Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
ll talk about next in this
chapter), quality control is a step that some developers (and even
companies) choose to skip for some reason. The unfortunate
choice that is sometimes made against quality control is one that
can cost everyone involved and it can cost them dearly. Imagine if
you created a piece of work and didn
Much like version control (which I
'
'
ttestitevenasingletime.
You
re probably good enough so that one piece of work would be
fine and so would the next 10. However, what if you hadn
'
thad
your morning coffee yet? Or what if you were at the end of an
18 hour work day? You might just miss something and end up
sending your work to the client, bugs and all. Now imagine that
you
did
test your work but because you
'
re so close to the project,
you missed an error and sent it out anyway. The best solution to
all of this is to check your own work and then have someone else
check it again.
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Test Yourself
You should be testing your own work as it progresses and again
after it is complete. Among other things, this testing is another
advantage to aiming ahead of your deadlines. If you finish up with
theanimationandcodingwithtimetospare,youcan(andalways
should)testitoutbeforesendingitontoqualitycontrol.Ifyou
find a bug at this point, that
ll have to fix after you
hand it off (not to mention that you will have helped make the
quality controller
'
sonelessyou
'
sjobalittleeasier).Thefewerbugsyoupassto
quality control and the fewer bugs you have to fix at the end of the
project, the earlier it can be approved to go live and the quicker
everyone can either go home or move on to the next piece of work.
I
'
ll go into more detail on quality control as it pertains to banners
and microsites individually in their respective chapters later on in
the topic. For now though, how about a bit of an overview?
'
TIP
It
s always a good idea to test as you work. Each time you create a new
piece of functionality for a project, don
'
t just test that one piece. Instead,
do at least a quick run through of the project to make sure that your new
functionality didn
'
'
t break other pieces or sections.
The Reason for Quality Control
So what is the focus of quality control? The answer to that ques-
tion is in the first word of the job title itself: quality. The work you
do should be held to the highest standard and quality control is
there to help make sure that it is. By making sure your work stays
within the specifications that have been set and by attempting to
