- Posted by Nate on June 29, 2009
I came across a great tool from Xenocode for debugging and testing cross browser compatability. Their Xenocode Browser Sandbox has All the major browsers and browser versions available for testing your apps. It essentially launches an instance of a browser (IE 6/7/8, FF 2/3, Chrome, Opera, Safari) in a 'sandbox' wrapper. The great thing is that from an IDE perspective the browser is just like any other browser. If you've fired up VS in debug mode and then use one of the IE browsers to navigate to a page, all the JavaScript debugging goodness is still available.
It's great for tracking down those pesky IE6 only issues, as well as running on a version of browser that might not be supported by your organization.
- Posted by Nate on May 20, 2009
Xceed Datagrid for WPF is a great tool. It's also been REALLY great because it was free. Well not much longer. In another month they're going to be switching the "Express" edition to the "Standard" edition and charging $300 for it. Kind of a bummer, but even for $300 it's a good deal. If you go register for the free version now, you'll be 'grandfathered' in and eligible for a $300 coupon toward the new version when it comes out. Check out:
http://xceed.com/freegrid
- Posted by Nate on April 24, 2009
I found a great article on debugging Web Analytics at Web Analytics Guys's Blog.
The two tools that really helped me the most were, Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP) and Charles Web Proxy. Wasp is just such a slick interface and integrates directly with FireFox.
- Posted by Nate on March 8, 2009
Making the jump from old-school plug-n-chug development to TDD/BDD is
tough. It's even tougher when the project you're on (and the company
you work for) and are following waterfall methods. Yes it's tough, but
it is possible, and you don't have to make waves and freak people out
in the process.
Tip 1: Make a Nights and Weekends investment. Spend your free time
reading up on TDD and getting a good stack setup. I have a run-down of
my stack on the about
page. After you've read a book and a couple of articles on the subject
you've gotta practice. You're not going to be able to convince anyone
you work with that this TDD business makes sense (and trust me it does)
unless you're already past the steep part of the curve. The only way to
get the feel and flow of TDD is to sit down and do it. Make up
something to code and start writing tests, and code. Get the feel of
the technique before you start to use it in your daily coding.
Tip 2: Just because you're not doing agile doesn't mean you can't do
TDD. Even if the project is using a waterfall or unified methodology you can still use TDD for
your software devleopment. Management won't worry about you writing unit tests BEFORE you write your code.
All they care about is that your code works, is bug free, and you hit your dates.
Tip 3: Be matter-of-fact about it. When someone asks you a question about a problem or bug, start off
by writing a test to reproduce it and then code the solution. Many times you'll find that some 'bugs'
are actually defects in the input data, test cases, or conflicting requirements.
Tip 4: Use waterfall to your advantage. Waterfall isn't all bad. I
like having a spec to code to. Is it a bad thing if while coding you
find an inconsistency in the design? Happens all the time. You're
actually able to find it much sooner in the process with TDD. So you
find the problem when writing code, not when it does to functional or
integration testing.
This first post was kind of short, but I felt like I had to get
the ball rolling. I've been spending a lot of time thinking of cool
things to write about but what I really needed to do was get something down. My next few posts will follow a similar thread and talk about some of my own personal experiences in TDD.
- Posted by Nate on March 3, 2009
I'm still in the process of getting the site up and running. I decided on BlogEngine.NET as the blog framework, and have been tweaking it for the last couple weeks to get it personalized. Tonight I added a little extension for .NET kicks button.
