You’re developing a new website and have decided to use some CSS3 and HTML5, now that many of the new specifications are gaining widespread support. As you’re coding the theme and thinking of how much easier these new technologies are making your job, you decide to stop for a while and test in other browsers, feeling a bit guilty for getting carried away and having forgotten to do so for a while. “Please work,” you whisper to your computer, while firing up all of the browsers you have installed. Browser A, check. You smile, feeling a bit relieved. Browser B, check. Your smile widens, and you start to feel better already. Browser C, “FFFFUUUUUUUUUUU…!”
Sound familiar? You might be surprised to hear that this is not necessarily your fault. With the competition in the browser market these days and the fast pace at which the new specifications are developing, browser makers are implementing new stuff in a hurry, sometimes without properly testing it. CSS3 and HTML5 are much more complex than their predecessors. The number of possible combinations of new features is huge, which leads to the most common cause of bugs: two (or more) things that weren’t tested together. As a result, developers these days stumble upon browser bugs much more frequently than they used to.
You might think that reporting the bug would be pointless, because it would take ages to fix, and would take even longer for users to upgrade to the fixed version. However, for all browsers except Internet Explorer (IE), this is not true anymore. Users of Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome upgrade really quickly these days, because the software pushes them to do so or (in the case of Chrome) doesn’t even give them a choice. Also, some bugs get fixed quite quickly, especially the ones that come with a decent report. Keep reading, and your own bug reports will likely fall in this latter category.
Here is the process I follow to create reductions:
Sound familiar? You might be surprised to hear that this is not necessarily your fault. With the competition in the browser market these days and the fast pace at which the new specifications are developing, browser makers are implementing new stuff in a hurry, sometimes without properly testing it. CSS3 and HTML5 are much more complex than their predecessors. The number of possible combinations of new features is huge, which leads to the most common cause of bugs: two (or more) things that weren’t tested together. As a result, developers these days stumble upon browser bugs much more frequently than they used to.
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Why Should I Bother Reporting Bugs?
If you don’t, perhaps no one else will. Maybe the bug you’ve discovered is so rare that no one else will stumble on it. Or maybe they will, but they won’t know how to report it. They might think that it’s their fault, just as you originally did. Besides, if you’ve used these new technologies in a way that triggers the bug now, you will likely do so again in the future as well, so you would directly benefit from the bug getting fixed. And in the process, you’d be helping thousands of other developers avoid the frustration you’ve faced.You might think that reporting the bug would be pointless, because it would take ages to fix, and would take even longer for users to upgrade to the fixed version. However, for all browsers except Internet Explorer (IE), this is not true anymore. Users of Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome upgrade really quickly these days, because the software pushes them to do so or (in the case of Chrome) doesn’t even give them a choice. Also, some bugs get fixed quite quickly, especially the ones that come with a decent report. Keep reading, and your own bug reports will likely fall in this latter category.
Making A Reduction
The first step is to reduce the problem to its bare minimum. If it turns out to be a browser bug, you will need to include this “reduction” in your bug report. Also, this will help you figure out a potential workaround until the browser vendor fixes it. Even if it’s not actually a browser bug, doing this will help you realize what you did wrong and fix it. Lastly, it’s a valuable aid in debugging in general.Here is the process I follow to create reductions:
- Make a copy of your project. If it includes server-side code, then first save the rendered page locally; the rest of the process will be identical from this point on.
- Start removing CSS and JavaScript files. Eventually, you’ll find that removing one makes the problem go away. Add that one back and remove the others (except any files it depends on). In some rare cases, you might find that the bug persists even after removing all CSS and JavaScript code. In these cases, the bug is more than likely HTML-related.
- Now you need to find the exact code in the file that triggers the problem. Start commenting out parts of the code until the problem goes away (being careful not to introduce any new problems in the process). I find that the quickest way to do this is like doing a binary search: first, comment out around half of the code; if the bug persists, then remove that code and comment out half of the remaining code, and so on; if the bug disappears, then remove the uncommented code and proceed with that. You might find that deleting and undoing is quicker than commenting and uncommenting. Sometimes you have to do this process twice in the same file, because some bugs can be reproduced only with a particular combination of different code parts.
- Put the remaining CSS and JavaScript code inline by transferring it from the external file to a
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