myDevNotes

Hi!

This post consists on just a little curiosity which I decided to share with you but, hopping that it will maybe make you think a little different, the next time you find a bug on your App…

There has been almost 3 months since we launched South Africa 2010 Soccer Scores.

Today I was reviewing its code and doing some changes because our next planned app will be based on that. Then I was completely surprised when I discovered a little bug that nobody had reported neither we had never noticed!

The little bug is that on the “About” tab of our App:

SA2010SS - About screen tab

the link that I marked with yellow on the above screen-shot is WRONG!

Why is it wrong? Because it should link to: “http://xphone.me/sa2010ss” instead of “http://xphone.me/wcs2010“.

That happened for a reason that I’ll also share with you…

The wrong link was because our original submitted App name was “World Cup Scores 2010” but due to the possibility of some FIFA legal copyright/trademarks infringement with the expression “World Cup”, we had to change it at the last hour, to the final name “South Africa 2010 Soccer Scores”.

In order to maintain the coherence we had also changed our original web page about that App, from the “http://xphone.me/wcs2010” URL to the new one “http://xphone.me/sa2010ss“.

Well it seems we updated all the image assets but we forgot that little link on the “About” tab!

Today when I discovered it, the first thought on my head was to correct the code and update the App on the App Store. That would be simple but why should I do that if probably almost nobody will update this App since the World Cup had already finished quite a long time. Simple conclusion: it is not worth the effort!

But because I don’t like to known that there are some living bugs on my code and I would like that if someone click on that link he/she can reach our web page and not a blank error page, I thought a little more on this issue and then I realized, the solution was even simpler… I had just created a simple “index.html” page on “http://xphone.me/wcs2010” that redirects the users the right page! And now the insect is killed! 🙂

Disclaimer: I have nothing against real bugs! 😉

Well, this post doesn’t teach you anything special but I think it can give you an useful message:

• the obvious solution is not always the best choice!

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By the way, if you want to know a little more about SA2010SS, read my old post: “My first iPhone App on the App Store! 🙂“.