Best Practices in Rev development

[Shari]

>The list is at <http://revolution.byu.edu/design/bestpractices.html>
>
>I'm interested in anyone's thoughts about them.
>
>Are they helpful?
>Could some of them inadvertently cause problems down the road?
>Have I left something important out?

on Thoughts

Name all objects:  Absolutely!  Even using an ID can come back and 
bite you later.  There are situations where even that can change. 
For example, you inadvertently copy and object without realizing it. 
You discover this later, and delete one of the two.  If you delete 
the one whose ID you used in a script, OOPS!  I know there are other 
cases where an ID would change.

Comment your scripts:  Agree again.  Sometimes naming the handler to 
match isn't enough, especially with a long script.  One thing I do 
with very long scripts with many if's and repeat loops nested, is to 
comment the beginning and ending of an IF or REPEAT, in order to 
match them up.  I've got scripts where it's nearly impossible to 
figure out which END goes with which beginning.  And if you're trying 
to troubleshoot, having things well labeled can be a lifesaver.

Cross platform issues:  There are many more issues than text and 
colors.  Option buttons appear so much differently that I had to 
force one program to use a particular look and feel on every 
platform.  There were no button style choices that looked and behaved 
as desired on all platforms.  Preference locations and permissions 
issues are vastly different.  My Mac users almost never bump into 
permissions issues, but my Windows users are constantly encountering 
this, so I've had to change how I save anything on Windows.  So check 
your stack on several computers to make sure it saves data properly 
to whatever text files, preference files, or stacks you have with 
changing data.  Creating desktop shortcuts is also handled 
differently depending on the platform.  Too many differences to 
recall at 1 a.m. :-)

Another cross platform issue:  Consider the screen size, and how the 
menus will vary from platform to platform in relation to affecting 
your available screen real estate.  So choose a stack size 
accordingly.  Remember that Macs will have not only a Mac menubar, 
but the dock as well, affecting your available territory.  If you 
want your stack to completely fill the screen, don't use a menubar, 
use buttons in the stack window.

BIGGEST cross platform issue:  Don't hard code your file paths for 
preference file locations!  If you do, they might work today, but 
tomorrow they will break, guaranteed.  How many folks ever hardcoded 
the path to C/Program Files or something similar?  With all the 
Windows permissions issues, as well as issues for other countries 
systems being slightly different, always use Rev's built in 
specialFolderPath().

end Thoughts
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