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  • Why and when should I make a class 'static'? What is the purpose of 'static' keyword on classes?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    The static keyword on a member in many languages mean that you shouldn't create an instance of that class to be able to have access to that member. However, I don't see any justification to make an entire class static. Why and when should I make a class static? What benefits do I get from making a class static? I mean, after declaring a static class, one should still declare all members which he/she wants to have access to without instantiation, as static too. This means that for example, Math class could be declared normal (not static), without affecting how developers code. In other words, making a class static or normal is kind of transparent to developers.

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  • When to mark a user story as done in scrum?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    There is a notion in scrum that emphasizes delivery of workable units at the end of each sprint. Each workable unit also maps directly of indirectly to a user story and when in new sprint PO introduces new PBI (new user stories), this means that practically team can't always go back to previous user stories to do the rest of the job, which in turn means that when you implement a user story, you should do it as complete as it's known to the team in that time, and you shouldn't forget anything (something like "I'm sorry, I've forgotten to implement validation for that input control" or "I didn't know that cross-browser check is part of the user story"). At the other hand, test, backward compatibility, acceptance criteria, deployment and more and more concepts come after each user story. So, when can team members know that the user story is done completely, not just for demo, and start a new one?

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  • Make Google Plus One only work for the domain and not the path [closed]

    - by Saeed Neamati
    Possible Duplicate: Make Google +1 button +1 a specific URL rather than the URL it's on? I'm creating an image sharing website, and since it's going to have many thousand links, then it's almost impossible to put a Google Plus One button in my site. Plus one is an indication of site's popularity and trust. You follow a link in SERP, because you see that somebody that you know has already plused one that link. So, you trust that link and click it. The more plus a page get, the more trustworthy it becomes. Sites which has simple static pages can get many plus ones, but sites like mine (dynamic sites with thousands of links) can't aggregate plus ones in one page. Is there any way to tell Google that I only want the Plus Ones to be counted for the domain only, and not for the path? In other words, how can I transfer a plus one given to the http://example.com/tag1-tag2/2525 to plus ones given to the http://example.com? Is it possible at all?

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  • Website URL layout & structure for SEO & PR

    - by Junaid Saeed
    i have already mastered the skills of building a page to comply with SEO requirements. What i want to do is customize the URL based parameters for best SEO & PR. I run wallpapers blog wallz which provides different resolution desktop wallpapers I am thinking about expanding the site to provide wallpapers for multiple devices like iphone, android, pc etc etc My goal is to provide users ease by detecting their devices and directing them to the relative portion of site, keeping that in mind also keep my URLs in a SEO friendly manner. i have the following two options for my URL structure wallpapers.com \ iphone \ **or** iphone . wallpapers . com wallpapers.com \ galaxyS3 \ **or** galaxys3 . wallpapers . com subdomain or subfolders, which one is a better option, i will separate interfaces for ever subdomain\subfolder basing on the specific device. And after this the URL structure will be like wallpapers.com \ galaxyS3 \ Cars \ Ferrai 550 . html galaxys3.wallpapers.com \ Cars \ Ferrai 550 . html what is the better way for me to proceed in

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  • different data with same title and keywords

    - by Junaid Saeed
    here is my scenario i have a website where i redirect my users basing upon the device they were using, lets say a user is visiting from an iPad, i take him directly to the page of iPad wallpapers, the user selects iPad version & i take the user to the gallery of wallpapers where the user can select & download any wallpaper. Every wallpaper is the required resolution, i have my reasons for doing this, now the thing is there are diff. resolution. versions of an image appearing one 5 diff. sections of my website, each having their own view page Now there is only one record in db.table for the image, and basing on the my consistent naming convention of the images, i pick the required image. this means when 5 different pages are generated in 5 categorized sections of the website, due to a shared DB record, the keywords, the titles and every single detail of the 5 pages is same besides the resolution of the image, and the section specific details that the page has and yeah the pages also have different paths like wallpapers.com\ipad-1\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-2\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-3\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-4\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-5\cars\Ferrari-dino.html now this is my scenario, How do Search Engines see it and how do they rank it? Is it a Good or Normal or Bad SEO practice? If bad how dangerous it is for my sites SEO? i need your comments on my scenario.

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  • A mechanism to include site title in every page, but not in <title> element

    - by Saeed Neamati
    Each site can have a name. For example, site x. Each page also can have a name (or a title) that should appear in <title> tag in the header. However, many websites out there use the combination site name - page name to provide the value for <title> tag. I find it a little far from being semantic. On the other hand, if you only include page title in <title> tag, search engines won't find your site by its name. For example, if your site's name is Thought Results and you don't include it in page titles, then if you search for Thought Results, you won't find your site in SERPs. Thus I'm searching for a mechanism to both include site title (not page title) in every page, and also only include page title in <title> tag to get more semantic results. Is there any way to achieve this?

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  • A good substitute for ASMX web service methods, but not a general handler

    - by Saeed Neamati
    The best thing I like about ASP.NET MVC, is that you can directly call a server method (called action), from the client. This is so convenient, and so straightforward, that I really like to implement such a model in ASP.NET WebForms too. However, in ASP.NET WebForms, to call a server method from the client, you should either use Page Methods, or Web Services, both of which use SOAP as their communication protocol (though JSON can also be used). There is also another substitution, which is using Generic Handlers. The problem with them however is that, a separate Generic Handler should be written for each server method. In other words, each Generic Handler works like a simple method. Is there anyway else to imitate MVC model in ASP.NET WebForms? Please note that I can't change to MVC platform right now, cause the project at our hand is a big project and we don't have required resources and time to change our platform. What we seek, is a simple MVC model implementation for our AJAX calls. A problem that we have with Web Services, is the known problem of SoapException, and we're not interested in creating custom SoapExctensions.

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  • Is it possible to know impressions of other websites?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    Google Webmasters's dashboard gives you a big number which is called impressions, and by definition that I've seen in Google Analytics, it means the total number of times your site has been become eligible for SERPs. I just don't have an idea how to invest on this number, and how much its increase or decrease mean to me, because I can't compare it with other websites. I mean, if the impressions of say site a.com is 150,000, and mine is 50,000, then maybe I can confer that I need to triple my efforts to reach to a.com. But by seeing 50,000 alone I have no clue at all of how to interpret it. Is there any service or other way to know about the impressions Google gives to other sites?

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  • What are the boundaries of the product owner in scrum?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    In another question, I asked about why I feel scrum turns active developers into passive developers, and it seems that the overall problem is not scrumy (related to scrum), and rather it's related to the bad implementation of scrum. So, here I have some questions about the scope of the responsibilities of PO (product owner) and the limitations he/she shouldn't pass. Should PO interfere the UI design, when there are designers at work in scrum team? (an example of this which has happened to us, is to replace checkboxes with a drop down list with two items, namely, yes and no; or to make some boxes larger, or to left-align some content instead of centering them on the page, or stuff like that). If yeah, to what extent? Colors? Layout? Should PO interfere in Design and architecture of coding? This hasn't happened to us yet, but I'm really curious about the boundaries. For example does PO has the right to change the platform (moving from ASP.NET MVC to PHP, or something like that), or choosing the count of servers (tier architecture), etc. Should PO interfere in validation mechanisms? For example, this field should be required, or we don't need to get this piece of information from user. Sometimes, analyzers and designers confirm that something can be handled behind the scene, like extracting the user profile info from another source, instead of asking for it in UI. How granular could/should PO get into the analysis and design? For example, a user story might be: "As a customer, I'd like to be able to buy new domains online". However, scrum team can implement this user story in a wizard of five steps, or in one single page. To which level PO should monitor, or govern, or supervise the technical analysis, design, and implementation? I asked these questions to judge whether our implementation is right or wrong?

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  • Using RTL languages with MS Office in Wine 1.4

    - by saeed hardan
    I've installed MS Office 2007 in Ubuntu 12.04 using Wine 1.4 with no problems, and it works fine with the English Language. However, I need to use it to work with Arabic and Hebrew, and it doesn't work when I switch to a Hebrew or Arabic keyboard. The typing gets reversed. I saw an earlier post for something similar, but it is closed and I think it was for the earlier Wine 1.3. Supposedly Wine 1.4 has added RTL -- is there a way to get it working?

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  • How to guide stakeholder(s) not to get far from the scrum vision?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    Consider this scenario: Stakeholder(s): Let's build a web application to manage user's financial data. Scrum team: Ok, let's do it. . . . After 3 sprints Stakeholder(s): Let's also implement a mailing system, so that when user's financial status is not good, (s)he would be warned. Scrum team: Ok, it's not that hard. We'll do it. . . . After 5 sprints Stakholder(s): Let's become a mailing provider. Here, how should scrum team guide stakeholder to stay inside the scope of scrum vision? Maybe a more fundamental question is, should the at all? Update: Of course there is a product owner. But by scrum team I meant PO, SM, and Team.

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  • How to Enable JavaScript file API in IE8 [closed]

    - by saeed
    i have developed a web application in asp.net , there is a page in this project which user should choose a file in picture format (jpeg,jpg,bmp,...) and i want to preview image in the page but i don't want to post file to server i want to handle it in client i have done it with java scripts functions via file API but it only works in IE9 but most of costumers use IE8 the reason is that IE8 doesn't support file API is there any way to make IE8 upgrade or some patches in code behind i mean that check if the browser is IE and not support file API call a function which upgrades IE8 to IE9 automatically. i don't want to ask user to do it in message i want to do it programmatic !! even if it is possible install a special patch that is required for file API because customers thought it is a bug in my application and their computer knowledge is low what am i supposed to do with this? i also use Async File Upload Ajax Control But it post the file to server any way with ajax solution and http handler but java scripts do it all in client browser!!! following script checks the browser supports API or not <script> if (window.File && window.FileReader && window.FileList && window.Blob) document.write("<b>File API supported.</b>"); else document.write('<i>File API not supported by this browser.</i>'); </script> following scripts do the read and Load Image function readfile(e1) { var filename = e1.target.files[0]; var fr = new FileReader(); fr.onload = readerHandler; fr.readAsText(filename); } HTML code: <input type="file" id="getimage"> <fieldset><legend>Your image here</legend> <div id="imgstore"></div> </fieldset> JavaScript code: <script> function imageHandler(e2) { var store = document.getElementById('imgstore'); store.innerHTML='<img src="' + e2.target.result +'">'; } function loadimage(e1) { var filename = e1.target.files[0]; var fr = new FileReader(); fr.onload = imageHandler; fr.readAsDataURL(filename); } window.onload=function() { var x = document.getElementById("filebrowsed"); x.addEventListener('change', readfile, false); var y = document.getElementById("getimage"); y.addEventListener('change', loadimage, false); } </script>

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  • From TFS to Git

    - by Saeed Neamati
    I'm a .NET developer and I've used TFS (team foundation server) as my source control software many times. Good features of TFS are: Good integration with Visual Studio (so I do almost everything visually; no console commands) Easy check-out, check-in process Easy merging and conflict resolution Easy automated builds Branching Now, I want to use Git as the backbone, repository, and source control of my open source projects. My projects are in C#, JavaScript, or PHP language with MySQL, or SQL Server databases as the storage mechanism. I just used github.com's help for this purpose and I created a profile there, and downloaded a GUI for Git. Up to this part was so easy. But I'm almost stuck at going along any further. I just want to do some simple (really simple) operations, including: Creating a project on Git and mapping it to a folder on my laptop Checking out/checking in files and folders Resolving conflicts That's all I need to do now. But it seems that the GUI is not that user friendly. I expect the GUI to have a Connect To... or something like that, and then I expect a list of projects to be shown, and when I choose one, I expect to see the list of files and folders of that project, just like exploring your TFS project in Visual Studio. Then I want to be able to right click a file and select check-in... or check-out and stuff like that. Do I expect much? What should I do to easily use Git just like TFS? What am I missing here?

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  • Why Google asks for "Title" for MIME type "image/*" in Google Webmasters?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    In my Google Webmasters account, in Optimization section, under HTML improvements I see that Google has indexed more than 100 links complaining that these links has no Title associated with them (Missing title tags). However, these links all result in thumbnails of images and they are served as MIME type (Internet Media Type) of "image/png", or "image/jpg", etc. What's wrong here? How should I tell Google that an image can't have a title tag? Note: An example link can be see here.

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  • Google Analytics show zero for "Search Engine Optimizations" graph

    - by Saeed Neamati
    In Google Analytics new design, there is an area related to the queries and impressions related to your site. You can get there by following Traffic Sources = Search Engine Optimization = Queries. However, it now shows zero for the "Site Usage" graph, at the top section, while other areas of Google Analytics definitely show that site has visitors and has been used. No matter how much I search, I can't find the source of the problem. Does anyone know where the problem might be?

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  • Why after each restart, my local .NET sites take time to load for the first time?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    I'm developing sites based on .NET platform. I usually deploy these sites on my local IIS, so that I can test them and see their functionality before going live. However, each time I restart windows, it seems that sites take a long time to run for the first time. I know about JIT and I'm also aware of this question, but it doesn't answer my question. Does JIT happens every time you restart windows? Is it related to creation of w3wp.exe process? Why sites are so slow for the first request after each restart?

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  • Dell wireless not working after upgrade

    - by Omer Saeed
    So, the short version of my sad story is that I tried upgrade Ubuntu to 12.04 and wireless driver has stopped working. I have tried all the solutions but nothing seem to be working. When I try to install my wireless from "Additional Drivers" Its says: Sorry, installation of this driver failed. Please have a look at the log file for details: /var/log/jockey.log The lspci command gives me the following info about wireless: 0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01) I have tried removing bcm drivers and reinstalling, but nothing seems to be working. rfkill is good too.

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  • Should I modify an entity with many parameters or with the entity itself?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    We have a SOA-based system. The service methods are like: UpdateEntity(Entity entity) For small entities, it's all fine. However, when entities get bigger and bigger, to update one property we should follow this pattern in UI: Get parameters from UI (user) Create an instance of the Entity, using those parameters Get the entity from service Write code to fill the unchanged properties Give the result entity to the service Another option that I've experienced in previous experiences is to create semantic update methods for each update scenario. In other words instead of having one global all-encompasing update method, we had many ad-hoc parametric methods. For example, for the User entity, instead of having UpdateUser (User user) method, we had these methods: ChangeUserPassword(int userId, string newPassword) AddEmailToUserAccount(int userId, string email) ChangeProfilePicture(int userId, Image image) ... Now, I don't know which method is truly better, and for each approach, we encounter problems. I mean, I'm going to design the infrastructure for a new system, and I don't have enough reasons to pick any of these approaches. I couldn't find good resources on the Internet, because of the lack of keywords I could provide. What approach is better? What pitfalls each has? What benefits can we get from each one?

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  • SEO - different data with same title and keywords

    - by Junaid Saeed
    here is my scenario i have a website where i redirect my users basing upon the device they were using, lets say a user is visiting from an iPad, i take him directly to the page of iPad wallpapers, the user selects iPad version & i take the user to the gallery of wallpapers where the user can select & download any wallpaper. Every wallpaper is the required resolution, i have my reasons for doing this, now the thing is there are diff. resolution. versions of an image appearing one 5 diff. sections of my website, each having their own view page Now there is only one record in db.table for the image, and basing on the my consistent naming convention of the images, i pick the required image. this means when 5 different pages are generated in 5 categorized sections of the website, due to a shared DB record, the keywords, the titles and every single detail of the 5 pages is same besides the resolution of the image, and the section specific details that the page has and yeah the pages also have different paths like wallpapers.com\ipad-1\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-2\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-3\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-4\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-5\cars\Ferrari-dino.html now this is my scenario, How do Search Engines see it and how do they rank it? Is it a Good or Normal or Bad SEO practice? If bad how dangerous it is for my sites SEO? i need your comments on my scenario.

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  • Should we encourage coding styles in favor of developer's autonomy, or discourage it in favor of consistency?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    A developer writes if/else blocks with one-line code statements like: if (condition) // Do this one-line code else // Do this one-line code Another uses curly braces for all of them: if (condition) { // Do this one-line code } else { // Do this one-line code } A developer first instantiates an object, then uses it: HelperClass helper = new HelperClass(); helper.DoSomething(); Another developer instantiates and uses the object in one line: new HelperClass().DoSomething(); A developer is more easy with arrays, and for loops: string[] ordinals = new string[] {'First', 'Second', 'Third'}; for (i = 0; i < ordinals.Length; i++) { // Do something } Another writes: List<string> ordinals = new List<string>() {'First', 'Second', 'Third'}; foreach (string ordinal in ordinals) { // Do something } I'm sure that you know what I'm talking about. I call it coding style (cause I don't know what it's called). But whatever we call it, is it good or bad? Does encouraging it have an effect of higher productivity of developers? Should we ask developers to try to write code the way we tell them, so to make the whole system become style-consistent?

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  • Any algorithm to dedicate a set of known resources to a set of known requirements (scheduling)

    - by Saeed Neamati
    I'm developing an application to help school principals in dedicating teachers to classes and courses over the hours of a week (scheduling). The scenario is roughly something like this: User enters the list of teachers and their free times into the system User enters the list of courses for this semester User enters the list of available classes into the system Well, up to here, there is no big deal. Just simple CRUD operations and nothing extraordinary. However, now what makes this system useful is that the application should automatically and based on an algorithm create the semester scheduling. I think you've got the main idea here. For example application should suggest that teacher A should go to class 1 for mathematics, and at the same time teacher B should go to class 2 for physics. This way all of the classes would be dedicated to lessons and teacher times won't overlap each other. Piece a cake for school principal. However, I can't find a good algorithm for this resource dedication. I mean it seems hard to me. Searching Google resulted in articles from different websites, but they are of no help and use to me. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_allocation or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduling_(production_processes) Is there any algorithm out there, or any application or engine which can help me here? Does this requirements have a known name, like for example time scheduling engine? Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Why it is called "hash table", or "hash function"? Hash doesn't make any sense to me here

    - by Saeed Neamati
    It's now about 4 years of development that I'm using, hearing, talking about, and implementing hash tables and hash functions. But I really never understand why it's called hash? I remember the first days I started programming, this term was kind'of cumbersome terminology to me. I never figured out what is it, based on its name. I just experimentally understood what it does and why and when should we use it. However, I still sometimes try to figure out why it's called hash. I have no problem with table or function and to be honest, they are pretty deductive, rational terms. However, I think better words could be used instead of hash, like key, or uniqueness. Don't key table or uniqueness table. According to my dictionary, hash means: Fried dish of potato and meats (highly irrelevant) # symbol (AKA number sign, pound sign, etc.) (still irrelevant, maybe just a mis-nomenclature) Apply algorithm to character string (still has nothing to do with uniqueness, which is the most important feature of a hash table) Cut food Another term for hashish Does anyone know why it's called hash?

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  • Interface (contract), Generics (universality), and extension methods (ease of use). Is it a right design?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    I'm trying to design a simple conversion framework based on these requirements: All developers should follow a predefined set of rules to convert from the source entity to the target entity Some overall policies should be able to be applied in a central place, without interference with developers' code Both the creation of converters and usage of converter classes should be easy To solve these problems in C# language, A thought came to my mind. I'm writing it here, though it doesn't compile at all. But let's assume that C# compiles this code: I'll create a generic interface called IConverter public interface IConverter<TSource, TTarget> where TSource : class, new() where TTarget : class, new() { TTarget Convert(TSource source); List<TTarget> Convert(List<TSource> sourceItems); } Developers would implement this interface to create converters. For example: public class PhoneToCommunicationChannelConverter : IConverter<Phone, CommunicationChannle> { public CommunicationChannel Convert(Phone phone) { // conversion logic } public List<CommunicationChannel> Convert(List<Phone> phones) { // conversion logic } } And to make the usage of this conversion class easier, imagine that we add static and this keywords to methods to turn them into Extension Methods, and use them this way: List<Phone> phones = GetPhones(); List<CommunicationChannel> channels = phones.Convert(); However, this doesn't even compile. With those requirements, I can think of some other designs, but they each lack an aspect. Either the implementation would become more difficult or chaotic and out of control, or the usage would become truly hard. Is this design right at all? What alternatives I might have to achieve those requirements?

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  • TechEd Europe early bird saving &ndash; register by 5th July

    - by Eric Nelson
    Another event advert alert :-) But this one comes with a cautious warning. I spoke at TechEd Europe last year. I found TechEd to be a huge, extremely well run conference filled with great speakers and passionate attendees in a top notch venue and fascinating city. As an “IT Pro” I think it is the premiere conference for Microsoft technologies in Europe. However, IMHO and those of others I trust, I didn’t think it hit the mark for developers in 2009. There was a fairly obvious reason – the PDC was scheduled to take place only a couple of weeks later which meant the “powder was being kept dry” and (IMHO) some of the best speakers on developer technologies were elsewhere. But I’m reasonably certain that this won’t be repeated this year (Err… Have I missed an announcement about “no pdc in 2010”?) Enjoy: Register for Tech·Ed Europe by 5 July and Save €500 Tech·Ed Europe returns to Berlin this November 8 – 12, for a full week of deep technical education, hands-on-learning and opportunities to connect with Microsoft and Community experts one-on-one.  Register by 5 July and receive your conference pass for only €1,395 – a €500 savings. Arrive Early and Get a Jumpstart on Technical Sessions Choose from 8 pre-conference seminars led by Microsoft and industry experts, and selected to give you a jumpstart on technical learning.  Additional fees apply.  Conference attendees receive a €100 discount.   Join the Tech·Ed Europe Email List for Event Updates Get the latest event news before the event, and find out more about what’s happening onsite.  Join the Tech·Ed Europe email list today!

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  • Who writes the words? A rant with graphs.

    - by Roger Hart
    If you read my rant, you'll know that I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about user interface text. But rather than just yelling about the way the world should be (short version: no UI text would suck), it seemed prudent to actually gather some data. Rachel Potts has made an excellent first foray, by conducting a series of interviews across organizations about how they write user interface text. You can read Rachel's write up here. She presents the facts as she found them, and doesn't editorialise. The result is insightful, but impartial isn't really my style. So here's a rant with graphs. My method, and how it sucked I sent out a short survey. Survey design is one of my hobby-horses, and since some smartarse in the comments will mention it if I don't, I'll step up and confess: I did not design this one well. It was potentially ambiguous, implicitly excluded people, and since I only really advertised it on Twitter and a couple of mailing lists the sample will be chock full of biases. Regardless, these were the questions: What do you do? Select the option that best describes your role What kind of software does your organization make? (optional) In your organization, who writes the text on your software user interfaces? (for example: button names, static text, tooltips, and so on) Tick all that apply. In your organization who is responsible for user interface text? Who "owns" it? The most glaring issue (apart from question 3 being a bit broken) was that I didn't make it clear that I was asking about applications. Desktop, mobile, or web, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, it might have been interesting to categorize and compare. But a few respondents commented on the seeming lack of relevance, since they didn't really make software. There were some other issues too. It wasn't the best survey. So, you know, pinch of salt time with what follows. Despite this, there were 100 or so respondents. This post covers the overview, and you can look at the raw data in this spreadsheet What did people do? Boring graph number one: I wasn't expecting that. Given I pimped the survey on twitter and a couple of Tech Comms discussion lists, I was more banking on and even Content Strategy/Tech Comms split. What the "Others" specified: Three people chipped in with Technical Writer. Author, apparently, doesn't cut it. There's a "nobody reads the instructions" joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. There were a couple of hybrid roles, including Tech Comms and Testing, which sounds gruelling and thankless. There was also, an Intranet Manager, a Creative Director, a Consultant, a CTO, an Information Architect, and a Translator. That's a pretty healthy slice through the industry. Who wrote UI text? Boring graph number two: Annoyingly, I made this a "tick all that apply" question, so I can't make crude and inflammatory generalizations about percentages. This is more about who gets involved in user interface wording. So don't panic about the number of developers writing UI text. First off, it just means they're involved. Second, they might be good at it. What? It could happen. Ours are involved - they write a placeholder and flag it to me for changes. Sometimes I don't make any. It's also not surprising that there's so much UX in the mix. Some of that will be people taking care, and crafting an understandable interface. Some of it will be whatever text goes on the wireframe making it into production. I'm going to assume that's what happened at eBay, when their iPhone app purportedly shipped with the placeholder text "Some crappy content goes here". Ahem. Listing all 17 "other" responses would make this post lengthy indeed, but you can read them in the raw data spreadsheet. The award for the approach that sounds the most like a good idea yet carries the highest risk of ending badly goes to whoever offered up "External agencies using focus groups". If you're reading this, and that actually works, leave a comment. I'm fascinated. Who owned UI text Stop. Bar chart time: Wow. Let's cut to the chase, and by "chase", I mean those inflammatory generalizations I was talking about: In around 60% of cases the person responsible for user interface text probably lacks the relevant expertise. Even in the categories I count as being likely to have relevant skills (Marketing Copywriters, Content Strategists, Technical Authors, and User Experience Designers) there's a case for each role being unsuited, as you'll see in Rachel's blog post So it's not as simple as my headline. Does that mean that you personally, Mr Developer reading this, write bad button names? Of course not. I know nothing about you. It rather implies that as a category, the majority of people looking after UI text have neither communication nor user experience as their primary skill set, and as such will probably only be good at this by happy accident. I don't have a way of measuring those frequency of those accidents. What the Others specified: I don't know who owns it. I assume the project manager is responsible. "copywriters" when they wish to annoy me. the client's web maintenance person, often PR or MarComm That last one chills me to the bone. Still, at least nobody said "the work experience kid". You can see the rest in the spreadsheet. My overwhelming impression here is of user interface text as an unloved afterthought. There were fewer "nobody" responses than I expected, and a much broader split. But the relative predominance of developers owning and writing UI text suggests to me that organizations don't see it as something worth dedicating attention to. If true, that's bothersome. Because the words on the screen, particularly the names of things, are fundamental to the ability to understand an use software. It's also fascinating that Technical Authors and Content Strategists are neck and neck. For such a nascent discipline, Content Strategy appears to have made a mark on software development. Or my sample is skewed. But it feels like a bit of validation for my rant: Content Strategy is eating Tech Comms' lunch. That's not a bad thing. Well, not if the UI text is getting done well. And that's the caveat to this whole post. I couldn't care less who writes UI text, provided they consider the user and don't suck at it. I care that it may be falling by default to people poorly disposed to doing it right. And I care about that because so much user interface text sucks. The most interesting question Was one I forgot to ask. It's this: Does your organization have technical authors/writers? Like a lot of survey data, that doesn't tell you much on its own. But once we get a bit dimensional, it become more interesting. So taken with the other questions, this would have let me find out what I really want to know: What proportion of organizations have Tech Comms professionals but don't use them for UI text? Who writes UI text in their place? Why this happens? It's possible (feasible is another matter) that hundreds of companies have tech authors who don't work on user interfaces because they've empirically discovered that someone else, say the Marketing Copywriter, is better at it. And once we've all finished laughing, I'll point out that I've met plenty of tech authors who just aren't used to thinking about users at the point of need in the way UI text and embedded user assistance require. If you've got what I regard, perhaps unfairly, as the bad kind of tech author - the old-school kind with the thousand-page pdf and the grammar obsession - if you've got one of those then you probably are better off getting the UX folk or the copywriters to do your UI text. At the very least, they'll derive terminology from user research.

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