Life is grand

Code coverage tools for Javascript are thin on the ground. In fact, I have only found one - JavaScript Coverage Validator - and it isn’t even out of closed beta yet.

Am I to think that all those millions of lines of Javascript out there on all those Web 2.0 sites that espouse agile practies with TDD influences don’t have code coverage? Sure, some may have unit testing but unit testing without code coverage is a less than ideal situation. You simply don’t know if you have tested all functions and all paths in your functions. Unit testing and code coverage go hand in hand, they back each other up.

Do you have a solution to code coverage for your Javascript?

I don’t often read technical books but thought the thin, interesting and good looking Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug would be a good read. A few hours later all the good reviews were proven right. This is an excellent book for everybody involved in user interface design, especially for websites. It is short and too the point with a very friendly tone that is not patronising. It covers a lot of common sense and a lot of usability you may have already read by the likes of Jakob Nielsen and others. But it does it in a thorough and consistent fashion that is well worth reading again.

It also goes a bit into usability testing. Getting people to sit down and test your products. What I really found interesting was how Steve pushed the idea of testing early and often. This reminds me of agile programming and even seems to complement it. Get people in to do usability testing of your product on a regular basis and without the usual usability testing overhead. Not too serious but still useful is the tone he advises. It got me thinking that we could easily fit it into our two-week iteration development cycle and use it for feedback and priority setting.

Hopefully after a few months I’ll be able to report back on how that goes.

Do give the book a read. It is quick and easy but imparts a lot of good information.

Just a quick one before a longer “Rails Continuous Integration” post but if you are trying to get Cerberus to work on Windows then after the gem install you have to set an environment variable yourself. Create one called CERBERUS_HOME with a value of C:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\cerberus-0.1.1