Phil's Tips

Monday, November 21, 2011

JavaScript debuggers

For Firefox: Firebug

For Opera: Dragonfly

For Safari: Web Inspector (formerly Drosera)

UPDATE December 10, 2011
Was tipped off to an IE JScript Debugger by a friend: link

jQuery's .append() function doesn't work as expected, so use .val() for object string appends

Via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4722914/jquery-append-not-appending-to-textarea-after-text-edited/4723017#4723017

$(textarea).append(txt) doesn't work like you think. When a page is loaded the text nodes inside the textarea are set the value of that form field. After that, the text nodes and the value can be disconnected. As you type in the field, the value changes, but the text nodes inside it on the DOM do not. Then you change the text nodes with the append() and the browser erases the value because it knows the text nodes inside the tag have changed.

So you want to set the value, you don't want to append. Use jQuery's val() method for this.

$(document).ready(function(){
  $(".hashtag").click(function(){
    var txt = $.trim($(this).text());
    var box = $("#text-box");
    box.val(box.val() + txt);
  });
});

Working example: http://jsfiddle.net/Hhptn/

Monday, July 11, 2011

Great charts comparing XPATH, CSS, DOM, and Selenium code

Here (download the PDF charts in the bubble in the upper right hand corner of the page)

Selenium and username/password logins

I'm heading up an effort at my current company to write integration (browser) tests. We're using Selenium as our integration testing tool.

Here's the problem: many tests require one to log in as an administrator. But it would be crazy to check into source code an administrator username and password.

Here's a write-up of what was suggested to me