http://www.brianlow.com Software Development Notes Sat, 08 Nov 2008 06:21:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en From the article Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help?: - no difference in speed or accuracy - 46% preferred it, 33% didn't care If you are going to use zebra striping, keep it subtle. http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/11/07/zebra-striping/ From Joel Spolsky's article User Interface Design for Programmers: - A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would. - Don't provide options unless the user really wants to choose - Use real-world metaphors - Affordances - Consistency with existing standards (good or bad) - Users don't read manuals - ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/11/06/user-interface-design-for-programmers/ This NAnt target will build the project into a new folder with a (single) precompiled DLL. All source files and other non-deployment files are removed. http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/08/31/build-aspnet-webservice-from-the-command-line/ WordPress 2.5 was released last month. Why can't we upgrade using Fantastico? It turns out BlueHost has started their own Fanastico competitor called SimpleScripts. I doubt we'll be seeing any new Fantastico updates. While Fantastico has had WordPress 2.5 scripts for at least three weeks, BlueHost's tech support claims they ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/04/30/upgrading-to-wordpress-25-on-bluehost/ This procedure will lookup the maximum value used in a table then set the sequence to this value + 1. CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE reset_sequence_from_table ( seq_name IN VARCHAR2, column_name IN VARCHAR2, table_name IN VARCHAR2) AS cval INTEGER; BEGIN EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'SELECT MAX(' || column_name ||') FROM ' ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/04/29/reset-sequence-from-table/ The open source project CHDK has built firmware enhancements for many of Canon's compact cameras. Some features: - RAW support - Extra fast/slow shutter speeds - In-camera scripting language - DOF calculator - AutoISO based on focal length - Exposure bracketing - Live histogram - Highlight clipping indicators - Detailed battery level indicator - Teathered shooting - Loads from SD card ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/04/06/canon-elph-on-steroids/ A friend told me I needed to write more blog posts. I'm not sure if he was interested in what I have to say or just didn't want to link to a dead blog. Either way I will put down a few more posts! Take a look at the work from ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2008/03/28/processing/ Some general notes on exception handling: Setup a global exception handler to catch and handle unexpected exceptions. Only catch exceptions where you can take more intelligent action than the global exception handler. Be careful with exceptions on any thread other than the main thread (spawned threads, asynchronous delegates, timers, etc...) ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2007/08/03/global-exception-handling/ These are suggested steps for creating batch scripts that will deploy a solution to DEV, TEST and PROD. If this article looks like it is more complicated than it should be, I agree. I think batch scripts with an XML read/write utility or NAnt would be a better choice: The ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2007/08/03/msbuild-automated-deploy-scripts-for-web-applications/ The following class allows you to easily switch between DEV, TEST and PROD appConfig settings. Settings are stored in one location (your web.config or app.config file). You can define settings global to all environments and override settings for each environment as neccessary. 1. In your app, access your settings with: ... http://www.brianlow.com/index.php/2007/08/03/multi-environment-config/