Results tagged “newhopeks.org”

Most of my readers will probably consider the above to be self evident, but I'm mostly ranting about a specific bug I've encountered with the Google Maps API map I've put together for my church web site, newhopeks.org.

Try viewing that page in MSIE (5.5+ please, since that's what Google supports) and see what you get. (Well, it might be fixed by the time you read this, but if not...) If you're lucky, it'll just work. If you're not lucky, you got a box saying:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.newhopeks.org/map

Operation aborted.

If you're especially unlucky, when you clicked OK, it took you to a page saying "The page cannot be displayed." (This error comes up even though you could see the map and everything up until you clicked OK.)

So, what's the problem? It turns out that if you have some JavaScript (the language Google Maps is written in) and you use a technology called DOM to manipulate the page (which Google Maps does) and you put the script in a <script/> tag inside of a <div/> tag or a table, MSIE freaks out some large percentage of time. I haven't even gotten the error consistently even on the same machine. This is complete idiocy. There's no way an error like this should have made it into production software and if it did, it should have been found and patched ages ago. This is what regression testing is for. Especially since this is a very well known error (just google for ""Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site" "Operation aborted"" if you don't believe me).

The moral of the story is, don't use Internet Explorer. I recommend Firefox or Apple Safari or Opera or any of the Mozilla-based alternatives (except for Netscape as AO-Hell has ruined it).

Oh, well. Being the web developer who has to make his stuff work everywhere, I now I have to figure out how to move my script out of all the <div/> tags that make up the New Hope theme...

Well, this isn't much of a brag, but I have had the opportunity to play with the new Google Maps API. We've had some nifty map ideas for church and I've started putting together a map for us.

Right now, all it shows is three markers: one for where we meet (Flint Hills Christian School), one for our church office on Poyntz, and one for our undeveloped land on Scenic Avenue. Not very exciting. However, I plan to eventually add a way of marking addresses on the map so that when there's an event or announcement with an address, that can be made into a link that's then geocoded on the map. There will also be a special map to show where various small groups meet with popup links taking you to each group's summary page, pictures, etc.

As I said, not much of a brag, but it's surprisingly easy to play with (only 5 lines of JS code and 2 lines of HTML and you're off running) and pretty fun for being JavaScript.