I remember reading a law (well, maybe not exactly a law), but in software design, providing user with a lot of control without really giving him an option of a Basic and an Advanced Mode will sometimes backfire and make the user to end up not using any of the options in the first place because they are just too many of them. Did I read t...
I am working with some code that uses Traits UI to show a dialog from which the user is able to select two files: class Files(HasTraits): filename_1 = File(exists=True) filename_2 = File(exists=True) traits_ui = View( 'filename_1', 'filename_2', title = 'Select Geometry Files', buttons = ['OK', 'Ca...
Hi guys. Do you know of any document or tutorial to make HTML5's canvas drawn interfaces? I'm thinking of a layered structure, one for the main app interface and other for popups, menus, etc, working with several canvas objects and dynamically manipulating them, but i found it lacks flexibility (for example, what if i want a non rectang...
I'm working on a webform that has about 15 user controls, separated by context (comments, locations, members/leaders, etc). If each control can render individually (using real or test data), does it make sense to have a seperate "functional" test page to test them in isolation or is there a better way? ...
I have an OpenGL application which is rendering intensive and also fetches stuff over HTTP. Following Apple's samples for OpenGL, I originally used NSTimer for my main painting loop, before finding out (like everyone else) that it really isn't a good idea (because you sometimes have huge delays on touch events being processed when slow ...
What software/UI techniques can leverage our spatial memory? I think and remember in physical space, often the location of something is as important as it's content. For instance I keep an untidy desk, but I know where to find things, I use different parts of my (multiscreen) desktop for different windows/icons. I annotate books (with p...
I have noticed a common scenario in UI development (both Web and fat client) where there is a group of radio buttons, and clicking on a radio button means you want to "select" a certain "set" of other controls (for simplicity's sake, let's say they're all text boxes). Just to illustrate, the asterisks represent radio buttons and the und...
I am looking for some tool that would help me prototype basic website structure and logistics (or simply user interface). It should be extremely efficient in the matter of time needed to do simple changes like changing position of objects on the page. It should provide features for creating multiple pages and linking them together. I d...
GUI: should a button represent the current state or the state to be achieved through clicking the button? I've seen both and it sometimes misleads the user. what do you think? ...
Hi, I am about to start developing a desktop application, and I am interested in making the application both usable and accessible for end users. Can anyone suggest online resources that offer guidance for developing usable desktop applications? In particular, I would be interested in learning about how to test desktop applications f...
We have a Java server application using a message based communication passing around strongly typed complex POJO messages. Our regular client is a rich-client Flex application that has a very heavy art and UI development process that doesn't lend itself to rapid prototyping. We are planning on building a Java UI to test server functiona...
So right now I have a UIView with a UILabel in it. I want the background to have an opacity < 1.0 and the label to have an opacity of 1.0. However since alphas propagate down the view hierarchy, the label ends up with an opacity < 1.0 as well. Is there anyway to do what I want without making the UILabel a subview of another view?? ...
i want to save logged in users actions so when they visit the page again they don't have to do the same thing again eg. what list values they chose or what page they were on before they logged out. i dont want to save it as cookies because i want them to be unchanged even if he switch computer. should i save these kind of information in...
It can be difficult to use (webpage) sliders that cover a large range with fine granularity. On the one hand, it is easy to move across the range. On the other hand, it is difficult to locate the exact point one wants, assuming a fine enough granularity. I was thinking that a magnify effect around the cursor could solve this problem (a...
hi, sorry for stupid question i am new to UI in general and gwt specifically how can i control the tabs width when using tabs panel in gwt? how how can i know what css attributes each widget has? i would like to control the tabs color (selected and not selected) and remove the tabs frame thanks ...
I am creating a website. I want to have my whole development flow under Linux. Any recommendations on graphics software for creating UI mocks in Linux? ...
I am in the process of building interactive front-ends to a distributed application which to date has been used to run workloads that had a batch-job like structures and needed no UI at all. The application is mostly written in Perl and C and runs on a mix of Unix and Windows machines, but I think this isn't relevant to the UI. The firs...
I'd like some feedback, and opinions on the following approach to UI design: We're working on an application that implements a series of industry-standard protocols. Each protocol dictates (very rigidly) how the user should perform the task at hand, from setup to collect data, to collecting the data, data entry and validation, analysis ...
Hi, At work, we have optimization engines, and one of the inputs used by these engines are business rules, which we create and edit with a proprietary rule editor. These rules are of our own proprietary format, because the existing rule engines were not capable of representing the business rules of the complexity we required. Anyhow, ...
I would like to add a mouseover event to a UI tab strip when user clicks on a checkbox, but I am trouble dynamically adding and removing events. Here is what I have so far. <script type="text/javascript"> $(function() { // add mouseover event when user clicks on checlkbox called chkbEnableMouseOver $("#chkbEnableMouseOver").ch...