Tinsology

After the release of SimpleMail I immediately experienced a problem that I imagine is shared by many developers: lack of feedback. Though I greatly appreciate all of the comments, suggestions, and bug reports (especially the bug reports) I know that for every one person that experienced a problem and reported it, five people experienced a problem, uninstalled the plugin and never thought about it again.

I found myself constantly worried about the bug reports I was not receiving, and in fact there were bugs that had existed since the original version that went unreported until recently. This was a learning experience of course and I have since taken steps to ensure that any application I release in the future is more robust. In addition to this I think that having experienced all of this I am must more likely to report issues I am having with any piece of software. I strongly encourage anyone reading this to do the same.

As I mentioned this was a learning experience, so I’ll offer some tips to developers so they don’t make the same mistakes I did:

• Test your applications in multiple environments
• Maintain portability in your code
  • Read the documentation for whatever feature, function or library you are using to ensure that it will work on whatever platform you expect it to
  • Don’t use language features that are not necessarily enabled or available to all users (ie PHP short tags)
• Make providing feedback easy
  • Add a link, button, or form to your application that either directs the user somewhere where they can provide feedback or allows them to send feedback from the application itself

The standard opening tag for php is <?php, however there are two alternative opening tags:

<? – short for <?php
<?= – short for <?php echo

Although they may be convenient, you should never use these tags. The main reason I don’t use them is because short tags can be disabled in the php.ini, so if your application relies on them, it will fail when this feature is disabled. Recently a couple of short tags crept into (by my own mistake) one of my applications and a user reported he was getting a parse error on the last line of code in the file. After looking over the code several times I replaced the short tags with the longer version and all was well.

If you are writing portable applications I recommend that you disable short tags in your own php.ini, so in the case that you place one by mistake (as I did) you will get the error message instead of one of your users reporting it weeks later.

If you haven’t heard about Windows 7 yet it is time to take note. 7 is the next iteration of windows and it appears that, unlike vista, its going to be a worthy replacement for XP. Those of you who have had to down(up?)grade from vista to xp are probably skeptical, but personally, from what I’ve read I think its going to be the next XP (in the sense that it will be a success, not the sense that it will be around for a decade before something better comes along… I hope).

You don’t have to take my word for it though. So long as you sign up before January 24th (exactly 2,647 days since the release of XP) you can try out the beta of Microsoft’s next OS:

Windows 7 Beta Information and Download

Be Warned! You’ll read on the website that it is not such a great idea to install 7 on your primary machine. I brushed off this warning without much thought and happily decided to install 7 alongside XP. And so begins the (notso) epic tale of how my Windows 7 beta test failed to get off the ground…

Downloading the installation DVD took me just over an hour, which for me is not bad for 2-3.5 GB depending on which flavor of 7 you decide to download. As soon as the dvd was done burning I quickly made a roughly 40GB primary NTFS partition on my hard drive and launched the installer. Unlike XP, which requires you to install by booting from cd (ie furiously tapping F8), 7 is smart enough to begin the install from XP while you sit back and enjoy the progress bar. Law and Order happened to be on TV at the time (There’s a 23/24 chance of that occuring as you are aware if you have basic cable) so I left the room.

A while later my progress-bar-nearly-full sense kicked in and I sprinted into my room to check the install. I caught the computer in the middle of a reboot. After the (new and shiny) load screen every step except was complete except for the very vauge “Completing Install…” step. I sat and watched the trailing dots come and go (. .. … .) until yet another reboot. Thinking its competely done now I watched the boot manager flash by, displaying “Windows 7″ and “Earlier version of Windows”. It defaulted to windows 7 and the low res but still new and shiny background appeared. Distracted, it took me a moment to notice the text “Installation was not successful”.

After this I made my critical error. I rebooted into XP and formatted my testing partition, then rebooted to try another install. If you haven’t realized I missed a step you will soon. After the install (and more Law and Order) I recieve the same message. This is, however, not the problem. Another reboot reveals the options “Earlier version of Windows” , “Windows 7″ , and… “Windows 7″. Thinking Oops I try to boot back into XP (forgetting that Vista and 7 don’t use the boot.ini) to fix the problem. This usually takes about 45 seconds. Three minutes later the screen was still black and I was thinking about the warning on the download page:

“Don’t install the Beta on your primary home or work computer. Microsoft is not responsible for downtime stemming from the Windows 7 Beta.”

A full day of debugging later I managed to get back into XP (thank you bcdedit).

That’s my story. For those of you who still want to do a side by side install here’s a link to a guide on how to do it:
You’ve been warned.
My old laptop is most likely going to be my new test subject. I’ll write again when I have have some first hand experience to share.