In recent weeks, we’ve spent a decent amount of time trying to improve the developer experience when a widget encounters errors. This applies both when submitting your widget as well as when your widget experiences issues at runtime.

Submission

Now when you submit for either test or real gallery submission, we give you a much better targeted error message. For example, if your identifier is not formatted properly, we’ll tell you exactly that. If your icon is not present in your bundle, or the Images folder is not there, we tell you in simple language.

Runtime Errors

Now, if your widget fails to parse due to it either being malformed XML, or perhaps you are using the language improperly, we’ll give you a much nicer error message pointing to the exact line where the error occurred. It should be much easier to locate the issue and fix it now.

Debug Options

You can now see the source of Widget pages that you submit for Test submission. At the bottom of your page, you’ll see an option which is automatically added so you can view your page source.

We’re hoping this will help you make much faster progress writing your widgets by not having to waste your time tracking down what our error messages actually mean.

If you still see errors that seem to be vague, or got you stuck for a while because it wasn’t telling you what you thought it should be, please let us know on our Developer Group site.

In the next few weeks, we plan to make a few changes to our language and introduce at least one new element. I’ll post here when these changes are ready for you to use and enjoy.