Search Results

Search found 17124 results on 685 pages for 'learning tool'.

Page 402/685 | < Previous Page | 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409  | Next Page >

• Anyone been successful changing their career without having to start over from scratch?

  - by Awaken

  I posted a similar question on careeroverflow, but stackoverflow is just way more active and has way more users, so hopefully someone out there can help answer. I am currently an embedded developer in the defense/aerospace world for a big company. While I like the benefits and the pay, it just isn't keeping me happy. The Paul Graham article: How To Do What You Love really struck home. The problem I face are my golden handcuffs. When I look at jobs out there, they all want 5+ years experience in that language with expertise in framework/tool/server A,B,C, etc... I have worked in C and C++ on the job (in a real-time embedded environment) with some small things in C# and Java. I'm learning Ruby now to expand my knowledge, but I don't consider myself an expert in anything right now. I'd love to work on desktop applications or web apps. Is it possible for someone like me to make the switch without going back to the start line? I'd love to leave the huge bureaucracy and work with some great developers. I'd be willing to work late and take a modest pay cut, but that isn't so clear just from a resume. For those that have altered their career path, how did you do it? For those people who are in charge of hiring, what can I do to help myself?

  Read the article

• How to scroll hex tiles?

  - by Chris Evans

  I don't seem to be able to find an answer to this one. I have a map of hex tiles. I wish to implement scrolling. Code at present: drawTilemap = function() { actualX = Math.floor(viewportX / hexWidth); actualY = Math.floor(viewportY / hexHeight); offsetX = -(viewportX - (actualX * hexWidth)); offsetY = -(viewportY - (actualY * hexHeight)); for(i = 0; i < (10); i++) { for(j = 0; j < 10; j++) { if(i % 2 == 0) { x = (hexOffsetX * i) + offsetX; y = j * sourceHeight; } else { x = (hexOffsetX * i) + offsetX; y = hexOffsetY + (j * sourceHeight); } var tileselected = mapone[actualX + i][j]; drawTile(x, y, tileselected); } } } The code I've written so far only handles X movement. It doesn't yet work the way it should do. If you look at my example on jsfiddle.net below you will see that when moving to the right, when you get to the next hex tile along, there is a problem with the X position and calculations that have taken place. It seems it is a simple bit of maths that is missing. Unfortunately I've been unable to find an example that includes scrolling yet. http://jsfiddle.net/hd87E/1/ Make sure there is no horizontal scroll bar then trying moving right using the - right arrow on the keyboard. You will see the problem as you reach the end of the first tile. Apologies for the horrid code, I'm learning! Cheers

  Read the article

• The best way to learn how to extend Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  We do have tutorials on the Orchard site, but we can't cover all topics, and recently I've found myself more and more responding to forum questions by pointing people to an existing module that was solving a similar problem to the one the question was about. I really like this way of learning by example and from the expertise of others. This is one of the reasons why we decided that modules would by default come in source code form that we compile dynamically. it makes them easy to understand and easier to modify for your own purposes. Hackability FTW! But how do you crack open a module and look at what's inside? You can do it in two different ways. First, you can just install the module from the gallery, directly from your Orchard instance's admin panel. Once you've done that, you can just look into your Modules directory under the web site. There is now a subfolder with the name of the new module that contains a csproj that you can open in Visual Studio or add to your Orchard solution. Second, you can simply download the package (it's NuGet) and rename it to a .zip extension. NuGet being based on Zip, this will open just fine in Windows Explorer: What you want to dig into is the Content/Modules/[NameOfTheModule] folder, which is where the actual code is. Thanks to Jason Gaylord for the idea for this post.

  Read the article

• about freelancer in third world countries

  - by MaKo

  hello guys, one question that is been bogging me... first of all I want to say that I actually come from a third world country, so I am all up for opportunities for everybody... so here comes my consideration,,, I have been working as a programmer for Iphone apps (noob in the company), now in my new "first" world country (immigration can be good!!!), but seem to be getting more and more advertisement from sites like freelancer.com etc,,, so I would want to know what do you think about all this???, would the jobs be getting cheaper?? if a project can be done by say 10% of the cost overseas, what is stopping the employers of doing just that? is it worth it? how about the quality? from a local job and overseas job? and all other aspects I cannot think about?? I just want to know if all this years of learning are going to pay off? or if in a near future all programming jobs will just go to cheaper labor? (sweat shops??) ok hope to make sense in my ramblings,, cheers;)

  Read the article

• How to ask the boss to pay for qualifications?

  - by adamk

  Hi, I'm working as a junior developer for a startup company, and have been working here around 7 months now. After 4 months, we had a late quarterly review, and just before the boss mentioned there was a training budget, and we should let them know what training we needed and they'd get it for us. I asked for some training at the time, but 3 months have passed without mention of it, and I have since learnt what I needed in my own time (I just can't stop learning new things!) I took on a new role recently, so have been given some cheap ($60) training for that however. Now the next review is approaching, and I would like to get Adobe Qualified Expert qualifications for ActionScript 3 / Flex. I was told by a contracted co-worker who had left that I should try to get the company to pay for this, as it's something they can tell potential investors as a selling point. My question is though; how do I approach this with my boss? I don't want it to sound like I'm looking for another job and want the qualifications to look elsewhere!

  Read the article

• What is the philosophy/reasoning behind C#'s Pascal-casing method names?

  - by Nocturne

  I'm just starting to learn C#. Coming from a background in Java, C++ and Objective-C, I find C#'s Pascal-casing its method-names rather unique, and a tad difficult to get used to at first. What is the reasoning and philosophy behind this? I'm guessing it is because of C# properties. Unlike in Objective-C, where method names can be exactly the same as an instance variables, this is not the case with C#. I would guess one of the goals with properties (as it is with most of the languages that support it) is to make properties truly indistinguishable from variables and methods. So, one can have an "int x" in C#, and the corresponding property becomes X. To ensure that properties and methods are indistinguishable, all method names I'm guessing are also therefore expected to start with an uppercase letter. (This is just my hypothesis based on what I know of C# so far—I'm still learning). I'm very curious to know how this curious guideline came into being (given that it's not something one sees in most other languages where method names are expected to start with a lowercase letter) (EDIT: By Pascal-casing, I mean PascalCase (which is basically camelCase but starting with a capital letter). Method names typically start with a lowercase letter in most languages)

  Read the article

• PHP frameworks - should I use them?

  - by 30secondstosam

  First of all let me explain who I am: I am a PHP Developer working for a company developing their CMS which handles online stores, data feeds and other content like blogs. I have been programming for 6 years and 4 of those have been in PHP. (I used to be a C# developer). My question is regarding PHP frameworks. I see so many jobs asking for zend, cakephp and other MVC types of frameworks. However, even as an experienced developer I have never used a PHP framework. Should I start learning? If so where do I even start as there are so many. I am about to re-write so much of my work's CMS and I'm wondering whether I could help myself a lot by using a framework. What do people think? Considering I will be re-writing a lot of the online store stuff... I am experienced in OO and I have used the .NET framework in the past. Thanks in advance for the replies.

  Read the article

• Logarithmic spacing of FFT subbands

  - by Mykel Stone

  I'm trying to do the examples within the GameDev.net Beat Detection article ( http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/programming/features/beatdetection/index.html ) I have no issue with performing a FFT and getting the frequency data and doing most of the article. I'm running into trouble though in the section 2.B, Enhancements and beat decision factors. in this section the author gives 3 equations numbered R10-R12 to be used to determine how many bins go into each subband: R10 - Linear increase of the width of the subband with its index R11 - We can choose for example the width of the first subband R12 - The sum of all the widths must not exceed 1024 He says the following in the article: "Once you have equations (R11) and (R12) it is fairly easy to extract 'a' and 'b', and thus to find the law of the 'wi'. This calculus of 'a' and 'b' must be made manually and 'a' and 'b' defined as constants in the source; indeed they do not vary during the song." However, I cannot seem to understand how these values are calculated...I'm probably missing something simple, but learning fourier analysis in a couple of weeks has left me Decimated-in-Mind and I cannot seem to see it.

  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

• Need to run a .sh as root on boot or login

  - by Graymayre

  Still new with linux and running ubuntu 12.10 I have a wireless stick (ae2500) which has known issues that has been partially solved using ndiswrapper. However, to use it I must run the same scripts every time I reboot, effectively uninstalling and reinstalling the driver. I made a .sh file to run every time to make it easy, but I must do the sudo login everytime. There are three solutions I am looking for and although not all are necessary to solve this particular problem, I would still like to know them all for learning purposes. run scripts or file.sh on boot (as well as other programs) run scripts or file.sh automatically with root privileges make the install permanent so as not to have to go through the process every time. Any additional information that can help me regarding this that I did not think to ask (including streamlining my commands), or general knowledge, would be greatly appreciated. Following are the contents of the file. I pretty much just made it as I would have entered it. cd ~/ndiswrapper-1.58rc1 sudo modprobe -rf ndiswrapper sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf sudo rm -r /etc/ndiswrapper/* sudo depmod -a sudo make uninstall sudo make sudo make install sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwlhigh5.inf ndiswrapper -l sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

  Read the article

• PowerShell a constant in a changing world

  - by Rob Addis

  I've been programming for about 20 years now some of my friends have been at it for over 30. I have read many, many manuals and yes it's not my favourite past time. So 10 years ago I made a promise to myself to try and only learn about products which have long life times. I immediately gave up programming GUIs and concentrated on back end development as I decided that these products (Oracle, MQ Series, SQL Server, BizTalk and later WCF, WF) have longer life times and smaller incremental changes than front end products.10 years ago I had no idea how good a decision that would turn out to be. There have been so many different Microsoft products for the front end in that time; multiple versions of Windows Forms, FrontPage, Html, Javascript, ASP.net, Silverlight, SharePoint, WPF and now hopefully a stayer Metro.I remember being at a Microsoft conference in 2006 when Martin Fowler told a crowd of developers (I'm paraphrasing) "If you don't like change then you're in the wrong business!". Well I've been in the business for 20 years and yes I'm a little resistant to change. I like my investment in reading manuals and getting certified to be time well spent!Over the last 2 years I have been writing A LOT of PowerShell script, I think there is a good chance this product will still be around and be used for new development in 10 years, learning it is a good investment.

  Read the article

• Integrated Reporting is Getting Closer

  - by jmorourke

  Oracle recently sponsored a webcast on CFO.com titled:  The CFO Playbook on Integrated Reporting: Integrating Sustainability into Financial Disclosures.  The speakers for this webcast were James Margolis, partner with Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a global provider of environmental, health, safety, risk and sustainability consulting services (EHSS) and Mike Wallace, Director of the Global Reporting Initiative's Focal Point USA. This webcast focused on why top companies in the U.S. and overseas are incorporating sustainability content into their annual reports and other financial disclosures. The speakers discussed the benefits of integrating sustainability reporting with traditional financial reporting. They noted how investors, corporate directors, lenders and most recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission, use this information to better understand, benchmark and value companies. They also discussed the November 2012 release of an Integrated Reporting Framework by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).  See the press release and link to the framework here.  The shift towards integrated financial and sustainability reporting is gaining momentum with a number of global stock exchanges endorsing this approach in 2012.  See the links here if you want to listen to the webcast or download the slides. Also, here is a demonstration of Oracle’s solution for integrated financial and sustainability reporting. If you’re interested in learning more about this and Oracle’s other Sustainability Reporting solutions, click here. If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

  Read the article

• Nordics OTN ACE Tour 2013 - Recap

  - by Mike Dietrich

  The Nordics OTN ACE Tour 2013 with stops in Stockholm, Ballerup/Copenhagen and Oslo is over. A very intense week with plenty of excellent presentations from Lonneke Dikmans, Sten Vesterli, Tim Hall and others. I'm always impressed how much those people know and how good they present. It's such a great learning experience. And there's always some time to talk about weired things apart from the Oracle cosmos. So thanks a lot, folks - it was a pleasure to travel with you. And many many thanks also to the people from ORCAN, DOUG and OUGN. Everything worked out so well. And thanks for the great gifts. the dinners, everything!!! Of course a special thanks to all the people who went to my presentations. Hope you've enjoyed it - and sorry for any overtiming But as Tim said yesterday in the Shuttle Bus back to the airport: "45 min slots don't work out at all" The final slide set about "Different Ways to Upgrade, Migrate and Consolidate into Oracle Database 12c including Oracle Multitenant, New Features and other stuff" can be downloaded via this link. Hope to see you all again soon - and let me know once you have successfully upgraded to Oracle Database 12c or in case you'd like to become one of our Upgrade Reference Customers. Cheers - Mike PS: One thing I couldn't really understand - why is that thing below not labeled simply GRAPE JUICE??? And who's honestly drinking that?

  Read the article

• Distributed Rendering in the UDK and Unity

  - by N0xus

  At the moment I'm looking at getting a game engine to run in a CAVE environment. So far, during my research I've seen a lot of people being able to get both Unity and the Unreal engine up and running in a CAVE (someone did get CryEngine to work in one, but there is little research data about it). As of yet, I have not cemented my final choice of engine for use in the next stage of my project. I've experience in both, so the learning curve will be gentle on both. And both of the engines offer stereoscopic rendering, either already inbuilt with ReadD (Unreal) or by doing it yourself (Unity). Both can also make use of other input devices as well, such as the kinect or other devices. So again, both engines are still on the table. For the last bit of my preliminary research, I was advised to see if either, or both engines could do distributed rendering. I was advised this, as the final game we make could go into a variety of differently sized CAVEs. The one I have access to is roughly 2.4m x 3m cubed, and have been duly informed that this one is a "baby" compared to others. So, finally onto my question: Can either the Unreal Engine, or Unity Engine make it possible for developers to allow distributed rendering? Either through in built devices, or by creating my own plugin / script?

  Read the article

• Where to Start?

  - by freemann098

  my name is Chase. I've been programming for over 3 years now and I've made very little progress towards game development. I blame myself for it due to reasons. I have experience in many languages such as C++, C#, and Java. I have a little bit of knowledge in JavaScript/HTML and Python. My question is where to start on actually understanding jumping into game development. Whenever I watch game development tutorials it mostly makes sense until points of things like OpenGL or advanced topics that make no sense at all. An example is something like glOrhho Matrix or whatever. Videos either don't explain things like this or they're not explained very well. Do I not know enough basics? I find myself always copying code from a video but understanding very little of it. It's like i'm memorizing things I don't understand which makes it hard to program at all. If I were to want to get to the point where I could write my own game engine or just a game by myself in general in C++ using at the most documentation how would I start at mastering to that level. Should I learn C first, or get really good at basics in general with C++. I know there is a similar posted question on this site but it's not the same due to the fact the person asking the question has a well knowledge level in programming. I'm stuck in a loop of learning the same things but if I go farther I don't understand. I'm stuck in the same spot and need to make progress.

  Read the article

• links for 2011-02-07

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Creating JAXWS Service in WebLogic Workshop Middleware Magic Jay SenSharma shares "a simple demo which explains how we can create a Complex JAXWS WebService using WebLogic Workshop." (tags: WebLogic jaxws middleware) Wentari: Re-Learning PeopleSoft "If I truly want to be an enterprise architect, what better way than to have hands on knowledge about all the Oracle offerings outside of my specialization in Siebel and OBIEE." -- Peter Yeung (tags: oracle otn businessintelligence obiee siebel) Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: CreateWithParams Operation for Oracle ADF BC 11g Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovski illustrates how you can apply a CreateWithParams operation in two easy steps. (tags: oracle otn oracleace soa) APEX plugins contributed to the APEX community by AMIS developers AMIS Technology blog The APEX 4.0 plugin framework "allows for more more organized, better structured development with lots more reuse potential," according to Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema. (tags: oracle otn oracleace apex) Oracle BI EE 11g and Oracle ADF - Part 2 - Real Time reporting using View Objects Venkatakrishnan J looks into "another reporting innovation (by use of the common ADF Framework) i.e. real time reporting using BI EE by directly reversing metadata from a transactional application. (tags: oracle otn oracleace businessintelligence obiee adf) On-demand Webcast: Java in the Smart Grid (The Java Source) Learn more about the Smart Grid and the role that Java is poised to play in this important initiative. (tags: oracle otn java smartgrid)

  Read the article

• Which programming language should i choose? (much more info inside) [closed]

  - by Andreas

  I am not completely sure if this is the right place to put this question, but since it's the programming thread I guessed that there's many experienced programmers here. :) Ok, hello! My name is Andreas and I am a 16 years old guy from Norway. For some time now I've wanted to learn a programming language. Six months ago I started learning C++, but quit withing a week due to lack of motivation. The same thing happend only 2 months ago when I tried to learn Lua. I wanted to program mods to the game Garry's mod, and was really motivated. Then I stopped playing the game, and the programming stopped with it. Today though I am ready again. The only difference is that I am not completely sure what I want to do with the language. I only want to create something, and I miss the progress of failing and enduring hard work until I finally solve the problem I've worked on for hours. What I am trying to say is; Is there any program out there that allows me, a complete noob (I didn't learn that much in a week, so I like to call myself a beginner), to create apps, mods or something similar but at the same time being qualified as a first time language? I was thinking of Java, because Android, Minecraft and many other applications and games use it. But I've heard that it is going to be replaced by a program called HTML 5 (whatever that is), is this true? I certainly don't want to spend many hours of my life on something that is useless in a year or two. Hopefully I didn't make this too complicated. I know that it is hard to recommend something when I don't have a goal, but I really don't know what to say. Have a good day kind folks! - Andreas EDIT:* I did not know that this was an off topic question, really sorry!

  Read the article

• Oracle SOA Suite on Virtual Box

  - by sravan.sarraju(at)oracle.com

  Recently I have started my journey Oracle SOA Suite and the first big hurdle everyone warned me off is setting up Oracle SOA Suite environment in our personal machine for learning. My laziness pushed me to search for much easier way than regular all download, configuration stuff and bang..! I found in the solution oracle site itself. Oracle SOA Suite on Virtual Box. For those who are not aware of Virtual Box, it’s a virtualization software which enables u to install multiple operating systems on a virtual hard drive which in turn managed by Virtual Box. In short pack ur Operating System, Software, Files everything into a VM and carry it wherever u go. Coming to Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle is offering a prebuilt VM for download which u can mount on ur Virtual box and that all you need. Here is the link for Virtual Box image of Oracle SOA Suite. Virtual Box can be downloaded here It’s a huge download. I’m yet to try it myself. Will get back to my writer again once I’m done.

  Read the article

• How to document requirements for an API systematically?

  - by Heinrich

  I am currently working on a project, where I have to analyze the requirements of two given IT systems, that use cloud computing, for a Cloud API. In other words, I have to analyze what requirements these systems have for a Cloud API, such that they would be able to switch it, while being able to accomplish their current goals. Let me give you an example for some informal requirements of Project A: When starting virtual machines in the cloud through the API, it must be possible to specify the memory size, CPU type, operating system and a SSH key for the root user. It must be possible to monitor the inbound and outbound network traffic per hour per virtual machine. The API must support the assignment of public IPs to a virtual machine and the retrieval of the public IPs. ... In a later stage of the project I will analyze some Cloud Computing standards that standardize cloud APIs to find out where possible shortcomings in the current standards are. A finding could and will probably be, that a certain standard does not support monitoring resource usage and thus is not currently usable. I am currently trying to find a way to systematically write down and classify my requirements. I feel that the way I currently have them written down (like the three points above) is too informal. I have read in a couple of requirements enineering and software architecture books, but they all focus too much on details and implementation. I do really only care about the functionalities provided through the API/interface and I don't think UML diagrams etc. are the right choice for me. I think currently the requirements that I collected can be described as user stories, but is that already enough for a sophisticated requirements analysis? Probably I should go "one level deeper" ... Any advice/learning resources for me?

  Read the article

• New Oracle University Courses for June 2014 - Just Released!

  - by user12601713

  -Written by the Oracle University Marketing team  At Oracle University, we work hard to make sure our training and certification portfolio is current. Here's a quick summary of our hottest new courses.  Top Course Releases for June 1)   Oracle BI 11g R1: Build Repositories 2)   Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g for System Administrators 3)   Oracle Database 12c: Clusterware Administration 4)   Oracle Database 12c: ASM Administration 5)   Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c R2 Virtualizing Systems 6)   XML Fundamentals Ed 1.1 7)   PeopleSoft Global Payroll Rel 9.2 8)   Oracle Agile 9.3.3 Administrator 9)   Oracle Agile 9.3.3 Product Collaboration This is just a sample of what we expect to be popular new releases. Explore all of Oracle's training and certifications at education.oracle.com.  Courses can be taken in the classroom or online. Choose your learning method based on your schedule.

  Read the article

• Handling Types for Real and Complex Matrices in a BLAS Wrapper

  - by mga

  I come from a C background and I'm now learning OOP with C++. As an exercise (so please don't just say "this already exists"), I want to implement a wrapper for BLAS that will let the user write matrix algebra in an intuitive way (e.g. similar to MATLAB) e.g.: A = B*C*D.Inverse() + E.Transpose(); My problem is how to go about dealing with real (R) and complex (C) matrices, because of C++'s "curse" of letting you do the same thing in N different ways. I do have a clear idea of what it should look like to the user: s/he should be able to define the two separately, but operations would return a type depending on the types of the operands (R*R = R, C*C = C, R*C = C*R = C). Additionally R can be cast into C and vice versa (just by setting the imaginary parts to 0). I have considered the following options: As a real number is a special case of a complex number, inherit CMatrix from RMatrix. I quickly dismissed this as the two would have to return different types for the same getter function. Inherit RMatrix and CMatrix from Matrix. However, I can't really think of any common code that would go into Matrix (because of the different return types). Templates. Declare Matrix<T> and declare the getter function as T Get(int i, int j), and operator functions as Matrix *(Matrix RHS). Then specialize Matrix<double> and Matrix<complex>, and overload the functions. Then I couldn't really see what I would gain with templates, so why not just define RMatrix and CMatrix separately from each other, and then overload functions as necessary? Although this last option makes sense to me, there's an annoying voice inside my head saying this is not elegant, because the two are clearly related. Perhaps I'm missing an appropriate design pattern? So I guess what I'm looking for is either absolution for doing this, or advice on how to do better.

  Read the article

• Navigation in Win8 Metro Style applications

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  In Windows 8, Touch is, as they say, a first class citizen. Now, to be honest: they also said that in Windows 7. However in Win8 this is actually true. Applications are meant to be used by touch. Yes, you can still use mouse, keyboard and pen and your apps should take that into account but touch is where you should focus on initially. Will all users have touch enabled devices? No, not in the first place. I don’t think touchscreens will be on every device sold next year. But in 5 years? Who knows? Don’t forget: if your app is successful it will be around for a long time and by that time touchscreens will be everywhere. Another reason to embrace touch is that it’s easier to develop a touch-oriented app and then to make sure that keyboard, nouse and pen work as doing it the other way around. Porting a mouse-based application to a touch based application almost never works. The reverse gives you much more chances for success. That being said, there are some things that you need to think about. Most people have more than one finger, while most users only use one mouse at the time. Still, most touch-developers translate their mouse-knowledge to the touch and think they did a good job. Martin Tirion from Microsoft said that since Touch is a new language people face the same challenges they do when learning a new real spoken language. The first thing people try when learning a new language is simply replace the words in their native language to the newly learned words. At first they don’t care about grammar. To a native speaker of that other language this sounds all wrong but they still will be able to understand what the intention was. If you don’t believe me: try Google translate to translate something for you from your language to another and then back and see what happens. The same thing happens with Touch. Most developers translate a mouse-click into a tap-event and think they’re done. Well matey, you’re not done. Not by far. There are things you can do with a mouse that you cannot do with touch. Think hover. A mouse has the ability to ‘slide’ over UI elements. Touch doesn’t (I know: with Pen you can do this but I’m talking about actual fingers here). A touch is either there or it isn’t. And right-click? Forget about it. A click is a click.  Yes, you have more than one finger but the machine doesn’t know which finger you use… The other way around is also true. Like I said: most users only have one mouse but they are likely to have more than one finger. So how do we take that into account? Thinking about this is really worth the time: you might come up with some surprisingly good ideas! Still: don’t forget that not every user has touch-enabled hardware so make sure your app is useable for both groups. Keep this in mind: we’re going to need it later on! Now. Apps should be easy to use. You don’t want your user to read through pages and pages of documentation before they can use the app. Imagine that spotter next to an airfield suddenly seeing a prototype of a Concorde 2 landing on the nearby runway. He probably wants to enter that information in our app NOW and not after he’s taken a 3 day course. Even if he still has to download the app, install it for the first time and then run it he should be on his way immediately. At least, fast enough to note down the details of that unique, rare and possibly exciting sighting he just did. So.. How do we do this? Well, I am not talking about games here. Games are in a league of their own. They fall outside the scope of the apps I am describing. But all the others can roughly be characterized as being one of two flavors: the navigation is either flat or hierarchical. That’s it. And if it’s hierarchical it’s no more than three levels deep. Not more. Your users will get lost otherwise and we don’t want that. Flat is simple. Just imagine we have one screen that is as high as our physical screen is and as wide as you need it to be. Don’t worry if it doesn’t fit on the screen: people can scroll to the right and left. Don’t combine up/down and left/right scrolling: it’s confusing. Next to that, since most users will hold their device in landscape mode it’s very natural to scroll horizontal. So let’s use that when we have a flat model. The same applies to the hierarchical model. Try to have at most three levels. If you need more space, find a way to group the items in such a way that you can fit it in three, very wide lanes. At the highest level we have the so called hub level. This is the entry point of the app and as such it should give the user an immediate feeling of what the app is all about. If your app has categories if items then you might show these categories here. And while you’re at it: also show 2 or 3 of the items itself here to give the user a taste of what lies beneath. If the user selects a category you go to the section part. Here you show several sections (again, go as wide as you need) with again some detail examples. After that: the details layer shows each item. By giving some samples of the underlaying layer you achieve several things: you make the layer attractive by showing several different things, you show some highlights so the user sees actual content and you provide a shortcut to the layers underneath. The image below is borrowed from the http://design.windows.com website which has tons and tons of examples: For our app we’ll use this layout. So what will we show? Well, let’s see what sorts of features our app has to offer. I’ll repeat them here: Note planes Add pictures of that plane Notify friends of new spots Share new spots on social media Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down the runway they take I am sure you can think of some more items but for now we'll use these. In the hub we’ll show something that represents “Spots”, “Friends”, “Social”. Apparently we have an inner list of spotter-friends that are in the app, while we also have to whole world in social. In the layer below we show something else, depending on what the user choose. When they choose “Spots” we’ll display the last spots, last spots by our friends (so we can actually jump from this category to the one next to it) and so on. When they choose a “spot” (or press the + icon in the App bar, which I’ll talk about next time) they go to the lowest and final level that shows details about that spot, including a picture, date and time and the notes belonging to that entry. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to organize your app this way. If you don’t have enough room in these three layers you probably could easily get away with grouping items. Take a look at our hub: we have three completely different things in one place. If you still can’t fit it all in in a logical and consistent way, chances are you are trying to do too much in this app. Go back to your mission statement, determine if it is specific enough and if your feature list helps that statement or makes it unclear. Go ahead. Give it a go! Next time we’ll talk about the look and feel, the charms and the app-bar….

  Read the article

• When does implementing MVVM not make sense

  - by Kelly Sommers

  I am a big fan of various patterns and enjoy learning new ones all the time however I think with all the evangelism around popular patterns and anti-patterns sometimes this causes blind adoption. I think most things have individual pros and cons and it's important to educate what the cons are and when it doesn't make sense to make a particular choice. The pros are constantly advocated. "It depends" I think applies most times but the industry does a poor job at communicating what it depends ON. Also many patterns surfaced from inheriting values from previous patterns or have derivatives, which each one brings another set of pros and cons to the table. The sooner we are more aware of the trade off's of decisions we make in software architecture the sooner we make better decisions. This is my first challenge to the community. Even if you are a big fan of said pattern, I challenge you to discover the cons and when you shouldn't use it. Define when MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) may not make sense in a particular piece of software and based on what reasons. MVVM has a set of pros and cons. Let's try to define them. GO! :)

  Read the article

• A terminal emulator for ex-Windows users

  - by Dan

  There are several things I would like to be better in Ubuntu Terminal Emulator. coloring, like in the source code Copy and paste keyboard shortcuts that I used all the time in Windows: Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V (Most of people here in Ubuntu use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste everywhere except the terminal! I think it's annoying for newcomers, and I don't worry about historical reasons) A feature to save all the output to log file UPDATE: Can the terminal be a powerful feature-full user-friendly tool like a modern IDE? The Linux user can spend 30% of time in the terminal. Programmers no longer code in a notepad. Can I see the history pane? Suggestions? Directory pane? Commands list? Search for words in an output? Contextual behavior? "Search in Google" for a mouse right-click. Tips and tricks learning? Time is money! Please, people, give me a link to the 21st - century terminal.

  Read the article

• Cocos2d v2.0 and OpenGL 2.0/1.0: where to start

  - by mm24

  I started developing my very first game 3 months ago using Cocos2d 2.0 for iPhone. I am now in the stage where I'd like to add some cool effects to the bullets and some special weapons (see my waveforms question here). I got a good answer in the cocos2d-iphone forum (see this one). Unfortunately I am a bit paralized now. I don't know if I will be overdoing by learning OpengGL 2.0 or if I should just stick ot the old 1.0. There is a good intro on various tutorial's written in Steffen Itterheims blog (see this post). I would like to add to my game: a blur effect to the bullets (here is a tutorial for OpenGL 1.0) a waveform (see above) some realistic water ripples (here is a nice sample code) So now, given that I don't want to overdo things but at the same time I want to achieve those effects, from where should I start? Should I discard the OpenGL 1.0 tutorials? OR should I use only OpenGL 1.0 code? How can I avoid confusion? I mean, it seems that the compiler recognizes both, but that there are some conflictual calls in some circumnstances, I am fairly sure this has some explanation, is there some reference to this somewhere?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409  | Next Page >