Custom styled form elements are a common thing to see in a design. That’s because default form styles vary visually from browser to browser and OS to OS. It makes sense that we’d want these elements styled consistently. Styling them is pretty straightforward, with the exception of select dropdowns which can be more complex. Recently, I ran into an unexpected problem when working on a site that needed a branded admin experience.

"If you're not testing, you're doing it wrong." I can't remember how many times I've heard those words. Each time, I'd feel a little pang of guilt, a little bit of shame that every day, I wrote code for myself and clients that wasn't tested. I'd be frustrated with the developers who repeated that mantra. Sure, it was easy to say, but hard to live up to. How do I test? What do I test? Should I test? How would I justify the costs?

As a programmer, I spend almost all my time hanging out with code. This code may be my own, other co-workers’, or code from an open source project. And I may be contributing this code at different points in that project's lifecycle: starting out, initial development, maintenance, debugging, adding new features, etc. Given the amount of time I have been working on various projects as a programmer, I spend more time – and place more value on – considerations around the ability for anyone to step into this code and maintain it, debug it, or refactor it.