href="#" ==> href="#todo"
I'd like to promote a change to the habit of using '#' as the placeholder for a the url of a new hyperlink when you don't yet know where it'll link to: instead set the href to "#todo". This follows the //todo pattern recognised for unfinished code, and means you can now search your codebase for any links you forgot to finish off.
<a href="#">new link</a>
becomes
<a href="#todo">new link</a>
eg: new link becomes new link
Give all these links an alert with the following (cheers to unknown in the comments)
It will also give clues to any sharp-eyed testers / users that they should report a bug for you as the url will change to #todo when the unfinished link is clicked. It can often be seen in the status bar too.Give all these links an alert with the following (cheers to unknown in the comments)
$("a[href=#todo]").click(function () { alert('Not implemented yet.') });This has the handy side-effect of avoiding the annoying jump to the top of the page that is the default behaviour when you click on a # link that's a placeholder.
For bonus points another little trick I like is to add a click handler with an alert to make it really obvious to any early users / testers that this is not done yet, and I've found this saves a lot of questions when you genuinely haven't finished, and also guarantees a quick bug report when you should have (not that I ever forget any of course :-D)
<a href="#">new link</a>
becomes
<a href="#todo" onclick="alert('Not Implemented');">new link</a>Simple and effective.
If you agree, please help spread the word. Perhaps by retweeting my tweet
P.S. This goes hand in hand with a technique of picking points during development at which there should be no todo's left in your codebase with the exception of those with references to outstanding user story / bug numbers. I suggest before marking a user story as done, and at the end of each sprint as good points to review all todos in your codebase.
Further reading:
2 comments:
Nice idea - but instead of putting the onclick specifically in each element, you could use jQuery (or, well, any other method you choose) to put a listener on that link's click event:
$("a[href='#todo').click(...);
@Unknown, love it, thanks for the excellent suggestion I shall use that in future.
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