In some application with UI, what is better (easy, friendly, etc.) to a user: UI is static (don't depends on user state). E.g user see some button, but it's grayed out or when it's clicked, a message, that this action is not applicable right now, is shown. or UI is dynamic (depend on user state). E.g. user don't see buttons, that a...
For instance, I would like to compute the time elapsed between 2 events from the following table: CREATE TABLE Events (_ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, type INTEGER, time INTEGER) My question is should I compute this difference with SQL or with java code ? Actually, this does not seem to be easy in SQL while traversing the table in java and p...
I wonder what would be a good definition of term "over-engineering" as applied to software development. The expression seems to be used a lot during software design discussions often in conjunction with "excessive future-proofing" and it would be nice to nail down a more precise definition. ...
In my application at the moment I have (as in so many other applications) an entity called Contact, which represents any person. At its most basic level this is used to represent business contacts. However it can also be used to represent employees of the company. and there are also a couple of special types of employee (let say there is...
Are there any site that show good examples of web application styles? Form designs and layout styles? "Coding is easy, getting it to look good thats hard" -Thanks ...
My self as a Front End Developer, for many years I have resolved many browser and CSS related issues for Developers coding in ASP, PHP and XSLT. I just want some Front End Designers and Developers to point out, which things to be consider when there is some Design issue in Programming. Firebug is one option. ...
I love having a book in front of me, but right now I can't afford to buy anymore books and all my libraries suck, so I'm wondering what free sites/resources exist where I can learn about best practices for designing classes? ...
I have an html table that literally has like 30 columns of data, and I'm having a hard time framing it in such a way that it can be visible without massive left/right scrolling. One thing I was wondering is if anyone has ever seen anything clever with column headers? Some of them just can't be abbreviated down enough, but the column he...
I'm attempting to model a grocery store. In the store, there are several "aisles". Each "aisle" has a group of "categories" of "items" it stores. Each "category" can only belong to one "aisle". Each "item" can only have one "category". The data model seems straight forward to me: An "aisle" table with an ID and DESCRIPTION A...
I'm working with a 3rd party c# class that has lots of great methods and properties - but as time has gone by I need to extend that class with methods and properties of my own. If it was my code I would just use that class as my base class and add my own properties and method on top - but this class has an internal constructor. (In my ...
I often find myself in a situation where I create a generic interface or class and then want to use different versions of this class or interface in a non generic way. For example I may have an interface like this: interface ICanCreate<T> { T NewObject(); } Which allows a class to be a factory for that type. I then want to registe...
I have been asked by a client something I have never really come across before and wondered if anyone could classify it for me, so that I can work out how to design it. Basically they would like a box in which the user types in a code, the first part of this code will determine which page they are then sent to. This page will not have ...
What tools are available out there to make writing and maintaining software documentation easier? Specifically what do you use to document requirements? What do you use to document your design? What do you use to document how your software is tested? How do you trace requirements back to your design and test documentation? Or is all...
In the years that I've been at my place of employment, I've noticed a distinct trend towards something that I consider an anti-pattern: Maintaining internal data as big strings of XML. I've seen this done a number of different ways, though the two worst offenders were quite similar. The Webservice The first application, a web service...
I have two separate functions, bar() and foo(). The execution flow of my program supposed to be as follows: input -> bar() -> foo() -> output Currently, a teammate of mine on the same development team made a foo() call inside the bar() function, which destroyed the modularity design. While it's better from modular design perspective to...
Are there a finite number of questions that can be asked regarding a specific language (and or topic), for example - for T-SQL given that there are only so many commands, can there be a limited number of non-repetitive questions? and if so can you use that to determine sizing for a site like stackoverflow and to determine the probability...
I have a piece of java code which reads strings from a file and creates a map out of the strings. As this code depends on a file, unit testing is clumsy. How does one design such pieces so that code can be unit tested? One approach that I can think of is, instead of this piece taking a file as an argument it can take an input stream. I...
I'm developing a sort of web application and recently come a need to log some of user activities in it. Therefore come with natural question is it a good idea to use Apache server logging mechanism for that? If the answer is yes, please explain why and so if not. Mine main concern is reduction in performance as a result of enabling loggi...
If I have an object, say, a user class, with say First & Last Name properties what is a better way to populate it: The PAGE instantiates the class and the PAGE calls the business layer to popualte the class. (In this case the class is essentially a container for data). or The class itself not only has the properties, but it also ha...
http://webdesignfromscratch.com/ If you look closely, the browser will render the fonts at first, and then quickly the header text flickers and then it becomes an image. Does anyone know what technique is being used here? ...