Kilg.us – Fantasy Stat Tracker …Tracker

Over the last couple weeks, I have received numerous emails from people having trouble signing-in to their accounts. With a little digging I was able to find a consistent theme: they were all using Internet Explorer 8 or 9.

Specifically what was happening was that a person would type their existing username into the sign-in form and would then be prompted to create an account. As everyone is probably aware, Kilg.us uses the same form for logging in and signing up. If you enter an existing username, it asks you to log-in. If you enter a username that doesn’t exist, it asks you to sign-up.

To manage this functionality, Kilg.us generates an AJAX request after you enter your username then move focus to the password field. This is creates a “change” event on the username field. When that event happens, Kilg.us asks the database whether the username you entered exists. The database returns a response in the form of XML. The XML has one message: the username is valid (it exists in the database) or it is invalid (it doesn’t exist in the database).

Once the XML response is returned, some JavaScript parses it to read whether it says “valid” or “invalid”. If the value is “invalid” the form asks you to create an account. The JavaScript to read this follows standard practices to navigate the document object model (DOM) and find the value in question. This works in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Konqueror, Mobile Safari, Opera, Android Browser, Blackberry Browser, etc., etc. Apparently, how Internet Explorer handles the XML is different. It doesn’t create all the parameters that the standard approach would.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

What I ultimately found is that Internet Explorer will parse the value out and save it in a “text” parameter for the XML object. Rather than navigating the DOM in a standard fashion, I’m now taking a shortcut and checking if that “text” parameter exists on the XML object. If it does, I read it in as the returned value. If it doesn’t (obviously, all the other browsers to generate this rogue parameter), I continue to navigate the tree and get the value in the proper manner. This only works because the only value of the XML is the “valid” or “invalid” message.

The end result: the log-in/sign-up form logic should now be working again in IE. And still working in every other browser. If you find that not to be the case, please let me know (comment, email, Facebook, Tweet).

While clicking through my team stats today on Kilg.us, I noticed that the stats display layer seemed to be out of date. After a little investigation, I found that the XML feed for the stats had not been updated since June 16. A little more digging turned up what looks like a change in the way MLB is storing their data. The format of the data itself seems to be the same, but they moved its home on the server. After updating the path to the data, all seems to be well and cumulative stats are up-to-date again.

In other news, I resolved an issue that yesterday’s IE7 “fixes” introduced. In the mega-drop-down, the new JavaScript set a negative top-margin for IE browsers. Turns out IE8 is enough better than IE7 for this to be a problem. So that method has been updated to only apply the margin to Internet Explorer version 7.

And lastly, some new language throughout the site. The Account Info page now displays an alert message if the User’s profile is set to Public but they don’t have a first or last name defined. Obviously it is difficult to find people in a search if you can’t search on their name(s). The new language encourages the inclusion of a name to help other Users in their searches. The Account Info and Sign-up pages now also have note text added to the password sections indicating that passwords must be at least 6 characters long. Previously the only way to know this would be to enter a password that was too short and try to submit it. At that point an alert would pop-up identifying the shortcoming. Now the User is informed up front.

While testing a new User account, I noticed that the Kilg.us page layout was “blown-out”–spreading across the entire page–if a User had zero or 1 teams associated with their account. This was an error in the nesting of the logic in the new team selection mega-drop down. This should be resolved for all pages.

In hopes of better regression testing in the future, I’ve defined a new test User account that only has 1 team associated with it so I can test changes with what is probably the most common use case. Kind of seems like a no-brainer…not sure why I wasn’t doing it before.

Today’s work continued to focus on improving the sign-up process. I included more instructional information in the form of a 4-step flow diagram on the home page which links to a new How it Works page. This new page walks through Signing Up, Creating a Team, Adding Players, Tracking Stats, and Selecting Stats. Hopefully the new thumbnail screenshots will make the application feel more accessible to potential Users and encourage them to join and offer feedback on the tool.

The biggest outcome of today’s work, though, was my renewed realization of how bad I suck at Photoshop. I’ve never been good at computer illustration and it’s painfully obvious. If anyone out there has a graphic thumb and wants to help on Kilg.us, shoot me a line.

It is now possible to sign up for an account on the Fantasy Stat Tracker, build your team, and track your stats! I’ve finished the functionality just in the last few minutes, so there is A LOT of work yet to do–rough edges to smooth, data to validate, workflows to finesse. But…the basic functionality works! There is no warning if your email duplicates an existing one (it will fail silently and won’t create your account). It also isn’t checking whether user names exist already, so it’s possible to duplicate users. That means down the road I might flush the database to get rid of crap data. So, if you sign up now, I don’t promise I won’t erase your account as development continues. I’ll try not to, though.

I was able to create an account and build a 25-man roster in less than 5 minutes. Please, give it a shot, and let me know what you think. Please post comments on the Fantasy Stat Tracker back to this blog post.

Enjoy!