When Requirements Collide

Could it be that not every set of business requirements has the customer's best interest in mind? Karl Wiegers had always believed that implemented software functionality should enable users to accomplish their goals and help the business achieve its objectives. But a recent experience with a less-than-helpful parking meter system suggested to him that conflicts sometimes might exist between business and user requirements.

Wiegers, Karl E. StickyMinds (2007). Articles>Project Management>Programming

When Scribes Were Honored in the Streets  

The growth of the information technology industry and the focus on ease of use combine to offer technical communicators an unprecedented opportunity. If we seize this opportunity, we will no longer feel the need to justify our jobs. By developing proactive user assistance, we can act for customers and make their tasks easier to complete. If we make customers’ jobs simpler and reduce their reliance on static information, our perceived value will increase. To create proactive user assistance, however, we need to develop computer-programming skills.

Harding, Andrew R. STC Proceedings (1998). Careers>TC>Programming

When to Use Parentheses to Enclose Subroutine and Function Arguments

The rules are confusing concerning the use of parentheses to enclose argument lists. I have even seen MS Knowledgebase articles that have got it wrong. The rules are as follows.

West, Jonathan. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word

When You Can't Trust the Browser

I like Opera--the browser, not the musical spectacle. I like that it puts small demands on your hardware. I like that it displays Web pages quickly and accurately. I like that it has always been close to the standards suggested by the W3C, especially for CSS styles. It is always worthwhile to preview pages in Opera. Opera is a little weak in event handling, and it has been slow to adopt the document object model. But in terms of page presentation, Opera shows a Web page the way it oughta look. It displays a great looking page, and it loads fast. And everybody likes the little guy. The troubles I have with Opera, as a code writer, are all derived from a single bad habit of the browser. Opera is a little loose with the truth.

Tibbetts, Kenneth. Internet.com (2002). Design>Web Design>Programming>DHTML

Why GNOME Hackers Should Care about Usability

Usable Us'a*ble, a. Capable of being used. For such a simplistic definition, this encapsulates the fundamental goal of usability very well. Usable software is software that people can use; whether to write Email, play games or develop the next killer application. GNOME is many different things, but certainely one of its significant aspects is to provide an environment for users - for people. What a disappointment it should be when a user's ability to access one of the features we have coded is impaired or altogether halted because they don't understand how to manipulate the interface.

Nickell, Seth. Gnome.org. Articles>Usability>Programming

Why Variables Should be Declared Properly

Almost all Microsoft Word variables should be dimensioned as whatever they are (Dim MyRange As Range, Dim MyString As String, etc.).

Rado, Dave. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word

Working with Bookmarks in VBA

The most important thing you need to know when working with bookmarks in Word is that there are two 'types' of bookmarks: 'placeholder' bookmarks and 'enclosing' bookmarks.

Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word

Write English the Way You Write Code

For a profession full of sharp people, software engineering produces some hideous prose. How many times have you tried to read a technical document and failed because it was, in a very real sense, unreadable? It doesn't have to be this way. We technical types can improve our writing simply by applying some of those hard won coding skills to to those other, human, languages. I may be grammar challenged and spelling incapable, but writing code has taught me a few things about writing for people.

Olsen, Russ. JRoller (2006). Articles>Writing>Programming>Minimalism

Writing for Expert Systems: A New Frontier for Technical Communicators  

Expert systems that use knowledge bases to find quick and accurate answers for customers are growing in popularity. Our experiences in writing knowledge bases for a large customer help desk have led us to believe that technical communicators are well suited for the job of “knowledge engineer.” We have used our technical writing skills to interview experts in an area, gather information from them, and then organize and write the information in a way that non-experts can use it.

Casey, Margot B. and Joan Lohmann. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Programming

X-Diff: An Effective Change Detection Algorithm for XML Documents    

XML has become the de facto standard format for web publishing and data transportation. Since online information changes frequently, being able to quickly detect changes in XML documents is important to Internet query systems, search engines, and continuous query systems. Previous work in change detection on XML, or other hierarchically structured documents, used an ordered tree model, in which left-to-right order among siblings is important and it can affect the change result. This paper argues that an unordered model (only ancestor relationships are significant) is more suitable for most database applications. Using an unordered model, change detection is substantially harder than using the ordered model, but the change result that it generates is more accurate. This paper proposes X-Diff, an effective algorithm that integrates key XML structure characteristics with standard tree-to-tree correction techniques. The algorithm is analyzed and compared with XyDiff [CAM02], a published XML diff algorithm. An experimental evaluation on both algorithms is provided.

Wang, Yuan, David J. DeWitt and Jin-Yi Cai. University of Wisconsin (2001). Articles>Information Design>Programming>XML

XIA@UT: An Extreme Makeover  

A presentation about applying concepts from extreme programming (XP) to the IA redesign of a web site (=XIA).

Burkart, Jill, Don Turnbull, Amaris Vigil, Andrew Switzky, Diana Miranda and Leonard Liaw. IAsummit (2004). Presentations>Information Design>Programming

XML Basics: Reading and Writing

This chapter covers the two most important tasks in working with XML: reading it into memory and writing it out again. XML is a structured, predictable, and standard data storage format, and as such carries a price.

Ray, Erik T. and Jason McIntosh. O'Reilly and Associates (2002). Design>Information Design>Programming>XML

The Business Analyst in Model-Driven Architecture

From a software development viewpoint, model-driven architecture (MDA) encourages efficient use of system models. It also encourages reusing best practices as families of systems are produced. One of the main aims of MDA is to separate design from architecture, which places the business analyst in a unique and potentially powerful position within the organization. Learn how you as a business analyst can take an active role in this type of architecture.

Slack, S.E. IBM (2008). Articles>Information Design>Programming>Project Management

Are We Designers or Developers?

On the about page of this site I used to call myself a “developer/designer/occasional writer”. It’s a bit confusing, and I still find it hard to know what to answer when someone asks me what I do for a living. Am I a Web designer? A Web developer? A Web programmer? All of them? Neither? It really is a difficult question to give a simple answer to.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Careers>Web Design>Programming>Writing

Mastering JavaScript — Concept and Resource Guide

There is not a single interpreted language used today that causes more excitement, confusion, disdain, and conflict than JavaScript. The language is so incredibly flexible that it is difficult to separate a developer’s choice of coding style from JavaScript best practices.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>JavaScript

JavaScript Shorthand Tips and Tricks

There is no official ECMAScript or JavaScript language feature called “shorthand”. Developers are responsible for coining the phrase, probably after realizing that terms like Ternary Condition are a bit archaic. The Mozilla Core JavaScript Guide does an excellent job of highlighting many of these shorthand techniques throughout tutorials, but I thought it best to have a definitive list all in one place.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>JavaScript

Core JavaScript 1.5 Guide

Getting started with JavaScript is easy: all you need is a modern Web browser. This guide includes some JavaScript features which are only currently available in the latest versions of Firefox (and other Gecko powered browsers), so using the most recent version of Firefox is recommended.

Mozilla.org (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>JavaScript

Will You Need a JavaScript Framework on Your Next Project?

One of the pitfalls of using a JavaScript framework, especially among beginners, is the ability to quickly lose sight of what is specific to the framework, and what is specific to the core JavaScript language. However, as bandwidth constraints continue to dissolve, and browser compatibility issues erode, it makes sense to consider a framework on each project. Whether or not you actually use a framework after these considerations are made, is totally up to you.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>JavaScript

Making a Cross-Platform AJAX-Based Web Application

I will go through how to make a full-blown widget that uses AJAX technology. It fetches news from a newsfeed source, presents them nicely to you, includes some eyecandy and of course lets you customize the amount of news items, refresh time and which category of news you want to be shown.

Mendoza, Nicolas. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Extending The JavaScript Date Object with User Defined Methods

Applications, particularly business applications, can often require a lot of date manipulation, but that code could be simplified if JavaScript’s core Date object had some additional methods. In this article, I will show you how to add custom methods to the Date object that are inherited by each date instance.

O'Sullivan, Lawrence. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>JavaScript

Offline Ajax with Apache Derby

People love Ajax applications so much that they are willing to use them instead of their desktop equivalents. The only problem occurs when they fail to have network access. This is when an offline feature is necessary. Apache Derby is a great option for enabling offline access to Ajax-powered applications. Learn how to use Apache Derby as a local data store that can be used to take your Ajax application offline.

Galpin, Michael. IBM (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Parse a String Using JavaScript

A handy trick for Web Developers in the ability to parse a string to check for a given substring. In plain English, this means checking if a word or part of a word is contained within text. This tutorial demonstrates how to do this using JavaScript.

Jason, Chris. ChrisJason.com (2007). Articles>Web Design>Programming>JavaScript

Seven Reasons Why Web Apps Fail

I’m not one to believe that we’re in a Bubble 2.0 or anything like that (aren’t we always bubbular?), but here are a few ideas about why some of the web apps out there fail.

Porter, Joshua. Bokardo (2006). Articles>Web Design>Programming>User Experience

Situated Software

I'm seeing is a change in the software ecosystem which, for the moment, I'm calling situated software. This is software designed in and for a particular social situation or context. This way of making software is in contrast with what I'll call the Web School (the paradigm I learned to program in), where scalability, generality, and completeness were the key virtues.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2004). Articles>Education>Programming>Technology

New XML Validation Technologies in Action

This paper is based from a number of real-world XML validation projects, and compares and contrasts the experience 'in the trenches' with the current state of the art in XML validation standards. Validation is a topic of some controversy in the XML community. While there has been movement from the basic validation offered by XML 1.0 DTD's, there is little consensus on whether that movement has been in the right direction.

Brown, Alex. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>Programming>XML