I'm wondering how far people should take the validation of e-mail address. My field is primarily web-development, but this applies anywhere. I've seen a few approaches: simply checking if there is an "@" present, which is dead simply but of course not that reliable. a more complex regex test for standard e-mail formats a full regex ag...
Although I'm specifically interested in web application information, I would also be somewhat curious about desktop application development as well. This question is driven by my work on my personal website as well as my job, where I have developed a few features, but left it to others to integrate into the look and feel of the site. Ar...
The company I'm currently working for is using Selenium for Uniting-Testing our User Interface. What do you use to Unit-Test your Web UI and how effective do you find it? ...
Where do you turn when creating user interface? I am a programmer, not a designer. Any ideas? My "UI" is usually terrible, as I just want to make it work, what do you do? ...
How are you instrumenting your UI's? In the past I've read that people have instrumented their user interfaces, but what I haven't found is examples or tips on how to instrument a UI. By instrumenting, I mean collecting data regarding usage and performance of the system. A MSDN article on Instrumentation is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-...
My company has developed a long standing product using MFC in Visual C++ as the defacto standard for UI development. Our codebase contains ALOT of legacy/archaic code which must be kept operational. Some of this code is older than me (originally written in the late 70s) and some members of our team are still on Visual Studio 6. However,...
I'm looking to create a menu bar similar to those found in desktop applications using xhtml and javascript. I don't mind using a framework like jQuery (in fact I'm already using jQuery for other behaviour in the app), but I'd like to avoid using a plugin or an external js solution (the idea is to keep it as light and as tightly-controll...
How do you test the usability of the user interfaces of your applications - be they web or desktop? Do you just throw it all together and then tweak it based on user experience once the application is live? Or do you pass it to a specific usability team for testing prior to release? We are a small software house, but I am interested i...
So one of the things that has been talked about a few times on the podcast is whether menu items should always be enabled to prevent "WHY ISN'T THIS AVAILABLE!" frustration for the end user. This strikes me as a good idea, but then there's the issue of communicating the lack of availability (and the reason why) to the user. Is there any...
There is some documentation on the internet that shows that Windows changes the behavior of the NotifyIcon.BalloonTipShown command if the user is currently idle and this is detected by checking for keyboard and mouse events. I am currently working on an application that spends most of its time in the system tray, but pop-ups up multiple ...
There are a lot of php mvc frameworks out there now. Which one will get me to a frontend, a backend, a user system with permissions the fastest. I like the look of things like Symfony or Codeigniter but there seems to be a lot of re-inventing the wheel involved. Every web application is going to have some users, even if they're just a...
Terminals and shells are very powerful but can be complicated to learn, especially to get the best out of them. Does anyone know of a more GUI based command shell that helps a user or displays answers in a more friendly way? I'm aware of IPython, but even the syntax of that is somewhat convoluted, although it's a step in the right direct...
I am decidedly a programmer, and not a UI designer, so when I am working on internal tools, I really struggle with laying out controls in a useful manner. For example, all those questions I've been asking for the last two days have been for building this tool: http://www.gfilter.net/junk/taskmanager.jpg And while I am pretty happy wit...
I'm using Ruby on Rails for an internal site. Different users of the site have access to a wide variety of data and highly disparate perspectives of the data. Within those different classes of users, there needs to be levels of access. Within the levels of access I need to be able to add features from other classes of users. In the rele...
I have a couple of pet projects where I'm the sole designer/programmer and I spend too much time changing the user interface to make it easier to use by real users and avoiding bright yellow and green that is so common on "programmer" designs. Do you have tips to choose a color scheme when you do not have a graphics designer around? How...
In Asp.Net web forms, what is the best chioce for providing a righ UI (a la Ajax)? I've been using the built in Ajax support that MS ships in addition to the Ajax Control Toolkit until now, but is there something better and/or easier? ...
For a long time I've been looking for a good diagramming/vector-based drawing program that meets my needs as a developer. I'd like to: Draw database diagrams Draw flow charts Draw object-modeling diagrams (UML being the standard) Draw other free-form diagrams (basically boxes & arrows with the occasional clipart) Draw mockups of user i...
I am creating an application for a Windows Mobile computer. The catch is that the device (Motorola MC17) does not have a touch screen or universal keys - there are only six programmable hardware keys. Fitt's law is not applicable here, most Microsoft guidelines are also moot. For now I'm mimicking Nokia's S60 keyboard layout as close as ...
I am a student and interested in doing some research on user interface. For some experiments, I have to change the behaviors of many default interactions in an operating system such as double-click or drag-and-drop in Windows (to make it faster, more efficient, etc.) The best way is to change the behaviors of these interactions in an o...
I want to show a chromeless modal window with a close button in the upper right corner. Is this possible? ...