Notes from the listening bench
These notes come from sittings, not from a catalogue of general advice. Each piece stays with a listener problem we actually had to name: a second attach, a detach that never ran, a scroll trace that drowned the page, a form that submitted itself.
When a click handler fires twice and nobody saw the second attach
A Melbourne enrolment form posted two records because a retired campaign layout still registered a click. The second attach was not on the button anyone was looking at.
12 June 2026
Detach is not the same as “we stopped listening”
Teams often remove a widget and assume its listeners have gone with it. Route changes in an application are where that assumption most often fails.
3 May 2026
Reading scroll listeners without drowning in the trace
Scroll and resize handlers fill a trace quickly. A Melbourne sitting stays useful when we name the surface first and only then sample the fire.
18 April 2026
A Melbourne afternoon with a form that submitted itself
A change listener on a gift-wrap message field fired on every keystroke and, once, posted the cart without a tap. The header’s scroll listener was the quieter finding.
9 March 2026
Capture, bubble, and the order people forget to write down
Fire order is not a style argument. On a shared status page, three resize handlers ran in an order no squad had written down, and one of them hid another’s work.
14 February 2026