macs aren't just easy, having a *nix base gives you a lot of power that you never even thought about.

But anyways, back to the subject. Never make assumptions. Test your software on multiple platforms during your development cycle - don't just wait for QA to come around. It will pay off in time and money in the long run. If you don't have access to a Mac, and you don't have 13 web browsers installed on your machine, I highly recommend giving BrowserCam a try. I've been meaning to put together a group fundraiser for a 25 user 1 year subscription. Split between 25 people, the cost goes down to $40 a piece for 12 months of unlimited use - which you could easily spend in a couple of days over there as an individual user. If anybody out there is interested in doing something like that, let me know.