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• Dealing with a fundamental design flaw when you're new to the project

  - by Matt Phillips

  I've just started working on an open source project with around 30 developers in it. I'm working on fixing some of the bugs as a way to get into the "loop" and become a regular committer to the project. The problem is I think I've uncovered a fundamental design flaw that's causing one of the bugs I'm working on. But I feel like if I blast this on the mailing list I'm going to come off as arrogant, and some of the discussions I've had about the issue are butting heads with some of the people. How should I go about this?

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• Challenges in multi-player Android Game Server with RESTful Nature

  - by Kush

  I'm working on an Android Game based on Contract Bridge, as a part of my college Summer Internship project. The game will be multi-player such that 4 Android devices can play it, so there's no BOT or CPU player to be developed. At the time of getting project, I realized that most of the students had already worked on the project but none of their works is reusable now (for variety of reasons like, undocumented code and design architecture, different platform implementation). I have experience working on several open source projects and hence I emphasis to work out on this project such that components I make become reusable as much as possible. Now, as the game is multi-player and entire game progress will be handled on server, I'm currently working on Server's design, since I wanted to make game server reusable such that any client platform can use it, I was previously confused in selecting Socket or REST for Game Server's design, but later finalized to work on REST APIs for the server. Now, since I have to keep all players in-sync while they make movements in game, on server I've planned to use Database which will keep all players' progress, specific for each table (in Bridge, 4 players play on single table, and server will handle many such game tables). I don't know if its an appropriate decision to use database as shared medium to track progress of each game table (let me know if there's an appropriate or better option). Obviously, when game is completed for the table, data for that table on server's database is discarded. Now the problem is that, access to REST service is an HTTP call, so as long as client doesn't make any request, server will remain idle, and consider a situation where A player has played a card on his device and the device requests to apply this change on the server. Now, I need to let rest of the three devices know that the player has played a card, and also update view on their device. AFAIK, REST cannot provide a sort-of Push-notification system, since the connection to the server is not persistent. One solution that I thought was to make each device constantly poll the server for any change (like every 56 ms) and when changes are found, reflect it on the device. But I feel this is not an elegant way, as every HTTP request is expensive. (and I choose REST to make game play experience robust since, a mobile device tends to get disconnected from Internet, and if there's Socket-like persistent connection then entire game progress is subject to lost. Also, portability on client-end is important) Also, imagining a situation where 10 game tables are in progress and 40 players are playing, a server must be capable to handle flooded HTTP requests from all the devices which make it every 56 ms. So I wonder if the situation is assumed as DoS attack. So, explaining the situation, am I going on the right track for the server design? I wanted to be sure before I proceed much further with the code.

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• choosing Database and Its Design for Rails

  - by Gaurav Shah

  I am having a difficulty in deciding the database & its structure. Let us say the problem is like this. For my product I have various customers( each is an educational institute) Each customer have their own sub-clients ( Institution have students) Each student record will have some basic information like "name" & "Number" . There are also additional information that a customer(institution) might want to ask sub-client(student) like "email" or "semester" I have come up with two solutions : 1. Mysql _insititution__ id-|- Description| __Student__ id-|-instituition_id-|-Name-|-Number| __student_additional_details__ student_id -|- field_name -|- Value Student_additional_details will have multiple records for each student depending upon number of questions asked from institution. 2.MongoDb _insititution___ id-|- Description| _Student__ id-|-instituition_id-|-Name-|-Number|-otherfield1 -|- otherfield2 with mongo the structure itself can be dynamic so student table seems really good in mongo . But the problem comes when I have to relate student with institution . So which one is a better design ? Or some other idea ?

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• PASS Conference 2011 Topic: Multitenant Design and Sharding with SQL Azure

  - by Herve Roggero

  I am really happy to announce that I have been accepted as a speaker at the 2011 PASS Conference in Seattle. The topic? It will be about SQL Azure scalability using shards, and the Data Federation feature of SQL Azure. I will also talk extensively about the community open-source sharding library Enzo SQL Shard (enzosqlshard.codeplex.com) and show how to make the most out of it. In general, the presentation will provide details about how to properly design an application for sharding, how to make it work for SQL Server, SQL Azure, and how to leverage the upcoming Data Federation technology that Microsoft is planning. The primary objective is to turn sharding an implementation concern, not a development concern. Using a library like Enzo SQL Shard will help you achieve this objective. If you come to PASS Summit this year, come see me and mention you saw this blog!

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• Human vs human android chess game design

  - by Plejo

  First of all I am total amateur in game development and sorry for my poor English. I want to make android human vs human chess game. So I am wondering how to design it? scenario 1: User connect to server, find opponent and send moves to server using socket, so match is running on a server side. I think this is not good idea because move should be validated on client side - or do I have to validate moves on client side? I do not think this is good solution because game is seperated. scenario 2: Using hole punching technique so server is needed only for connection between players, so game is running on android devices. which approach do you suggest? Or is there any better solution? Which server is best to use?

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• When should complexity be removed?

  - by ElGringoGrande

  Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice. But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design patterns you will introduce some complexity as features and requirements are added or changed to keep your design as maintainable and flexible as needed. However once that complexity is introduced and working like a champ when do you removed it? Example. I have an application written for a client. When originally created there where several ways to give raises to employees. I used the strategy pattern and factory to keep the whole process nice and clean. Over time certain raise methods where added or removed by the application owner. Time passes and new owner takes over. This new owner is hard nosed, keeps everything simple and only has one single way to give a raise. The complexity needed by the strategy pattern is no longer needed. If I where to code this from the requirements as they are now I would not introduce this extra complexity (but make sure I could introduce it with little or no work should the need arise). So do I remove the strategy implementation now? I don't think this new owner will ever change how raises are given. But the application itself has demonstrated that this could happen. Of course this is just one example in an application where a new owner takes over and has simplified many processes. I could remove dozens of classes, interfaces and factories and make the whole application much more simple. Note that the current implementation does works just fine and the owner is happy with it (and surprised and even happier that I was able to implement her changes so quickly because of the discussed complexity). I admit that a small part of this doubt is because it is highly likely the new owner isn't going to use me any longer. I don't really care that somebody else will take this over since it has not been a big income generator. But I do care about 2 (related) things I care a bit that the new maintainer will have to think a bit harder when trying to understand the code. Complexity is complexity and I don't want to anger the psycho maniac coming after me. But even more I worry about a competitor seeing this complexity and thinking I just implement design patterns to pad my hours on jobs. Then spreading this rumor to hurt my other business. (I have heard this mentioned.) So... In general should previously needed complexity be removed even though it works and there has been a historically demonstrated need for the complexity but you have no indication that it will be needed in the future? Even if the question above is generally answered "no" is it wise to remove this "un-needed" complexity if handing off the project to a competitor (or stranger)?

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• Help Us Pick the First T-Shirt Design to Promote How-To Geek

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Here’s your first peek at How-To Geek’s new line of merchandise! Tell us what you think, what you like, and what you actually would like to own in this first round of potential HTG tee shirts. If you like the content here at HTG, we’d love to hear back from you—we made these for you, the readers, and we hope to hear what suits you and if you like what we’ve got to offer. Check them out, tell us your thoughts in the comments section (or send us emails at [email protected]) and fill out our poll in the section below.  The design that you like the most will be professionally printed and sold right here at howtogeek.com. Interested in buying one of them right now? Jump to the bottom to be notified when they’re ready for be bought and shipped right to you. How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 3 How to Sync Your Media Across Your Entire House with XBMC How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 2

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• Is dynamic casting Entities A good design?

  - by Milo

  For my game, Everything inherits from Entity, then other things like Player, PhysicsObject, etc, inherit from Entity. The physics engine sends collision callbacks which has an Entity* to the B that A collided on. Then, lets say A is a Bullet, A tries to cast the entity as a player, if it succeeds, it reduces the player's health. Is this a good design? The problem I have with a message system is that I'd need messages for everything, like: entity.sendMessage(SET_PLAYER_HEALTH,16); So that's why I think casting is cleaner.

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• In the Cloud, Everything Costs Money

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been teaching my daughter about budgeting. I’ve explained that most of the time the money coming in is from only one or two sources – and you can only change that from time to time. The money going out, however, is to many locations, and it changes all the time. She’s made a simple debits and credits spreadsheet, and I’m having her research each part of the budget. Her eyes grow wide when she finds out everything has a cost – the house, gas for the lawnmower, dishes, water for showers, food, electricity to run the fridge, a new fridge when that one breaks, everything has a cost. She asked me “how do you pay for all this?” It’s a sentiment many adults have looking at their own budgets – and one reason that some folks don’t even make a budget. It’s hard to face up to the realities of how much it costs to do what we want to do. When we design a computing solution, it’s interesting to set up a similar budget, because we don’t always consider all of the costs associated with it. I’ve seen design sessions where the new software or servers are considered, but the “sunk” costs of personnel, networking, maintenance, increased storage, new sizes for backups and offsite storage and so on are not added in. They are already on premises, so they are assumed to be paid for already. When you move to a distributed architecture, you'll see more costs directly reflected. Store something, pay for that storage. If the system is deployed and no one is using it, you’re still paying for it. As you watch those costs rise, you might be tempted to think that a distributed architecture costs more than an on-premises one. And you might be right – for some solutions. I’ve worked with a few clients where moving to a distributed architecture doesn’t make financial sense – so we didn’t implement it. I still designed the system in a distributed fashion, however, so that when it does make sense there isn’t much re-architecting to do. In other cases, however, if you consider all of the on-premises costs and compare those accurately to operating a system in the cloud, the distributed system is much cheaper. Again, I never recommend that you take a “here-or-there-only” mentality – I think a hybrid distributed system is usually best – but each solution is different. There simply is no “one size fits all” to architecting a solution. As you design your solution, cost out each element. You might find that using a hybrid approach saves you money in one design and not in another. It’s a brave new world indeed. So yes, in the cloud, everything costs money. But an on-premises solution also costs money – it’s just that “dad” (the company) is paying for it and we don’t always see it. When we go out on our own in the cloud, we need to ensure that we consider all of the costs.

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• Designing Mobile SMS text advertising system

  - by Ramraj Edagutti

  Currently, I am working on a product where we have an SMS text advertising system, and using this, we setup advertising campaigns for clients, and later these campaigns are sent to the end users. This is very similar to Google Adwords, but targeted to Mobile users via SMS. Just to give an overview of the system Each Campaign is mapped to an advertiser Campaign has start date and end date Campaign has a filter condition(s) or query to select the target user base from our database (to whom we send Campaigns) Target user base can be fixed, for e.g send campaign to 10000 users Target user base can also be dynamic based on query condition, for e.g send campaign to users who are active and from a particular state, district, town etc. (this way user base will be keep changing on daily basis) Campaign can have multiple campaign messages Each campaign message has start date and end date Each campaign message can have multiple message texts for different locales, for e.g English,Hindi,Telugu etc After creating an advertisement campaign, we run daily night job to provision the target user base for that a particular campaign in a separate table, and another daily job runs on morning times and checks provisioned table for campaigns and targeted users and sends the campaign to users via SMS. Problem is, current UI for creating advertising campaigns is designed in a very technical manner, I mean, normal user or business owner or clients can not use the UI to create a campaign. Below are reasons why the UI is very technical in nature Filter condition(s) or query input filed, takes user ids or mobile numbers or SQL queries. Most of times or almost every time, we use big SQL queries So we end up storing SQL queries in a database for a campaign, later we use this SQL query to fetch targeted user base. For scheduling these campaigns, we have input filed on UI which takes quartz cron expression(s) ( for e.g. send campaign on "0 0 9 1-10 MAR 2012" ), again very technical in nature Normal user or business owner, can not use the UI for creating campaigns for reasons mentioned above, Currently, we ourself (developers) helping clients to setup/create campaigns. we are trying to re-design the UI to make it more user friendly so that any user can go to UI and create an advertisement campaign by himself. I am thinking of re-designing the current UI similar to Google Adwords interface, especially for selecting target users based on user geography like country, state, city etc. I also need to select users based user subscription(s), which might make system even more complex. And also, for campaign scheduling, I am thinking of using weekdays with hours. For example, I will shows Monday to Sunday on UI, and user can select the from hours, to hours etc. Any better ideas or suggestion on how to design UI in very user friendly manner and what design should be followed on server side code (we write backend code on java/jpa/spring/quartz)? And I am looking for ideas or design patterns on how to build SQL queries (using JPA/Hinernate) programmatically on server side, based on varies conditions like based on country, state, town, village, and user subscriptions.

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• How to design a replay system

  - by daddz

  So how would I design a replay system? You may know it from certain games like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft where you can watch the game again after it has been played already. You end up with a relatively small replay file. So my questions are: How to save the data? (custom format?) (small filesize) What shall be saved? How to make it generic so it can be used in other games to record a time period (and not a complete match for example)? Make it possible to forward and rewind (WC3 couldn't rewind as far as I remember)

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• Transition from maintenance programming to design

  - by andrew wang

  What to do people do develop a design for a s/w for a given set of requirements? I like many people joined a Semiconductor MNC and got stuck in maintenance for quite a couple of years. My work was usually changing a lines of code for windows drivers supplied by my company or a couple of small script (style like) C programs for validating h/w. As a result I developed the bad habit of 'programming by coincidence'. I have not developed the ability for designing tools/programs from scratch. I was the only s/w member of the local team and thus some grunt work from the well established other site of the company came to be done by me. Now I have moved to a different company and thus finding developing from scratch very difficult. How do I unlearn my bad habit and develop this ability of designing s/w and then coding it ?

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• Transiltion from maintenance programing to design

  - by andrew wang

  What to do guys do develop a design for a s/w for a given set of requirements? I like many people joined a Semiconductor MNC and got stuck in maintenance for quite a couple of years. My work was usually changing a lines of code for windows drivers supplied by my company or a couple of small script (style like) C programs for validating h/w. As a result I developed the bad habit of 'programming by coincidence'. I have not developed the ability for designing tools/programs from scratch. I was the only s/w member of the local team and thus some grunt work from the well established other site of the company came to be done by me. Now I have moved to a different company and thus finding developing from scratch very difficult. How do I unlearn my bad habit and develop this ability of designing s/w and then coding it ?

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• How prevent useless content load on the page in Responsive Design

  - by Ícaro Leandro

  In Responsive Design, we hide elements in the page with @media queries and display: hide in the CSS. Ok, But in my system: Browsers that have less than width: 800px, the layout must hide some content, not only hide, but avoid them load fully. I mean, in access with desktop with more than 800px of screen, the page load fully; In mobile devices, or even in desktop with less than 800px, not load some content. I want to make the page load faster in this browsers. The system are maked in PHP and have some Javascript. Thanks...

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• How to design a character animation system?

  - by Andrea Benedetti

  I'm searching for suggestions and resources on the possible ways to design a character animation system. I mean a system built on top of the graphics engine (as graphics engine I use Ogre3D, that provide an animation layer), and in strict contact with the logic of the game. It's for a sports title, so the question is not easy. Edit: What I'm searching for are suggestions and resources about the action state mechines (or animation state machines), that is build on top of the animation pipeline already provided by the graphics engine. So, a state-driver animation interface for use by virtually all higher-level game code.

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• How to design a leaderboard?

  - by PeterK

  This sounds like an easy thing but when i considering the following Many players Some have played many games and some just started Different type of statistics ...on what information should the actual ranking be based on. I am planning to display the board in a UITableView so there is limited space available per player. However, I am not bound to the UITableView if there is a better solution. This is a quiz game and the information i am currently capturing per player is: #games played totally #games played per game type (current version have only one game type) #questions answered #correct answers Maybe i should include additional information. I have been thinking about having a leaderboard property page where the player can decide on what basis the leaderboard should display information but would like to avoid the complexity in that. However, if that is needed i will do it. Anyone that can give me some advice on how to design the presentation of this would be highly appreciated?

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• SQLPASS DB Design Precon Preview

  - by drsql

  It is just a few months left before SQLPASS and I am pushing to get my precon prepped for you. While it will be the second time I produce this on the year, I listened to the feedback and positive comments I have heard from potential attendees, so I am making a couple of big changes to fit what people really liked. Lots more design time. We will do more designs in some form, as a group, teams, and individually, depending on the room and people in attendance. (Figure on a lot of databases centered...(read more)

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• quick prototyping in project design & development

  - by lurscher

  i'm currently working on a project in my spare time (mostly 3-4 hours from monday to friday, and up to 6 hours on sundays) and i've found redmine very useful to hold a record of development tasks. However, there are some stuff, specially when you are trying to prototype or brainstorm a redesign of a set of related classes, that the best tool that i've found for this still is a sheet of paper and a pen. I want to understand if maybe i'm just short of getting to work properly with existing tools. Do you find the use of a notebook or a journal an unavoidable part of software design? are there better alternatives? how do you organize pen-and-paper work and other software management tools like redmine?

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• How to design a separated tutorial mode?

  - by Sylpheed

  I'm working on a "social" game that's about 90% completion. One of the remaining features is the tutorial mode. Basically, the tutorial mode will restrict the user to access some parts of UI and limit the features (like store items). The tutorial will only progress if a certain event is triggered, specifically following the tutorial. The code is ready and we already have an "almost" working game. The problem is I haven't foreseen the tutorial mode while I was doing those 90%. My requirement is there shouldn't be any loading/transition from tutorial mode to normal mode. This means I have to pick up the progress from the tutorial (no re-rendering of assets and stuff). How should I design this in a way where I won't touch anything from my old code? I want it to be as easy as just plugging it in. I don't want to jam the tutorial in my old code since this will lead to many bugs.

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress thru the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will just quit playing the game and delete the app since they get frustrated and can't play any other puzzles until the current puzzle is solved. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from that they need to solve before unlocking the next level, it almost seems as tho I'm making them feel like it's work they have to do. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is more motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• Upcoming Database Design Pre-Cons

  - by drsql

  In July and October, I will be doing my "How To Design a Relational Database" full day conference in two places. First on July 26 for the East Iowa SQL Saturday , and then for the big daddy SQLPASS Summit in Charlotte, NC on October 14. You can see the entire abstract here on the SQL PASS site. It is essentially the same concept as last year, but this year I am making a few big changes to really give the people what they have desired (and am truly glad to have a swing at it several months...(read more)

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• how to design transparent screen in libgdx

  - by ved

  this question is for LibGdx geeks. I want to make transparent screen in my game. For example, when level completes I want a new transparent screen pop up and show player's high score, buttons to navigate on next level etc like in angry birds kind of screen. This type of screen can also use, when user click on pause button, to show pause screen. Please guide me to design this kind of screen. Or if I am going wrong to make transparent screens for this kind of situation. Please guide me for better one.

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• Is perfectionism a newbie's friend or enemy? [closed]

  - by Akromyk

  Possible Duplicate: Where do you draw the line for your perfectionism? I see that the development community is very focused on doing things the right way and personally I would like to do the same too, however, is it a good or bad idea for a newbie to focus on design principles, design patterns, and commenting code when getting started, or is it better to let creativity run wild and potentially write sloppy code. Where should a newbie draw the line?

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• Now you can design ADF applications that look like Fusion Apps

  - by Grant Ronald

  One possible failure point in ADF applications (and I’ve seen happen) is getting Web designers to build the UI without any knowledge of what ADF does.  The resulting design may look pretty but might be virtually impossible to implement using ADF. To help address this Oracle have released a set of Visio templates which help guide you in “Fusion”/ADF look and feel.  I’ve been lucky enough to have some of our usability teams mock up these templates for some ADF projects I’ve been working on and they are a great help in conceptualising the final applications. You can find out more about these Visio ADF templates here.

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• How do you conquer the challenge of designing for large screen real-estate?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  This question is a bit more subjective, but I'm hoping to get some new perspective. I'm so used to designing for a certain screen size (typically 1024x768) that I find that size to not be a problem. Expanding the size to 1280x1024 doesn't buy you enough screen real estate to make an appreciable difference, but will give me a little more breathing room. Basically, I just expand my "grid size" and the same basic design for the slightly smaller screen still works. However, in the last couple of projects my clients were all using 1080p (1920x1080) screens and they wanted solutions to use as much of that real estate as possible. 1920 pixels across provides just under twice the width I am used to, and the wide screen makes some of my old go to design approaches not to work as well. The problem I'm running into is that when presented with so much space, I'm confronted with some major problems. How many columns should I use? The wide format lends itself to a 3 column split with a 2:1:1 split (i.e. the content column bigger than the other two). However, if I go with three columns what do I do with that extra column? How do I make efficient use of the screen real estate? There's a temptation to put everything on the screen at once, but too much information actually makes the application harder to use. White space is important to help make sense of complex information, but too much makes related concepts look too separate. I'm usually working with web applications that have complex data, and visualization and presentation is key to making sense of the raw data. When your user also has a large screen (at least 24"), some information is out of eye sight and you need to move the pointer a long distance. How do you make sure everything that's needed stays within the visual hot points? Simple sites like blogs actually do better when the width is constrained, which results in a lot of wasted real estate. I kind of wonder if having the text box and the text preview side by side would be a big benefit for the admin side of that type of screen? (1:1 two column split). For your answers, I know almost everything in design is "it depends". What I'm looking for is: General principles you use How your approach to design has changed I'm finding that i have to retrain myself how to work with this different format. Every bump in resolution I've worked through to date has been about 25%: 640 to 800 (25% increase), 800 to 1024 (28% increase), and 1024 to 1280 (25% increase). However, the jump from 1280 to 1920 is a good 50% increase in space--the equivalent from jumping from 640 straight to 1024. There was no commonly used middle size to help learn lessons more gradually.

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