Search Results

Search found 8954 results on 359 pages for 'color profiles'.

Page 169/359 | < Previous Page | 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176  | Next Page >

• How to Identify Stuck Pixels and Remove Them from Your Digital Photos

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’ve noticed hotspots in your digital photos, areas where a stuck pixel in the camera’s sensor has rendered very bright spots of color that don’t belong in the image, you’re not alone. It’s an incredibly common phenomenon, but that doesn’t mean you have to put up with it. Read on as we discuss what distinguishes stuck pixels from other sensor defects and problems, how to identify it, and how to fix it both in-camera and out.Click Here to Continue Reading

  Read the article

• Registering InputListener in libGDX

  - by JPRO

  I'm just getting started with libGDX and have run into a snag registering an InputListener for a button. I've gone through many examples and this code appears correct to me but the associated callback never triggers ("touched" is not printed to console). I'm just posting the code with the abstract game screen and the implementing screen. The application starts successfully with a label of "Exit" in the bottom left hand corner, but clicking the button/label does nothing. I'm guessing the fix is something simple. What am I overlooking? public abstract class GameScreen<T> implements Screen { protected final T game; protected final SpriteBatch batch; protected final Stage stage; public GameScreen(T game) { this.game = game; this.batch = new SpriteBatch(); this.stage = new Stage(0, 0, true); } @Override public final void render(float delta) { update(delta); // Clear the screen with the given RGB color (black) Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0f, 0f, 0f, 1f); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); stage.act(delta); stage.draw(); } public abstract void update(float delta); @Override public void resize(int width, int height) { stage.setViewport(width, height, true); } @Override public void show() { Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(stage); } // hide, pause, resume, dipose } public class ExampleScreen extends GameScreen<MyGame> { private TextButton exitButton; public ExampleScreen(MyGame game) { super(game); } @Override public void show() { super.show(); TextButton.TextButtonStyle buttonStyle = new TextButton.TextButtonStyle(); buttonStyle.font = Font.getFont("Origicide", 32); buttonStyle.fontColor = Color.WHITE; exitButton = new TextButton("Exit", buttonStyle); exitButton.addListener(new InputListener() { @Override public void touchUp (InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) { System.out.println("touched"); } }); stage.addActor(exitButton); } @Override public void update(float delta) { } }

  Read the article

• Day 3 - XNA: Hacking around with images

  - by dapostolov

  Yay! Today I'm going to get into some code! My mind has been on this all day! I find it amusing how I practice, daily, to be "in the moment" or "present" and the excitement and anticipation of this project seems to snatch it away from me frequently. WELL!!! (Shakes Excitedly) Let's do this =)! Let's code! For these next few days it is my intention to better understand image rendering using XNA; after said prototypes are complete I should (fingers crossed) be able to dive into my game code using the design document I hammered out the other night. On a personal note, I think the toughest thing right now is finding the time to do this project. Each night, after my little ones go to bed I can only really afford a couple hours of work on this project. However, I hope to utilise this time as best as I can because this is the first time in a while I've found a project that I've been passionate about. A friend recently asked me if I intend to go 3D or extend the game design. Yes. For now I'm keeping it simple. Lastly, just as a note, as I was doing some further research into image rendering this morning I came across some other XNA content and lessons learned. I believe this content could have probably been posted in the first couple of posts, however, I will share the new content as I learn it at the end of each day. Maybe I'll take some time later to fix the posts but for now Installation and Deployment - Lessons Learned I had installed the XNA studio  (Day 1) and the site instructions were pretty easy to follow. However, I had a small difficulty with my development environment. You see, I run a virtual desktop development environment. Even though I was able to code and compile all the tutorials the game failed to run...because I lacked a 3D capable card; it was not detected on the virtual box... First Lesson: The XNA runtime needs to "see" the 3D card! No sweat, Il copied the files over to my parent box and executed the program. ERROR. Hmm... Second Lesson (which I should have probably known but I let the excitement get the better of me): you need the XNA runtime on the client PC to run the game, oh, and don't forget the .Net Runtime! Sprite, it ain't just a Soft Drink... With these prototypes I intend to understand and perform the following tasks. learn game development terminology how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen how to layer static images on the screen understand image scaling can we reuse images? understand how framerate is handled in XNA how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques how to detect colliding images or screen edges how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) Well, let's start with this "prototype" task list for now...Today, let's get an image on the screen and maybe I can mark a few of the tasks as completed... C# Prototype1 New Visual Studio Project Select the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Project Type Select the Windows Game 3.1 Template Type Prototype1 in the Name textbox provided Press OK. At this point code has auto-magically been created. Feel free to press the F5 key to run your first XNA program. You should have a blue screen infront of you. Without getting into the nitty gritty right, the code that was generated basically creates some basic code to clear the window content with the lovely CornFlowerBlue color. Something to notice, when you move your mouse into the window...nothing. ooooo spoooky. Let's put an image on that screen! Step A - Get an Image into the solution Under "Content" in your Solution Explorer, right click and add a new folder and name it "Sprites". Copy a small image in there; I copied a "Royalty Free" wizard hat from a quick google search and named it wizards_hat.jpg (rightfully so!) Step B - Add the sprite and position fields Now, open/edit  Game1.cs Locate the following line:  SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Under this line type the following:         SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // the line you are looking for...         Texture2D sprite;         Vector2 position; Step C - Load the image asset Locate the "Load Content" Method and duplicate the following:             protected override void LoadContent()         {             spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);             // your image name goes here...             sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprites\\wizards_hat");             position = new Vector2(200, 100);             base.LoadContent();         } Step D - Draw the image Locate the "Draw" Method and duplicate the following:        protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         }  Step E - Compile and Run Engage! (F5) - Debug! Your image should now display on a cornflowerblue window about 200 pixels from the left and 100 pixels from the top. Awesome! =) Pretty cool how we only coded a few lines to display an image, but believe me, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. However, for now, I'm going to call it a night here. Blogging all this progress certainly takes time... However, tomorrow night I'm going to detail what we just did, plus start checking off points on that list! I'm wondering right now if I should add pictures / code to this post...let me know if you want them =) Best Regards, D.

  Read the article

• problem in array of shooter sprites which contain different colour bubbles

  - by prakash s

  everyone i am developing bubble shooter game in cocos2d I have placed shooter array which contain different color bubbles like this 00000000 it is 8 bubbles array if i tap the screen, first bubbles should move for shooting the target .png .And if i again tap the screen again 2nd position bubble should move for shooting the target.png bubbles,how it will possible for me because i have already created the array of target which contain different color bubbles, here i write the code : - (void)ccTouchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { // Choose one of the touches to work with UITouch *touch = [touches anyObject]; CGPoint location = [touch locationInView:[touch view]]; location = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] convertToGL:location]; // Set up initial location of projectile CGSize winSize = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; NSMutableArray * movableSprites = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; NSArray *images = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"1.png", @"2.png", @"3.png", @"4.png",@"5.png",@"6.png",@"7.png", @"8.png", nil]; for(int i = 0; i < images.count; ++i) { int index = (arc4random() % 8)+1; NSString *image = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d.png", index]; CCSprite*projectile = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:image]; //CCSprite *projectile = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"3.png" rect:CGRectMake(0, 0,256,256)]; [self addChild:projectile]; [movableSprites addObject:projectile]; float offsetFraction = ((float)(i+1))/(images.count+1); //projectile.position = ccp(20, winSize.height/2); //projectile.position = ccp(18,0 ); //projectile.position = ccp(350*offsetFraction, 20.0f); projectile.position = ccp(10/offsetFraction, 20.0f); // projectile.position = ccp(projectile.position.x,projectile.position.y); // Determine offset of location to projectile int offX = location.x - projectile.position.x; int offY = location.y - projectile.position.y; // Bail out if we are shooting down or backwards if (offX <= 0) return; // Ok to add now - we've double checked position //[self addChild:projectile]; // Determine where we wish to shoot the projectile to int realX = winSize.width + (projectile.contentSize.width/2); float ratio = (float) offY / (float) offX; int realY = (realX * ratio) + projectile.position.y; CGPoint realDest = ccp(realX, realY); // Determine the length of how far we're shooting int offRealX = realX - projectile.position.x; int offRealY = realY - projectile.position.y; float length = sqrtf((offRealX*offRealX)+(offRealY*offRealY)); float velocity = 480/1; // 480pixels/1sec float realMoveDuration = length/velocity; // Move projectile to actual endpoint [projectile runAction:[CCSequence actions: [CCMoveTo actionWithDuration:realMoveDuration position:realDest], [CCCallFuncN actionWithTarget:self selector:@selector(spriteMoveFinished:)], nil]]; // Add to projectiles array projectile.tag = 1; [_projectiles addObject:projectile]; } }

  Read the article

• How can I access the scanner functionality of my Samsung CLX 3175N over the network?

  - by Roger De Backer

  I have a Samsung CLX 3175N network capable color laser printer/scanner which was sold as being Linux compatible. Whereas the printer undeed works in the network. It has been impossible up to now to get the scanner working under Ubuntu (safe for using Windows XP running in Virtualbox on the Ubuntu client), but that is not my understanding of Linux compatibility. Is there anybody who knows a method to access a network Scanner in Ubuntu?

  Read the article

• SQL Server v.Next (Denali) : Another SSMS bug that should be fixed

  - by AaronBertrand

  Sorry to call this out in a separate post (I talked about a bunch of SSMS Connect items the other day), but Aaron Nelson ( blog | twitter ) jogged my memory today about an issue that has gone unfixed for years: the custom coloring for Registered Servers is neither consistent nor global. For one of my servers, I've chosen a red color to show in the status bar. Let's pretend this is a production server, and I want the red to remind me to use caution. I can set this up by right-clicking a Registered...(read more)

  Read the article

• IDE for visually impaired

  - by Eli Rosencruft

  A visually impaired colleague has asked me to recommend an IDE with easy-to-find and easy-to-use controls for: font size background and foreground colors changing syntax color scheme support for at least C/C++ and Java He would prefer an IDE that is either portable or that has similar versions for Linux, Windows and Mac. He prefers a dark background and light colored fonts and needs to sit very close to the display.

  Read the article

• Shiny, Happy Linux OS Terminals With Bashish

  Tip of the Trade: With spring in the air outside, why not add some color to your Linux OS powered terminals? Bashish offers a fun and simple way to add themes to your terminal.

  Read the article

• Shiny, Happy Linux OS Terminals With Bashish

  <b>Serverwatch:</b> "In the mood for a bit more color in your life? Check out Bashish to try out themes for your terminal."

  Read the article

• Making entire scene fade to grayscale

  - by Fibericon

  When the player loses all of their lives, I want the entire game screen to go grayscale, but not stop updating immediately. I'd also prefer it fade to grayscale instead of suddenly lose all color. Everything I've found so far is either about taking a screenshot and making it grayscale, or making a specific texture grayscale. Is there a way to change the entire playing field and all objects within to grayscale without iterating through everything?

  Read the article

• LightDM Backgroud is a simple purple radiant

  - by Zahidul Islam

  It seems after I tried to change the login screen background with Ubuntu Tweak, the greeter's background stays a simple purple background with just the spots.. I tried using dconf-editor, rechanging the image from Ubuntu Tweak back to the default, it still does not work. So In The End, everything for the lightdm points to /usr/share/backgrounds/warty-final-ubuntu.png. But it's still a purple solid color. How do I fix it?

  Read the article

• My vertex shader doesn't affect texture coords or diffuse info but works for position

  - by tina nyaa

  I am new to 3D and DirectX - in the past I have only used abstractions for 2D drawing. Over the past month I've been studying really hard and I'm trying to modify and adapt some of the shaders as part of my personal 'study project'. Below I have a shader, modified from one of the Microsoft samples. I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? // // Skinned Mesh Effect file // Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. // float4 lhtDir = {0.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f}; //light Direction float4 lightDiffuse = {0.6f, 0.6f, 0.6f, 1.0f}; // Light Diffuse float4 MaterialAmbient : MATERIALAMBIENT = {0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1.0f}; float4 MaterialDiffuse : MATERIALDIFFUSE = {0.8f, 0.8f, 0.8f, 1.0f}; // Matrix Pallette static const int MAX_MATRICES = 100; float4x3 mWorldMatrixArray[MAX_MATRICES] : WORLDMATRIXARRAY; float4x4 mViewProj : VIEWPROJECTION; /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// struct VS_INPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 BlendWeights : BLENDWEIGHT; float4 BlendIndices : BLENDINDICES; float3 Normal : NORMAL; float3 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 Diffuse : COLOR; float2 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; float3 Diffuse(float3 Normal) { float CosTheta; // N.L Clamped CosTheta = max(0.0f, dot(Normal, lhtDir.xyz)); // propogate scalar result to vector return (CosTheta); } VS_OUTPUT VShade(VS_INPUT i, uniform int NumBones) { VS_OUTPUT o; float3 Pos = 0.0f; float3 Normal = 0.0f; float LastWeight = 0.0f; // Compensate for lack of UBYTE4 on Geforce3 int4 IndexVector = D3DCOLORtoUBYTE4(i.BlendIndices); // cast the vectors to arrays for use in the for loop below float BlendWeightsArray[4] = (float[4])i.BlendWeights; int IndexArray[4] = (int[4])IndexVector; // calculate the pos/normal using the "normal" weights // and accumulate the weights to calculate the last weight for (int iBone = 0; iBone < NumBones-1; iBone++) { LastWeight = LastWeight + BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Pos += mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Normal += mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; } LastWeight = 1.0f - LastWeight; // Now that we have the calculated weight, add in the final influence Pos += (mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); Normal += (mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); // transform position from world space into view and then projection space //o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Diffuse.x = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.y = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.z = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.w = 0.0f; o.Tex0 = float2(0,0); return o; } technique t0 { pass p0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VShade(4); } } I am currently using the SlimDX .NET wrapper around DirectX, but the API is extremely similar: public void Draw() { var device = vertexBuffer.Device; device.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.White, 1.0f, 0); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.Lighting, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.DitherEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.ZEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.CullMode, Cull.Counterclockwise); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.NormalizeNormals, true); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MagFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MinFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetTransform(TransformState.World, Matrix.Identity * Matrix.Translation(0, -50, 0)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.View, Matrix.LookAtLH(new Vector3(-200, 0, 0), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.UnitY)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.Projection, Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); var material = new Material(); material.Ambient = material.Diffuse = material.Emissive = material.Specular = new Color4(Color.White); material.Power = 1f; device.SetStreamSource(0, vertexBuffer, 0, vertexSize); device.VertexDeclaration = vertexDeclaration; device.Indices = indexBuffer; device.Material = material; device.SetTexture(0, texture); var param = effect.GetParameter(null, "mWorldMatrixArray"); var boneWorldTransforms = bones.OrderedBones.OrderBy(x => x.Id).Select(x => x.CombinedTransformation).ToArray(); effect.SetValue(param, boneWorldTransforms); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "mViewProj"), Matrix.Identity);// Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialDiffuse"), material.Diffuse); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialAmbient"), material.Ambient); effect.Technique = effect.GetTechnique(0); var passes = effect.Begin(FX.DoNotSaveState); for (var i = 0; i < passes; i++) { effect.BeginPass(i); device.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, skin.Vertices.Length, 0, skin.Indicies.Length / 3); effect.EndPass(); } effect.End(); } Again, I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? Also, whatever I set in the bone transformation matrices doesn't seem to have an effect on my model. If I set every bone transformation to a zero matrix, the model still shows up as if nothing had happened, but changing the Pos field in shader output makes the model disappear. I don't understand why I'm getting this kind of behaviour. Thank you!

  Read the article

• How to add a custom shape in the beginning of terminal command-prompt?

  - by Naruto

  I have seen a lot of terminal with sweet shape in the beginning of terminal command-prompt, like this: and i want to add a shape like this : .....____________________ , ,__ ....../ `---___________----_____] - - - - - - - - ¦ ¦¦¦¦D ...../_==o;;;;;;;;_______.:/ .....), ---.(_(__) / ....// (..) ), ----" ...//___// ..//___// .//___// i know how to change text color and add a character at the end, but when i add the brev shape it give me an error when i open the terminal : so how to do this ?

  Read the article

• Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks&ndash;Part 1: Extensions

  - by ToStringTheory

  I don’t know about you, but when it comes to development, I prefer my environment to be as free of clutter as possible.  It may surprise you to know that I have tried ReSharper, and did not like it, for the reason that I stated above.  In my opinion, it had too much clutter.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of features that I did like about it (inversion of if blocks, code feedback), but for the most part, I actually felt that it was slowing me down. Introduction Another large factor besides intrusiveness/speed in my choice to dislike ReSharper would probably be that I have become comfortable with my current setup and extensions.  I believe I have a good collection, and am quite happy with what I can accomplish in a short amount of time.  I figured that I would share some of my tips/findings regarding Visual Studio productivity here, and see what you had to say. The first section of things that I would like to cover, are Visual Studio Extensions.  In case you have been living under a rock for the past several years, Extensions are available under the Tools menu in Visual Studio: The extension manager enables integrated access to the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery online with access to a few thousand different extensions.  I have tried many extensions, but for reasons of lack reliability, usability, or features, have uninstalled almost all of them.  However, I have come across several that I find I can not do without anymore: NuGet Package Manager (Microsoft) Perspectives (Adam Driscoll) Productivity Power Tools (Microsoft) Web Essentials (Mads Kristensen) Extensions NuGet Package Manager To be honest, I debated on whether or not to put this in here.  Most people seem to have it, however, there was a time when I didn’t, and was always confused when blogs/posts would say to right click and “Add Package Reference…” which with one of the latest updates is now “Manage NuGet Packages”.  So, if you haven’t downloaded the NuGet Package Manager yet, or don’t know what it is, I would highly suggest downloading it now! Features Simply put, the NuGet Package Manager gives you a GUI and command line to access different libraries that have been uploaded to NuGet. Some of its features include: Ability to search NuGet for packages via the GUI, with information in the detail bar on the right. Quick access to see what packages are in a solution, and what packages have updates available, with easy 1-click updating. If you download a package that requires references to work on other NuGet packages, they will be downloaded and referenced automatically. Productivity Tip If you use any type of source control in Visual Studio as well as using NuGet packages, be sure to right-click on the solution and click "Enable NuGet Package Restore". What this does is add a NuGet package to the solution so that it will be checked in along side your solution, as well as automatically grab packages from NuGet on build if needed. This is an extremely simple system to use to manage your package references, instead of having to manually go into TFS and add the Packages folder. Perspectives I can't stand developing with just one monitor. Especially if it comes to debugging. The great thing about Visual Studio 2010, is that all of the panels and windows are floatable, and can dock to other screens. The only bad thing is, I don't use the same toolset with everything that I am doing. By this, I mean that I don't use all of the same windows for debugging a web application, as I do for coding a WPF application. Only thing is, Visual Studio doesn't save the screen positions for all of the undocked windows. So, I got curious one day and decided to check and see if there was an extension to help out. This is where I found Perspectives. Features Perspectives gives you the ability to configure window positions across any or your monitors, and then to save the positions in a profile. Perspectives offers a Panel to manage different presets/favorites, and a toolbar to add to the toolbars at the top of Visual Studio. Ability to 'Favorite' a profile to add it to the perspectives toolbar. Productivity Tip Take the time to setup profiles for each of your scenarios - debugging web/winforms/xaml, coding, maintenance, etc. Try to remember to use the profiles for a few days, and at the end of a week, you may find that your productivity was never better. Productivity Power Tools Ah, the Productivity Power Tools... Quite possibly one of my most used extensions, if not my most used. The tool pack gives you a variety of enhancements ranging from key shortcuts, interface tweaks, and completely new features to Visual Studio 2010. Features I don't want to bore you with all of the features here, so here are my favorite: Quick Find - Unobtrusive search box in upper-right corner of the code window. Great for searching in general, especially in a file. Solution Navigator - The 'Solution Explorer' on steroids. Easy to search for files, see defined members/properties/methods in files, and my favorite feature is the 'set as root' option. Updated 'Add Reference...' Dialog - This is probably my favorite enhancement period... The 'Add Reference...' dialog redone in a manner that resembles the Extension/Package managers. I especially love the ability to search through all of the references. "Ctrl - Click" for Definition - I am still getting used to this as I usually try to use my keyboard for everything, but I love the ability to hold Ctrl and turn property/methods/variables into hyperlinks, that you click on to see their definitions. Great for travelling down a rabbit hole in an application to research problems. While there are other commands/utilities, I find these to be the ones that I lean on the most for the usefulness. Web Essentials If you have do any type of web development in ASP .Net, ASP .Net MVC, even HTML, I highly suggest grabbing the Web Essentials right NOW! This extension alone is great for productivity in web development, and greatly decreases my development time on new features. Features Some of its best features include: CSS Previews - I say 'previews' because of the multiple kinds of previews in CSS that you get font-family, color, background/background-image previews. This is great for just tweaking UI slightly in different ways and seeing how they look in the CSS window at a glance. Live Preview - One word - awesome! This goes well with my multi-monitor setup. I put the site on one monitor in a Live Preview panel, and then as I make changes to CSS/cshtml/aspx/html, the preview window will update with each save/build automatically. For CSS, you can even turn on live-update, so as you are tweaking CSS, the style changes in real time. Great for tweaking colors or font-sizes. Outlining - Small, but I like to be able to collapse regions/declarations that are in the way of new work, or are just distracting. Commenting Shortcuts - I don't know why it wasn't included by default, but it is nice to have the key shortcuts for commenting working in the CSS editor as well. Productivity Tip When working on a site, hit CTRL-ALT-ENTER to launch the Live Preview window. Dock it to another monitor. When you make changes to the document/css, just save and glance at the other monitor. No need to alt tab, then alt tab before continuing editing. Conclusion These extensions are only the most useful and least intrusive - ones that I use every day. The great thing about Visual Studio 2010 is the extensibility options that it gives developers to utilize. Have an extension that you use that isn't intrusive, but isn't listed here? Please, feel free to comment. I love trying new things, and am always looking for new additions to my toolset of the most useful. Finally, please keep an eye out for Part 2 on key shortcuts in Visual Studio. Also, if you are visiting my site (http://tostringtheory.com || http://geekswithblogs.net/tostringtheory) from an actual browser and not a feed, please let me know what you think of the new styling!

  Read the article

• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - The Gotchas, The Do's and Don'ts for IDM Implementations

  - by Tanu Sood

  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:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6 {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; border-top:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-top-themecolor:accent6; border-left:none; border-bottom:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; border-right:none; 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:"Georgia","serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Georgia; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Georgia; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; color:#968C6D; mso-themecolor:text2; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} 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:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6 {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; border-top:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-top-themecolor:accent6; border-left:none; border-bottom:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; border-right:none; 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:"Georgia","serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Georgia; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Georgia; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; color:#968C6D; mso-themecolor:text2; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} It is generally accepted among business communities that technology by itself is not a silver bullet to all problems, but when it is combined with leading practices, strategy, careful planning and execution, it can create a recipe for success. This post attempts to highlight some of the best practices along with dos & don’ts that our practice has accumulated over the years in the identity & access management space in general, and also in the context of R2, in particular. Best Practices The following section illustrates the leading practices in “How” to plan, implement and sustain a successful OIM deployment, based on our collective experience. Planning is critical, but often overlooked A common approach to planning an IAM program that we identify with our clients is the three step process involving a current state assessment, a future state roadmap and an executable strategy to get there. It is extremely beneficial for clients to assess their current IAM state, perform gap analysis, document the recommended controls to address the gaps, align future state roadmap to business initiatives and get buy in from all stakeholders involved to improve the chances of success. When designing an enterprise-wide solution, the scalability of the technology must accommodate the future growth of the enterprise and the projected identity transactions over several years. Aligning the implementation schedule of OIM to related information technology projects increases the chances of success. As a baseline, it is recommended to match hardware specifications to the sizing guide for R2 published by Oracle. Adherence to this will help ensure that the hardware used to support OIM will not become a bottleneck as the adoption of new services increases. If your Organization has numerous connected applications that rely on reconciliation to synchronize the access data into OIM, consider hosting dedicated instances to handle reconciliation. Finally, ensure the use of clustered environment for development and have at least three total environments to help facilitate a controlled migration to production. If your Organization is planning to implement role based access control, we recommend performing a role mining exercise and consolidate your enterprise roles to keep them manageable. In addition, many Organizations have multiple approval flows to control access to critical roles, applications and entitlements. If your Organization falls into this category, we highly recommend that you limit the number of approval workflows to a small set. Most Organizations have operations managed across data centers with backend database synchronization, if your Organization falls into this category, ensure that the overall latency between the datacenters when replicating the databases is less than ten milliseconds to ensure that there are no front office performance impacts. Ingredients for a successful implementation During the development phase of your project, there are a number of guidelines that can be followed to help increase the chances for success. Most implementations cannot be completed without the use of customizations. If your implementation requires this, it’s a good practice to perform code reviews to help ensure quality and reduce code bottlenecks related to performance. We have observed at our clients that the development process works best when team members adhere to coding leading practices. Plan for time to correct coding defects and ensure developers are empowered to report their own bugs for maximum transparency. Many organizations struggle with defining a consistent approach to managing logs. This is particularly important due to the amount of information that can be logged by OIM. We recommend Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) as an alternative to be used for logging. ODL allows log files to be formatted in XML for easy parsing and does not require a server restart when the log levels are changed during troubleshooting. Testing is a vital part of any large project, and an OIM R2 implementation is no exception. We suggest that at least one lower environment should use production-like data and connectors. Configurations should match as closely as possible. For example, use secure channels between OIM and target platforms in pre-production environments to test the configurations, the migration processes of certificates, and the additional overhead that encryption could impose. Finally, we ask our clients to perform database backups regularly and before any major change event, such as a patch or migration between environments. In the lowest environments, we recommend to have at least a weekly backup in order to prevent significant loss of time and effort. Similarly, if your organization is using virtual machines for one or more of the environments, it is recommended to take frequent snapshots so that rollbacks can occur in the event of improper configuration. Operate & sustain the solution to derive maximum benefits When migrating OIM R2 to production, it is important to perform certain activities that will help achieve a smoother transition. At our clients, we have seen that splitting the OIM tables into their own tablespaces by categories (physical tables, indexes, etc.) can help manage database growth effectively. If we notice that a client hasn’t enabled the Oracle-recommended indexing in the applicable database, we strongly suggest doing so to improve performance. Additionally, we work with our clients to make sure that the audit level is set to fit the organization’s auditing needs and sometimes even allocate UPA tables and indexes into their own table-space for better maintenance. Finally, many of our clients have set up schedules for reconciliation tables to be archived at regular intervals in order to keep the size of the database(s) reasonable and result in optimal database performance. For our clients that anticipate availability issues with target applications, we strongly encourage the use of the offline provisioning capabilities of OIM R2. This reduces the provisioning process for a given target application dependency on target availability and help avoid broken workflows. To account for this and other abnormalities, we also advocate that OIM’s monitoring controls be configured to alert administrators on any abnormal situations. Within OIM R2, we have begun advising our clients to utilize the ‘profile’ feature to encapsulate multiple commonly requested accounts, roles, and/or entitlements into a single item. By setting up a number of profiles that can be searched for and used, users will spend less time performing the same exact steps for common tasks. We advise our clients to follow the Oracle recommended guides for database and application server tuning which provides a good baseline configuration. It offers guidance on database connection pools, connection timeouts, user interface threads and proper handling of adapters/plug-ins. All of these can be important configurations that will allow faster provisioning and web page response times. Many of our clients have begun to recognize the value of data mining and a remediation process during the initial phases of an implementation (to help ensure high quality data gets loaded) and beyond (to support ongoing maintenance and business-as-usual processes). A successful program always begins with identifying the data elements and assigning a classification level based on criticality, risk, and availability. It should finish by following through with a remediation process. Dos & Don’ts Here are the most common dos and don'ts that we socialize with our clients, derived from our experience implementing the solution. Dos Don’ts Scope the project into phases with realistic goals. Look for quick wins to show success and value to the stake holders. Avoid “boiling the ocean” and trying to integrate all enterprise applications in the first phase. Establish an enterprise ID (universal unique ID across the enterprise) earlier in the program. Avoid major UI customizations that require code changes. Have a plan in place to patch during the project, which helps alleviate any major issues or roadblocks (product and database). Avoid publishing all the target entitlements if you don't anticipate their usage during access request. Assess your current state and prepare a roadmap to address your operations, tactical and strategic goals, align it with your business priorities. Avoid integrating non-production environments with your production target systems. Defer complex integrations to the later phases and take advantage of lessons learned from previous phases Avoid creating multiple accounts for the same user on the same system, if there is an opportunity to do so. Have an identity and access data quality initiative built into your plan to identify and remediate data related issues early on. Avoid creating complex approval workflows that would negative impact productivity and SLAs. Identify the owner of the identity systems with fair IdM knowledge and empower them with authority to make product related decisions. This will help ensure overcome any design hurdles. Avoid creating complex designs that are not sustainable long term and would need major overhaul during upgrades. Shadow your internal or external consulting resources during the implementation to build the necessary product skills needed to operate and sustain the solution. Avoid treating IAM as a point solution and have appropriate level of communication and training plan for the IT and business users alike. Conclusion In our experience, Identity programs will struggle with scope, proper resourcing, and more. We suggest that companies consider the suggestions discussed in this post and leverage them to help enable their identity and access program. This concludes PwC blog series on R2 for the month and we sincerely hope that the information we have shared thus far has been beneficial. For more information or if you have questions, you can reach out to Rex Thexton, Senior Managing Director, PwC and or Dharma Padala, Director, PwC. We look forward to hearing from you. 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:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL).

  Read the article

• Augmenting your Social Efforts via Data as a Service (DaaS)

  - by Mike Stiles

  The following is the 3rd in a series of posts on the value of leveraging social data across your enterprise by Oracle VP Product Development Don Springer and Oracle Cloud Data and Insight Service Sr. Director Product Management Niraj Deo. In this post, we will discuss the approach and value of integrating additional “public” data via a cloud-based Data-as-as-Service platform (or DaaS) to augment your Socially Enabled Big Data Analytics and CX Management. Let’s assume you have a functional Social-CRM platform in place. You are now successfully and continuously listening and learning from your customers and key constituents in Social Media, you are identifying relevant posts and following up with direct engagement where warranted (both 1:1, 1:community, 1:all), and you are starting to integrate signals for communication into your appropriate Customer Experience (CX) Management systems as well as insights for analysis in your business intelligence application. What is the next step? Augmenting Social Data with other Public Data for More Advanced Analytics When we say advanced analytics, we are talking about understanding causality and correlation from a wide variety, volume and velocity of data to Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to achieve and optimize business value. And in some cases, to predict future performance to make appropriate course corrections and change the outcome to your advantage while you can. The data to acquire, process and analyze this is very nuanced: It can vary across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data It can span across content, profile, and communities of profiles data It is increasingly public, curated and user generated The key is not just getting the data, but making it value-added data and using it to help discover the insights to connect to and improve your KPIs. As we spend time working with our larger customers on advanced analytics, we have seen a need arise for more business applications to have the ability to ingest and use “quality” curated, social, transactional reference data and corresponding insights. The challenge for the enterprise has been getting this data inline into an easily accessible system and providing the contextual integration of the underlying data enriched with insights to be exported into the enterprise’s business applications. The following diagram shows the requirements for this next generation data and insights service or (DaaS): Some quick points on these requirements: Public Data, which in this context is about Common Business Entities, such as - Customers, Suppliers, Partners, Competitors (all are organizations) Contacts, Consumers, Employees (all are people) Products, Brands This data can be broadly categorized incrementally as - Base Utility data (address, industry classification) Public Master Reference data (trade style, hierarchy) Social/Web data (News, Feeds, Graph) Transactional Data generated by enterprise process, workflows etc. This Data has traits of high-volume, variety, velocity etc., and the technology needed to efficiently integrate this data for your needs includes - Change management of Public Reference Data across all categories Applied Big Data to extract statics as well as real-time insights Knowledge Diagnostics and Data Mining As you consider how to deploy this solution, many of our customers will be using an online “cloud” service that provides quality data and insights uniformly to all their necessary applications. In addition, they are requesting a service that is: Agile and Easy to Use: Applications integrated with the service can obtain data on-demand, quickly and simply Cost-effective: Pre-integrated into applications so customers don’t have to Has High Data Quality: Single point access to reference data for data quality and linkages to transactional, curated and social data Supports Data Governance: Becomes more manageable and cost-effective since control of data privacy and compliance can be enforced in a centralized place Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) Just as the cloud has transformed and now offers a better path for how an enterprise manages its IT from their infrastructure, platform, and software (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), the next step is data (DaaS). Over the last 3 years, we have seen the market begin to offer a cloud-based data service and gain initial traction. On one side of the DaaS continuum, we see an “appliance” type of service that provides a single, reliable source of accurate business data plus social information about accounts, leads, contacts, etc. On the other side of the continuum we see more of an online market “exchange” approach where ISVs and Data Publishers can publish and sell premium datasets within the exchange, with the exchange providing a rich set of web interfaces to improve the ease of data integration. Why the difference? It depends on the provider’s philosophy on how fast the rate of commoditization of certain data types will occur. How do you decide the best approach? Our perspective, as shown in the diagram below, is that the enterprise should develop an elastic schema to support multi-domain applicability. This allows the enterprise to take the most flexible approach to harness the speed and breadth of public data to achieve value. The key tenet of the proposed approach is that an enterprise carefully federates common utility, master reference data end points, mobility considerations and content processing, so that they are pervasively available. One way you may already be familiar with this approach is in how you do Address Verification treatments for accounts, contacts etc. If you design and revise this service in such a way that it is also easily available to social analytic needs, you could extend this to launch geo-location based social use cases (marketing, sales etc.). Our fundamental belief is that value-added data achieved through enrichment with specialized algorithms, as well as applying business “know-how” to weight-factor KPIs based on innovative combinations across an ever-increasing variety, volume and velocity of data, will be where real value is achieved. Essentially, Data-as-a-Service becomes a single entry point for the ever-increasing richness and volume of public data, with enrichment and combined capabilities to extract and integrate the right data from the right sources with the right factoring at the right time for faster decision-making and action within your core business applications. As more data becomes available (and in many cases commoditized), this value-added data processing approach will provide you with ongoing competitive advantage. Let’s look at a quick example of creating a master reference relationship that could be used as an input for a variety of your already existing business applications. In phase 1, a simple master relationship is achieved between a company (e.g. General Motors) and a variety of car brands’ social insights. The reference data allows for easy sort, export and integration into a set of CRM use cases for analytics, sales and marketing CRM. In phase 2, as you create more data relationships (e.g. competitors, contacts, other brands) to have broader and deeper references (social profiles, social meta-data) for more use cases across CRM, HCM, SRM, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the amount of master reference relationships is constrained only by your imagination and the availability of quality curated data you have to work with. DaaS is just now emerging onto the marketplace as the next step in cloud transformation. For some of you, this may be the first you have heard about it. Let us know if you have questions, or perspectives. In the meantime, we will continue to share insights as we can.Photo: Erik Araujo, stock.xchng

  Read the article

• Get Info From Database, or Build Inferred Info?

  - by Zaemz

  Does it make more sense to store and retrieve properties or information directly related to an item in a database, or, say in such a case that a product's ID could describe information about it, should the information be gathered from that? Example: Item SKU -- 4HBU12 4 - is the number of motors H - the voltage B - the color, blue U - the model 12 - the length Should I store those individual attributes as well as the SKU, or should I store only the SKU and build the attributes from it?

  Read the article

• Visual studio Real Dark mode (2010,2012,2013)

  - by Anirudha

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/11/02/visual-studio-real-dark-mode-201020122013.aspxWhen Visual studio 2010 released back in 3 year ago I soon show a demo to some people that how Dark mode of Visual studio will be great idea. Soon we got some theme plugin  which make us able to modify the look of visual studio.   http://studiostyl.es/ already provide lots of wonderful color scheme that make you able to modify the theme. These themes are also work in webmatrix 2.  Webmatrix 2 have a plugin for themes that is made by Yishai Galatzer that is awesome for webmatrix 2.   In Visual studio 2012 we got a native dark mode. This means we can configure it without any plugin or requirement of anything. In this post I have a demo to show you how to use Dark mode that is part of Windows 7 (and windows 8 too).   Few months ago I show a problem that webmatrix 2 run slow. it’s run better in windows 7 dark mode. Windows 7 dark mode simply refer to right click > personalize > High contrast theme in bottom of windows. This setting make thing a little bit faster.   When you have set this you have seen that Visual studio doesn’t react good anymore because it’s color scheme is broken now. What you need now is import any theme from http://studiostyl.es/ When you import this this will look good as this.   This is the demo look of Windows 7 phone Express 2010. It will react same for future version as 2012, 2013. Now see your VS react look dark. Everything is dark now. Your Firefox and IE will not run totally in blackish mode but you can use chrome. Chrome have less effect of dark. Now if you benchmark it then you will feel that everything that take a long time in loading now run fast.   Note :- This is experiments. Remember to have settings backup before apply new theme. All thing I do is make my VS run faster. If you have any trouble or idea please comment it.   Thanks for read my post

  Read the article

• How to: Apply themes using Server Object Model in SharePoint 2013 Preview

  - by panjkov

  One of new functionalities introduced in SharePoint 2013 Preview is new theming engine. Themes that are managed by this new engine don’t use Office Theme .thmx format and can’t be created using PowerPoint like it was case before. New themes are based on set of xml files stored in Theme Gallery “15” subfolder (on relative path _catalogs/theme/15): .spcolor files  which define color palettes for components of SharePoint interface .spfont files which contain set of predefined font schemes. There...(read more)

  Read the article

• Using multiple diagrams per model in Entity Framework 5.0

  - by nikolaosk

  I have downloaded .Net framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 since it was released to MSDN subscribers on the 15th of August.For people that do not know about that yet please have a look at Jason Zander's excellent blog post .Since then I have been investigating the many new features that have been introduced in this release.In this post I will be looking into theIn order to follow along this post you must have Visual Studio 2012 and .Net Framework 4.5 installed in your machine.Download and install VS 20120 using this link.My machine runs on Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 works just fine. I have also installed in my machine SQL Server 2012 developer edition. I have also downloaded and installed AdventureWorksLT2012 database.You can download this database from the codeplex website.   Before I start showcasing the demo I want to say that I strongly believe that Entity Framework is maturing really fast and now at version 5.0 can be used as your data access layer in all your .Net projects.I have posted extensively about Entity Framework in my blog.Please find all the EF related posts here. In this demo I will show you how to split an entity model into multiple diagrams using the new enhanced EF designer. We will not build an application in this demo.Sometimes our model can become too large to edit or view.In earlier versions we could only have one diagram per EDMX file.In EF 5.0 we can split the model into more diagrams.1) Launch VS 2012. Express edition will work fine.2) Create a New Project. From the available templates choose a Web Forms application  3) Add a new item in your project, an ADO.Net Entity Data Model. I have named it AdventureWorksLT.edmx.Then we will create the model from the database and click Next.Create a new connection by specifying the SQL Server instance and the database name and click OK.Then click Next in the wizard.In the next screen of the wizard select all the tables from the database and hit Finish.4) It will take a while for our .edmx diagram to be created. When I select an Entity (e.g Customer) from my diagram and right click on it,a new option appears "Move to new Diagram".Make sure you have the Model Browser window open.Have a look at the picture below 5) When we do that a new diagram is created and our new Entity is moved there.Have a look at the picture below  6) We can also right-click and include the related entities. Have a look at the picture below. 7) When we do that the related entities are copied to the new diagram.Have a look at the picture below  8) Now we can cut (CTRL+X) the entities from Diagram2 and paste them back to Diagram1.9) Finally another great enhancement of the EF 5.0 designer is that you can change colors in the various entities that make up the model.Select the entities you want to change color, then in the Properties window choose the color of your choice. Have a look at the picture below. To recap we have demonstrated how to split your entity model in multiple diagrams which comes handy in EF models that have a large number of entities in them Hope it helps!!!!

  Read the article

• It's Here! Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Ship

  Today Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0. I've been using the RC version of Visual Studio 2010 quite a bit for the past couple of months and have really grown to like it. It has a host of features and enhancements that improve developer productivity, from improved IntelliSense to better multiple monitor support. Plus there's something about the user experience that, to me, makes it feel better than Visual Studio 2008. I don't know if it's the new blue color motif or what, but the IDE seems more modern looking and more responsive to my mouse movements and other input. Anyway, if you've not yet downloaded Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0, why not? As with previous versions of Visual Studio there's a free Express Edition and VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 runs side-by-side with earlier versions of Visual Studio and ASP.NET. And with Visual Studio 2010's multi-targeting you can even use VS2010 as your development editor for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 web applications. (Although be forewarned if you have multiple developers working on the application that the project files in VS2010 and earlier versions of Visual Studio differ.) This week's article on 4Guys explores my favorite new features of Visual Studio 2010. Here's an excerpt: The Visual Studio 2010 user experience is noticeably different than with previous versions. Some of the changes are cosmetic - gone is the decades-old red and orange color scheme, having been replaced with blues and purples - while others are more substantial. For instance, the Visual Studio 2010 shell was rewritten from the ground up to use Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). In addition to an updated user experience, Visual Studio introduces an array of new features designed to improve developer productivity. There are new tools for searching for files, types, and class members; it's now easier than ever to use IntelliSense; the Toolbox can be searched using the keyboard; and you can use a single editor - Visual Studio 2010 - to work on. This article explores some of the new features in Visual Studio 2010. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather highlights those features that I, as an ASP.NET developer, find most useful in my line of work. Read on to learn more! And, in closing, here are some helpful VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 links: One click installation for ASP.NET 4.0, Visual Web Developer 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and ASP.NET MVC 2 Eight Quick Hit videos showing some of the cool new VS2010 features VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Release Announcement with some great info/links from none other than Scott Guthrie Happy Programming!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• WordPress Plugins to Help Make Your Site Responsive

  - by Ravish

  Ultimate Coming Soon Page Ultimate Coming Soon Page plugin allows you quickly and easily set up a coming update page for your website. It has includes some feature like completely customizable with background color and image, add custom CSS and HTML, collect emails, option to stretch background image according to browser etc. WP Orbit Slider [...] Related posts:Responsive WordPress Theme Eleven40 by Studiopress 10 Useful Admin WordPress Plugins 15 Useful SEO Plugins For WordPress

  Read the article

• Designing Videogame Character Parodies [duplicate]

  - by David Dimalanta

  This question already has an answer here: Is it legal to add a cameo appearance of a known video game character in my game? 2 answers Was it okay to make a playable character when making a videogame despite its resemblance? For example, I'm making a 3rd-person action-platform genre and I have to make a character design resembling like Megaman but not exactly the same as him since there is little alternate in color, details, and facial features.

  Read the article

• Corrupted Ambiance Theme

  - by Alex

  I have a corrupted Ambiance theme... the background of the top menus is grey :( i must have done some fiddling... If i choose another theme, it seems to work fine, but I want Ambiance :D what do you think i could try? I already tried downloading ambiance again, but same issue happens. I tried to download gnome color chooser, but it doesn't do nothing, so i guess maybe i can change something else... but where? Here's a screenshot:

  Read the article

• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows: --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 --volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then --c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) --c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I'll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176  | Next Page >