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Sergio Pereira

There are no half-solutions because there isn't half a problem

Don't be sloppy in your scripts

For a few weeks now, every time I try to logoff from my home banking website something bad happens. See screenshot below.

Firebug opens unexpectedly
There's a frigging debugger; statement in the live production site
The logoff process hangs until I press F8 in Firebug or the continue button
All my information is still on the screen. Imagine if I had just clicked Sign Off and left my desk.

When I saw this for the first time I though: wow, some developer will be slapped for that (actually there are some developer names in the file,) but it seems that nobody else has a debugger enabled or they just hate their clients that are also web developers. The "bug" has been there for at least 2 weeks now.

Even if you don't care for customers that happen to have a debugger like myself, leaving that kind of thing in your production environment immediately projects an image of sloppiness that is the last thing I want to have with my home banking.

Update 11/24/2008: That script was fixed sometime over this past weekend.

Published Nov 14 2008, 12:05 PM by sergiopereira

Filed under: Development

Comments

Jeff W said:

This doesn't shock me at all. There is so much bad or sloppy scripting out there it is crazy. I'm constantly getting debug error to the point where I often turn the option of when I'm just browsing and not coding.

# November 14, 2008 4:17 PM

sergiopereira said:

@Jeff

I don't get these type of errors often but I can certainly believe there are many things like that out there - probably much worse things.

What surprises me is that in this case we are not talking about some random startup or personal site. Maybe I'm just giving too much credit to my bank (was that a pun?).

# November 14, 2008 4:25 PM

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# November 15, 2008 9:38 PM

Daniel said:

I just tried the same thing, worked fine for me. Firebug is defniitly set to debug scripts, too.

# November 17, 2008 9:31 AM

sergiopereira said:

@Daniel. Funny, I've tried it earlier today and still got that problem. My account became BofA when they acquired my previous bank. Maybe they still have some logic there to support these different types of accounts, who knows... Check if you have that debugger; line in the file cmdatatagutils.js as shown in the image.

# November 17, 2008 9:45 AM

norm said:

i don't know if this will make a difference, but they have some steps you are supposed to follow to set up Firefox to use the online banking system...

Firefox

1. Clear your cache

Go to Tools in the browser’s menu

Select Options and then Advanced

From the Network tab, under “Cache”, click Clear Now

2. a. Delete Bank of America cookies

Go to the main Start button in the Windows menu

Select Search and then For Files or Folders…

Enter bankofamerica.com in the “Search for files or folders named” box

Select Local Hard Drives (C:) for the “Look in” box and click Search Now

Once all Bank of America cookies have displayed, select Edit from the Search Results window menu and then Select All

All cookies will be highlighted. Click the Delete button on your keyboard to delete all the cookies.

b. Delete cookies

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Privacy

Click Show Cookies...

Select a particular site from the list and click Remove Cookies to delete cookies from that site, or click Remove All Cookies to delete cookies from all the sites in the list

3. Check your popup blocker

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Content

Make sure “Block pop-up windows” is selected and then click Exceptions

Add www.bankofamerica.com to “Address of web site” area and click Allow

4. Clear private data

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Privacy

Select “Ask me before clearing private data” and click Clear Now...

In the Clear Private Data popup window, select the following: Browsing History; Download History; Saved Form and Search History; Cache; Cookies; Saved Passwords; and Authenticated Sessions

Click Clear Private Data Now

5. Allow add-ons

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Security

Select “Warn me when sites try to install add-ons” and click Exceptions

Enter www.bankofamerica.com in the “Address of web site” box and click Allow and then Close

6. Clear passwords

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Security

Click Show Passwords..., then click Remove All, then click Close

7. Check your protocols

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Advanced

From the Encryption tab, under “Protocols”, select both Use SSL 3.0 and Use TLS 1.0 and then click OK

8. Turn off Auto-Detect

Go to View in the browser's menu

Select Character Encoding

Make sure Auto-Detect is off

9. Check languages

Go to Tools in the browser's menu

Select Options and then Advanced

From the General tab, under “Languages”, click the Choose... button

Select English and click OK

# November 17, 2008 5:52 PM

sergiopereira said:

@Norm. Wow, those are very thorough instructions, thanks. Unfortunately none of them deal with the debugging support in the browser.

I just tried on Firefox on a Mac and the same thing happens. That darn "debugger;" statement is there, stops everything and Firebug opens.

# November 17, 2008 7:06 PM

GR Brot said:

Perhaps the latest versions of Firebug have a failsafe as I only get the debugger on local files. As soon as I publish them to the web and access them with http://... then the debugger no longer kicks in.

# November 19, 2008 4:22 PM

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