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• The Koyal Group Info Mag News¦Charged building material could make the renewable grid a reality

  - by Chyler Tilton

  What if your cell phone didn’t come with a battery? Imagine, instead, if the material from which your phone was built was a battery. The promise of strong load-bearing materials that can also work as batteries represents something of a holy grail for engineers. And in a letter published online in Nano Letters last week, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University describes what it says is a breakthrough in turning that dream into an electrocharged reality. The researchers etched nanopores into silicon layers, which were infused with a polyethylene oxide-ionic liquid composite and coated with an atomically thin layer of carbon. In doing so, they created small but strong supercapacitor battery systems, which stored electricity in a solid electrolyte, instead of using corrosive chemical liquids found in traditional batteries. These supercapacitors could store and release about 98 percent of the energy that was used to charge them, and they held onto their charges even as they were squashed and stretched at pressures up to 44 pounds per square inch. Small pieces of them were even strong enough to hang a laptop from—a big, fat Dell, no less. Although the supercapacitors resemble small charcoal wafers, they could theoretically be molded into just about any shape, including a cell phone’s casing or the chassis of a sedan. They could also be charged—and evacuated of their charge—in less time than is the case for traditional batteries. “We’ve demonstrated, for the first time, the simple proof-of-concept that this can be done,” says Cary Pint, an assistant professor in the university’s mechanical engineering department and one of the authors of the new paper. “Now we can extend this to all kinds of different materials systems to make practical composites with materials specifically tailored to a host of different types of applications. We see this as being just the tip of a very massive iceberg.” Pint says potential applications for such materials would go well beyond “neat tech gadgets,” eventually becoming a “transformational technology” in everything from rocket ships to sedans to home building materials. “These types of systems could range in size from electric powered aircraft all the way down to little tiny flying robots, where adding an extra on-board battery inhibits the potential capability of the system,” Pint says. And they could help the world shift to the intermittencies of renewable energy power grids, where powerful batteries are needed to help keep the lights on when the sun is down or when the wind is not blowing. “Using the materials that make up a home as the native platform for energy storage to complement intermittent resources could also open the door to improve the prospects for solar energy on the U.S. grid,” Pint says. “I personally believe that these types of multifunctional materials are critical to a sustainable electric grid system that integrates solar energy as a key power source.”

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• Ask How-To Geek: Learning the Office Ribbon, Booting to USB with an Old BIOS, and Snapping Windows

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Today we highlight how to master the new Office interface, USB boot a computer with outdated BIOS, and snap windows to preset locations. Learning the New Office Ribbon Dear How-To Geek, I feel silly asking this (in light of how long the new Office interface has been out) but my company finally got around to upgrading from Windows XP and Office 2000 so the new interface it totally new to me. Can you recommend any resources for quickly learning the Office ribbon and the new changes? I feel completely lost after two decades of the old Office interface. Help! Sincerely, Where the Hell is Everything? Dear Where the Hell, We think most people were with you at some point in the last few years. “Where the hell is…” could possibly be the slogan for the new ribbon interface. You could browse through some of the dry tutorials online or even get a weighty book on the topic but the best way to learn something new is to get hands on. Ribbon Hero turns learning the new Office features and ribbon layout into a game. It’s no vigorous round of Team Fortress mind you, but it’s significantly more fun than reading a training document. Check out how to install and configure Ribbon Hero here. You’ll be teaching your coworkers new tricks in no time. Boot via USB with an Old BIOS Dear How-To Geek, I’m trying to repurpose some old computers by updating them with lightweight Linux distros but the BIOS on most of the machines is ancient and creaky. How ancient? It doesn’t even support booting from a USB device! I have a large flash drive that I’ve turned into a master installation tool for jobs like this but I can’t use it. The computers in question have USB ports; they just aren’t recognized during the boot process. What can I do? USB Bootin’ in Boise Dear USB Bootin’, It’s great you’re working to breathe life into old hardware! You’ve run into one of the limitations of older BIOSes, USB was around but nobody was thinking about booting off of it. Fortunately if you have a computer old enough to have that kind of BIOS it’s likely to also has a floppy drive or a CDROM drive. While you could make a bootable CDROM for your application we understand that you want to keep using the master USB installer you’ve made. In light of that we recommend PLoP Boot Manager. Think of it like a boot manager for your boot manager. Using it you can create a bootable floppy or CDROM that will enable USB booting of your master USB drive. Make a CD and a floppy version and you’ll have everything in your toolkit you need for future computer refurbishing projects. Read up on creating bootable media with PLoP Boot Manager here. Snapping Windows to Preset Coordinates Dear How-To Geek, Once upon a time I had a company laptop that came with a little utility that snapped windows to preset areas of the screen. This was long before the snap-to-side features in Windows 7. You could essentially configure your screen into a grid pattern of your choosing and then windows would neatly snap into those grids. I have no idea what it was called or if was anymore than a gimmick from the computer manufacturer, but I’d really like to have it on my new computer! Bend and Snap in San Francisco, Dear Bend and Snap, If we had to guess, we’d guess your company must have had a set of laptops from Acer as the program you’re describing sounds exactly like Acer GridVista. Fortunately for you the application was extremely popular and Acer released it independently of their hardware. If, by chance, you’ve since upgraded to a multiple monitor setup the app even supports multiple monitors—many of the configurations are handy for arranging IM windows and other auxiliary communication tools. Check out our guide to installing and configuring Acer GridVista here for more information. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Download the New Year in Japan Windows 7 Theme from Microsoft Once More Unto the Breach – Facebook Apps Can Now Access Your Address and Phone Number Dial Zero Speeds You Through Annoying Customer Service Menus Complete Dropquest 2011 and Receive Free Dropbox Storage Desktop Computer versus Laptop Wallpaper The Kids Have No Idea What Old Tech Is [Video]

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• Top 10 Tips & Tricks for Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Being a short week due to the holiday, and with everyone enjoying their Summer vacations (apologies Southern Hemispherians), I reckoned it was a great time to do one of those lazy recap-Top 10-Reader’s Digest type posts. I’ve been sharing 1-3 tips or ‘tricks’ a week since I started blogging about SQL Developer, and I have more than enough content to write a book. But since I’m lazy, I’m just going to compile a list of my favorite ‘must know’ tips instead. I always have to leave out a few tips when I do my presentations, so now I can refer back to this list to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. So without further ado… 1. Configure Your Preferences Yes, there are a LOT of options. But you don’t need to worry about all of them just yet. I do recommend you take a quick look at these ones in particular. Whether you’re new to the tool or have been using it for 5 years, don’t overlook these settings! 2. Disable Extensions You Aren’t Using If you’re not using Data Miner, or if you’re not working on a Migration – disable those extensions! SQL Developer will run leaner & meaner, plus the user interface will be a bit more simplified making the tool easier to navigate as well. 3. SQL Recall via Keyboard Access your history via the keyboard! Cycle through your recent SQL statements just using these magic key strokes! Ctrl+Up or Ctrl+Down. 4. Format Your Query Output Directly to CSV, XML, HTML, etc Have the query results pre-formatted in the format of your choice! Too lazy to run the Export wizard for your query result sets? Just add the SQL Developer output hints to your statement and have the output auto-magically formatted to the style of your choice! 5. Drag & Drop Multiple Tables to the Worksheet SQL Developer will auto-join the related objects. You can then toggle over to the Query Builder to toggle off the columns you don’t want to query. I guarantee this tip will save you time if you’re joining 3 or more tables! 6. Drag & Drop Multiple Tables to a Relational Model A pretty picture is worth a few dozen DDL scripts? SQL Developer does data modeling! If you ctrl-drag a table to a model, it will take that table and any related tables and reverse engineer them to a relational model! You can then print it out or export it to HTML, PDF, etc. 7. View Your PL/SQL Execution Output Automatically Function returns a refcursor? Procedure had 3 out parameters? When you run these programs via the Procedure Editor, we automatically capture the output and place them into one or more data grids for you to browse. 8. Disable Automatic Code Insight and Use It On-Demand Code Editor – Completion Insight – Enable Completion Auto-Popup (Keyword being Auto) Some folks really don’t like it when their IDEs or word-processors try to do ‘too much’ for them. Thankfully SQL Developer allows you to either increase the delay before it attempts to auto-complete your text OR to disable the automatic bit. Instead, you can invoke it on-demand. 9. Interactive Debugging – Change Your Variable Values as You Step Through Your PLSQL Watches aren’t just for watching. You can actually interact with your programs and ‘see what happens’ when X = 256 instead of 1. 10. Ditch the Tree View for the Schema Browser There’s nothing wrong with the Connection tree for browsing your database objects. But some folks just can’t seem to get comfortable with it. So, we built them a Schema Browser that uses a drop down control instead for changing up your schema and object types. Already Know This Stuff, Want More? Just check out my SQL Developer resource page, it’s one of the main links on the top of this page. Or if you can’t find something, just drop me a note in the form of a comment on this page and I’ll do my best to find it or write it for you.

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• Copying Columns from Grid to Clipboard in SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  There are several ways to get data from a query or a table|view to the clipboard. You know the tried and true, copy and paste. But what if you only want one or more columns, not every column? There are several ways to do this, let’s see if we can’t identify all of them. Write your query to only include the data you want Obvious? Yes. Needed to be said? Definitely. The best tuning tip is to only ask for the data you need, only when you absolutely need it. But let’s look at a few more practical ways to do this. Hide the unwanted columns Mouse right click on an column header. In the context menu, select ‘Columns.’ Hide the columns you don’t want. Copy and paste. WYSIWYG Grids, Hide Columns and Filter Rows Mouse select the columns Obvious, but a bit painful. For a very large dataset, you’ll be holding down the Shift and PageDown buttons – but it works. Remember to use Ctrl+Shift+C to get the column headers with the data. Use the Export Wizard This used to be called ‘Unload’ – agreed, not a great name. So, we changed it. In a grid, right mouse click on the data, and on the context menu, select ‘Export…’ Select your format – I suggest ‘delimited’ or ‘fixed’ for copying data to the clipboard. You can export to the clipboard, yes you can! Click ‘Next.’ Click in the Columns dialog, and choose the columns you want copied. Trim the columns you don't want copied Click ‘Finish.’ Alt or Ctrl tab to your window or application of choice. And Paste! "FIRST_NAME" "LAST_NAME" "Donald" "OConnell" "Douglas" "Grant" "Jennifer" "Whalen" "Pat" "Fay" "Susan" "Mavris" "William" "Gietz" "Alexander" "Hunold" "Bruce" "Ernst" "David" "Austin" "Valli" "Pataballa" "Diana" "Lorentz" "Daniel" "Faviet" "John" "Chen" "Ismael" "Sciarra" "Jose Manuel" "Urman" "Luis" "Popp" "Alexander" "Khoo" "Shelli" "Baida" "Sigal" "Tobias" "Guy" "Himuro" "Karen" "Colmenares" "Matthew" "Weiss" "Adam" "Fripp" "Payam" "Kaufling" "Shanta" "Vollman" "Kevin" "Mourgos" "Julia" "Nayer" "Irene" "Mikkilineni" ... There’s probably at least 2 or 3 more ways, but… But, try these and let me know how we can improve things. I’ve already gotten a request to be able to include the SQL text used to populate the dataset on the the copy to clipboard, and it’s now on our to-do list

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• jQuery Datatable in MVC &hellip; extended.

  - by Steve Clements

  There are a million plugins for jQuery and when a web forms developer like myself works in MVC making use of them is par-for-the-course!  MVC is the way now, web forms are but a memory!! Grids / tables are my focus at the moment.  I don’t want to get in to righting reems of css and html, but it’s not acceptable to simply dump a table on the screen, functionality like sorting, paging, fixed header and perhaps filtering are expected behaviour.  What isn’t always required though is the massive functionality like editing etc you get with many grid plugins out there. You potentially spend a long time getting everything hooked together when you just don’t need it. That is where the jQuery DataTable plugin comes in.  It doesn’t have editing “out of the box” (you can add other plugins as you require to achieve such functionality). What it does though is very nicely format a table (and integrate with jQuery UI) without needing to hook up and Async actions etc.  Take a look here… http://www.datatables.net I did in the first instance start looking at the Telerik MVC grid control – I’m a fan of Telerik controls and if you are developing an in-house of open source app you get the MVC stuff for free…nice!  Their grid however is far more than I require.  Note: Using Telerik MVC controls with your own jQuery and jQuery UI does come with some hurdles, mainly to do with the order in which all your jQuery is executing – I won’t cover that here though – mainly because I don’t have a clear answer on the best way to solve it! One nice thing about the dataTable above is how easy it is to extend http://www.datatables.net/examples/plug-ins/plugin_api.html and there are some nifty examples on the site already… I however have a requirement that wasn’t on the site … I need a grid at the bottom of the page that will size automatically to the bottom of the page and be scrollable if required within its own space i.e. everything above the grid didn’t scroll as well.  Now a CSS master may have a great solution to this … I’m not that master and so didn’t! The content above the grid can vary so any kind of fixed positioning is out. So I wrote a little extension for the DataTable, hooked that up to the document.ready event and window.resize event. Initialising my dataTable ( s )… $(document).ready(function () {   var dTable = $(".tdata").dataTable({ "bPaginate": false, "bLengthChange": false, "bFilter": true, "bSort": true, "bInfo": false, "bAutoWidth": true, "sScrollY": "400px" });   My extension to the API to give me the resizing….   // ********************************************************************** // jQuery dataTable API extension to resize grid and adjust column sizes // $.fn.dataTableExt.oApi.fnSetHeightToBottom = function (oSettings) { var id = oSettings.nTable.id; var dt = $("#" + id); var top = dt.position().top; var winHeight = $(document).height(); var remain = (winHeight - top) - 83; dt.parent().attr("style", "overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; height: " + remain + "px;"); this.fnAdjustColumnSizing(); } This is very much is debug mode, so pretty verbose at the moment – I’ll tidy that up later! You can see the last call is a call to an existing method, as the columns are fixed and that normally involves so CSS voodoo, a call to adjust those sizes is required. Just above is the style that the dataTable gives the grid wrapper div, I got that from some firebug action and stick in my new height. The –83 is to give me the space at the bottom i require for fixed footer!   Finally I hook that up to the load and window resize.  I’m actually using jQuery UI tabs as well, so I’ve got that in the open event of the tabs.   $(document).ready(function () { var oTable; $("#tabs").tabs({ "show": function (event, ui) { oTable = $('div.dataTables_scrollBody>table.tdata', ui.panel).dataTable(); if (oTable.length > 0) { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); } } }); $(window).bind("resize", function () { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); }); }); And that all there is too it.  Testament to the wonders of jQuery and the immense community surrounding it – to which I am extremely grateful. I’ve also hooked up some custom column filtering on the grid – pretty normal stuff though – you can get what you need for that from their website.  I do hide the out of the box filter input as I wanted column specific, you need filtering turned on when initialising to get it to work and that input come with it!  Tip: fnFilter is the method you want.  With column index as a param – I used data tags to simply that one.

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• $.fadeTo/fadeOut() operations on Table Rows in IE fail

  - by Rick Strahl

  Here’s a a small problem that one of customers ran into a few days ago: He was playing around with some of the sample code I’ve put out for one of my simple jQuery demos which deals with providing a simple pulse behavior plug-in: $.fn.pulse = function(time) { if (!time) time = 2000; // *** this == jQuery object that contains selections $(this).fadeTo(time, 0.20, function() { $(this).fadeTo(time, 1); }); return this; } it’s a very simplistic plug-in and it works fine for simple pulse animations. However he ran into a problem where it didn’t work when working with tables – specifically pulsing a table row in Internet Explorer. Works fine in FireFox and Chrome, but IE not so much. It also works just fine in IE as long as you don’t try it on tables or table rows specifically. Applying against something like this (an ASP.NET GridView): var sel = $("#gdEntries>tbody>tr") .not(":first-child") // no header .not(":last-child") // no footer .filter(":even") .addClass("gridalternate"); // *** Demonstrate simple plugin sel.pulse(2000); fails in IE. No pulsing happens in any version of IE. After some additional experimentation with single rows and various ways of selecting each and still failing, I’ve come to the conclusion that the various fade operations in jQuery simply won’t work correctly in IE (any version). So even something as ‘elemental’ as this: var el = $("#gdEntries>tbody>tr").get(0);$(el).fadeOut(2000); is not working correctly. The item will stick around for 2 seconds and then magically disappear. Likewise: sel.hide().fadeIn(5000); also doesn’t fade in although the items become immediately visible in IE. Go figure that behavior out. Thanks to a tweet from red_square and a link he provided here is a grid that explains what works and doesn’t in IE (and most last gen browsers) regarding opacity: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/opacity.html It appears from this link that table and row elements can’t be made opaque, but td elements can. This means for the row selections I can force each of the td elements to be selected and then pulse all of those. Once you have the rows it’s easy to explicitly select all the columns in those rows with .find(“td”). Aha the following actually works: var sel = $("#gdEntries>tbody>tr") .not(":first-child") // no header .not(":last-child") // no footer .filter(":even") .addClass("gridalternate"); // *** Demonstrate simple plugin sel.find("td").pulse(2000); A little unintuitive that, but it works. Stay away from <table> and <tr> Fades The moral of the story is – stay away from TR, TH and TABLE fades and opacity. If you have to do it on tables use the columns instead and if necessary use .find(“td”) on your row(s) selector to grab all the columns. I’ve been surprised by this uhm relevation, since I use fadeOut in almost every one of my applications for deletion of items and row deletions from grids are not uncommon especially in older apps. But it turns out that fadeOut actually works in terms of behavior: It removes the item when the timeout’s done and because the fade is relatively short lived and I don’t extensively test IE code any more I just never noticed that the fade wasn’t happening. Note – this behavior or rather lack thereof appears to be specific to table table,tr,th elements. I see no problems with other elements like <div> and <li> items. Chalk this one up to another of IE’s shortcomings. Incidentally I’m not the only one who has failed to address this in my simplistic plug-in: The jquery-ui pulsate effect also fails on the table rows in the same way. sel.effect("pulsate", { times: 3 }, 2000); and it also works with the same workaround. If you’re already using jquery-ui definitely use this version of the plugin which provides a few more options… Bottom line: be careful with table based fade operations and remember that if you do need to fade – fade on columns.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  

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• Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners 2012: ADF & Fusion Development

  - by Dana Singleterry

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor customers for their cutting-edge solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware. Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. The awards were presented during Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and following winners are for the category of ADF & Fusion Development. Micros – an OPN Platinum partner – has been working closely with Oracle product management teams in applying industry best practices in the development of their solutions. Their current application suite for the hospitality industry was built on Oracle Forms and the Oracle database running on MS Windows. The next generation of this suite is being developed and released in modules that are now based on Oracle FMW (including ADF) 11g technologies and Oracle Database 11g all running on Oracle Linux. The primary driver was that of modernization and hence the reason Oracle ADF was selected to provide a rich UI for business processes that could be served up through traditional methods or through mobile devices globally. SOA Suite & ADF allowed for loosely-coupled services that could evolve with the needs of the business. Micros's application innovations includes the use of business application portlets that have been published from ADF Faces Task Flows generated using WebCenter portlet libraries  & Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) with multi-layered customizations using Oracle WebCenter Composer. PCS (Marfin Egnatia Bank of Greece) – PCS Wealth Management is a WM Software Solution, which captures and automates the WM business processes allowing Service Providers to allocate enough time and effort into Customer Service and Investment Strategies, under Advisory or Execution-Only Services. The Product is built upon the latest Web Technologies and ensures Best Practices covering all functional expectations, meeting local regulatory requirements and discovering successful opportunities for the WM Customers' Portfolios. The new unified Wealth Management system offers an unparalleled User Interface taking full advantage of the user friendly ADF Faces Components to a great extent, all serving Private Banking purposes. The application offers a true Account Officer Cockpit with shallow navigation, one-click access to informed decisions and a perfect customer service. ADF Grids and Pivots, the Data Visualization Components, as well as the Calendar and Map Components are cleverly used to help the user eliminate the usage of Excel, Outlook and other systems. PCS's application is unique in the way it leverages the ADF Faces data visualization components to create a truly attractive and insightful dashboard for their application. PCS Wealth Management Demo Qualcomm – Qualcomm, a $17B per year company, designs and sells semiconductor products for wireless telecommunications, mobile and computing markets. In addition, Qualcomm companies provide various hardware and software products to facilitate the design, development and deployment of phones and the applications that run on them. Qualcomm’s challenge has been to not only develop and deploy new business system functions to keep pace with customer demand, but also to provide a customer collaboration capability that is sufficiently robust, easy to use, and flexible to meet emerging and future needs. Qualcomm has taken successful steps in building and deploying the customer engagement platform Ieveraging various Oracle technologies including Fusion Middleware (ADF, SOA, OBIEE) and their proven ERP foundation of EBS and 11g databases. The new platform delivers a more unified and “seamless” business solution with a consistent, modern “look and feel” all based on standard business processes which facilitate efficient collaboration with Qualcomm and its customers. The look and feel leverages ADF in innovative ways and includes hover over navigation, custom pagination components, and skinning. Qualcomm has exposed a services layer that provides significant functionality including order-to-ship, quote-to-order, customer on-boarding and contract validation. Qualcomm's creative designs leverage Oracle's SOA Suite to integrate with Oracle EBS and desperate applications to provide a rich user interface through the use use of Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components providing a self-service solution to their customers.

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• Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

  - by dapostolov

  Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

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• Grid Layouts in ADF Faces using Trinidad

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} ADF Faces does provide a data table component but none to define grid layouts. Grids are common in web design and developers often try HTML table markup wrapped in an f:verbatim tag or directly added the page to build a desired layout. Usually these attempts fail, showing unpredictable results, However, ADF Faces does not provide a table layout component, but Apache MyFaces Trinidad does. The Trinidad trh:tableLayout component is a thin wrapper around the HTML table element and contains a series of row layout elements, trh:rowLayout. Each trh:rowLayout component may contain one or many trh:cellLayout components to format cells content. <trh:tableLayout id="tl1" halign="left">   <trh:rowLayout id="rl1" valign="top" halign="left">     <trh:cellFormat id="cf1" width="100" header="true">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 1" id="ol1"/>     </trh:cellFormat>     <trh:cellFormat id="cf2" header="true"                               width="300">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 2" id="outputLabel1"/>        </trh:cellFormat>      </trh:rowLayout>      <trh:rowLayout id="rowLayout1" valign="top" halign="left">        <trh:cellFormat id="cellFormat1" width="100" header="false">           <af:outputLabel value="Label 3" id="outputLabel2"/>        </trh:cellFormat>     </trh:rowLayout>        ... </trh:tableLayout> To add the Trinidad tag library to your ADF Faces projects ... Open the Component Palette and right mouse click into it Choose "Edit Tag Libraries" and select the Trinidad components. Move them to the "Selected Libraries" section and Ok the dialog.The first time you drag a Trinidad component to a page, the web.xml file is updated with the required filters Note: The Trinidad tags don't participate in the ADF Faces RC geometry management. However, they are JSF components that are part of the JSF request lifecycle. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ADF Faces RC components work well with Trinidad layout components that don't use PPR. The PPR implementation of Trinidad is different from the one in ADF Faces. However, when you mix ADF Faces components with Trinidad components, avoid Trinidad components that have integrated PPR behavior. Only use passive Trinidad components.See:http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_tableLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_rowLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_cellFormat.html .

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• Performing dynamic sorts on EF4 data

  - by Jaxidian

  I'm attempting to perform dynamic sorting of data that I'm putting into grids into our MVC UI. Since MVC is abstracted from everything else via WCF, I've created a couple utility classes and extensions to help with this. The two most important things (slightly simplified) are as follows: public static IQueryable<T> ApplySortOptions<T, TModel, TProperty>(this IQueryable<T> collection, IEnumerable<ISortOption<TModel, TProperty>> sortOptions) where TModel : class { var sortedSortOptions = (from o in sortOptions orderby o.Priority ascending select o).ToList(); var results = collection; foreach (var option in sortedSortOptions) { var currentOption = option; var propertyName = currentOption.Property.MemberWithoutInstance(); var isAscending = currentOption.IsAscending; if (isAscending) { results = from r in results orderby propertyName ascending select r; } else { results = from r in results orderby propertyName descending select r; } } return results; } public interface ISortOption<TModel, TProperty> where TModel : class { Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> Property { get; set; } bool IsAscending { get; set; } int Priority { get; set; } } I've not given you the implementation for MemberWithoutInstance() but just trust me in that it returns the name of the property as a string. :-) Following is an example of how I would consume this (using a non-interesting, basic implementation of ISortOption<TModel, TProperty>): var query = from b in CurrentContext.Businesses select b; var sortOptions = new List<ISortOption<Business, object>> { new SortOption<Business, object> { Property = (x => x.Name), IsAscending = true, Priority = 0 } }; var results = query.ApplySortOptions(sortOptions); As I discovered with this question, the problem is specific to my orderby propertyName ascending and orderby propertyName descending lines (everything else works great as far as I can tell). How can I do this in a dynamic/generic way that works properly?

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• Windows forms application blocks after station lock

  - by Silviu

  We're having a serious issue at work. We've discovered that after the station where the client was running is locked/unlocked the client is blocked. No repaint. So the UI thread is blocked with something. Looking at the callstack of the UI thread (thread 0) using windbg we see that a UserPreferenceChanged event gets raised. It is marshalled through a WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext using it's controlToSend field to the UI. It gets blocked by a call to the marshalling control. The method called is MarshaledInvoke it builds a ThreadMethodEntry entry = new ThreadMethodEntry(caller, method, args, synchronous, executionContext); This entry is supposed to do the magic. The call is a synchronous call and because of that (still in the MarshaledInvoke of the Control class) the wait call is reached: if (!entry.IsCompleted) { this.WaitForWaitHandle(entry.AsyncWaitHandle); } The last thing that i can see on the stack is the WaitOne called on the previously mentioned AsyncWaitHandle. This is very annoying because having just the callstack of the runtime and not one of our methods being invoked we cannot really point to a bug in our code. I might be wrong, but I'm guessing that the marshaling control is not "marshaling" to the ui thread. But another one...i don't really know which one because the other threads are being used by us and are blocked...maybe this is the issue. But none of the other threads are running a message loop. This is very annoying. We had some issues in the past with marshaling controls to the right ui thread. That is because the first form that is constructed is a splash form. Which is not the main form. We used to use the main form to marshal call to the ui thread. But from time to time some calls would go to a non ui thread and some grids would broke with a big red X on them. I fixed this by creating a specific class: public class WindowsFormsSynchronizer { private static readonly WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext = new WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext(); //Methods are following that would build the same interface of the synchronization context. } This class gets build as one of the first objects in the first form being constructed. We've noticed some other strange thing. Looking at the heap there are 7 WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext objects. 6 of these have the same instance of controlToSend, and the other one has some different instance of controlToSend. This last one is the one that should marshal the calls to the UI. I don't have any other idea...maybe some of you guys had this same issue?

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• WPF WrapPanel with some items having a height of *

  - by Aphex

  How do I make a WrapPanel with some items having a Height of *? A deceptively simple question that I have been trying to solve. I want a control (or some XAML layout magickry) that behaves similar to a Grid that has some rows with a Height of *, but supports wrapping of columns. Hell; call it a WrapGrid. :) Here's a mockup to visualize this. Imagine a grid defined as such: <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Window1" Height="400"> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="*"/> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Button Grid.Row="0" MinHeight="30">I'm auto-sized.</Button> <Button Grid.Row="1" MinHeight="90">I'm star-sized.</Button> <Button Grid.Row="2" MinHeight="30">I'm auto-sized.</Button> <Button Grid.Row="3" MinHeight="90">I'm star-sized, too!</Button> <Button Grid.Row="4" MinHeight="30">I'm auto-sized.</Button> <Button Grid.Row="5" MinHeight="30">I'm auto-sized.</Button> </Grid> </Window> What I want this panel to do is wrap an item into an additional column when the item can not get any smaller than its minHeight. Here is a horrible MSPaint of some mockups I made detailing this process. Recall from the XAML that the auto-sized buttons have minHeights of 30, and the star-sized buttons have minHeights of 90. This mockup is just two grids side by side and I manually moved buttons around in the designer. Conceivably, this could be done programmatically and serve as a sort of convoluted solution to this. How can this be done? I will accept any solution whether it's through xaml or has some code-behind (though I would prefer pure XAML if possible since xaml code behind is tougher to implement in IronPython). Updated with a bounty

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• java, swing, Gridlayout problem

  - by josh

  I have a panel with GridLayout But when I'm trying to run the program, only the first button out of 100 is shown. Futhermore, the rest appear only when I move the cursor over them. What's wrong with it? Here's the whole class(Life.CELLS=10 and CellButton is a class which extends JButton) public class MainLayout extends JFrame { public MainLayout() { setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); setSize(650, 750); setLayout(new FlowLayout()); //setResizable(false); final JPanel gridPanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout(Life.CELLS, Life.CELLS)); for (int i=0; i<Life.CELLS; i++) { for (int j=0; j<Life.CELLS; j++) { CellButton jb = new CellButton(i, j); jb.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(jb.getIcon().getIconHeight(), jb.getIcon().getIconWidth())); buttons[i][j] = jb; grid[i][j] = false; gridPanel.add(jb); } } add(gridPanel); } } This is code of CellButton package classes; import javax.swing.JButton; import javax.swing.ImageIcon; import javax.swing.JFrame; public class CellButton extends JButton { private int x; private int y; boolean alive; ImageIcon icon; boolean next; // icons for grids final ImageIcon dead = new ImageIcon(JFrame.class.getResource("/images/image1.gif")); final ImageIcon live = new ImageIcon(JFrame.class.getResource("/images/image2.gif")); public CellButton(int X, int Y) { super(); x = X; y = Y; alive = false; icon = dead; setIcon(icon); } public int getX() { return x; } public int getY() { return y; } public boolean isAlive() { return alive; } public void relive() { alive = true; icon = live; setIcon(icon); } public void die() { alive = false; icon = dead; setIcon(icon); } public void setNext(boolean n) { next = n; } public boolean getNext() { return next; } public ImageIcon getIcon() { return icon; } }

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• C++ - Conway's Game of Life & Stepping Backwards

  - by Gabe

  I was able to create a version Conway's Game of Life that either stepped forward each click, or just ran forward using a timer. (I'm doing this using Qt.) Now, I need to be able to save all previous game grids, so that I can step backwards by clicking a button. I'm trying to use a stack, and it seems like I'm pushing the old gridcells onto the stack correctly. But when I run it in QT, the grids don't change when I click BACK. I've tried different things for the last three hours, to no avail. Any ideas? gridwindow.cpp - My problem should be in here somewhere. Probably the handleBack() func. #include <iostream> #include "gridwindow.h" using namespace std; // Constructor for window. It constructs the three portions of the GUI and lays them out vertically. GridWindow::GridWindow(QWidget *parent,int rows,int cols) : QWidget(parent) { QHBoxLayout *header = setupHeader(); // Setup the title at the top. QGridLayout *grid = setupGrid(rows,cols); // Setup the grid of colored cells in the middle. QHBoxLayout *buttonRow = setupButtonRow(); // Setup the row of buttons across the bottom. QVBoxLayout *layout = new QVBoxLayout(); // Puts everything together. layout->addLayout(header); layout->addLayout(grid); layout->addLayout(buttonRow); setLayout(layout); } // Destructor. GridWindow::~GridWindow() { delete title; } // Builds header section of the GUI. QHBoxLayout* GridWindow::setupHeader() { QHBoxLayout *header = new QHBoxLayout(); // Creates horizontal box. header->setAlignment(Qt::AlignHCenter); this->title = new QLabel("CONWAY'S GAME OF LIFE",this); // Creates big, bold, centered label (title): "Conway's Game of Life." this->title->setAlignment(Qt::AlignHCenter); this->title->setFont(QFont("Arial", 32, QFont::Bold)); header->addWidget(this->title); // Adds widget to layout. return header; // Returns header to grid window. } // Builds the grid of cells. This method populates the grid's 2D array of GridCells with MxN cells. QGridLayout* GridWindow::setupGrid(int rows,int cols) { isRunning = false; QGridLayout *grid = new QGridLayout(); // Creates grid layout. grid->setHorizontalSpacing(0); // No empty spaces. Cells should be contiguous. grid->setVerticalSpacing(0); grid->setSpacing(0); grid->setAlignment(Qt::AlignHCenter); for(int i=0; i < rows; i++) //Each row is a vector of grid cells. { std::vector<GridCell*> row; // Creates new vector for current row. cells.push_back(row); for(int j=0; j < cols; j++) { GridCell *cell = new GridCell(); // Creates and adds new cell to row. cells.at(i).push_back(cell); grid->addWidget(cell,i,j); // Adds to cell to grid layout. Column expands vertically. grid->setColumnStretch(j,1); } grid->setRowStretch(i,1); // Sets row expansion horizontally. } return grid; // Returns grid. } // Builds footer section of the GUI. QHBoxLayout* GridWindow::setupButtonRow() { QHBoxLayout *buttonRow = new QHBoxLayout(); // Creates horizontal box for buttons. buttonRow->setAlignment(Qt::AlignHCenter); // Clear Button - Clears cell; sets them all to DEAD/white. QPushButton *clearButton = new QPushButton("CLEAR"); clearButton->setFixedSize(100,25); connect(clearButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handlePause())); // Pauses timer before clearing. connect(clearButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handleClear())); // Connects to clear function to make all cells DEAD/white. buttonRow->addWidget(clearButton); // Forward Button - Steps one step forward. QPushButton *forwardButton = new QPushButton("FORWARD"); forwardButton->setFixedSize(100,25); connect(forwardButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handleForward())); // Signals to handleForward function.. buttonRow->addWidget(forwardButton); // Back Button - Steps one step backward. QPushButton *backButton = new QPushButton("BACK"); backButton->setFixedSize(100,25); connect(backButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handleBack())); // Signals to handleBack funciton. buttonRow->addWidget(backButton); // Start Button - Starts game when user clicks. Or, resumes game after being paused. QPushButton *startButton = new QPushButton("START/RESUME"); startButton->setFixedSize(100,25); connect(startButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handlePause())); // Deletes current timer if there is one. Then restarts everything. connect(startButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handleStart())); // Signals to handleStart function. buttonRow->addWidget(startButton); // Pause Button - Pauses simulation of game. QPushButton *pauseButton = new QPushButton("PAUSE"); pauseButton->setFixedSize(100,25); connect(pauseButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(handlePause())); // Signals to pause function which pauses timer. buttonRow->addWidget(pauseButton); // Quit Button - Exits program. QPushButton *quitButton = new QPushButton("EXIT"); quitButton->setFixedSize(100,25); connect(quitButton, SIGNAL(clicked()), qApp, SLOT(quit())); // Signals the quit slot which ends the program. buttonRow->addWidget(quitButton); return buttonRow; // Returns bottom of layout. } /* SLOT method for handling clicks on the "clear" button. Receives "clicked" signals on the "Clear" button and sets all cells to DEAD. */ void GridWindow::handleClear() { for(unsigned int row=0; row < cells.size(); row++) // Loops through current rows' cells. { for(unsigned int col=0; col < cells[row].size(); col++) // Loops through the rows'columns' cells. { GridCell *cell = cells[row][col]; // Grab the current cell & set its value to dead. cell->setType(DEAD); } } } /* SLOT method for handling clicks on the "start" button. Receives "clicked" signals on the "start" button and begins game simulation. */ void GridWindow::handleStart() { isRunning = true; // It is running. Sets isRunning to true. this->timer = new QTimer(this); // Creates new timer. connect(this->timer, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(timerFired())); // Connect "timerFired" method class to the "timeout" signal fired by the timer. this->timer->start(500); // Timer to fire every 500 milliseconds. } /* SLOT method for handling clicks on the "pause" button. Receives "clicked" signals on the "pause" button and stops the game simulation. */ void GridWindow::handlePause() { if(isRunning) // If it is running... this->timer->stop(); // Stops the timer. isRunning = false; // Set to false. } void GridWindow::handleForward() { if(isRunning); // If it's running, do nothing. else timerFired(); // It not running, step forward one step. } void GridWindow::handleBack() { std::vector<std::vector<GridCell*> > cells2; if(isRunning); // If it's running, do nothing. else if(backStack.empty()) cout << "EMPTYYY" << endl; else { cells2 = backStack.peek(); for (unsigned int f = 0; f < cells.size(); f++) // Loop through cells' rows. { for (unsigned int g = 0; g < cells.at(f).size(); g++) // Loop through cells columns. { cells[f][g]->setType(cells2[f][g]->getType()); // Set cells[f][g]'s type to cells2[f][g]'s type. } } cout << "PRE=POP" << endl; backStack.pop(); cout << "OYYYY" << endl; } } // Accessor method - Gets the 2D vector of grid cells. std::vector<std::vector<GridCell*> >& GridWindow::getCells() { return this->cells; } /* TimerFired function: 1) 2D-Vector cells2 is declared. 2) cells2 is initliazed with loops/push_backs so that all its cells are DEAD. 3) We loop through cells, and count the number of LIVE neighbors next to a given cell. --> Depending on how many cells are living, we choose if the cell should be LIVE or DEAD in the next simulation, according to the rules. -----> We save the cell type in cell2 at the same indice (the same row and column cell in cells2). 4) After check all the cells (and save the next round values in cells 2), we set cells's gridcells equal to cells2 gridcells. --> This causes the cells to be redrawn with cells2 types (white or black). */ void GridWindow::timerFired() { backStack.push(cells); std::vector<std::vector<GridCell*> > cells2; // Holds new values for 2D vector. These are the next simulation round of cell types. for(unsigned int i = 0; i < cells.size(); i++) // Loop through the rows of cells2. (Same size as cells' rows.) { vector<GridCell*> row; // Creates Gridcell* vector to push_back into cells2. cells2.push_back(row); // Pushes back row vectors into cells2. for(unsigned int j = 0; j < cells[i].size(); j++) // Loop through the columns (the cells in each row). { GridCell *cell = new GridCell(); // Creates new GridCell. cell->setType(DEAD); // Sets cell type to DEAD/white. cells2.at(i).push_back(cell); // Pushes back the DEAD cell into cells2. } // This makes a gridwindow the same size as cells with all DEAD cells. } for (unsigned int m = 0; m < cells.size(); m++) // Loop through cells' rows. { for (unsigned int n = 0; n < cells.at(m).size(); n++) // Loop through cells' columns. { unsigned int neighbors = 0; // Counter for number of LIVE neighbors for a given cell. // We know check all different variations of cells[i][j] to count the number of living neighbors for each cell. // We check m > 0 and/or n > 0 to make sure we don't access negative indexes (ex: cells[-1][0].) // We check m < size to make sure we don't try to access rows out of the vector (ex: row 5, if only 4 rows). // We check n < row size to make sure we don't access column item out of the vector (ex: 10th item in a column of only 9 items). // If we find that the Type = 1 (it is LIVE), then we add 1 to the neighbor. // Else - we add nothing to the neighbor counter. // Neighbor is the number of LIVE cells next to the current cell. if(m > 0 && n > 0) { if (cells[m-1][n-1]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; } if(m > 0) { if (cells[m-1][n]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; if(n < (cells.at(m).size() - 1)) { if (cells[m-1][n+1]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; } } if(n > 0) { if (cells[m][n-1]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; if(m < (cells.size() - 1)) { if (cells[m+1][n-1]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; } } if(n < (cells.at(m).size() - 1)) { if (cells[m][n+1]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; } if(m < (cells.size() - 1)) { if (cells[m+1][n]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; } if(m < (cells.size() - 1) && n < (cells.at(m).size() - 1)) { if (cells[m+1][n+1]->getType() == 1) neighbors += 1; } // Done checking number of neighbors for cells[m][n] // Now we change cells2 if it should switch in the next simulation step. // cells2 holds the values of what cells should be on the next iteration of the game. // We can't change cells right now, or it would through off our other cell values. // Apply game rules to cells: Create new, updated grid with the roundtwo vector. // Note - LIVE is 1; DEAD is 0. if (cells[m][n]->getType() == 1 && neighbors < 2) // If cell is LIVE and has less than 2 LIVE neighbors -> Set to DEAD. cells2[m][n]->setType(DEAD); else if (cells[m][n]->getType() == 1 && neighbors > 3) // If cell is LIVE and has more than 3 LIVE neighbors -> Set to DEAD. cells2[m][n]->setType(DEAD); else if (cells[m][n]->getType() == 1 && (neighbors == 2 || neighbors == 3)) // If cell is LIVE and has 2 or 3 LIVE neighbors -> Set to LIVE. cells2[m][n]->setType(LIVE); else if (cells[m][n]->getType() == 0 && neighbors == 3) // If cell is DEAD and has 3 LIVE neighbors -> Set to LIVE. cells2[m][n]->setType(LIVE); } } // Now we've gone through all of cells, and saved the new values in cells2. // Now we loop through cells and set all the cells' types to those of cells2. for (unsigned int f = 0; f < cells.size(); f++) // Loop through cells' rows. { for (unsigned int g = 0; g < cells.at(f).size(); g++) // Loop through cells columns. { cells[f][g]->setType(cells2[f][g]->getType()); // Set cells[f][g]'s type to cells2[f][g]'s type. } } } stack.h - Here's my stack. #ifndef STACK_H_ #define STACK_H_ #include <iostream> #include "node.h" template <typename T> class Stack { private: Node<T>* top; int listSize; public: Stack(); int size() const; bool empty() const; void push(const T& value); void pop(); T& peek() const; }; template <typename T> Stack<T>::Stack() : top(NULL) { listSize = 0; } template <typename T> int Stack<T>::size() const { return listSize; } template <typename T> bool Stack<T>::empty() const { if(listSize == 0) return true; else return false; } template <typename T> void Stack<T>::push(const T& value) { Node<T>* newOne = new Node<T>(value); newOne->next = top; top = newOne; listSize++; } template <typename T> void Stack<T>::pop() { Node<T>* oldT = top; top = top->next; delete oldT; listSize--; } template <typename T> T& Stack<T>::peek() const { return top->data; // Returns data in top item. } #endif gridcell.cpp - Gridcell implementation #include <iostream> #include "gridcell.h" using namespace std; // Constructor: Creates a grid cell. GridCell::GridCell(QWidget *parent) : QFrame(parent) { this->type = DEAD; // Default: Cell is DEAD (white). setFrameStyle(QFrame::Box); // Set the frame style. This is what gives each box its black border. this->button = new QPushButton(this); //Creates button that fills entirety of each grid cell. this->button->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::Expanding,QSizePolicy::Expanding); // Expands button to fill space. this->button->setMinimumSize(19,19); //width,height // Min height and width of button. QHBoxLayout *layout = new QHBoxLayout(); //Creates a simple layout to hold our button and add the button to it. layout->addWidget(this->button); setLayout(layout); layout->setStretchFactor(this->button,1); // Lets the buttons expand all the way to the edges of the current frame with no space leftover layout->setContentsMargins(0,0,0,0); layout->setSpacing(0); connect(this->button,SIGNAL(clicked()),this,SLOT(handleClick())); // Connects clicked signal with handleClick slot. redrawCell(); // Calls function to redraw (set new type for) the cell. } // Basic destructor. GridCell::~GridCell() { delete this->button; } // Accessor for the cell type. CellType GridCell::getType() const { return(this->type); } // Mutator for the cell type. Also has the side effect of causing the cell to be redrawn on the GUI. void GridCell::setType(CellType type) { this->type = type; redrawCell(); // Sets type and redraws cell. } // Handler slot for button clicks. This method is called whenever the user clicks on this cell in the grid. void GridCell::handleClick() { // When clicked on... if(this->type == DEAD) // If type is DEAD (white), change to LIVE (black). type = LIVE; else type = DEAD; // If type is LIVE (black), change to DEAD (white). setType(type); // Sets new type (color). setType Calls redrawCell() to recolor. } // Method to check cell type and return the color of that type. Qt::GlobalColor GridCell::getColorForCellType() { switch(this->type) { default: case DEAD: return Qt::white; case LIVE: return Qt::black; } } // Helper method. Forces current cell to be redrawn on the GUI. Called whenever the setType method is invoked. void GridCell::redrawCell() { Qt::GlobalColor gc = getColorForCellType(); //Find out what color this cell should be. this->button->setPalette(QPalette(gc,gc)); //Force the button in the cell to be the proper color. this->button->setAutoFillBackground(true); this->button->setFlat(true); //Force QT to NOT draw the borders on the button } Thanks a lot. Let me know if you need anything else.

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• e.Row.Tag .ToString

  - by prince23

  hi, Child data grid is not showing the values in the page for the child datagrid I am binding with an list <sdk:DataGrid MinHeight="100" x:Name="contacts" Margin="51,21,88,98" RowDetailsVisibilityChanged="contacts_RowDetailsVisibilityChanged" LoadingRowDetails="contacts_LoadingRowDetails" RowDetailsVisibilityMode="VisibleWhenSelected" MouseLeftButtonUp="contacts_MouseLeftButtonUp" MouseLeftButtonDown="contacts_MouseLeftButtonDown"> <sdk:DataGrid.Columns> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeID}" Header="ID" /> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeFName}" Header="Fname" /> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeLName}" Header="LName" /> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeMailID}" Header="MailID" /> </sdk:DataGrid.Columns> <sdk:DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> <DataTemplate> <sdk:DataGrid x:Name="dgrdRowDetail" Width="200" AutoGenerateColumns="False" HorizontalAlignment="Center" IsReadOnly="True"> <sdk:DataGrid.Columns> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Header="CompanyName" Binding="{Binding Company name}"/> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Header="CompanyName" Binding="{Binding EmpID}"/> </sdk:DataGrid.Columns> </sdk:DataGrid> </DataTemplate> </sdk:DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> </sdk:DataGrid> I am having 2 grids "contacts" and "dgrdRowDetail" globally i have defined an variable like this:- DataGrid dgrdRowDetail; in the contacts_RowDetailsVisibilityChanged event I have this code if (e.Row.DataContext != null) { string strEmpID = ((SilverlightApplication1.DBServiceEMP.Employee)((e.DetailsElement).DataContext)).EmployeeID; dgrdRowDetail = (DataGrid)e.DetailsElement.FindName("dgrdRowDetail"); // here i am finding the child datgrid control in contacts datagrid // then in dgrdRowDetail i will be binding this grid with new values if (strEmpID != null) { int EmpID = Convert.ToInt32(strEmpID.ToString()); DBServiceEmp.GetEmployeeIDCompleted += new EventHandler<GetEmployeeIDCompletedEventArgs>(DBServiceEmp_GetEmployeeIDCompleted); DBServiceEmp.GetEmployeeIDAsync(EmpID); } } this is my method void DBServiceEmp_GetEmployeeIDCompleted(object sender, GetEmployeeIDCompletedEventArgs e) { // List<Employee> Employes = new List<Employee>(); List<Employee> rows = new List<Employee>(); for (int i = 0; i < e.Result.Count; i++) { rows.Add(e.Result[i]); } dgrdRowDetail.ItemsSource = rows; // here i am binding the child datagrid with new data source } dgrdRowDetail.ItemsSource = rows// what ever rows i am binding to dgrdRowDetail are not shown in the page if i check the rows i am able to see the value ther. but in the child grid it is not reflecting plz plz help me out i am struck thanks in advance prince

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• Why don't my scrollbars work properly when programmatically hiding rows in silverlight Datagrid?

  - by Luke Vilnis

  I have a Silverlight datagrid with custom code that allows for +/- buttons on the lefthand side and can display a table with a tree structure. The +/- buttons are bound to a IsExpanded property on my ViewModelRows, as I call them. The visibility of rows is bound to an IsVisible property on the ViewModelRows which is determined based on whether or not all of the parent rows are expanded. Straightforward enough. This code works fine in that if I scroll up and down the grid with PageUp/PageDown or the arrow keys, all the right rows are hidden and everything has the right structure and I can play with the +/- buttons to my hearts content. However, the vertical scroll bar on the right hand side, although it starts off the correct size and it scrolls through the rows smoothly, when I collapse rows and then re-expand them, doesn't go back to its correct size. The scrollbar can still usually be moved around to scroll through the whole collection, but because it is too big, once the bar moves to the bottom, there are still more rows to go through and it sort of jerkily shoots all the way down to the bottom or sometimes fails to scroll at all. This is pretty hard to describe so I included a screenshot with the black lines drawn on to show the difference in scrollbar length even though the two grids have the same number of rows expanded. I think this might be a bug related to the way the Datagrid does virtualization of rows. It seems to me like it isn't properly keeping track of how tall each row is supposed to be when expansion states change. Is there a way to programmatically "poke" (read hack) it to recalculate its scrollbar size on LoadingRow or something ugly like that? I'd include a code sample but there's 2 c# files and 1 xaml file so I wanted to see if anyone else has heard of this sort of issue before I try to make it reproducible in a self-contained way. Once again, scrolling with the arrow keys works fine so I'm pretty sure the underlying logic and binding is working, there's just some issue with the row height not being calculated properly. Since I'm a new user, it won't let me use image tags so here's the link to a picture of the problem: http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/8760/messedupscrollbars.png

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• ASP.NET MVC grid/table

  - by nivlam

  public class Person { public string First { get; set; } public string Last { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } public IEnumerable<Child> Children { get; set; } } public class Child { public string First { get; set; } public string Last { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } } I'm searching for a way to render a table from my model, which is of type IEnumerable<Person>. I'm trying to generate the following table: <table> <tr class="person"> <td>First 1</td> <td>Last 1</td> <td>1</td> </tr> <tr class="child"> <td>First 1</td> <td>Last 1</td> <td>1</td> </tr> <tr class="child"> <td>First 2</td> <td>Last 2</td> <td>2</td> </tr> ... ... </table> Each person is a row and each of their children would be individual rows under the person row. This would repeat for each person in IEnumerable<Person>. Are there any grids or components that generate a table like this? I found MvcContrib's grid component, but it doesn't appear to be able to generate these child rows. Is there a way to extend MvcContrib's grid to do this?

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• Child data grid is not showing the values in the page

  - by prince23

  hi, Child data grid is not showing the values in the page for the child datagrid I am binding with an list <sdk:DataGrid MinHeight="100" x:Name="contacts" Margin="51,21,88,98" RowDetailsVisibilityChanged="contacts_RowDetailsVisibilityChanged" LoadingRowDetails="contacts_LoadingRowDetails" RowDetailsVisibilityMode="VisibleWhenSelected" MouseLeftButtonUp="contacts_MouseLeftButtonUp" MouseLeftButtonDown="contacts_MouseLeftButtonDown"> <sdk:DataGrid.Columns> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeID}" Header="ID" /> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeFName}" Header="Fname" /> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeLName}" Header="LName" /> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeMailID}" Header="MailID" /> </sdk:DataGrid.Columns> <sdk:DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> <DataTemplate> <sdk:DataGrid x:Name="dgrdRowDetail" Width="200" AutoGenerateColumns="False" HorizontalAlignment="Center" IsReadOnly="True"> <sdk:DataGrid.Columns> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Header="CompanyName" Binding="{Binding Company name}"/> <sdk:DataGridTextColumn Header="CompanyName" Binding="{Binding EmpID}"/> </sdk:DataGrid.Columns> </sdk:DataGrid> </DataTemplate> </sdk:DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> </sdk:DataGrid> I am having 2 grids "contacts" and "dgrdRowDetail" globally i have defined an variable like this:- DataGrid dgrdRowDetail; in the contacts_RowDetailsVisibilityChanged event I have this code if (e.Row.DataContext != null) { string strEmpID = ((SilverlightApplication1.DBServiceEMP.Employee)((e.DetailsElement).DataContext)).EmployeeID; dgrdRowDetail = (DataGrid)e.DetailsElement.FindName("dgrdRowDetail"); // here i am finding the child datgrid control in contacts datagrid // then in dgrdRowDetail i will be binding this grid with new values if (strEmpID != null) { int EmpID = Convert.ToInt32(strEmpID.ToString()); DBServiceEmp.GetEmployeeIDCompleted += new EventHandler<GetEmployeeIDCompletedEventArgs>(DBServiceEmp_GetEmployeeIDCompleted); DBServiceEmp.GetEmployeeIDAsync(EmpID); } } this is my method void DBServiceEmp_GetEmployeeIDCompleted(object sender, GetEmployeeIDCompletedEventArgs e) { // List<Employee> Employes = new List<Employee>(); List<Employee> rows = new List<Employee>(); for (int i = 0; i < e.Result.Count; i++) { rows.Add(e.Result[i]); } dgrdRowDetail.ItemsSource = rows; // here i am binding the child datagrid with new data source } dgrdRowDetail.ItemsSource = rows// what ever rows i am binding to dgrdRowDetail are not shown in the page if i check the rows i am able to see the value ther. but in the child grid it is not reflecting plz plz help me out i am struck thanks in advance prince

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• Insane CPU usage in QT 5.0

  - by GravityScore

  I'm having trouble using the QT framework, particularly with the paintEvent of QWidget. I have a QWidget set up, and am overriding the paintEvent of it. I need to render a bunch of rectangles (grid system), 51 by 19, leading to 969 rectangles being drawn. This is done in a for loop. Then I also need to draw an image on each on of these grids. The QWidget is added to a QMainWindow, which is shown. This works nicely, but it's using up 47% of CPU per window open! And I want to allow the user to open multiple windows like this, likey having 3-4 open at a time, which puts the CPU close to 150%. Why does this happen? Here is the paintEvent contents. The JNI calls don't cause the CPU usage, commenting them out doesn't lower it, but commenting out the p.fillRect and Renderer::renderString (which draws the image) lowers the CPU to about 5%. // Background QPainter p(this); p.fillRect(0, 0, this->width(), this->height(), QBrush(QColor(0, 0, 0))); // Lines for (int y = 0; y < Global::terminalHeight; y++) { // Line and color method ID jmethodID lineid = Manager::jenv->GetMethodID(this->javaClass, "getLine", "(I)Ljava/lang/String;"); error(); jmethodID colorid = Manager::jenv->GetMethodID(this->javaClass, "getColorLine", "(I)Ljava/lang/String;"); error(); // Values jstring jl = (jstring) Manager::jenv->CallObjectMethod(this->javaObject, lineid, jint(y)); error(); jstring cjl = (jstring) Manager::jenv->CallObjectMethod(this->javaObject, colorid, jint(y)); error(); // Convert to C values const char *l = Manager::jenv->GetStringUTFChars(jl, 0); const char *cl = Manager::jenv->GetStringUTFChars(cjl, 0); QString line = QString(l); QString color = QString(cl); // Render line for (int x = 0; x < Global::terminalWidth; x++) { QColor bg = Renderer::colorForHex(color.mid(x + color.length() / 2, 1)); // Cell location on widget int cellx = x * Global::cellWidth + Global::xoffset; int celly = y * Global::cellHeight + Global::yoffset; // Background p.fillRect(cellx, celly, Global::cellWidth, Global::cellHeight, QBrush(bg)); // String // Renders the image to the grid Renderer::renderString(p, tc, text, cellx, celly); } // Release Manager::jenv->ReleaseStringUTFChars(jl, l); Manager::jenv->ReleaseStringUTFChars(cjl, cl); }

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• Making a grid on iPhone using Opengl

  - by TheGambler

  I'm trying to make a grid similar to what you would see in these geo games(geoDefense/geometry wars). I'm wanting to apply separate transformation matrixes to each to create different effects. So, it makes since to me that I need to draw each square separately to that I can apply a different transformation to each one. The problem I'm having is mapping these grids out or connecting the squares. The coordinate systems is still confusing to me. I know it would be easy just to create a huge triangle strip but I'm not able to figure out a way to apply separate transformations to each square( quad ) if I use triangle strips. So first question: Can you apply different transformations to quads if you use a triangle strip to draw a huge grid? If so, any tips suggestions on how to do so? If not, how does one usually connect textures without using triangle strips? Here is my coord setup: const GLfloat zNear = 0.01, zFar = 1000.0, fieldOfView = 45.0; GLfloat size; glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); size = zNear * tanf(DEGREES_TO_RADIANS(fieldOfView) / 2.0); CGRect rect = view.bounds; glFrustumf(-size, size, -size / (rect.size.width / rect.size.height), size / (rect.size.width / rect.size.height), zNear, zFar); glViewport(0, 0, rect.size.width, rect.size.height); Here is my draw: - (void)drawView:(GLView*)view; { int loop; //glColor4f(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Grid Loop for( loop = 0; loop < kNumberSectionsInGrid; loop++ ) { //glLoadIdentity(); static Matrix3D shearMatrix; Matrix3DSetShear(shearMatrix, 0.2, 0.2); static Matrix3D finalMatrix; //Matrix3DMultiply(temp2Matrix, shearMatrix, finalMatrix); glLoadMatrixf(shearMatrix); glTranslatef(-1.0f,(float)loop,-3.0f); glScalef(0.1, 0.1, 0.0); Vertex3D vertices[] = { {-1.0, 1.0, 0.5}, { 1.0, 1.0, 0.5}, { -1.0, -1.0, 0.5}, { 1.0, -1.0, 0.5} }; static const Vector3D normals[] = { {0.0, 0.0, 1.0}, {0.0, 0.0, 1.0}, {0.0, 0.0, 1.0}, {0.0, 0.0, 1.0}, }; GLfloat texCoords[] = { 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }; glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, 0, vertices); glNormalPointer(GL_FLOAT, 0, normals); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, texCoords); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, 0, 4); glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glDisableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); glDisableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); } } glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);

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• Adaptive ADF/WebCenter template for the iPad

  - by Maiko Rocha

  One of my WebCenter Portal customers was asking about adaptive design with ADF/WebCenter Portal and how they could go about creating an adaptive iPad template for their WebCenter Portal application. They were looking not only for the out-of-the-box support for mobile Safari which is certified against PS5+ (11.1.1.6) for ADF/WebCenter - but also to create a specific template to streamline their workflow on the iPad. Seems like they wanted something in the lines of Yahoo! Mail provides for the iPad - so the example I will use is shamelessly inspired by Y! Mail's iPad UI.  But first, let's quickly understand how can we bake in some adaptive goodness into ADF Faces. First thing we need to understand is, yes, there are a couple of constraints that we will need to work around, namely, the use or layout managers and skins. Please also keep in mind that I'm not and I don't pretend to be a web designer, much less an UX specialist, so feel free to leave your thoughts on the matter in the comments section. Now, back to the limitations. Layout Managers ADF Faces layout managers create an abstraction on top of the generated HTML code for a page so a developer doesn't need to be worried about how to size and dimension the UI layout (eg, af:panelStretchLayout). Although layout managers are very helpful, in this specific situation we will need to know a little bit more of how the final HTML is being rendered so we can apply the CSS class accordingly and create transition containers where the media queries will be applied - now, if you're using 11gR2 (11.1.2.2.3) there's the new component af:panelGridLayout (here and here) that will greatly improve creating responsive templates and pages because it is based on the grid/fluid systems and will generate straight out to DIVs on your final page. For now, I'm limited to PS5 and the af:panelStretchLayout component as a starting point because that's the release my customer is on. Skins You won't be able to use media queries, or use anything with "@" notation on the skin CSS file - the skin pre-processor will remove all extraneous "@" from the CSS file. The solution is to split your CSS in two separate files: a skin CSS file and plain CSS where you will add the media queries. The issue here is that you won't be able to use media queries for any faces components. We can, though, still apply the media queries for the components like af:panelGroupLayout and af:panelBorderLayout through their styleClass property to enable these components to be responsive to to the iPad orientation, by changing its dimensions, font sizes, hide/show areas, etc. Difference between responsive and adaptive design The best definition of adaptive vs responsive web design I could find is this: “Responsive web design,” as coined by Ethan Marcotte, means “fluid grids, fluid images/media & media queries.” “Adaptive web design,” as I use it, is about creating interfaces that adapt to the user’s capabilities (in terms of both form and function). To me, “adaptive web design” is just another term for “progressive enhancement” of which responsive web design can (an often should) be an integral part, but is a more holistic approach to web design in that it also takes into account varying levels of markup, CSS, JavaScript and assistive technology support. Responsive/adapative web design is much more than slapping an HTML template with CSS around your content or application. The content and application themselves are part of your web design - in other words, a responsive template is just an afterthought if it is not originating from a responsive design the involves the whole web application/s. Tips on responsive / adapative design with ADF/WebCenter Some of the tips listed below were already mentioned in multiple blog posts about ADF layout and skinning, but it is still worth remembering: a simple guideline for ADF/WebCenter apps would be to first create a high-level group of devices, for example: smartphones, tablets,  and desktop. For each of these large groups, create the basic structure to provide responsiveness: a page template, a skin, and an external CSS: pagetemplate_smartphone.jspx, smartphone_skin.css, smartphone-responsive.css pagetemplate_tablet.jspx, tablet_skin.css, tablet-responsive.css pagetemplate_desktop.jspx, desktop_skin.css, desktop-responsive.css These three assets can be changed on the fly through an user-agent check on the server side, delivering the right UI to the right device. Within each of the assets, you can make fine adjustments for each subgroup of devices with media queries - for example, smart phones with different screen dimensions and pixel density. Having these three groups and the corresponding assets per group seem to be a good compromise between trying to put everything on a single set of assets - specially considering the constraints above - and going to the other side of the spectrum to create assets per discrete device (iPhone4, iPhone5, Nexus, S3, etc.). Keep in mind that these are my rules and are not in any shape or form a best practice - this is how it fits best for the scenarios I've been working with. If you need to use HTML tags on your page, surround them with af:group to protect the DOM structure For stretchable/fluid layouts: Use non-stretching containers: panelGroupLayout, panelBorderLayout, … panelBorderLayout can be used to approximate HTML table component To avoid multiple scroll bars, do not nest scrolling PanelGroupLayout components. Consider layout="vertical" For stretchable/fluid layouts: Most stretchable ADF components also work in flowing context with dimensionsFrom="auto" To stretch a component horizontally, use styleClass="AFStretchWidth" instead of  "width:100%" Skinning Don't use CSS3 @media, @import, animations, etc. on skin css files. They will be removed. CSS3 properties within a class (box-shadow, transition, etc.) work just fine. Consider resetting some skin classes to better control their rendering: body {color: inherit;font: inherit;} af|document {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|commandLink {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|goLink {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|inputText::content {font: inherit;} Specific meta tags and CSS properties: Use  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0"/> to avoid zooming (if you want) Use -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch to enable native momentum scrolling within overflown areas (here) Use text-rendering: optmizeLegibility to improve readability. (here) User text-overflow: ellipsis to gracefully crop overflown text. (here) The meta-tags are included in each and every page in the metaContainer facet of af:document tag. You can also use a javascript to inject the meta-tags from the template. For the purpose of the example, I wanted to use as few workarounds as possible.   The iPad template and sample application This sample application has been built as a WebCenter Portal application, but you will also be able to reuse the template and techniques on your vanilla ADF application. Keep in mind that I'm neither a designer nor a CSS specialist, so please don't bash me too much on the messy CSS file you'll find on the application.  I've extended the provided PreferencesBean class that comes with WebCenter Portal and added code to dinamically change the template and skin on the fly.   This is the sample application in landscape orientation: This is the sample application in portrait orientation - the left side menu hides automatically based on a CSS media query: Another screenshot with a skinned popup opened: This is a sample application for you to play with - ideally you shouldn't use it as a starting point. On the left side bar you will find links rendered from a WebCenter Portal navigation model - the link triggers a full request through an af:goLink, while the light blue PPR button triggers a PPR navigation. The dark blue toolbar buttons at the top don't have any function,while the Approve and Reject buttons show a skinned popup. The search box of course doesn't have any behavior attahed to it either. There's a known issue right now with some PPR calls that are randomly generating a 403 error redirecting to the login page - I didn't have time to investigate if this is iOS6 specific or not - if you have any insights please let me know your findings. You can download the sample here.

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• Base de Datos Oracle, su mejor opción para reducir costos de IT

  - by Ivan Hassig

  Por Victoria Cadavid Sr. Sales Cosultant Oracle Direct Uno de los principales desafíos en la administración de centros de datos es la reducción de costos de operación. A medida que las compañías crecen y los proveedores de tecnología ofrecen soluciones cada vez más robustas, conservar el equilibrio entre desempeño, soporte al negocio y gestión del Costo Total de Propiedad es un desafío cada vez mayor para los Gerentes de Tecnología y para los Administradores de Centros de Datos. Las estrategias más comunes para conseguir reducción en los costos de administración de Centros de Datos y en la gestión de Tecnología de una organización en general, se enfocan en la mejora del desempeño de las aplicaciones, reducción del costo de administración y adquisición de hardware, reducción de los costos de almacenamiento, aumento de la productividad en la administración de las Bases de Datos y mejora en la atención de requerimientos y prestación de servicios de mesa de ayuda, sin embargo, las estrategias de reducción de costos deben contemplar también la reducción de costos asociados a pérdida y robo de información, cumplimiento regulatorio, generación de valor y continuidad del negocio, que comúnmente se conciben como iniciativas aisladas que no siempre se adelantan con el ánimo de apoyar la reducción de costos. Una iniciativa integral de reducción de costos de TI, debe contemplar cada uno de los factores que  generan costo y pueden ser optimizados. En este artículo queremos abordar la reducción de costos de tecnología a partir de la adopción del que según los expertos es el motor de Base de Datos # del mercado.Durante años, la base de datos Oracle ha sido reconocida por su velocidad, confiabilidad, seguridad y capacidad para soportar cargas de datos tanto de aplicaciones altamente transaccionales, como de Bodegas de datos e incluso análisis de Big Data , ofreciendo alto desempeño y facilidades de administración, sin embrago, cuando pensamos en proyectos de reducción de costos de IT, además de la capacidad para soportar aplicaciones (incluso aplicaciones altamente transaccionales) con alto desempeño, pensamos en procesos de automatización, optimización de recursos, consolidación, virtualización e incluso alternativas más cómodas de licenciamiento. La Base de Datos Oracle está diseñada para proveer todas las capacidades que un área de tecnología necesita para reducir costos, adaptándose a los diferentes escenarios de negocio y a las capacidades y características de cada organización.Es así, como además del motor de Base de Datos, Oracle ofrece una serie de soluciones para optimizar la administración de la información a través de mecanismos de optimización del uso del storage, continuidad del Negocio, consolidación de infraestructura, seguridad y administración automática, que propenden por un mejor uso de los recursos de tecnología, ofrecen opciones avanzadas de configuración y direccionan la reducción de los tiempos de las tareas operativas más comunes. Una de las opciones de la base de datos que se pueden provechar para reducir costos de hardware es Oracle Real Application Clusters. Esta solución de clustering permite que varios servidores (incluso servidores de bajo costo) trabajen en conjunto para soportar Grids o Nubes Privadas de Bases de Datos, proporcionando los beneficios de la consolidación de infraestructura, los esquemas de alta disponibilidad, rápido desempeño y escalabilidad por demanda, haciendo que el aprovisionamiento, el mantenimiento de las bases de datos y la adición de nuevos nodos se lleve e cabo de una forma más rápida y con menos riesgo, además de apalancar las inversiones en servidores de menor costo. Otra de las soluciones que promueven la reducción de costos de Tecnología es Oracle In-Memory Database Cache que permite almacenar y procesar datos en la memoria de las aplicaciones, permitiendo el máximo aprovechamiento de los recursos de procesamiento de la capa media, lo que cobra mucho valor en escenarios de alta transaccionalidad. De este modo se saca el mayor provecho de los recursos de procesamiento evitando crecimiento innecesario en recursos de hardware. Otra de las formas de evitar inversiones innecesarias en hardware, aprovechando los recursos existentes, incluso en escenarios de alto crecimiento de los volúmenes de información es la compresión de los datos. Oracle Advanced Compression permite comprimir hasta 4 veces los diferentes tipos de datos, mejorando la capacidad de almacenamiento, sin comprometer el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el lado del almacenamiento también se pueden conseguir reducciones importantes de los costos de IT. En este escenario, la tecnología propia de la base de Datos Oracle ofrece capacidades de Administración Automática del Almacenamiento que no solo permiten una distribución óptima de los datos en los discos físicos para garantizar el máximo desempeño, sino que facilitan el aprovisionamiento y la remoción de discos defectuosos y ofrecen balanceo y mirroring, garantizando el uso máximo de cada uno de los dispositivos y la disponibilidad de los datos. Otra de las soluciones que facilitan la administración del almacenamiento es Oracle Partitioning, una opción de la Base de Datos que permite dividir grandes tablas en estructuras más pequeñas. Esta aproximación facilita la administración del ciclo de vida de la información y permite por ejemplo, separar los datos históricos (que generalmente se convierten en información de solo lectura y no tienen un alto volumen de consulta) y enviarlos a un almacenamiento de bajo costos, conservando la data activa en dispositivos de almacenamiento más ágiles. Adicionalmente, Oracle Partitioning facilita la administración de las bases de datos que tienen un gran volumen de registros y mejora el desempeño de la base de datos gracias a la posibilidad de optimizar las consultas haciendo uso únicamente de las particiones relevantes de una tabla o índice en el proceso de búsqueda. Otros factores adicionales, que pueden generar costos innecesarios a los departamentos de Tecnología son: La pérdida, corrupción o robo de datos y la falta de disponibilidad de las aplicaciones para dar soporte al negocio. Para evitar este tipo de situaciones que pueden acarrear multas y pérdida de negocios y de dinero, Oracle ofrece soluciones que permiten proteger y auditar la base de datos, recuperar la información en caso de corrupción o ejecución de acciones que comprometan la integridad de la información y soluciones que permitan garantizar que la información de las aplicaciones tenga una disponibilidad de 7x24. Ya hablamos de los beneficios de Oracle RAC, para facilitar los procesos de Consolidación y mejorar el desempeño de las aplicaciones, sin embrago esta solución, es sumamente útil en escenarios dónde las organizaciones de quieren garantizar una alta disponibilidad de la información, ante fallo de los servidores o en eventos de desconexión planeada para realizar labores de mantenimiento. Además de Oracle RAC, existen soluciones como Oracle Data Guard y Active Data Guard que permiten replicar de forma automática las bases de datos hacia un centro de datos de contingencia, permitiendo una recuperación inmediata ante eventos que deshabiliten por completo un centro de datos. Además de lo anterior, Active Data Guard, permite aprovechar la base de datos de contingencia para realizar labores de consulta, mejorando el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el punto de vista de mejora en la seguridad, Oracle cuenta con soluciones como Advanced security que permite encriptar los datos y los canales a través de los cueles se comparte la información, Total Recall, que permite visualizar los cambios realizados a la base de datos en un momento determinado del tiempo, para evitar pérdida y corrupción de datos, Database Vault que permite restringir el acceso de los usuarios privilegiados a información confidencial, Audit Vault, que permite verificar quién hizo qué y cuándo dentro de las bases de datos de una organización y Oracle Data Masking que permite enmascarar los datos para garantizar la protección de la información sensible y el cumplimiento de las políticas y normas relacionadas con protección de información confidencial, por ejemplo, mientras las aplicaciones pasan del ambiente de desarrollo al ambiente de producción. Como mencionamos en un comienzo, las iniciativas de reducción de costos de tecnología deben apalancarse en estrategias que contemplen los diferentes factores que puedan generar sobre costos, los factores de riesgo que puedan acarrear costos no previsto, el aprovechamiento de los recursos actuales, para evitar inversiones innecesarias y los factores de optimización que permitan el máximo aprovechamiento de las inversiones actuales. Como vimos, todas estas iniciativas pueden ser abordadas haciendo uso de la tecnología de Oracle a nivel de Base de Datos, lo más importante es detectar los puntos críticos a nivel de riesgo, diagnosticar las proporción en que están siendo aprovechados los recursos actuales y definir las prioridades de la organización y del área de IT, para así dar inicio a todas aquellas iniciativas que de forma gradual, van a evitar sobrecostos e inversiones innecesarias, proporcionando un mayor apoyo al negocio y un impacto significativo en la productividad de la organización. Más información http://www.oracle.com/lad/products/database/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=otnes 1Fuente: Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide 2011 by Colleen Graham, Joanne Correia, David Coyle, Fabrizio Biscotti, Matthew Cheung, Ruggero Contu, Yanna Dharmasthira, Tom Eid, Chad Eschinger, Bianca Granetto, Hai Hong Swinehart, Sharon Mertz, Chris Pang, Asheesh Raina, Dan Sommer, Bhavish Sood, Marianne D'Aquila, Laurie Wurster and Jie Zhang. - March 29, 2012 2Big Data: Información recopilada desde fuentes no tradicionales como blogs, redes sociales, email, sensores, fotografías, grabaciones en video, etc. que normalmente se encuentran de forma no estructurada y en un gran volumen

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• PeopleSoft Upgrades, Fusion, & BI for Leading European PeopleSoft Applications Customers

  - by Mark Rosenberg

  With so many industry-leading services firms around the globe managing their businesses with PeopleSoft, it’s always an adventure setting up times and meetings for us to keep in touch with them, especially those outside of North America who often do not get to join us at Oracle OpenWorld. Fortunately, during the first two weeks of May, Nigel Woodland (Oracle’s Service Industries Director for the EMEA region) and I successfully blocked off our calendars to visit seven different customers spanning four countries in Western Europe. We met executives and leaders at four Staffing industry firms, two Professional Services firms that engage in consulting and auditing, and a Financial Services firm. As we shared the latest information regarding product capabilities and plans, we also gained valuable insight into the hot technology topics facing these businesses. What we heard was both informative and inspiring, and I suspect other Oracle PeopleSoft applications customers can benefit from one or more of the following observations from our trip. Great IT Plans Get Executed When You Respect the Users Each of our visits followed roughly the same pattern. After introductions, Nigel outlined Oracle’s product and technology strategy, including a discussion of how we at Oracle invest in each layer of the “technology stack” to provide customers with unprecedented business management capabilities and choice. Then, I provided the specifics of the PeopleSoft product line’s investment strategy, detailing the dramatic number of rich usability and functionality enhancements added to release 9.1 since its general availability in 2009 and the game-changing capabilities slated for 9.2. What was most exciting about each of these discussions was that shortly after my talking about what customers can do with release 9.1 right now to drive up user productivity and satisfaction, I saw the wheels turning in the minds of our audiences. Business analyst and end user-configurable tools and technologies, such as WorkCenters and the Related Action Framework, that provide the ability to tailor a “central command center” to the exact needs of each recruiter, biller, and every other role in the organization were exactly what each of our customers had been looking for. Every one of our audiences agreed that these tools which demonstrate a respect for the user would finally help IT pole vault over the wall of resistance that users had often raised in the past. With these new user-focused capabilities, IT is positioned to definitively partner with the business, instead of drag the business along, to unlock the value of their investment in PeopleSoft. This topic of respecting the user emerged during our very first visit, which was at Vital Services Group at their Head Office “The Mill” in Manchester, England. (If you are a student of architecture and are ever in Manchester, you should stop in to see this amazingly renovated old mill building.) I had just finished explaining our PeopleSoft 9.2 roadmap, and Mike Code, PeopleSoft Systems Manager for this innovative staffing company, said, “Mark, the new features you’ve shown us in 9.1/9.2 are very relevant to our business. As we forge ahead with the 9.1 upgrade, the ability to configure a targeted user interface with WorkCenters, Related Actions, Pivot Grids, and Alerts will enable us to satisfy the business that this upgrade is for them and will deliver tangible benefits. In fact, you’ve highlighted that we need to start talking to the business to keep up the momentum to start reviewing the 9.2 upgrade after we get to 9.1, because as much as 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.52 offers, what you’ve shown us for 9.2 is what we’ve envisioned was ultimately possible with our investment in PeopleSoft applications.” We also received valuable feedback about our investment for the Staffing industry when we visited with Hans Wanders, CIO of Randstad (the second largest Staffing company in the world) in the Netherlands. After our visit, Hans noted, “It was very interesting to see how the PeopleSoft applications have developed. I was truly impressed by many of the new developments.” Hans and Mike, sincere thanks for the validation that our team’s hard work and dedication to “respecting the users” is worth the effort! Co-existence of PeopleSoft and Fusion Applications Just Makes Sense As a “product person,” one of the most rewarding things about visiting customers is that they actually want to talk to me. Sometimes, they want to discuss a product area that we need to enhance; other times, they are interested in learning how to extract more value from their applications; and still others, they want to tell me how they are using the applications to drive real value for the business. During this trip, I was very pleased to hear that several of our customers not only thought the co-existence of Fusion applications alongside PeopleSoft applications made sense in theory, but also that they were aggressively looking at how to deploy one or more Fusion applications alongside their PeopleSoft HCM and FSCM applications. The most common deployment plan in the works by three of the organizations is to upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.1 or 9.2, and then adopt one of the new Fusion HCM applications, such as Fusion Performance Management or the full suite of  Fusion Talent Management. For example, during an applications upgrade planning discussion with the staffing company Hays plc., Mark Thomas, who is Hays’ UK IT Director, commented, “We are very excited about where we can go with the latest versions of the PeopleSoft applications in conjunction with Fusion Talent Management.” Needless to say, this news was very encouraging, because it reiterated that our applications investment strategy makes good business sense for our customers. Next Generation Business Intelligence Is the Key to the Future The third, and perhaps most exciting, lesson I learned during this journey is that our audiences already know that the latest generation of Business Intelligence technologies will be the “secret sauce” for organizations to transform business in radical ways. While a number of the organizations we visited on the trip have deployed or are deploying Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the associated analytics applications to provide dashboards of easy-to-understand, user-configurable metrics that help optimize business performance according to current operating procedures, what’s most exciting to them is being able to use Business Intelligence to change the way an organization does business, grows revenue, and makes a profit. In particular, several executives we met asked whether we can help them minimize the need to have perfectly structured data and at the same time generate analytics that improve order fulfillment decision-making. To them, the path to future growth lies in having the ability to analyze unstructured data rapidly and intuitively and leveraging technology’s ability to detect patterns that a human cannot reasonably be expected to see. For illustrative purposes, here is a good example of a business problem where analyzing a combination of structured and unstructured data can produce better results. If you have a resource manager trying to decide which person would be the best fit for an assignment in terms of ensuring (a) client satisfaction, (b) the individual’s satisfaction with the work, (c) least travel distance, and (d) highest margin, you traditionally compare resource qualifications to assignment needs, calculate margins on past work with the client, and measure distances. To perform these comparisons, you are likely to need the organization to have profiles setup, people ranked against profiles, margin targets setup, margins measured, distances setup, distances measured, and more. As you can imagine, this requires organizations to plan and implement data setup, capture, and quality management initiatives to ensure that dependable information is available to support resourcing analysis and decisions. In the fast-paced, tight-budget world in which most organizations operate today, the effort and discipline required to maintain high-quality, structured data like those described in the above example are certainly not desirable and in some cases are not feasible. You can imagine how intrigued our audiences were when I informed them that we are ready to help them analyze volumes of unstructured data, detect trends, and produce recommendations. Our discussions delved into examples of how the firms could leverage Oracle’s Secure Enterprise Search and Endeca technologies to keyword search against, compare, and learn from unstructured resource and assignment data. We also considered examples of how they could employ Oracle Real-Time Decisions to generate statistically significant recommendations based on similar resourcing scenarios that have produced the desired satisfaction and profit margin results. --- Although I had almost no time for sight-seeing during this trip to Europe, I have to say that it may have been one of the most energizing and engaging trips of my career. Showing these dedicated customers how they can give every user a uniquely tailored set of tools and address business problems in ways that have to date been impossible made the journey across the Atlantic more than worth it. If any of these three topics intrigue you, I’d recommend you contact your Oracle applications representative to arrange for more detailed discussions with the appropriate members of our organization.

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• Product Development Investment: A Measure of Vendor Performance

  - by Jim Mcglothlin

  The relationship between a large, complex organization and its key suppliers of information technology is normally more than just "strategic". Expectations about the duration of the relationship typically exceed 20 years. Enterprise applications and technology infrastructure are not expected to be changed out like petunias. So how would you rate the due diligence processes as performed in Higher Education when selecting critical, transformational information technology? My observation: I see a lot of effort put into elaborate demonstration of basic software functionality. I see a lot of attention paid to the cost element of technology acquisition, including the contracted cost of implementation consulting services. But the factor that receives only cursory analysis and due diligence is long-term performance--the ability of a vendor to grow, expand, and develop, and bring its customers along with it. So what should you look for in a long-term IT supplier? Oracle has a public track record for product development. The annual investment has been on a run rate of almost $3 Billion organic product development. Oracle's well-publicized acquisitions and mergers have been supplemental to its R&D. This is important for Higher Education. Another meaningful way to evaluate a company is to look at the tangible track record of enhancement. Consider the Oracle-PeopleSoft enterprise business platform since acquired by Oracle 6 years ago: Product or Technology Enhancement Customer or User Impact Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) 300+ new web services delivered in versions 9.0 & 9.1 provide flexibility, so that customers can integrate PeopleSoft with other applications. Campus Solutions has added Admissions and Constituent Web Services. Constituent Relationship Management PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 for Higher Education introduced new process flows for student recruiting and retention to support "Student Success" initiatives. A 360 view of the constituent is now delivered, and the concept of a single-stop Student Services Center is now in CRM 9.1 with tight integration to PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Human Capital Management Contract Pay for Education, with flexibility for configuration and calculation, has been extended in HCM 9.1. New chartfield integration among Project Costing - Time & Labor - Payroll to serve the labor distribution requirements for Grants / Sponsored Research. Talent Management PeopleSoft 9.0 and 9.1 feature an integrated talent management approach centered on definitions in "Profile Manager", with all new usability improvements. Internal and external candidate pools, and the entire recruitment process, are driven by delivered configurable selection and on-boarding processes. Interview scheduling, and online job offers are newly delivered processes. Performance Management PeopleSoft HCM ePerformance 9.1 will include significant new functionality designed to help organizations more effectively align business objectives with employee goals. Using an Organization Chart view, your business goals can flow down to become tangible objectives per employee. Succession Planning / Workforce Development New in HCM 9.0, enhanced in 9.1, is a planning capability for regular or unusual (major organizational change) succession of internal or external candidates. PeopleSoft supports employee-based career planning, which ultimately increases the integrity of the succession planning process (identify their career needs, plans, preferences, and interests). Dashboards / Oracle Business Intelligence Application Suite Oracle Human Resources Analytics provides the workforce information foundation that integrates data from HR functional areas and Finance. Oracle Human Resources Analytics delivers 9 dashboards and over 200 reports. Provide your HR professionals and front-line managers the tools to analyze workforce staffing, retention, productivity, to better source high-quality applicants, and to reduce absence costs. Multi-year Planning and Commitment Control External funding sources, especially Grants, require a multi-year encumbrance business process. PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 adds multi-year funding and commitment control, including budget checking. The newly designed Real Time Budget Checking will provide the customer with an updated snapshot of their budget and encumbrances at any given time. Position Budgeting with Hyperion Hyperion Planning world-class products now include delivered integration to PeopleSoft HCM. Position Budgeting is available in the new Public Sector Planning module of Hyperion. Web 2.0 features for the latest in usability PeopleSoft 9.1 features a contemporary internet user experience: Partial-page refreshing Drag and drop pagelets New menu structure Navigation pagelets Modal popup message windows Favorites & recently used links Type-ahead Drag and drop grid columns, pop-out grids Portal Workspaces Enterprise 2.0 for your collaborative web communities, using new content management, along with Wikis, blogs, and discussion forums in PeopleSoft Portal 9.1. PeopleTools enhanced by Oracle Fusion Middleware Standards-based tools have been added to the PeopleTools application infrastructure: BI (XML) Publisher, Java tools. Certified for use with PeopleSoft: Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE), Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Weblogic Server, Oracle SOA Suite. Hosting for PeopleSoft applications A solid new deployment option: Oracle On Demand remote hosting center for high scalability, security, and continuity of operations. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for HCM / Payroll functions Partnership with AT&T provides hosting of HR/Payroll application along with payroll business process operations, and subscription-based service fees (SaaS). AT&T BPO full service includes pay sheet processing, bank and 3rd party file transfer, payroll tax handling, etc. Continuous Delivery Model Feature Packs provide faster time-to-benefit; new features become available in PeopleSoft 9.1 (or Campus Solutions 9.0) without need to perform upgrade. Golden person data model across all campus applications Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub provides synchronization and data governance of person data across any application, e.g. HR/ Payroll, Student Information System, Housing, Emergency Contact, LMS, CRM. Oracle's aggressive enhancement plans within the "Applications Unlimited" program continue, as new functionality is under development for a new version of a PeopleSoft release planned for 2012. Meanwhile, new capabilities are planned on an annual basis in Feature Packs. PeopleSoft just delivered the HCM 2010 Feature Pack and another is planned for 2011. In February we plan to have over 100 customers from our Customer Advisory Boards at our PeopleSoft Development Center in California to review designs for all of these releases. For those of you near New York City The investment and progressive development story described above is the subject of an Oracle road show event on February 9, 2011. Charting Your Course with Oracle Applications is a global event series designed to help business and IT executives assess the impact of new inflection points on their business and applications roadmap: changing workforces, shifting customer and constituent bases, and increased volatility. Learn how innovations ranging from new deployment models like cloud computing to the introduction of social applications and smart devices are delivering results across all areas of business and industry. THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT.

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• 5 Lessons learnt in localization / multi language support in WPF

  - by MarkPearl

  For the last few months I have been secretly working away at the second version of an application that we initially released a few years ago. It’s called MaxCut and it is a free panel/cut optimizer for the woodwork, glass and metal industry. One of the motivations for writing MaxCut was to get an end to end experience in developing an application for general consumption. From the early days of v1 of MaxCut I would get the odd email thanking me for the software and then listing a few suggestions on how to improve it. Two of the most dominant suggestions that we received were… Support for imperial measurements (the original program only supported the metric system) Multi language support (we had someone who volunteered to translate the program into Japanese for us). I am not going to dive into the Imperial to Metric support in todays blog post, but I would like to cover a few brief lessons we learned in adding support for multi-language functionality in the software. I have sectioned them below under different lessons. Lesson 1 – Build multi-language support in from the start So the first lesson I learnt was if you know you are going to do multi language support – build it in from the very beginning! One of the power points of WPF/Silverlight is data binding in XAML and so while it wasn’t to painful to retro fit multi language support into the programing, it was still time consuming and a bit tedious to go through mounds and mounds of views and would have been a minor job to have implemented this while the form was being designed. Lesson 2 – Accommodate for varying word lengths using Grids The next lesson was a little harder to learn and was learnt a bit further down the road in the development cycle. We developed everything in English, assuming that other languages would have similar character length words for equivalent meanings… don’t!. A word that is short in your language may be of varying character lengths in other languages. Some language like Dutch and German allow for concatenation of nouns which has the potential to create really long words. We picked up a few places where our views had been structured incorrectly so that if a word was to long it would get clipped off or cut out. To get around this we began using the WPF grid extensively with column widths that would automatically expand if they needed to. Generally speaking the grid replacement got round this hurdle, and if in future you have a choice between a stack panel or a grid – think twice before going for the easier option… often the grid will be a bit more work to setup, but will be more flexible. Lesson 3 – Separate the separators Our initial run through moving the words to a resource dictionary led us to make what I thought was one potential mistake. If we had a label like the following… “length : “ In the resource dictionary we put it as a single entry. This is fine until you start using a word more than once. For instance in our scenario we used the word “length’ frequently. with different variations of the word with grammar and separators included in the resource we ended up having what I would consider a bloated dictionary. When we removed the separators from the words and put them as their own resources we saw a dramatic reduction in dictionary size… so something that looked like this… “length : “ “length. “ “length?” Was reduced to… “length” “:” “?” “.” While this may not seem like a reduction at first glance, consider that the separators “:?.” are used everywhere and suddenly you see a real reduction in bloat. Lesson 4 – Centralize the Language Dictionary This lesson was learnt at the very end of the project after we had already had a release candidate out in the wild. Because our translations would be done on a volunteer basis and remotely, we wanted it to be really simple for someone to translate our program into another language. As a common design practice we had tiered the application so that we had a business logic layer, a ui layer, etc. The problem was in several of these layers we had resource files specific for that layer. What this resulted in was us having multiple resource files that we would need to send to our translators. To add to our problems, some of the wordings were duplicated in different resource files, which would result in additional frustration from our translators as they felt they were duplicating work. Eventually the workaround was to make a separate project in VS2010 with just the language translations. We then exposed the dictionary as public within this project and made it as a reference to the other projects within the solution. This solved out problem as now we had a central dictionary and could remove any duplication's. Lesson 5 – Make a dummy translation file to test that you haven’t missed anything The final lesson learnt about multi language support in WPF was when checking if you had forgotten to translate anything in the inline code, make a test resource file with dummy data. Ideally you want the data for each word to be identical. In our instance we made one which had all the resource key values pointing to a value of test. This allowed us point the language file to our test resource file and very quickly browse through the program and see if we had missed any linking. The alternative to this approach is to have two language files and swap between the two while running the program to make sure that you haven’t missed anything, but the downside of dual language file approach is that it is much a lot harder spotting a mistake if everything is different – almost like playing Where’s Wally / Waldo. It is much easier spotting variance in uniformity – meaning when you put the “test’ keyword for everything, anything that didn’t say “test” stuck out like a sore thumb. So these are my top five lessons learnt on implementing multi language support in WPF. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments section if you feel maybe something is more important than one of these or if I got it wrong!

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