JavaScript
How to Check If Google Analytics Click Tracking is Triggered
When I add new Event or PageView tracking code that is bound to click events, I want to be sure that the tracking code is fired without waiting for a site visitor to trigger it (or in some cases before the code is even on a live page). Because my own traffic is filtered out … Continue reading … Continue reading IE Change Event Delay
I recently developed a sign-up form for a client that includes on-page price total calculation using JavaScript (jQuery). The premise is simple: the user provides information and specify options, then clicks a radio button to choose a specific price plan. The initial total price calculation is triggered by the change() event for the radio button elements. But, the client was concerned (and with user testing, it turned out rightly so) because in IE, the price calculation didn't happen until the user clicked somewhere else on the page. In cases where they first clicked one option, then a different one, the price would seemingly lag behind because of IE’s delayed change event firing. It was confusing to the user, but worse—confusing for me to “fix” IE’s implementation. … Continue reading The TITLE element and jQuery’s text() function
In a day of zero fun, I ended up tasked with debugging a jQuery-based script that seemed to be perfectly fine, except of course, the part where it wasn’t working as expected in IE. After some tracing, it turns out the issue had everything to do with one line of code not returning a value: $("title").text();. To translate, the author of the code had been trying to retrieve the text of the title element using jQuery’s text function. But, turns out that doesn’t work in IE. … Continue reading Losing Values When Cloning Forms
I’ve finally started development of a book recommendation widget for the musings and reviews on books I read section of my site. The general functionality is pretty simple: visitors have a few fields to complete with info about the book; upon submission, their recommendation is saved to a database; the new recommendation is shown to all and sundry in a “last recommendation” section; rinse & repeat. The whole no-JS needed, server-side scripting processing involved is simple, straight-forward and was quickly completed. Being a front-end developer, however, I want to make sure this can all be done in a smooth JS-enhanced way as well (for some nifty UX). That’s where I encountered yet another annoying JavaScript problem. … Continue reading
Trigger AJAX Error Event
When I was new to working with AJAX functions—especially in the realm of form submission—one hurdle I often encountered was how to handle processing errors in my back-end script and give meaningful feedback to my users. I didn’t understand how to designate a response as an error instead of successful processing. Early on, I sometimes employed a dirty hack of prepending any error with the string ERROR: and then adding in some quick checking to see if that substring existed in my response text. While that may get the job done, it’s not good form. It causes convoluted code usage, thumbs its nose at existing error handling functionality and makes future maintenance a headache. But there is a better way by simply utilizing your processing language’s inherent header and error handling functionality. … Continue reading
Q: Where Does JavaScript Go?
A: The bottom of your page, just before the
</body> tag is your safest bet. Of course, with Web development, nothing is as easy as a blanket statement like that, right? But, when I’m helping people troubleshoot their JavaScript problems, 95% of the time the first step is to move the JS to the bottom, order the scripts properly and wrap it in some sort of function that starts only after the page is loaded. This not only fixes their problem, but often speeds up content loading. Read on to learn why this is a good rule. … Continue reading PSA: Update SimpleModal jQuery plugin
Just a quick note for y’all: if you’re using the jQuery SimpleModal plugin on your or a client’s site, make sure you’ve updated it recently. The old version of the plugin does not play well with IE 8, causing your entire modal popup system to fail spectacularly. … Continue reading
IE Gradient Bug with PNG-24
I try to make sure to do my due diligence by checking my sites in the 3 major browsers. And usually, much to my chagrin, I also end up thoroughly testing in IE6, although I’m not willing to make them pixel perfect unless I’m being paid very well to do so. So, I was extremely surprised when I client got ahold of me about a display bug in a now live site. Ok, so you have to believe me, I really did check in IE7. On multiple computers. I don’t know why the client’s installation was special, but sometimes that’s just how things go. … Continue reading
