Author Archives: Meg McGinty
An Intro to Resolving Duplicate Results in SQL Queries
I recently reviewed a SQL query that was returning duplicate results. Since I expected, and needed, a single result from the query this was a problem. Here’s an explanation of why this bug occurred, and several different ways it can be resolved.
Zend DB Config.ini for Oracle DB options
Anyone who has worked much with the Zend framework much will be familiar with the framework’s reliance on config files. I recently worked on a project where I needed to set some database configurations in a Zend config file and it took me some time to figure out the correct syntax for them.
Lessons Learned from My First HTML5 Video implementation
I recently had the opportunity to implement an HTML5 video for a client. It was the first time I’d really worked with HTML5 video, and I ran into a few issues and quirks I thought I’d share for other developers who run into these issues.
1. HTML5 video with a fallback to Flash works really well. The opposite doesn’t work as well.
At first I started implementing my video in Flash with a fallback to HTML5 – not for any special reason, but only because a previous developer had implemented another of the client’s videos that way and I followed the pattern already set. I soon discovered that although this works fine for a video that just plays in a fairly static page, it wasn’t ideal for the kind of video I was implementing, which required some custom controls and interactions with other elements on the page. I first thought that the best way to handle this would be with a try / catch, but since my flash took a little bit of time to load, I would often get an exception when calling a flash function, even though the flash was ultimately playable. The real crux of the problem was that in an HTML5 to Flash fallback implementation, the flash code doesn’t even exist as far as the browser is concerned unless HTML5 is not supported – in which case the <video> tags don’t exist. The user can only ever interact with the HTML5 video or with the Flash – never with both. If you implement it the opposite way, BOTH Flash and HTML5 video exist on the page, potentially leading to a situation where the user is interacting with both videos. Once I found myself writing code to catch and prevent these weird interactions, I decided this was the wrong way to go. The HTML5 to Flash fallback is the way this code is meant to be implemented, and leads to the cleanest implementation.
A Quick Reference on Box-Shadows
Every few months I come across the need to add shadows to frontends, and it seems each time I have to go back and look up how these things work. I always take to the internet for a brush up on box shadows, but I seem to find more information than I’m looking for – I just want a quick cheat sheet, not the War and Peace of box-shadowing. So here’s the cheat sheet I’ll be using from now on to create the shadows I need.
Running A Good Scrum
Whether or not they follow other precepts of Agile development, many software companies have implemented some form of a ‘scrum’ – a short daily stand-up in which team members report on their current progress. A well run scrum can be an extremely valuable communication asset for team members. A poorly run scrum can be an annoying and time consuming hassle that turns teams off of scrum. And even though teams are supposed to be “self-organizing”, in my experience a good scrummaster is always important for a good scrum outcome. Below I’ve outlined a few common problems for scrums, and things the scrummaster can do to keep things on track.