Greetings, currently I am refactoring one of my programs, and I found an interesting problem. I have Transitions in an automata. Transitions always have a start-state and an end-state. Some Transitions have a label, which encodes a certain Action that must be performed upon traversal. No label means no action. Some transitions have a co...
Our product design team has a very active imagination (not a bad thing), but they tend to want things that are one or more of the following: Not possible Not practical Lack adherence to usability standards Just plain stupid I try my best to explain my case. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. How do you handle situations like this? ...
Basically, when a user inputs a product name (such as "iPhone 3g"), I would like to know the parent categories of that item (such as Electronics / Mobile phones). Is there a web api (ie. for ebay, amazon etc.) or any other way to figure out that information? ...
When coding, what in your experience is a better approach? Break the problem down into small enough pieces and then implement each piece. Break the problem down, but then implement using a top-down approach. Any other? ...
Since AS3 does not allow private constructors, it seems the only way to construct a singleton and guarantee the constructor isn't explicitly created via "new" is to pass a single parameter and check it. I've heard two recommendations, one is to check the caller and ensure it's the static getInstance(), and the other is to have a private...
I'm pretty sure most of us are familiar with the concept of a project's requirements changing after it starts, this becomes more and more of an issue the less the client knows about how things work and the closer you work with them. How then can I design a system (specifically a website but general advice will probably be best here) so ...
We need to implement a simple state machine in C. Is a standard switch statement the best way to go? We have a current state (state) and a trigger for the transition. switch(state) { case STATE_1: state = DoState1(transition); break; case STATE_2: state = DoState2(transition); break; } ... DoState2(int transitio...
I'm trying to design some tables to store some data, which has to be converted to different languages later. Can anybody provide some "best practices" or guidelines for this? Thanks ...
I'm looking for a good, well designed flow of a UK postcode lookup process as part of registration for an eCommerce account. We're redesigning ours and want to see what is out there and how I can make it as friendly as possible. --Update-- Basically our current design was a manual entry form (worked pretty well) which a less than expe...
Assuming the you are implementing a user story that requires changes in all layers from UI (or service facade) to DB. In what direction do you move? From UI to Business Layer to Repository to DB? From DB to Repository to Business Layer to UI? It depends. (On what ?) ...
Where do you put user input validation in a web form application? View: Javascript client side Controller: Server side language (C#...) Model: Database (stored procedures or dependencies) I think there is validation required by each level: Did the user input a sane value are dates actual dates, are numbers actualy numbers ... D...
I have added author pages to my company blog recently. Although I've no trouble pulling through relevant fields to populate the page - e.g. Author Name, User-profile, etc, I would really like to be able to add a small amount of html to the user-profile. Currently the whole thing is just dumped onto the author profile page - you can view ...
I have been working on a ImageRotator control and finished weeding out any oddities with it tonight, and it works great. However, there is one thing that is bugging me with it. It doesn't display anything at design time (I just get the image placeholder). I have been Googling, and came across a good article from Rick Strahl (as always),...
Do you draw your windows before constructing them? What do you use? I've tried the Pencil plugin for FF. I've tried MS Visio. I've tried paper & pencil. I've tried Designer Vista. etc. etc. etc. I'm currently leaning toward paper & pencil, but what about you; what's your preference? ...
I am fascinated by the performance of applications such as "Rollercoaster Tycoon" and "The Sims" and FPS games. I would like to know more about the basic application architecture. (Not so concerned with the UI - I assume MVC/MVP piriciples apply here. Nor am I concerned with the math and physics at this point.) My main question deals ...
In Java, there is a practice of declaring every variable (local or class), parameter final if they really are. Though this makes the code a lot more verbose, this helps in easy reading/grasping of the code and also prevents mistakes as the intention is clearly marked. What are your thoughts on this and what do you follow? ...
I'm contemplating an application that is, at a glance, a "free form" database. A collection of notes and artifacts. However, at the same time there are some higher level structures within the system. My 10 second back-of-napkin design entails storing individual "entries" in small files (perhaps XML), organized in directories, and then i...
I am looking for a free tool to quickly create a screen design in a workshop with a customer (for a web application). The focus of the tool should be on a functional definition of screens and not on the design of them. Do you have any suggestions for an appropriate tool? ...
Hello all, In a recent project I have nearly completed we used an architecture that as its top layer of interaction from the web/services layers uses XXXManager classes. For example, there is a windows services that runs on a scheduled basis that imports data from several diverse data sources into our system. Within this service seve...
I've begun to use TDD. As mentioned in an earlier question the biggest difficulty is handling interface changes. How do you reduce the impact on your test cases as requirements change? ...