It's odd working with IE - Part 2. comma

2. comma makes big difference in IE.
Like most technical people out there, I used to be chased by time. So, it happened from time to time to insert unwanted character by hitting keyboard without notice when I hastily moving around numerous codes. However, IE stop all my script, once, I mistakenly put comma ‘,’ in the declaration of Javascript object as follow;

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var test = {
    abc: new Array(),
    …
    def: function(arg1, arg2) {
    …
    },
    ghl: function(arg3) {
    …
    },
}
…
</script>

Because I prefer use Aptana when editing HTML pages, I did not notice what’s happened. (By the way Aptana does not provide strict error checking when it comes to Javascript) Furthermore, because I usually develop using Firefox under Linux environment, even in the first running test it goes without noticed. (Firefox seemed generous to people like me.) However, when I loaded in IE6 (I only installed IE version 6 in Linux) using sometime later, I was surprised to see that not a single line of Javascript was running from the web page, and no error message was shown.

It is true that I still did not find an editor with perfect syntax or semantic checking, in the market. Furthermore, unfortunately, Unlike C++ or Java, it does not comes with error checking program such as compiler. So, it comfortable to check such error.

There are, however, ways to avoid this pitfall.

a. Using JSLint: just as link does for C program, JSLint can hint erroneous or even under-performing code. Online version can be accessed using http://www.jslint.com/, plug-in version can be found in http://www.rockstarapps.com.
b. Using multiple editor: Just to double check errors that may remain in source code, reviewing code with another editor(editor comes with ATF, Ajax Toolkit Framework, for example) with more rigorous error checking is also helpful.

P.S. By the way, because I’m a heavy user of Eclipse, editor or plug-in is viewed from Eclipse environment.