How do you test layout design across multiple browsers/OSs?
What is a good method for testing website layout designs across multiple browsers and operating systems?...
design
Folders or Projects in a Visual Studio Solution?
When spliting a solution in to logical layers, when is it best to use a separate project over just grouping by a folder?...
What programs do you use to create graphic images?
Background: I am working as a freelance web-developer. Now, lately this has meant that I have to design a lot of graphic images, logos etc for the the websites I create. So, are there any good resources to learn these things? And, what softwares should I ideally be learning? I have always heard about Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photosho...
What are you using for Web UI/layout design?
What are folks out there using for web/ui design? For the most part we use PowerPoint at my company. The UI folks will mock up a screen in PowerPoint and we (the development group) will take it from there. So, for a side gig of mine I decided to do some mock ups to show the client prior to dev and I'm quickly feeling that PowerPoint i...
Icons: How does a developer with no design skill make his/her application icons look pretty?
I probably spend far too much time trying to make my visual interfaces look good, and while I'm pretty adept at finding the right match between usability and style one area I am hopeless at is making nice looking icons. How do you people overcome this (I'm sure common) problem? I'm thinking of things like images on buttons and perhaps ...
Javascript and PHP - Login Script with hidden buttons
I have been using PHP and Javascript for building my dads website. He wants to incorporate a login system into his website. I have the design for the login system using PHP, my problem is how do I show buttons if the person is logged in. For Example - You have Home, Products, About Us, and Contact. Well I want to have buttons for Dea...
MVC pattern question: Who has what? who calls what?
I am refactoring a project and I want to make it conform to the MVC pattern (model view control). There are three objects: a ServerList (maintains a list of servers that are active) - this guy will be the controller a Form - this is your standard .NET GUI a DatabaseThingy - wrapper class that reads/writes to database. (don't ask me wh...
Best WYSIWYG CSS editor?
[rant] boy how I hate CSS! it's an art that I have no clue about! Spend hours making everything look dandy then you look at the same site in a different browser... WT... I though this was supposed to be a standard!! [/rant] What I really want is a WYCIWYG editor. No not dreamweaver! An editor where you can define an element and ...
Generating Icon Files
I'm looking for an online solution for generating .ICO files. I'd like the ICO files to have the ability to have transparency as well. What software or web site do you use to create them? [Update] To clarify, I have an existing image in PNG format, 32 x 32 pixels. I want to generate the icon from this existing file, not create a bra...
Personalized icon next to the URL address in the browser's address bar?
How do I code for a company icon to appear on the left-side next to the URL address in the browser's address bar? ...
What are the best resources on designing a new language?
I've been toying with the idea of building a new general purpose programming language lately, and I was wondering where to go for help. Does anyone have a favorite book? Tutorial? Tools? I see the primary benefit of the project being that I will learn more about language design. I have little hope that it will become the next Ruby o...
Good Resources for Relational Database Design
I'm looking for a book/site/tutorial on best practices for relational database design, tuning for performance etc. It turns out this kind of resource is a bit difficult to find; there's a lot of "here's normalization, here's ER diagrams, have at it," but not much in the way of real examples. Anyone have any ideas? ...
Design debate: what are good ways to store and manipulate versioned objects?
I am intentionally leaving this quite vague at first. I'm looking for discussion and what issues are important more than I'm looking for hard answers. I'm in the middle of designing an app that does something like portfolio management. The design I have so far is Problem: a problem that needs to be solved Solution: a proposed soluti...
Designing a Calendar system like Google Calendar
Hi, I have to create something similiar to Google Calendar, so I created an events table that contains all the events for a user. The hard part is handling re-occurring events, the row in the events table has an event_type field that tells you what kind of event it is, since an event can be for a single date only, OR a re-occuring event...
Resources on wordpress theme-development
What are the best resources for Wordpress theme-development? I am currently in the phase of starting my own blog, and don't want to use one of the many free themes. I already have a theme for my website, so I want to read about best-practices. Any advice on how to get started would be very welcome :) I have now created my theme (woh...
Class designer
What software do you use when designing classes and their relationship, or just pen and paper? ...
Are there good resources on federated software?
Imagine you want to build a version of SOFlow that does every topic. Much more encyclopdic -- somewhat similar to a collection of all of the "talk" pages on Wikipedia. If I were designing this, I wouldn't try to do it as one site. I'd do it as a framework where anybody could create a version for their special topic, but all of the spe...
Looking for example of Command pattern for UI
I'm working on a WinForm .Net application with the basic UI that includes toolbar buttons, menu items and keystrokes that all initiate the same underlying code. Right now the event handlers for each of these call a common method to perform the function. From what I've read this type of action could be handled by the Command design patte...
Is Single Responsibility Principle a rule of OOP?
An answer to a Stack Overflow question stated that a particular framework violated a plain and simple OOP rule: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). Is the Single Responsibility Principle really a rule of OOP? My understanding of the definition of Object Orientated Programming is "a paradigm where objects and their behaviour are used...
How do you begin designing a large system?
It's been mentioned to me that I'll be the sole developer behind a large new system. Among other things I'll be designing a UI and database schema. I'm sure I'll receive some guidance, but I'd like to be able to knock their socks off. What can I do in the meantime to prepare, and what will I need to keep in mind when I sit down at my ...