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  • Smart Help with UPK

    - by [email protected]
    A short lesson on how awesome Smart Help is. In Oracle UPK speak, there are targeted and non-targeted applications. Targeted applications are Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, SAP and a few others. Non-targeted applications are either custom built or other third party off the shelf applications. For most targeted applications you'll see better object recognition (during recording) and also Help Integration for that application. Help integration means that someone technical modifies the help link in your application to call up the UPK content that has been created. If you have seen this presented before, this is usually where the term context sensitive help is mentioned and the Do It mode shows off. The fact that UPK builds context sensitive help for its targeted applications automatically is awesome enough, but there is a whole new world out there and it's called "custom and\or third party apps." For the purposes of Smart Help and this discussion, I'm talking about the browser based applications. How does UPK support these apps? It used to be that you had to have your vendor try to modify the Help link to point to UPK or if your company had control over the applications configuration menus, then you get someone on your team to modify this for you. But as you start to use UPK for more than one, two or three applications, the administration of this starts to become daunting. Multiple administrators, multiple player packages, multiple call points, multiple break points, help doesn't always work the same way for every application (picture the black white infomercial with an IT person trying to configure a bunch of wires or something funny like that). Introducing Smart Help! (in color of course, new IT person, probably wearing a blue shirt and smiling). Smart help eliminates the need to configure multiple browser help integration points, and adds a icon to the users browser itself. You're using your browser to read this now correct? Look up at the icons on your browser, you have the home link icon, print icon, maybe an RSS feed icon. Smart Help is icon that gets added to the users browser just like the others. When you click it, it first recognizes which application you're in and then finds the UPK created material for you and returns the best possible match, for (hold on to your seat now) both targeted and non-targeted applications (browser based applications). But wait, there's more. It does this automatically! You don't have to do anything! All you have to do is record content, UPK and Smart Help do the rest! This technology is not new. There are customers out there today that use this for as many as six applications! The real hero here is SMART MATCH. Smart match is the technology that's used to determine which application you're in and where you are when you click on Smart Help. We'll save that for a one-on-one conversation. Like most other awesome features of UPK, it ships with the product. All you have to do is turn it on. To learn more about Smart Help, Smart Match, Targeted and Non-Targeted applications, contact your UPK Sales Consultant or me directly at [email protected]

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  • Make your CHM Help Files show HTML5 and CSS3 content

    - by Rick Strahl
    The HTML Help 1.0 specification aka CHM files, is pretty old. In fact, it's practically ancient as it was introduced in 1997 when Internet Explorer 4 was introduced. Html Help 1.0 is basically a completely HTML based Help system that uses a Help Viewer that internally uses Internet Explorer to render the HTML Help content. Because of its use of the Internet Explorer shell for rendering there were many security issues in the past, which resulted in locking down of the Web Browser control in Windows and also the Help Engine which caused some unfortunate side effects. Even so, CHM continues to be a popular help format because it is very easy to produce content for it, using plain HTML and because it works with many Windows application platforms out of the box. While there have been various attempts to replace CHM help files CHM files still seem to be a popular choice for many applications to display their help systems. The biggest alternative these days is no system based help at all, but links to online documentation. For Windows apps though it's still very common to see CHM help files and there are still a ton of CHM help out there and lots of tools (including our own West Wind Html Help Builder) that produce output for CHM files as well as Web output. Image is Everything and you ain't got it! One problem with the CHM engine is that it's stuck with an ancient Internet Explorer version for rendering. For example if you have help content that uses HTML5 or CSS3 content you might have an HTML Help topic like the following shown here in a full Web Browser instance of Internet Explorer: The page clearly uses some CSS3 features like rounded corners and box shadows that are rendered using plain CSS 3 features. Note that I used Internet Explorer on purpose here to demonstrate that IE9 on Windows 7 can properly render this content using some of the new features of CSS, but the same is true for all other recent versions of the major browsers (FireFox 3.1+, Safari 4.5+, WebKit 9+ etc.). Unfortunately if you take this nice and simple CSS3 content and run it through the HTML Help compiler to produce a CHM file the resulting output on the same machine looks a bit less flashy: All the CSS3 styling is gone and although the page display and functionality still works, but all the extra styling features are gone. This even though I am running this on a Windows 7 machine that has IE9 that should be able to render these CSS features. Bummer. Web Browser Control - perpetually stuck in IE 7 Mode The problem is the Web Browser/Shell Components in Windows. This component is and has been part of Windows for as long as Internet Explorer has been around, but the Web Browser control hasn't kept up with the latest versions of IE. In a nutshell the control is stuck in IE7 rendering mode for engine compatibility reasons by default. However, there is at least one way to fix this explicitly using Registry keys on a per application basis. The key point from that blog article is that you can override the IE rendering engine for a particular executable by setting one (or more) registry flags that tell the Windows Shell which version of the Internet Explorer rendering engine to load. An application that wishes to use a more recent version of Internet Explorer can then register itself during installation for the specific IE version desired and from then on the application will use that version of the Web Browser component. If the application is older than the specified version it falls back to the default version (IE 7 rendering). Forcing CHM files to display with IE9 (or later) Rendering Knowing that we can force the IE usage for a given process it's also possible to affect the CHM rendering by setting same keys on the executable that's hosting the CHM file. What that executable file is depends on the type of application as there are a number of ways that can launch the help engine. hh.exeThe standalone Windows CHM Help Viewer that launches when you launch a CHM from Windows Explorer. You can manually add hh.exe to the registry keys. YourApplication.exeIf you're using .NET or any tool that internally uses the hhControl ActiveX control to launch help content your application is your host. You should add your application's exe to the registry during application startup. foxhhelp9.exeIf you're building a FoxPro application that uses the built-in help features, foxhhelp9.exe is used to actually host the help controls. Make sure to add this executable to the registry. What to set You can configure the Internet Explorer version used for an application in the registry by specifying the executable file name and a value that specifies the IE version desired. There are two different sets of keys for 32 bit and 64 bit applications. 32 bit only or 64 bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Value Key: hh.exe 32 bit on 64 bit machine: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Value Key: hh.exe Note that it's best to always set both values ideally when you install your application so it works regardless of which platform you run on. The value specified is a DWORD value and the interesting values are decimal 9000 for IE9 rendering mode depending on !DOCTYPE settings or 9999 for IE 9 standards mode always. You can use the same logic for 8000 and 8888 for IE8 and the final value of 7000 for IE7 (one has to wonder what they're going todo for version 10 to perpetuate that pattern). I think 9000 is the value you'd most likely want to use. 9000 means that IE9 will be used for rendering but unless the right doctypes are used (XHTML and HTML5 specifically) IE will still fall back into quirks mode as needed. This should allow existing pages to continue to use the fallback engine while new pages that have the proper HTML doctype set can take advantage of the newest features. Here's an example of how I set the registry keys in my Tarma Installmate registry configuration: Note that I set all three values both under the Software and Wow6432Node keys so that this works regardless of where these EXEs are launched from. Even though all apps are 32 bit apps, the 64 bit (the default one shown selected) key is often used. So, now once I've set the registry key for hh.exe I can now launch my CHM help file from Explorer and see the following CSS3 IE9 rendered display: Summary It sucks that we have to go through all these hoops to get what should be natural behavior for an application to support the latest features available on a system. But it shouldn't be a surprise - the Windows Help team (if there even is such a thing) has not been known for forward looking technologies. It's a pretty big hassle that we have to resort to setting registry keys in order to get the Web Browser control and the internal CHM engine to render itself properly but at least it's possible to make it work after all. Using this technique it's possible to ship an application with a help file and allow your CHM help to display with richer CSS markup and correct rendering using the stricter and more consistent XHTML or HTML5 doctypes. If you provide both Web help and in-application help (and why not if you're building from a single source) you now can side step the issue of your customers asking: Why does my help file look so much shittier than the online help… No more!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in HTML5  Help  Html Help Builder  Internet Explorer  Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • mounts aren't case-sensitive

    - by Asi
    I mounted a few drives from Linux boxes in my network, but those mounts aren't case-sensitive. The mount command I used ( from the man mount.cifs, case-sensitive should be the default ): mount //10.0.1.10/remote_folder /local_folder -t cifs -o username=xxxx,password=xxxx but those mounts aren't sensitive. for example doing: ls -l /local_folder/testfile.txt ls -l /local_folder/TESTFILE.TXT give's the same result... instead of 'file not found' Couple of important points: All drives are running on Linux machines. My local machine is running Fedora 18 and it is case-sensitive for ANY folder/file expect the mounted drives. All drive/mounts are case-sensitive when when doing SSH. So if I SSH from my local machine to a remote machine, doing ls -l /local_folder/TESTFILE.TXT will say file not found as it should. So I believe the issue is in my local machine and not in the way I did the mount. but I'm not sure where to look next (I'm new to Linux)

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  • Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron

    - by Asian Angel
    Is the lack of an Image Properties listing in the Context Menu of your favorite Chromium-based browser driving you crazy? If you have been missing this extremely useful function, then the Image Properties Context Menu extension is here to save the day. As soon as you get the extension installed you can start enjoying access to image property information as seen here. Very nice! Image Properties Context Menu [via Shankar Ganesh (@shankargan)] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video] Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron Add an Easy to View Notification Badge to Tabs in Firefox SpellBook Parks Bookmarklets in Chrome’s Context Menu Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox Enchanted Swing in the Forest Wallpaper

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  • Vagrant synced folders aren't case sensitive

    - by lvmisooners
    For our web stack, we are moving from a Windows Server to CentOS. To facilitate development, we're utilizing Vagrant to run CentOS VMs locally. We're using Vagrant's Synced Folders feature to allow devs to use their favorite IDEs on their host machine, but we're finding that one key feature is missing from this setup: file system case sensitivity. The synced folder inside the VM apparently takes on the properties of the host's file system, so if I'm developing from a Windows machine, or even OSX, the file system isn't case sensitive. This is a big issue, as our production servers will be pure CentOS, and its file system will be case sensitive. Case sensitivity is one of the main reasons we wanted to have a local VM. We want to prevent "It works on my machine!" Some workarounds we've considered or tried: Use lsyncd to sync from the vagrant share to a location within the VM that is case sensitive updating files on the host doesn't seem to generate the events in the VM that lsync listens to Make a case-sensitive partition on the host (Doesn't work for Windows) Use samba this may be an option, but we haven't vetted it yet. Is there a better way? Note that we have developers using Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu, and the solution needs to work everywhere.

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  • loadbalancing with difference nginx location context and backend server context

    - by robinmag
    Hi, I used nginx and upstream module for load balancing with the following config upstream lb { server 127.0.0.1:8080; server 127.0.0.1:8081; } server { listen 88; server_name localhost; location /cas/ { proxy_pass http://lb; proxy_redirect off; proxy_connect_timeout 2; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; } } the problem is the "location /context/" have to match to the context of backend server so when i request localhost/context/index.html then nginx routes it to 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html or 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html. Is it possible to have difference backend context and nginx location for example with "location /" nginx will routes the request to 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html or 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html Thank you.

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  • loadbalancing with difference nginx location context and backend context

    - by robinmag
    Hi, I used nginx and upstream module for load balancing with the following config upstream lb { server 127.0.0.1:8080; server 127.0.0.1:8081; } server { listen 88; server_name localhost; location /cas/ { proxy_pass http://lb; proxy_redirect off; proxy_connect_timeout 2; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; } } the problem is the "location /context/" have to match to the context of backend server so when i request localhost/context/index.html then nginx routes it to 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html or 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html. Is it possible to have difference backend context and nginx location for example with "location /" nginx will routes the request to 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html or 127.0.0.1:8080/context/index.html Thank you.

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  • Developing a mobile application, how to show help if it contains too much data?

    - by MobileDev123
    I am developing a mobile application which has many functionality, and I am pretty sure that the design will confuse the user about how to use some functionality so we decided to include some help as we can see them regularly in desktop applications, but later we found that the help text is too long. We don't think that one screen is enough to describe what a user can do. Moreover the project itself is subjected to evolve based on beta stage and user reports. After a lot of thinking and meetings we have decided three options to show the users what they can do. Create the website or blog, so we can let the users know what they can do with this application, the advantage is that it can provide us a good source of marketing, but for that they have to access the site while most part of the application can be used while being offline in earlier versions. Create a section in the application called demos to show the same thing locally, but we are afraid that it will increase the size, that we think can be avoided (and we are planning to avoid if there is any option) Show popups, but we discarded this thinking that pop ups annoys user no matter what the platform is. I want to know from community that which option will you choose, we are also open to accept other ideas if you have.

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  • openss7 help help help

    - by deddihp
    Hello, is there anyone in this forum who have experience with openss7 before ?. Or maybe stil developing with openss7 ?. I need to discuss something, since it's difficult to find the solution...

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  • Context switch time - Role of RTOS and Processor

    - by S.M
    Does the RTOS play a major role or processor play a major role in determining the time for context switch ? What is the percentage of share between these two major players in determining the context switch time . Can anyone tell with respect to uC/OS-II RTOS ?

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  • Can I force MySql table name case sensitivity on file systems that aren't case sensitive

    - by Brian Deacon
    So our target environment is linux, making mysql case-sensitive by default. I am aware that we can make our linux environment not case sensitive with the lower_case_table_names variable, but we would rather not. We have a few times been bitten with a case mismatch because our dev rigs are OSX, and mysql is not case sensitive there. Is there a way we can force table names to be case sensitive on my OSX install of MySql (5.0.83 if that matters) so that we catch a table name case mismatch prior to deploying to the integration servers running on linux?

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  • Xcode find in document stuck in case-sensitive

    - by mjdth
    When in Xcode editing code for my objective C files, I often press Command-F to bring up the little Find-In-Document banner across the top. Sometimes this gets stuck in case-sensitive search, and when it does that it also won't loop through the entire document and sometimes won't even display the selected found string. I can't find any options to turn off the case sensitivity, and I never intentionally turned it on. I've restarted xcode several times hoping that would be it but it's changed nothing. Slightly off-topic, but this was the best place I could think of to ask this question. Thanks for any response!

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  • Schmelp Portal, Help Portal: Oracle Fusion Applications Help Online

    - by ultan o'broin
    Yes, the Oracle Fusion Applications Help (or "Help Portal" to us insiders) is now available. Click the link fusionhelp.oracle.com and check it out! Oracle Fusion Applications Help user interface If you're developing your own help for Fusion Apps, then you can use the newly published Oracle Fusion Help User Interface Guidelines to understand the best usage. These guidelines are also a handy way to get to the embedded help design patterns for Oracle Fusion Applications, now also available. To customize and extend the help content itself no longer requires the engagement of your IT Department or expensive project work. Customers can now use the Manage Custom Help capability to edit or add whatever content they need, make it secure and searchable, and develop a community around it too. You can see more of that capability in this slideshare.net presentation from UKOUG Ireland 2012 about the Oracle Fusion Applications User Assistance and Support Ecosystem by Ultan O'Broin and Richard Bingham. Manage Custom Help capability To understand the science and craft that went into the creation and delivery of the "Help Portal" (cardiac arrests all round in Legal and Marketing Depts), then check out this great white paper by Ultan O'Broin and Laurie Pattison: Putting the User into Oracle Fusion Applications User Assistance. So, what's with this "Help Portal" name? Well, that's an internal (that is, internal to Oracle) name only and we should all really call it by the correct product listing name: Oracle Fusion Applications Help. To be honest, I don't care what you call it as long as it is useful. However, these internal names can be problematic when talking with support or the licensing people. For years, we referred casually to the Oracle Applications Help or Oracle Applications Help System that ships with the Oracle E-Business Suite products as "iHelp". Then, somebody went and bought Siebel. Game over.

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  • Make case-sensitive SMB share case-insensitive

    - by fungs
    I am running a legacy XP app that I would like to move on a network share. It is very simple and works in theory but the server providing the share is based on Linux (cannot configure) and the software does not work correctly because it is programmed case-insensitively, it seems. After some research, network shares behave like the filesystem they use underneath. This is normal. Unfortunately I cannot fix the software myself. Is there any way to turn the case-sensitivity into case-insensitivity for a Windows network drive on the client side? I fould two approaches: First, something like icasefile (http://wnd.katei.fi/icasefile/) that wraps around the program and intercepts the file I/O. This is for UNIX only. Secondly, a proxy virtual file system (e. g. something using Dokan). Unfortunately I couldn't find any suitable fs, the only possibility would be to put a case-insensitive filesystem on an image file and put this on the share using for example lmdisk (http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk). Do you have any better ideas?

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  • Why is NTFS case sensitive?

    - by Luke
    I personally thought that NTFS was case insensitive, since you can type cmd, CMD, cMd or even CmD and still get the command prompt. However, why is it that during a CHKDSK x: /f /r, sometimes it fixes capitalization in some files? If it didn't care about the case, it shouldn't matter about that, and CHKDSK shouldn't be checking if it's actually CMD or cmd. Am I right? Where does it actually matter in the file system?

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  • How to add programs in context menu on desktop at one context name?

    - by tonni
    Hello I'm searching for answer how to put programs (not program) in context menu of desktop at one context name? Example: I want to create new context name which can be extendable to put inside more programs. That is like "New" or "View" that show as more options after using it. Here is what i tried (and is working when you want to put one program to desktop): I created in registry "New Folder" with name of some programs (i.e. "notepad") inside of this location HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\ Inside of new created folder ("notepad") i put one more time "New Folder" and name it "command" (must be same name) Inside of "command" at string ("Default") put the location through notepad ("C:\Windows\system32\notepad.exe") - and now when you click right mouse button on desktop will see new context text with name "notepad" what will of course open notepad if you use them Well what i'm searching for is to find solution of how to make context name which will offer as to use more that one programs, do you have any solution? O.S. win 7

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  • ASP.NET MVC: Using jQuery context menu with tables

    - by DigiMortal
    I needed to add context menus to some tables of my intranet application. After trying some components I found one that does everything I need and has no overhead. In this posting I will show you how to use jQuery context menu plug-in and how to attach it to tables. I found context menu plug-in by Chris Domigan and it was very easy to integrate to my application (when comparing some other plug-ins that work only on demo pages and in simple scenarios). Thanks, Chris, for great work! Now let’s use this context menu plug-in with table. Before we go on let’s see what we are trying to achieve. The following screenshot fragment shows simple context menu that we want to attach to our table. And when we click some menu option then something should happen too. :) Installing context menu plug-in Download plug-in (if download link is broken then open demo page and I think you know how to get plug-in from there). Copy jquery.contextmenu.js to your scripts folder. Include it in your masterpage or in the page where you plan to use context menus. Make sure plug-in is included correctly (use Firebug or some other tool you like). Save the page. Defining context menu Now let’s define context menu. Here is fragment on context menu definition from my code. <div class="contextMenu" id="myMenu1">     <ul>     <li id="email"><img src="/img/e-mail.png" />E-mail</li>     <li id="homepage"><img src="/img/homepage.png" />Homepage</li>     </ul> </div> div with id myMenu1 is container of context menu. Unordered list inside container defines items in context menu – simple and elegant! Adding context menu to table I have table with persons. It is simple HTML. I omitted commands column from this and the next table to keep them simple and more easily readable. <table>   <tr>     <th>Name</th>     <th>Short</th>     <th>Address</th>     <th>Mobile</th>     <th>E-mail</th>   </tr>   <% foreach(var person in Model.Results) { %>   <tr>     <td><%=person.FullName %></td>     <td><%=person.ShortName %></td>     <td><%=person.FullAddress %></td>     <td><%=person.Mobile %></td>     <td><%=person.Email %></td>   </tr>   <% } %> </table> To get context menu linked to table rows first cells we need to specify class for cells and ID. We need ID because we have to know later which ID has the row on which user selected something from context menu. <table>   <tr>     <th>Name</th>     <th>Short</th>     <th>Address</th>     <th>Mobile</th>     <th>E-mail</th>   </tr>   <% foreach(var person in Model.Results) { %>   <tr>     <td class="showContext" id="<%= person.Id %>"><%=person.FullName %></td>     <td><%=person.ShortName %></td>     <td><%=person.FullAddress %></td>     <td><%=person.Mobile %></td>     <td><%=person.Email %></td>   </tr>   <% } %> </table> Now we have only one thing to do – we have to write some code that attaches context menu to table cells. Catching context menu events Now we will make everything work. Relax, it is only couple of lines of code, thank to jQuery. <script type="text/javascript">   $(document).ready(function () {     $('td.showContext').contextMenu('myMenu1', {         bindings: {         'email': function (t) {           document.location.href = '/contact/sendmail/' + t.id;         },         'homepage': function (t) {           document.location.href = '/contact/homepage/' + t.id;         }       }     });   }); </script> I think that first lines doesn’t need any comments. Take a look at bindings. We gave ID to table cells because it is carried also to bound events. We can use also more complex ID-s if we have more than one table with context menus on our form. Now we are done. Save all files, compile solution, run it and try out how context menu works. Conclusion We saw than using jQuery with context menu component allows us easily create powerful context menus for our user interfaces. Context menu was very easy to define. We were also able to attach context menu to table and use ID of current row entity also in events of context menu. To achieve this we needed only some minor modifications in view and couple of lines of JavaScript.

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  • Conversation as User Assistance

    - by ultan o'broin
    Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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  • What good alternatives to CHM are there for context sensitive help documents in desktop applications

    - by ninesided
    We currently have a number of desktop applications (PowerBuilder, Winforms, WPF) that make use of a single CHM for context sensitive help. We'd like to move away from CHM as it's difficult to maintain but we've not found a suitable alternative. Ideally we'd like our developers to keep the help files up to date (perhaps in a wiki) as they add funtionality and simply export this to PDF or something like that, but is it possible to use a PDF for context sensitve help, or are there any other promising alternative to CHM?

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  • drawRect context Error

    - by user361228
    Hi, I heard that a lot of people get a context error by not using drawRect Now I have this: - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { NSLog(@"drawRect: Starts"); CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor(context, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0); CGContextSetLineWidth(context, 3.0); CGContextMoveToPoint(context, lineStart.x, lineStart.y); CGContextAddLineToPoint(context, lineEnd.x, lineEnd.y); CGContextStrokePath(context); } Error: <Error>: CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor: invalid context Which had work on previous programs, but not on this one. Whats different: I have a view controller, which calls this UIView: -(void)createLine:(CGPoint)start:(CGPoint)end { NSLog(@"createLine: Starts"); lineEnd = start; lineStart = end; self = [super initWithFrame:drawRect:CGRectMake(fmin(lineStart.x, lineEnd.x), fmin(lineStart.y, lineEnd.y), fabs(lineStart.x - lineEnd.x), fabs(lineStart.y - lineEnd.y))]; } This is my first question, and I am not sure how much info code I should be putting here so be easy on me :D Thanks

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  • Explicitly pass context object versus injecting with IoC

    - by SonOfPirate
    I have a layered service application where the service layer delegates operations into the domain layer for execution. Many of these operations need to know the context under which they are operation. (The context included the identity of the current user, culture information, etc. received from the caller.) For example, I have an API method that returns a list of announcements. The list is based on the current user's role and each announcement is localized to their culture. The API is a thin-facade that delegates to an Application Service in my domain layer. The Application Service method obviously needs to know the context of the current request/operation as another call to the same API from another user should result in a different list. Within this method, we also have logging that uses some of the context information so we a clear understanding of the context when the operation was performed (this is especially useful if something goes wrong.) While this is a contrived example, in the real world, my Application Services will coordinate operations with many collaborative components, any number of them also needing the context information. My choice is to pass the context to the Application Service which would then pass it with any calls to collaborators or have the IoC container satisfy the dependency the Application Service and any collaborators have on the context. I am wondering if it is considered good/bad, best practices/code smell, etc. if I pass the context object as a parameter to the domain methods or if injecting the context via an IoC container is preferred. (EDIT: I should mention that the context object is instantiated per-request.)

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  • What email providers are case sensitive? [on hold]

    - by Thanatos
    According to RFC 5321, the local-part of email addresses is case-sensitive. However, most providers that I know of (e.g., GMail) are not case-sensitive. (It's actually more complex than that: GMail ignores .s in emails as well.) Is there a list, or source, of the various rules, including case-sensitivity, for various major email providers? Is there a large-ish email provider than has case-sensitive email addresses?

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