Search Results

Search found 25198 results on 1008 pages for 'non programmers'.

Page 391/1008 | < Previous Page | 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398  | Next Page >

• Are web application usability issues equal to website usability issues?

  - by Kor

  I've been reading two books about web usability issues and tests (Rocket Surgery Made Easy¹ and Prioritizing Web Usability²) and they claim some strategies and typical problems about website usability and how to lead them. However, I want to do a web application, and I think I lost track of what I am trying to solve. These two books claim to work with raw websites (e-commerce, business sites, even intranet), but I'm not sure if everything about web usability is applicable to web application usability. They sure talk about always having available (and usable) the Back button, to focus on short information rather than big amounts of text, etc., but they could be inaccurate in deeper problems that may be easier (or just skippable) in regular websites. Has anybody some experience in this field and could tell me if both web applications and websites share their usability issues? Thanks in advance Edit: Quoting Wikipedia, a website is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets, and a web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. To sum up, both shows/lets you search/produce information but websites are "simple" in interaction and keep the classics of websites (one-click actions) and the other one is closer to desktop applications in the meaning of their uses and ways of interaction (double click, modal windows, asynchronous calls [to keep you in the same "environment" instead of reloading it] etc.). I don't know if this clarifies the difference. Edit 2: Quoting @Victor and myself, a website is anything running in your browser, but a web application is somewhat running in your browser that could be running in your desktop, with similar behaviors and features. Gmail is a web application that could replace Outlook. GDocs could replace Office. Grooveshark could replace your music player, etc.

  Read the article

• How to define template directives (from an API perspective)?

  - by Ralph

  Preface I'm writing a template language (don't bother trying to talk me out of it), and in it, there are two kinds of user-extensible nodes. TemplateTags and TemplateDirectives. A TemplateTag closely relates to an HTML tag -- it might look something like div(class="green") { "content" } And it'll be rendered as <div class="green">content</div> i.e., it takes a bunch of attributes, plus some content, and spits out some HTML. TemplateDirectives are a little more complicated. They can be things like for loops, ifs, includes, and other such things. They look a lot like a TemplateTag, but they need to be processed differently. For example, @for($i in $items) { div(class="green") { $i } } Would loop over $items and output the content with the variable $i substituted in each time. So.... I'm trying to decide on a way to define these directives now. Template Tags The TemplateTags are pretty easy to write. They look something like this: [TemplateTag] static string div(string content = null, object attrs = null) { return HtmlTag("div", content, attrs); } Where content gets the stuff between the curly braces (pre-rendered if there are variables in it and such), and attrs is either a Dictionary<string,object> of attributes, or an anonymous type used like a dictionary. It just returns the HTML which gets plunked into its place. Simple! You can write tags in basically 1 line. Template Directives The way I've defined them now looks like this: [TemplateDirective] static string @for(string @params, string content) { var tokens = Regex.Split(@params, @"\sin\s").Select(s => s.Trim()).ToArray(); string itemName = tokens[0].Substring(1); string enumName = tokens[1].Substring(1); var enumerable = data[enumName] as IEnumerable; var sb = new StringBuilder(); var template = new Template(content); foreach (var item in enumerable) { var templateVars = new Dictionary<string, object>(data) { { itemName, item } }; sb.Append(template.Render(templateVars)); } return sb.ToString(); } (Working example). Basically, the stuff between the ( and ) is not split into arguments automatically (like the template tags do), and the content isn't pre-rendered either. The reason it isn't pre-rendered is because you might want to add or remove some template variables or something first. In this case, we add the $i variable to the template variables, var templateVars = new Dictionary<string, object>(data) { { itemName, item } }; And then render the content manually, sb.Append(template.Render(templateVars)); Question I'm wondering if this is the best approach to defining custom Template Directives. I want to make it as easy as possible. What if the user doesn't know how to render templates, or doesn't know that he's supposed to? Maybe I should pass in a Template instance pre-filled with the content instead? Or maybe only let him tamper w/ the template variables, and then automatically render the content at the end? OTOH, for things like "if" if the condition fails, then the template wouldn't need to be rendered at all. So there's a lot of flexibility I need to allow in here. Thoughts?

  Read the article

• Is the carriage-return char considered obsolete

  - by Evan Plaice

  I wrote an open source library that parses structured data but intentionally left out carriage-return detection because I don't see the point. It adds additional complexity and overhead for little/no benefit. To my surprise, a user submitted a bug where the parser wasn't working and I discovered the cause of the issue was that the data used CR line endings as opposed to LF or CRLF. Hasn't OSX been using LF style line-endings since switching over to a unix-based platform? I know there are applications like Notepad++ where line endings can be changed to use CR explicitly but I don't see why anybody would want to. Is it safe to exclude support for the statistically insignificant percentage of users who decide (for whatever reason) to the old Mac OS style line-endings?

  Read the article

• Android application Database Framework

  - by Marek Sebera

  When creating mobile (specially Android) application, I usually come to touch with similar pattern of working with data. Usually I need to fetch some remote data (covered by authorization process) to local cache. And on next request: Check networking Check presence of cache file Check version of cache file (if networking) Get new version and save cache (if networking and file not in cache, or outdated) Data store is no-SQL JSON Document-Based (and yes, I know about CouchDB Android version, but it doesn't fit my needs yet.) Process of authorizing to data source and code for check version of local cache is adapted to application. But the other code (handling network, saving cache, handling exceptions,...) is always the same. Is there any Data Store helper I can use, which provides functions I described above?

  Read the article

• Why do I get this Debug Assertion Failed? Expression: list iterator not dereferenceable [migrated]

  - by Karel

  I'm trying this example in the (translated to dutch) book of Bjarne Stroustrup (C++): #include <vector> #include <list> #include "complex.h" complex ac[200]; std::vector<complex> vc; std::list<complex> l; template<class In, class Out> void Copy(In from, In too_far, Out to) { while(from != too_far) { *to = *from; ++to; ++from; } } void g(std::vector<complex>& vc , std::list<complex>& lc) { Copy(&ac[0], &ac[200], lc.begin()); // generates debug error Copy(lc.begin(), lc.end(), vc.begin()); // also generates debug error } void f() { ac[0] = complex(10,20); g(vc, l); } int main () { f(); } ** Compiling and Linking goes successful (0 errors/warnings)** But at runtime I get this error: Debug Assertion Failed! Program: path to exe file: \program files\ms vs studio 10.0\vc\include\list Line: 207 Expression: list iterator not dereferenceable For information on how your program can cause an assertion failure, see the Visual C++ documentation on asserts. (Press retry to debug the application)

  Read the article

• What is considered to be a "modification" of sources under the BSD license?

  - by Den

  I have a question about the 3-clause BSD license based on it's Wiki description. It states: Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: ... What is understood by "modification"? Specifically I am interested whether any/all of the following is considered as such modification: 1) reading the original sources and then re-implementing; 2) reading the original sources, waiting for a year and then re-implementing something based on whatever you could remember; 3) direct and very significant "complete" refactoring of the original sources.

  Read the article

• How can I configure updates in a CMS like WordPress?

  - by Varsha

  I have a CMS built in core PHP. Till now, if a new version is released, it is downloaded to client machine in zipped form. And then client has to manually unzip the folder and copy that to required location. Because there is no way to download zip file to required location. I want that CMS should be updated in the background like-WordPress. In other words, I want that new version can replace old version. How can I do this?

  Read the article

• Authorization design-pattern / practice?

  - by Lawtonfogle

  On one end, you have users. On the other end, you have activities. I was wondering if there is a best practice to relate the two. The simplest way I can think of is to have every activity have a role, and assign every user every role they need. The problem is that this gets really messy in practice as soon as you go beyond a trivial system. A way I recently designed was to have users who have roles, and roles have privileges, and activities require some combinations of privileges. For the trivial case, this is more complex, but I think it will scale better. But after I implemented it, I felt like it was overkill for the system I had. Another option would be to have users, who have roles, and activities require you to have a certain role to perform with many activities sharing roles. A more complex variant of this would given activities many possible roles, which you only needed one of. And an even more complex variant would be to allow logical statements of role ownership to use an activity (i.e. Must have A and (B exclusive or C) and must not have D). I could continue to list more, but I think this already gives a picture. And many of these have trade offs. But in software design, there are oftentimes solutions, while perhaps not perfect in every possible case, are clearly top of the pack to an extent it isn't even considered opinion based (i.e. how to store passwords, plain text is worse, hashing better, hashing and salt even better, despite the increased complexity of each level) (i.e. 2, Smart UI designs for applications are bad, even if it is subjective as to what the best design is). So, is there a best practice for authorization design that is not purely opinion based/subjective?

  Read the article

• Finding "spare time" in a day from within a list of events

  - by MFB

  I have a list of events which is always sorted chronologically. The start time is always followed by the end time. Times are strings formatted as 'HHmmss'. // list of events var events = [ '010000', // start '013000', // end... '053000', '060000', '161500', '184500'] // desired output var spares = [ '000000', // start '010000', // end... '013000', '053000', '060000', '161500', '184500', '235959'] How can I programmatically create a new list of "spare time" from 000000 to 235959? PS I'm trying to do this in Javascript, but any conceptual answer or pseudo code would be helpful too.

  Read the article

• what are some good interview questions for a position that consists of reviewing code for security vulnerabilities?

  - by John Smith

  The position is an entry-level position that consists of reading C++ code and identifying lines of code that are vulnerable to buffer overflows, out-of-bounds reads, uncontrolled format strings, and a bunch of other CWE's. We don't expect the average candidate to be knowledgeable in the area of software security nor do we expect him or her to be an expert computer programmer; we just expect them to be able to read the code and correctly identify vulnerabilities. I guess I could ask them the typical interview questions: reverse a string, print a list of prime numbers, etc, but I'm not sure that their ability to write code under pressure (or lack thereof) tells me anything about their ability to read code. Should I instead focus on testing their knowledge of C++? Ask them if they understand what a pointer is and how bitwise operators work? My only concern about asking that kind of question is that I might unfairly weed out people who don't happen to have the knowledge but have the ability to acquire it. After all, it's not like they will be writing a single line of code, and it's not like we are looking only for people who already know C++, since we are willing to train the right candidate. (It is true that I could ask those questions only to those candidates who claim to know C++, but I'd like to give the same "test" to everyone.) Should I just focus on trying to get an idea of their level of intelligence? In other words, should I get them to talk and pay attention to the way they articulate their thoughts, and so on?

  Read the article

• What is logical cohesion, and why is it bad or undesirable?

  - by Matt Fenwick

  From the c2wiki page on coupling & cohesion: Cohesion (interdependency within module) strength/level names : (from worse to better, high cohesion is good) Coincidental Cohesion : (Worst) Module elements are unrelated Logical Cohesion : Elements perform similar activities as selected from outside module, i.e. by a flag that selects operation to perform (see also CommandObject). i.e. body of function is one huge if-else/switch on operation flag Temporal Cohesion : operations related only by general time performed (i.e. initialization() or FatalErrorShutdown?()) Procedural Cohesion : Elements involved in different but sequential activities, each on different data (usually could be trivially split into multiple modules along linear sequence boundaries) Communicational Cohesion : unrelated operations except need same data or input Sequential Cohesion : operations on same data in significant order; output from one function is input to next (pipeline) Informational Cohesion: a module performs a number of actions, each with its own entry point, with independent code for each action, all performed on the same data structure. Essentially an implementation of an abstract data type. i.e. define structure of sales_region_table and its operators: init_table(), update_table(), print_table() Functional Cohesion : all elements contribute to a single, well-defined task, i.e. a function that performs exactly one operation get_engine_temperature(), add_sales_tax() (emphasis mine). I don't fully understand the definition of logical cohesion. My questions are: what is logical cohesion? Why does it get such a bad rap (2nd worst kind of cohesion)?

  Read the article

• migrating from struts2, looking for a new framework

  - by adhg

  We are supposed to start a relatively big project that will require lots of computation and analysis. Presentation (UI) for the end user is very crucial (graphs, tabels...) So far we've been using struts2. It's ok+. It has some drawbacks (specially if you work with tiles and all that XML) but if you get the lingo - you're ok. One option on the table is to continue using struts2 with jquery and all the other stuff that we've been doing for so long. Alternatively, I think we have an opportunity to learn something new and maybe a bit better then struts2. My question is this: Anyone has migrated from struts2 to something new and can share the experience. Or had some great experience witha particular java framework. Many thanks for any pointers.

  Read the article

• Portal Server comparisons / TCoO

  - by Scott

  We have a client whom is looking to incorporate Oracle Portal into our next release. I'm newer to this team, but the team is currently working with Apache, so whichever Portal Server we choose will likely incur a bit of a learning curve. Is there any comparison (not marketing) out there which discusses the differences in the servers and/or the total cost of ownership on them? With 5 developers, installing RAD becomes expensive, which I'd assume they'd wish to move onto us with the change to Oracle Portal and WebSphere.

  Read the article

• A potential new hire may make more money you do..what should I do [migrated]

  - by Ali

  I have a very solid experience in Software Development and Project management. I just learned that the company I work for has posted a new position with half the experience of mine and even lesser set of skills than I have. However, the new position pays the same salary as my current salary while at the same time they declined to pay the asking salary when I was joining the company. How should I counter this? I know there are many projects in the pipeline where my involvement is crucial for the projects to be successful but I don't want to come across threating. Any advise would be helpful..!

  Read the article

• Backtrack My "Education"

  - by perl.j

  About a year or so ago, I decided to start programming. I really, just jumped into a language (Perl) and went from there. What I regret is that I just jumped in: I didn't learn the basics (if you would call them basics). I didn't learn about Computer Science. This issue, I believe, is holding me back. Where should I "restart"? Are there any books, articles, etc. that I should read? Are there any topics an experienced programmer should know? What's your advice? Thanks! Please don't advise me to take a college/high-school class.

  Read the article

• How should I handle using two databases with a legacy PHP application?

  - by Toby Allen

  I have a legacy PHP application that was written in 2004 and uses MSSQL as a database backend. At this stage MSSQL is still supported by PHP but only just via a Microsoft driver. I have looked at converting to mysql via automated tools, which work quite well, but I have quite complex views which need a lot of individual work to convert. I don't have a great deal of time to do this. Many tools I wish to use and frameworks I would like to move the application to, don't support MSSQL, so I was considering adding new features using a new mysql database and wondered if anyone had opinions on the pros and cons of using two seperate database backends in a single application?

  Read the article

• Structure of a correctly implemented JTable with TableModel and Listeners?

  - by bamboocha

  I am pretty new to Java and its JTables and this is where I am struggling at the moment. I need to create a GUI which shows me results of a sql query like SELECT * FROM tblPeople WHERE name='Doe'. My idea was to create a a JFrame which displays a JTable with all found records. Besides this, I need to also implement some code to handle when a user is double clicking a record or selecting it by using his arrow keys (additional feature: pressing 12(e.g.) should select the 12th record). What is the best way to structure my program (what classes do I need and especially where do I store my logic)? I came up with structuring it the following way: Main.java ("view") SQLConnection.java PeopleTableModel.java (only stores and returns data given by the passed ResultSet, "model" inherits from DefaultTableModel) PeopleTable.java (stores basically all my logic including KeyListener and MouseListener, "controller", inherits from JTable) Are there better ways to achieve my goals? If so, what are they?

  Read the article

• From Oracle PL/SQL Developer to Java programmer - Is it a good decision? [on hold]

  - by user3554231

  I will explain my question in simple words. I have little over 1 year experience in Oracle. My dream is to be "called" as a 'Developer', be it database developer if not software developer. But right now I don't develop anything neither I am in good touch with PL/SQL and other Oracle Utilites like SQL*LOADER, shell scripting and stuff like that as I am only a System Analyst where I analyze and configure database using SQL queries. To be honest, I know very basic PL/SQL and good knowledge in SQL but that won't ever give me a chance to be a developer as I am lagging way behind the "real" developers knowledge. Now I feel I should learn JAVA as well so that I can cope up with the competition. But I am too scared to learn new things as it will take much more time which will indirectly increase my useless work experince(just analyzing) which values nothing in todays market. Moreover that, I am too lazy to work hard i.e. to study and not to work during office hours. To sum it up I am lazy and confused and scared but I want to learn things as well but don't know if I am intelligent enough to learn whole of PL/SQL or to master any other language. Is there any other way from which I can feel confident? Actually I even feel sometimes that after 2-3 years if I still don't achieve my goal, I won't ever be able to reach my destination. I just want to live my dream of being a developer. Give me some tips and hopes but not false hopes.

  Read the article

• How do references work in R?

  - by djechlin

  I'm finding R confusing because it has such a different notion of reference than I am used to in languages like C, Java, Javascript... Ruby, Python, C++, well, pretty much any language I have ever programmed in ever. So one thing I've noticed is variable names are not irrelevant when passing them to something else. The reference can be part of the data. e.g. per this tutorial a <- factor(c("A","A","B","A","B","B","C","A","C")) results <- table(a) Leads to $a showing up as an attribute as $dimnames$a. We've also witnessed that calling a function like a <- foo(alpha=1, beta=2) can create attributes in a of names alpha and beta, or it can assign or otherwise compute on 1 and 2 to properties already existing. (Not that there's a computer science distinction here - it just doesn't really happen in something like Javascript, unless you want to emulate it by passing in the object and use key=value there.) Functions like names(...) return lvalues that will affect the input of them. And the one that most got me is this. x <- c(3, 5, 1, 10, 12, 6) y = x[x <= 5] x[y] <- 0 is different from x <- c(3, 5, 1, 10, 12, 6) x[x <= 5] <- 0 Color me confused. Is there a consistent theory for what's going on here?

  Read the article

• ISO 12207: Verification of integration and Unit test validation

  - by user970696

  I have received comments from the supervisor reviewing my thesis. He asked two questions I cannot answer right now: If ISO 12207 says under "Integration verification" that it "checks that components are correctly and completely integrated into a system", how this can be verified without testing, if all testing is validation? How without testing can I know that system is integrated correctly and fully? If unit testing is validation, how does it match the ISO definiton of validation "that requirements for intended use were fulfilled" if its so low level?

  Read the article

• Defining a function that is both a generator and recursive [on hold]

  - by user96454

  I am new to python, so this code might not necessarily be clean, it's just for learning purposes. I had the idea of writing this function that would display the tree down the specified path. Then, i added the global variable number_of_py to count how many python files were in that tree. That worked as well. Finally, i decided to turn the whole thing into a generator, but the recursion breaks. My understanding of generators is that once next() is called python just executes the body of the function and "yields" a value until we hit the end of the body. Can someone explain why this doesn't work? Thanks. import os from sys import argv script, path = argv number_of_py = 0 lines_of_code = 0 def list_files(directory, key=''): global number_of_py files = os.listdir(directory) for f in files: real_path = os.path.join(directory, f) if os.path.isdir(real_path): list_files(real_path, key=key+' ') else: if real_path.split('.')[-1] == 'py': number_of_py += 1 with open(real_path) as g: yield len(g.read()) print key+real_path for i in list_files(argv[1]): lines_of_code += i print 'total number of lines of code: %d' % lines_of_code print 'total number of py files: %d' % number_of_py

  Read the article

• What are the advantages of myBatis over Hibernate?

  - by Kshitiz Sharma

  This question originates from a comment I received on one of my questions - I'd rather drop hibernate in favor of mybatis instead of jdbc I've done some research on my own and understand the basic concept. But some insights can only be gained through actual experience. What are the advantages of myBatis that would make it worth learning a new framework? In what case would you avoid using it?

  Read the article

• How many developers actually have private offices?

  - by Morgan Herlocker

  So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but thats normally just one person in your average office. If it would not be to much to ask: Do you work in a totally awesome office or a nasty old cube? (or somewhere in between) What's your relative rank in the office? (junior, programmer II, senior, lead, etc.) are you doing internal software, or are you in a software-centric environment? (the general thought seems to be that internal developers get cubes while others live in "Joel-Spolsky-Programmer-Candyland")

  Read the article

• How can I gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?

  - by ruslan

  One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are: After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them "target IDs". Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey. Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable { @Id transient private Long id; transient private Long version = (long) 0; transient private Long startDate; @Parent transient private Key parent; // fake parent which contains target id @Transient int targetId; private double avgPercent; private long hitCount; } But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are avgPercent and hitCount in HitsStatsDO. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this: // Contains stats for one hour private class Shard { ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID public void saveToDatastore(); public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits); } and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long) private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>(); // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have class LifetimeStats which keeps Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - I have only ONE backend instance :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion: Can I do this without using backend instance ? What if one instance is not enough ? How can I split data between multiple dynamic backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases. I know I can launch exact number of resident backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive. What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting?

  Read the article

• How is software used in critical life-or-death systems tested?

  - by waiwai933

  An airplane, as opposed to, for example, a website, is a system where any failure in certain systems is completely unacceptable, since errors in e.g. flight monitoring can cause the autopilot to malfunction and do a dive. Obviously, this doesn't happen since the brilliant engineers at Boeing and Airbus have checks in the autopilot to make sure it doesn't suddenly decide a dive is a perfectly acceptable and safe maneuver. Or perhaps the computer crashes, and the pilots in the newer fly-by-wire aircraft can no longer actually fly the plane. Of course, there are various safety procedures and redundancies built into these systems to prevent a crash (of both the software and the aircraft). However, on the other hand, it's quite obvious that software isn't perfect—both open source and closed source software do crash regularly, and only the simplest "Hello World" program doesn't fail. How can the engineers who design the software systems in the aeronautic, medical, and other life-or-death industries manage to test their software so that it doesn't fail (and if it does fail, at least fail gracefully)? I'm desperately hoping that you're not all going to go: "Oh, I work for Boeing/Airbus/(some other company) and it's not! Have fun on your next flight/hospital visit."

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398  | Next Page >