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Thread: One of *those* days...

  1. #1
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    One of *those* days...

    You know the ones. Not the ones where eveything goes wrong, they're easy to deal with. You just screw them up, throw them away and start over.

    No, today is one of those days where everything is going swimmingly, then something utterly stumps you. Brick wall time. You can't see any reason for it, and everything seems to work except in one specific circumstance that shouldn't be any different to any other. And you scratch your head for hours, and when you finally track it down it's something really dim (in Eddie Izzard terms, "the printer has an on button?...").

    Well, since I very nearly embarrassed myself with this one in the programming forum, and now I've sorted it I can kind of see the funny side, here's what brick walled me today:

    I've been working on a new reporting system for one of our clients, and there was a bit of it that was just screaming for some AJAXy goodness. Not a core skill of mine, but one that I've been meaning to learn for some time. And after a few newb errors and oversights, I got it working in my dev environment with IE8. So I pulled down Firefox, and sure enough it worked in dev with Firefox 3.6 too.

    So I rolled it down to test, and checked it with IE8, IE7, Chrome and Firefox running in my test environment. And there was much rejoicing.

    Then the ultimate test: this tool is going to be used by NHS staff, so IE6 support was essential. First the problem of finding a computer that still had IE6 on it, since everyone in the unit had upgraded long ago. And I was about 10 seconds off pulling a spare box out and sticking a fresk copy of XP SP2 on it when I remembered our old projector PC hadn't been used in about a year (since the ceiling mounted projector died from hyperthermic shock ) and sure enough, once I'd got it hooked up to the new projector and found a USB keyboard and mouse to hook up to, it was running good old 6.0 . So I loaded up the test site, nervously went to the AJAXy section, and..... RESULT! Perfect crossbrowser AJAX in IE6, 7, 8, FF 3.6 and Chrome 5. So, brim full of whatever it is success fills you with, I decided to top off a great day I'd fire up Opera and watch my AJAXy magic on one last browser.

    Nothing.

    No AJAXy goodness, just an empty <select>.

    Error Console? Nothing. Developer Tools? Nothing. My tea leaves? Nothing (although admittedly that's because I don't drink tea...). So off I trotted to Hexus to beg the wise and good for some advice on where to start working out why this just wasn't working, and how running javascript that was working everywhere else but Opera would not leave any error messages either. And as my mouse hovered over the 'submit thread' button, a nagging voice said "One way that javascript wouldn't leave error messages is if it wasn't running....".

    I couldn't be that dim could I?

    Tools... Quick Preferences... Enable Javascript...? No check mark. My AJAX wasn't working, because I had *chose* to disable javascript in Opera last time I was using it.

    Ahem. Well...


    So, that's my "blindingly obvious but I missed it moment" today - anyone else having / had one?

  2. #2
    Welcome to stampytown! Salazaar's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    I'm having a 'I've got six grumpy old men switching from desktops to laptops this weekend and I've got to make sure they don't leave anything vital on their c:\ drive which should be on one of the network drives' day...

    It will not end well, I just know it.
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  3. #3
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Oooh, hate those. Thankfully the nonsense described above was the last piece of serious work I have to do before two days off with the kids. The project is now being handed back for client testing, so I can kick back for the rest of the day

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    HEXUS webmaster Steve's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    And the moral of the story is, put some <noscript> tags in on the page to alert you (and your users) if javascript is disabled.

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  6. #5
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve View Post
    .. put some <noscript> tags in on the page to alert you ...
    See, that's why you're the Hexus webmaster and I'm not...

  7. #6
    HEXUS webmaster Steve's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Only because I've made the same mistake as you before

  8. #7
    Don't feed the trolls... tiggerai's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    also - ietester for IE6 on non-native environments....

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  10. #8
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Quote Originally Posted by tiggerai View Post
    also - ietester for IE6 on non-native environments....
    Looks interesting, although I'm suspicious since my AJAX works in ietester 5.5 but didn't in my native IE 5.5 environment. Although that could be down to the pre XMLHttpRequest ActiveX component not being installed on my ancient Win 2K lappy... I'm never sure what level of DOM compliance each iteration of IE was meant to have...

  11. #9
    Don't feed the trolls... tiggerai's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    IE5.5 didn't as far as I know... only IE6 upwards did... I cant believe you're still testing in that...

    Ietester is always going to be "best guess" though - but it's a lot easier than firing up a whole XP native machine for one test... it's usually good enough to spot most issues. (or in my case... "non replicateable")

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    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    I hadn't intended to test IE5.5 - I thought the Win 2k lappy had been updated to IE6, and since I'd fired it up I figured I might as well have a laugh and see what happened I still reckon 2k Pro was the only decent Windows before 7, and I miss having an install disk and VLK.... ;(

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    boop, got your nose stevie lee's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    So, that's my "blindingly obvious but I missed it moment" today - anyone else having / had one?
    today we were sorting out scrap batteries for disposal from scooters, theres 27 of them, we looked through the paperwork which said there was a 33A battery number 0098. could we find it in the pile.. no we couldn't.

    we double and triple checked every battery, still no 0098. we decide it must have been disposed with the previous lot of batteries. so the manager updates paperwork.

    i come to sit down and have my drink, move a battery of my chair, manager says "whats that one then?".

    guess what it was?

    number 0098.

    how we missed a battery that was on my chair, who knows?


    and i did miss the eurofighters flying around (read one of my previous threads).

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    I R Toff Pandi! TAKTAK's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Me and the boss had one of those at work yesterday, spent ages double checking everything was on a pallet to ship out (expensive stuffs).

    Get it all wrapped and taped up ready for shipping (All the pallets that we send out are over packaged.)

    As soon as i walked in the office the boss was putting the phone down saying "He's not going to like that, he's just packed it all up"... They wanted another order to go out with the stuff that was already planned to leave. So we decided that we would just put it on another pallet in the morning rather than strip it down.

    Then we stashed it overnight.

    Next morning the boss opened the door to one of the containers to find 2 stainless steel plates which we had double checked were on the pallet....

    So we had to strip it down and then decided to combine the two and used a pallet case instead


    Today we got a new van and it was supposed to be stickered up, but they'd cut black instead of blue...

    The boss went out in it first thing, it got to about 3 when i noticed a written note on the office managers desk which had a plate number written on it.

    So i asked what it was for, which she replied "The new van's plate is XX10 VXX", to which i replied, "...It's not.. The vans plates were XX10 ZXX this morning..."

    So the boss is driving round on the wrong plates too...
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    Senior Member Tumble's Avatar
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    Re: One of *those* days...

    Sounds like a government operation TAKTAK

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