I'm curious what change requests, from testers, clients, or managers, programmers have encountered that seemed really simple but were in fact really complicated.
Could you add an undo button? (To a custom WYSIWYG editor).
Back in my college days I worked on a side project for a client. It was a medium sized Win32 desktop application to do some 2D diagramming and every step of the way and every demo was great. The client liked it. Finally, I was ready to deliver it and be done when they asked if I could just make it run on the web first.
Classic "missing-requirement-kills-project" scenario.
How about adding a GUI to this command line app?
One thing I've hit was being asked to change a word in the title of a window. However, the title of the window was in fact localized in a library and was shared with several applications. Changing it's title in either title would mean either changing where it grabbed the data (ugly and inconsistent with the rest of the code), changing the dll (will impact other software), or adding a hard-coded fix (hacky).
"I'd like to use Oracle instead of SQLServer for the database."
"can you make it bigger?" in reference to the sizing of radio buttons.. back before CSS
"just make it more webbish"
Related
I'm learning basic web dev and started with HTML, CSS, Bootstrap. Haven't touched PHP or anything server side yet.
What I've done so far is I've created a pretty basic registration form with 5 fields and what I'm trying to do is display the input of those fields in a table that I've created on another page. The submit button has the "method" and action. Now, I've Googled a ton to find some solutions and have gone through most of the questions of this site but I still can't find out to achieve what I'm trying to do without the use of PHP/JS.
So, is it even possible to read form data from another page like this without the use of JS/PHP? If so, how do I proceed and what needs to be done? I can post the source code but I don't think it's going to help since there isn't much there, everything else is working fine except for finding a solution to this.
Thank you.
You need a programming language.
If you want to do it entirely client-side, then that has to be JS.
If you want to do it server-side (which allows you to access the data and, optionally, make it available to other people, instead of limiting it to the user of the browser) then you can use any programming language at all (although JS and PHP are among the most common choices).
Since you are trying to create a registration page, you'll need to use server-side programming.
You necessarily need to use JavaScript / PHP.
Since you are just starting, I would highly recommend you to check out the W3Schools tutorials on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Bootstrap and jQuery.
:)
So this is long gone but I was actually able to resolve my problem without using anything other than basic HTML , so here's how I did it for anyone else who's trying to find the answer to problem (probably not, you don't usually do this professionally and basically this was a challenge from a friend).
So, two things.
SessionStorage
LocalStorage
This is built-in to your browser and you can use it to achieve simple tasks by simply assigning values to it. They'll remain there and you can use however you want.
But, as the name implies, sessionstorage will only retain those values during the session (the time you have your browser open for) while localstorage can retain it indefinitely. Not sure if I can link other sites over here so just Google these terms to learn more and how to use them.
I know there are several tools available to find unused CSS on a static web page. But in most real world scenarios I encounter, a lot of the CSS is used after some or the other interaction on the page, maybe a new modal opening up or an options popup etc.
In such scenarios, what would you suggest? How do I keep a tab on my ever-growing render blocking CSS?
The only way I guess one could do that is by running regular unused-css-detector type tools in conjunction with Selenium - test known interactions and see whats left unused. But a big assumption here is that I'd need to know all interactions on my page which could use new CSS. Is there a way to achieve my goal without making this assumption?
In an ideal world, I'd be able to post-back all CSS used by a visitor's browser on my page to my server. Then I'd collect data over a month, aggregate, and get a pretty accurate idea about actual unused CSS.
Any good ideas?
I am the author of a tool that is aiming at doing what you are describing. Everywhere I worked, the CSS is this "append-only" thing that is too risky, too time-consuming to clean up. And even when you try, the ROI is so low that it not worth it.
So I am working on a tool that is very similar to what you are describing. The goal is to bring confidence on what can be removed, and to actually do it automatically by submitting pull requests.
A snippet of JavaScript is running in the browser and sends reports of what is being used to a server. Once enough data is accumulated to build some "confidence score", it can create Pull Request automatically to remove selectors that are actually not used.
It is still very early stage, but you are welcome to try it and give some feedback about it.
https://www.bleachcss.com/
Problem
So we have quite a big project with lots of different Partial Views and a client side data binding framework (Knockout.js in our case).
One of the more problemtic parts is that is getting harder and harder to figure out which partial view is rendering an element that I see on my page.
So I need to debug this particular DIV. Okay, where do I find it?
Usually I try to find a very specific class or ID close by this element and do a search through the whole platform - far from ideal.
Question
So I was thinking about the following; tagging all elements (in debug mode) with the source file where they have been generated.
Right now I'm thinking about something like a precompiler that adds a data-source="" to every element. I might refer to an ID within a dictionary to prevent repeating all the long filenames.
Before I'm reinventing the wheel:
is there already something similar?
are there better alternatives?
We're using ASP.NET MVC, but any hints to how other platforms do this are perfect too.
If you are using Visual Studio, I highly recommend the Web Essentials extension. Among many great features, it has one called "Inspect Mode", part of the larger "Browser Link" feature, that does exactly what you are looking for; it identifies the file that a particular DOM element came from. It might be worth a shot if that option is open to you.
#Dirk, as per my understanding your issue is to easily identify the element/view. Adding data-source can be an option but before that have a look at this link
Editing Styles and DOM - Chrome Dev Tools
This page has many demonstrations which might be helpful to your problem. Furthermore, I do agree with Kevin suggestion.
Does anybody know of any pre-canned gadget/widget management framework (along the lines of iGoogle etc) that I would be able to use on an ASP.NET MVC site (presumably loading divs via jQuery etc)?
In particular, I'd rather not write all the selection / location code if there is something decent already available. (I would expect to write the actual widgets / content etc myself...)
I was waiting to see if you got an answer on this one as it's something I'm interested in too. As you haven't, I'll tell you what I know (it's probably not so useful but it might get you started...)
I've used something based on the ExtJS portal demo in a previous project - there are some license costs involved depending on the deployment scenario though, and besides, it turned out to be quite slow and cumbersome, and rather tricky to customise - the default for the ext toolset is for the ui to be built entirely from javascript, not from markup, and while it was possible to coerce it into working on top of existing markup, it seemed more difficult than it needed to be. That aside, it worked well in the end, and with the paid version the support is very good.
I've also implemented a widget / portal screen based on jquery-ui sortable which worked really well - the basic implementation was very quick and easy but writing the code to save and load portal settings took more time than I would have liked.
If I were doing a similar project now, I think I'd evaluate this instead - it looks ok from a cursory glance and it's open source - it's built with jquery-ui sortable, so the core should be solid enough, and the slightly uneven animations on the demo version should be easy to sort out assuming it uses the standard jquery-ui sortable options. It has functionality to load/save portal settings too by the looks of it, so it should mean less hand coding that side of things.
I have used Telerik RadDock in the past and found it to be pretty good. It renders in divs and is relatively easy to style.
It doesn't cost too much if you are using it commercially.
http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/dock/examples/overview/defaultcs.aspx
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/inettuts/
This guy put together a great tutorial on implementing a iGoogle like drag/drop widget interface. Even links to a working example.
In my Delphi program I want to display some information generated by the application. Nothing fancy, just 2 columns of text with parts of words color-coded.
I think I basically have two options:
HTML in a TWebbrowser
RTF in a TRichEdit.
HTML is more standard, but seems to load slower, and I had to deal with The Annoying Click Sound.
Is RTF still a good alternative these days?
Note: The documents will be discarded after viewing.
I would vote for HTML.
I think it is more future oriented. The speed would not concern me.
The question of HTML or RTF may be irrelevant. If they are just used for display purposes, then the file format doesn't matter. It's really just an internal representation. (Are any files even being saved to disk?) I think the question to ask is which one solves the problem with the least amount of work.
I would be slightly concerned that the browser control is changing all the time. I doubt the richedit control will change much. I would lean towards the richedit control because I think there is less that could go wrong with it. But it's probably not a big deal either way.
Have you considered doing an ownerdraw TListView?
I'd also use HTML. Besides, you just got an answer for the clicking sound in TWebBrowser.
If you'd rather not use TWebBrowser, take a look at Dave Baldwin's free HTML Display Components.
I would vote for HTML, too.
We started an app a while ago...
We wanted to
display some information generated by the application. Nothing fancy, just...
(do you hear the bells ring???)
Then we wanted to display more information and style it even more....
...someone decided, that RTF isn't enough anymore, but for backwards compatibility we moved on to MS Word over OLE-Server. That was the end of talking about performance anymore.
I think if we would have done that in HTML it would be much faster now.
RTF is much easier to deal with, as the TRichEdit control is part of every single Windows installation, and has much less overhead than TWebBrowser (which is basically embedding an ActiveX version of Internet Explorer into your app).
TRichEdit is also much easier to use to programmatically add text and formatting. Using the SelStart and SelLength, along with the text Attributes, makes adding bolding and italics, setting different fonts, etc. simple. And, as Re0sless said, TRichEdit can easily be printed while TWebBrowser makes it more complicated to do so.
I would vote RTF as I dont like the fact TWebBrowser uses Internet explorer, as we have had trouble with this in the past on tightly locked down computers.
Also TRichEdit has a print method build in, where as you have to do all sorts of messing about to get the TWebBrowser to print.
Nobody seems to have mentioned a reporting component yet. Yes, it is overkill right now, but if you use it anyway (and maybe you already have got some reporting to do in your app, so the component is already included) you can just display the preview and allow to print / export to pdf later, if it makes any sense. Also if you later decide that you want to have a fancier display there is nothing holding you back.
If both HTML and RTF won't satisfy your need, you could also use an open source text/edit component that supports coloring words or create your own edit component based on a Delphi component.
Another alternative to the HTML browser is the "Embedded Web Browser" components which I used a few projects for displaying html documents to the user. You have complete control over the embedded browser, and I don't recall any clicks when a page is loaded.
I vote for HTML also
RTF is good only for its editor, else then you'd better go standard.
RTF offers some useful text editing options like horizontal tabulator which are not available in HTML. Automatic hyperlink detection is also a nice extra. But I think I would prefer HTML, if these features are not required.
I vote for HTML.
Easier to generate programmatically.
Widely supported.
Since you don't need WYSIWYG capabilities I think HTML advantages trump RTF. Moreover, should the need to export generated data for further, WP-like editing arise, remember that major word processor can open and convert HTML files.
Use HTML, but with 'Delphi Wrapper for Chromium Embedded' by Henri Gourvest , Chromium embedded uses the core that powers Google Chrome.
Don't use TWebBrowser, I'm suffering from all programs that use IE's web control - the font is too small on my 22' monitor with a 1920x1080 resolution, I use Windows 7 and my system's DPI is 150% (XP mode), I tried everything to tweak trying to fix that, no luck...