ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 19. Debugging

So far we’ve explored a lot of techniques and also the syntax to accomplish many goals. Inevitably, however, when you begin writing your own ActionScript, you’ll encounter innumerable errors (especially at first when you are still making syntax and conceptual errors). Do not lose heart! Even experienced programmers spend a lot of time debugging (fixing broken code).

It is important that you test your product thoroughly so that you can find the bugs in the first place. This means testing in various browser brands and versions of those brands on all platforms that you intend to support. Test under different flavors of Windows and, if applicable, older versions of the Flash plug-in, which you can find at:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/oldplayers.htm

A discussion of testing and quality assurance (QA) is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice to say that you should have a testing and QA process in place and a bug report form on which you can receive reports with sufficient detail (such as the platform, browser version, Flash plug-in version, and reproducible steps) for you to reproduce the error, which is the first step toward fixing it.

Debugging is an essential part of programming and what sets great programmers apart from average ones. Beginners are often happy if a bug that was seen earlier inexplicably disappears. Experienced programmers know that the bug will undoubtedly resurface at the most inopportune time, and although it is intermittent ...