Search Results

Search found 36619 results on 1465 pages for 'damn small linux'.

Page 813/1465 | < Previous Page | 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820  | Next Page >

• How do I detect multiple sprite collisions when there are >10 sprites?

  - by yao jiang

  I making a small program to animate the astar algorithm. If you look at the image, there are lots of yellow cars moving around. Those can collide at any moment, could be just one or all of them could just stupidly crash into each other. How do I detect all of those collisions? How do I find out which specific car has crash into which other car? I understand that pygame has collision function, but it only detects one collision at a time and I'd have to specify which sprites. Right now I am just trying to iterate through each sprite to see if there is collision: for car1 in carlist: for car2 in carlist: collide(car1, car2); This can't be the proper way to do it, if the car list goes to a huge number, a double loop will be too slow.

  Read the article

• Smooth animation in Cocos2d for iOS

  - by MrDatabase

  I move a simple CCSprite around the screen of an iOS device using this code: [self schedule:@selector(update:) interval:0.0167]; - (void) update:(ccTime) delta { CGPoint currPos = self.position; currPos.x += xVelocity; currPos.y += yVelocity; self.position = currPos; } This works however the animation is not smooth. How can I improve the smoothness of my animation? My scene is exceedingly simple (just has one full-screen CCSprite with a background image and a relatively small CCSprite that moves slowly). I've logged the ccTime delta and it's not consistent (it's almost always greater than my specified interval of 0.0167... sometimes up to a factor of 4x). I've considered tailoring the motion in the update method to the delta time (larger delta = larger movement etc). However given the simplicity of my scene it's seems there's a better way (and something basic that I'm probably missing).

  Read the article

• Five C# Code Snippets

  A snippet is a small section of text or source code that can be inserted into the code of a program. Snippets provide an easy way to implement commonly used code or functions into a larger section of code. Instead of rewriting the same code over and over again, a programmer can save the code [...] Related posts:How To Obtain Environment Details With .NET 3.5 How-to: Easily Send Emails With .NET Understanding SMTP Status Codes ...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

• Ball bouncing at a certain angle and efficiency computations

  - by X Y

  I would like to make a pong game with a small twist (for now). Every time the ball bounces off one of the paddles i want it to be under a certain angle (between a min and a max). I simply can't wrap my head around how to actually do it (i have some thoughts and such but i simply cannot implement them properly - i feel i'm overcomplicating things). Here's an image with a small explanation . One other problem would be that the conditions for bouncing have to be different for every edge. For example, in the picture, on the two small horizontal edges i do not want a perfectly vertical bounce when in the middle of the edge but rather a constant angle (pi/4 maybe) in either direction depending on the collision point (before the middle of the edge, or after). All of my collisions are done with the Separating Axes Theorem (and seem to work fine). I'm looking for something efficient because i want to add a lot of things later on (maybe polygons with many edges and such). So i need to keep to a minimum the amount of checking done every frame. The collision algorithm begins testing whenever the bounding boxes of the paddle and the ball intersect. Is there something better to test for possible collisions every frame? (more efficient in the long run,with many more objects etc, not necessarily easy to code). I'm going to post the code for my game: Paddle Class public class Paddle : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.DrawableGameComponent { #region Private Members private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private ContentManager contentManager; private bool keybEnabled; private bool isLeftPaddle; private Texture2D paddleSprite; private Vector2 paddlePosition; private float paddleSpeedY; private Vector2 paddleScale = new Vector2(1f, 1f); private const float DEFAULT_Y_SPEED = 150; private Vector2[] Normals2Edges; private Vector2[] Vertices = new Vector2[4]; private List<Vector2> lst = new List<Vector2>(); private Vector2 Edge; #endregion #region Properties public float Speed { get {return paddleSpeedY; } set { paddleSpeedY = value; } } public Vector2[] Normal2EdgesVector { get { NormalsToEdges(this.isLeftPaddle); return Normals2Edges; } } public Vector2[] VertexVector { get { return Vertices; } } public Vector2 Scale { get { return paddleScale; } set { paddleScale = value; NormalsToEdges(this.isLeftPaddle); } } public float X { get { return paddlePosition.X; } set { paddlePosition.X = value; } } public float Y { get { return paddlePosition.Y; } set { paddlePosition.Y = value; } } public float Width { get { return (Scale.X == 1f ? (float)paddleSprite.Width : paddleSprite.Width * Scale.X); } } public float Height { get { return ( Scale.Y==1f ? (float)paddleSprite.Height : paddleSprite.Height*Scale.Y ); } } public Texture2D GetSprite { get { return paddleSprite; } } public Rectangle Boundary { get { return new Rectangle((int)paddlePosition.X, (int)paddlePosition.Y, (int)this.Width, (int)this.Height); } } public bool KeyboardEnabled { get { return keybEnabled; } } #endregion private void NormalsToEdges(bool isLeftPaddle) { Normals2Edges = null; Edge = Vector2.Zero; lst.Clear(); for (int i = 0; i < Vertices.Length; i++) { Edge = Vertices[i + 1 == Vertices.Length ? 0 : i + 1] - Vertices[i]; if (Edge != Vector2.Zero) { Edge.Normalize(); //outer normal to edge !! (origin in top-left) lst.Add(new Vector2(Edge.Y, -Edge.X)); } } Normals2Edges = lst.ToArray(); } public float[] ProjectPaddle(Vector2 axis) { if (Vertices.Length == 0 || axis == Vector2.Zero) return (new float[2] { 0, 0 }); float min, max; min = Vector2.Dot(axis, Vertices[0]); max = min; for (int i = 1; i < Vertices.Length; i++) { float p = Vector2.Dot(axis, Vertices[i]); if (p < min) min = p; else if (p > max) max = p; } return (new float[2] { min, max }); } public Paddle(Game game, bool isLeftPaddle, bool enableKeyboard = true) : base(game) { contentManager = new ContentManager(game.Services); keybEnabled = enableKeyboard; this.isLeftPaddle = isLeftPaddle; } public void setPosition(Vector2 newPos) { X = newPos.X; Y = newPos.Y; } public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); this.Speed = DEFAULT_Y_SPEED; X = 0; Y = 0; NormalsToEdges(this.isLeftPaddle); } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); paddleSprite = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"Content\pongBar"); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { //vertices array Vertices[0] = this.paddlePosition; Vertices[1] = this.paddlePosition + new Vector2(this.Width, 0); Vertices[2] = this.paddlePosition + new Vector2(this.Width, this.Height); Vertices[3] = this.paddlePosition + new Vector2(0, this.Height); // Move paddle, but don't allow movement off the screen if (KeyboardEnabled) { float moveDistance = Speed * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; KeyboardState newKeyState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (newKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down) && Y + paddleSprite.Height + moveDistance <= Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { Y += moveDistance; } else if (newKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && Y - moveDistance >= 0) { Y -= moveDistance; } } else { if (this.Y + this.Height > this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { this.Y = this.Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - this.Height - 1; } } base.Update(gameTime); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Texture,null); spriteBatch.Draw(paddleSprite, paddlePosition, null, Color.White, 0f, Vector2.Zero, Scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } Ball Class public class Ball : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.DrawableGameComponent { #region Private Members private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private ContentManager contentManager; private const float DEFAULT_SPEED = 50; private float speedIncrement = 0; private Vector2 ballScale = new Vector2(1f, 1f); private const float INCREASE_SPEED = 50; private Texture2D ballSprite; //initial texture private Vector2 ballPosition; //position private Vector2 centerOfBall; //center coords private Vector2 ballSpeed = new Vector2(DEFAULT_SPEED, DEFAULT_SPEED); //speed #endregion #region Properties public float DEFAULTSPEED { get { return DEFAULT_SPEED; } } public Vector2 ballCenter { get { return centerOfBall; } } public Vector2 Scale { get { return ballScale; } set { ballScale = value; } } public float SpeedX { get { return ballSpeed.X; } set { ballSpeed.X = value; } } public float SpeedY { get { return ballSpeed.Y; } set { ballSpeed.Y = value; } } public float X { get { return ballPosition.X; } set { ballPosition.X = value; } } public float Y { get { return ballPosition.Y; } set { ballPosition.Y = value; } } public Texture2D GetSprite { get { return ballSprite; } } public float Width { get { return (Scale.X == 1f ? (float)ballSprite.Width : ballSprite.Width * Scale.X); } } public float Height { get { return (Scale.Y == 1f ? (float)ballSprite.Height : ballSprite.Height * Scale.Y); } } public float SpeedIncreaseIncrement { get { return speedIncrement; } set { speedIncrement = value; } } public Rectangle Boundary { get { return new Rectangle((int)ballPosition.X, (int)ballPosition.Y, (int)this.Width, (int)this.Height); } } #endregion public Ball(Game game) : base(game) { contentManager = new ContentManager(game.Services); } public void Reset() { ballSpeed.X = DEFAULT_SPEED; ballSpeed.Y = DEFAULT_SPEED; ballPosition.X = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2 - ballSprite.Width / 2; ballPosition.Y = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - ballSprite.Height / 2; } public void SpeedUp() { if (ballSpeed.Y < 0) ballSpeed.Y -= (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); else ballSpeed.Y += (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); if (ballSpeed.X < 0) ballSpeed.X -= (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); else ballSpeed.X += (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); } public float[] ProjectBall(Vector2 axis) { if (axis == Vector2.Zero) return (new float[2] { 0, 0 }); float min, max; min = Vector2.Dot(axis, this.ballCenter) - this.Width/2; //center - radius max = min + this.Width; //center + radius return (new float[2] { min, max }); } public void ChangeHorzDirection() { ballSpeed.X *= -1; } public void ChangeVertDirection() { ballSpeed.Y *= -1; } public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); ballPosition.X = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2 - ballSprite.Width / 2; ballPosition.Y = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - ballSprite.Height / 2; } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); ballSprite = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"Content\ball"); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { if (this.Y < 1 || this.Y > GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - this.Height - 1) this.ChangeVertDirection(); centerOfBall = new Vector2(ballPosition.X + this.Width / 2, ballPosition.Y + this.Height / 2); base.Update(gameTime); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(ballSprite, ballPosition, null, Color.White, 0f, Vector2.Zero, Scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } Main game class public class gameStart : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; public gameStart() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; this.Window.Title = "Pong game"; } protected override void Initialize() { ball = new Ball(this); paddleLeft = new Paddle(this,true,false); paddleRight = new Paddle(this,false,true); Components.Add(ball); Components.Add(paddleLeft); Components.Add(paddleRight); this.Window.AllowUserResizing = false; this.IsMouseVisible = true; this.IsFixedTimeStep = false; this.isColliding = false; base.Initialize(); } #region MyPrivateStuff private Ball ball; private Paddle paddleLeft, paddleRight; private int[] bit = { -1, 1 }; private Random rnd = new Random(); private int updates = 0; enum nrPaddle { None, Left, Right }; private nrPaddle PongBar = nrPaddle.None; private ArrayList Axes = new ArrayList(); private Vector2 MTV; //minimum translation vector private bool isColliding; private float overlap; //smallest distance after projections private Vector2 overlapAxis; //axis of overlap #endregion protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); paddleLeft.setPosition(new Vector2(0, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - paddleLeft.Height / 2)); paddleRight.setPosition(new Vector2(this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width - paddleRight.Width, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - paddleRight.Height / 2)); paddleLeft.Scale = new Vector2(1f, 2f); //scale left paddle } private bool ShapesIntersect(Paddle paddle, Ball ball) { overlap = 1000000f; //large value overlapAxis = Vector2.Zero; MTV = Vector2.Zero; foreach (Vector2 ax in Axes) { float[] pad = paddle.ProjectPaddle(ax); //pad0 = min, pad1 = max float[] circle = ball.ProjectBall(ax); //circle0 = min, circle1 = max if (pad[1] <= circle[0] || circle[1] <= pad[0]) { return false; } if (pad[1] - circle[0] < circle[1] - pad[0]) { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(-pad[1] + circle[0])) { overlap = -pad[1] + circle[0]; overlapAxis = ax; } } else { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(circle[1] - pad[0])) { overlap = circle[1] - pad[0]; overlapAxis = ax; } } } if (overlapAxis != Vector2.Zero) { MTV = overlapAxis * overlap; } return true; } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { updates += 1; float ftime = 5 * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; if (updates == 1) { isColliding = false; int Xrnd = bit[Convert.ToInt32(rnd.Next(0, 2))]; int Yrnd = bit[Convert.ToInt32(rnd.Next(0, 2))]; ball.SpeedX = Xrnd * ball.SpeedX; ball.SpeedY = Yrnd * ball.SpeedY; ball.X += ftime * ball.SpeedX; ball.Y += ftime * ball.SpeedY; } else { updates = 100; ball.X += ftime * ball.SpeedX; ball.Y += ftime * ball.SpeedY; } //autorun :) paddleLeft.Y = ball.Y; //collision detection PongBar = nrPaddle.None; if (ball.Boundary.Intersects(paddleLeft.Boundary)) { PongBar = nrPaddle.Left; if (!isColliding) { Axes.Clear(); Axes.AddRange(paddleLeft.Normal2EdgesVector); //axis from nearest vertex to ball's center Axes.Add(FORMULAS.NormAxisFromCircle2ClosestVertex(paddleLeft.VertexVector, ball.ballCenter)); } } else if (ball.Boundary.Intersects(paddleRight.Boundary)) { PongBar = nrPaddle.Right; if (!isColliding) { Axes.Clear(); Axes.AddRange(paddleRight.Normal2EdgesVector); //axis from nearest vertex to ball's center Axes.Add(FORMULAS.NormAxisFromCircle2ClosestVertex(paddleRight.VertexVector, ball.ballCenter)); } } if (PongBar != nrPaddle.None && !isColliding) switch (PongBar) { case nrPaddle.Left: if (ShapesIntersect(paddleLeft, ball)) { isColliding = true; if (MTV != Vector2.Zero) ball.X += MTV.X; ball.Y += MTV.Y; ball.ChangeHorzDirection(); } break; case nrPaddle.Right: if (ShapesIntersect(paddleRight, ball)) { isColliding = true; if (MTV != Vector2.Zero) ball.X += MTV.X; ball.Y += MTV.Y; ball.ChangeHorzDirection(); } break; default: break; } if (!ShapesIntersect(paddleRight, ball) && !ShapesIntersect(paddleLeft, ball)) isColliding = false; ball.X += ftime * ball.SpeedX; ball.Y += ftime * ball.SpeedY; //check ball movement if (ball.X > paddleRight.X + paddleRight.Width + 2) { //IncreaseScore(Left); ball.Reset(); updates = 0; return; } else if (ball.X < paddleLeft.X - 2) { //IncreaseScore(Right); ball.Reset(); updates = 0; return; } base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Aquamarine); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } And one method i've used: public static Vector2 NormAxisFromCircle2ClosestVertex(Vector2[] vertices, Vector2 circle) { Vector2 temp = Vector2.Zero; if (vertices.Length > 0) { float dist = (circle.X - vertices[0].X) * (circle.X - vertices[0].X) + (circle.Y - vertices[0].Y) * (circle.Y - vertices[0].Y); for (int i = 1; i < vertices.Length;i++) { if (dist > (circle.X - vertices[i].X) * (circle.X - vertices[i].X) + (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y) * (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y)) { temp = vertices[i]; //memorize the closest vertex dist = (circle.X - vertices[i].X) * (circle.X - vertices[i].X) + (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y) * (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y); } } temp = circle - temp; temp.Normalize(); } return temp; } Thanks in advance for any tips on the 4 issues. EDIT1: Something isn't working properly. The collision axis doesn't come out right and the interpolation also seems to have no effect. I've changed the code a bit: private bool ShapesIntersect(Paddle paddle, Ball ball) { overlap = 1000000f; //large value overlapAxis = Vector2.Zero; MTV = Vector2.Zero; foreach (Vector2 ax in Axes) { float[] pad = paddle.ProjectPaddle(ax); //pad0 = min, pad1 = max float[] circle = ball.ProjectBall(ax); //circle0 = min, circle1 = max if (pad[1] < circle[0] || circle[1] < pad[0]) { return false; } if (Math.Abs(pad[1] - circle[0]) < Math.Abs(circle[1] - pad[0])) { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(-pad[1] + circle[0])) { overlap = -pad[1] + circle[0]; overlapAxis = ax * (-1); } //to get the proper axis } else { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(circle[1] - pad[0])) { overlap = circle[1] - pad[0]; overlapAxis = ax; } } } if (overlapAxis != Vector2.Zero) { MTV = overlapAxis * Math.Abs(overlap); } return true; } And part of the Update method: if (ShapesIntersect(paddleRight, ball)) { isColliding = true; if (MTV != Vector2.Zero) { ball.X += MTV.X; ball.Y += MTV.Y; } //test if (overlapAxis.X == 0) //collision with horizontal edge { } else if (overlapAxis.Y == 0) //collision with vertical edge { float factor = Math.Abs(ball.ballCenter.Y - paddleRight.Y) / paddleRight.Height; if (factor > 1) factor = 1f; if (overlapAxis.X < 0) //left edge? ball.Speed = ball.DEFAULTSPEED * Vector2.Normalize(Vector2.Reflect(ball.Speed, (Vector2.Lerp(new Vector2(-1, -3), new Vector2(-1, 3), factor)))); else //right edge? ball.Speed = ball.DEFAULTSPEED * Vector2.Normalize(Vector2.Reflect(ball.Speed, (Vector2.Lerp(new Vector2(1, -3), new Vector2(1, 3), factor)))); } else //vertex collision??? { ball.Speed = -ball.Speed; } } What seems to happen is that "overlapAxis" doesn't always return the right one. So instead of (-1,0) i get the (1,0) (this happened even before i multiplied with -1 there). Sometimes there isn't even a collision registered even though the ball passes through the paddle... The interpolation also seems to have no effect as the angles barely change (or the overlapAxis is almost never (-1,0) or (1,0) but something like (0.9783473, 0.02743843)... ). What am i missing here? :(

  Read the article

• I feel stuck in the center of Python, How to get past beginner

  - by Isov5

  I really apologize if this doesn't follow the S.O rules but I need a little help, I personally still classify myself as a beginner in python, Yet I've wrote a very small and VERY SURE impractical program for my boss to use. I know I'm still a beginner because simple things still perplex me but every book I read for beginners honestly just rehashes what I do already know but every 'more advanced' book doesn't really allow me to learn, they depend on example files and I never really understand why they built 'said' function or 'said' class. So onto my question... Is there any recommendations on a book or ANYTHING that pushes me out of this stage, I've used head first and normally they are really good but my issue there is they have me back tracking just to move forward again, It worked in HTML but its confusing in Python, basically I think I need to build a program while following along, Again I like HeadFirst's style but I need something that isn't going to make me have to remember one thing just to forget it... for record, I've checked into some O'Reilly books

  Read the article

• Avoid GPL violation by moving library out of process

  - by Andrey

  Assume there is a library that is licensed under GPL. I want to use it is closed source project. I do following: Create small wrapper application around that GPL library that listens to socket, parse messages and call GPL library. Then returns results back. Release it's sources (to comply with GPL) Create client for this wrapper in my main application and don't release sources. I know that this adds huge overhead compared to static/dynamic linking, but I am interested in theoretical way.

  Read the article

• What defines good developer culture? [closed]

  - by Sven

  We are a team of 6 people developing applications for mobile devices (Android & iOS). In our company, which consists of many teams responsible for "classic" software development, business intelligence, virtualization, hardware, etc., we are kind of a small startup because we were the first to use agile methods like Scrum and we are open to new technologies and methods. Also our team is pretty young with me being the oldest with 30 years. We would like to further raise productivity and motivation and thus are currently collecting points which make up a good developer/hacker culture and which may be improved in our team/company. This can be points that we can either improve ourselves or have to pass on to management. I would like to know what in your opinion defines good, modern developer culture? What does developer culture consists of? For example is it clearly defined career opportunities geeky office benefits like trips to extraordinary conferences like WWDC or Google I/O ...

  Read the article

• Does Azure only support ASP.NET MVC applications and if so how should I adapt my design?

  - by RPK

  I am writing a small ASP.NET Web Application. My worries are that I want to keep the architecture same giving me the option to install it on an Intranet or on a Cloud Platform. I am not using MVC but lately learned that Azure only supports ASP.NET MVC applications. I want to know whether ASP.NET Web Forms application work on Azure/AppHarbor or not. Do I need to convert this application to MVC if Web Forms is not supported? Will the same application run on Intranet as well?

  Read the article

• What You Said: Your Tech Spring Cleaning Routines

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Earlier this week we asked you to share your tech spring cleaning routine; now we’re back to highlight your tips, tricks, and techniques. What tools rule the spring cleaning roost? Compressed air and microfiber cloths are the tools of choice by a wide margin. D^Angelo highlights the software and physicals tools he uses: Backup all the important stuff just to be safe (c:/, my documents, desktop, drivers) Cleaning the dust with some office depot compressed air, avoiding spinning the fans. Use a brush for that small places (fans, memory, capacitors, etc). Use some dielectric spray on the motherboard. If the pc turned on without problems its time to use ccleaner, Check if there is a toolbar installed or another unusual software that I don’t want. Run my antivirus software or malwarebytes; some defraggler maybe. Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

  Read the article

• Taking web sites offline for demonstration

  While working in software development in general, and in web development for a couple of customers it is quite common that it is necessary to provide a test bed where the client is able to get an image, or better said, a feeling for the visions and ideas you are talking about. Usually here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. we set up a demo web site on one of our staging servers, and provide credentials to the customer to access and review our progress and work ad hoc. This gives us the highest flexibility on both sides, as the test bed is simply online and available 24/7. We can update the structure, the UI and data at any time, and the client is able to view it as it suits best for her/him. Limited or lack of online connectivity But what is going to happen when your client is not capable to be online - no matter for what reasons; here are some more obvious ones: No internet connection (permanently or temporarily) Expensive connection, ie. mobile data package, stay at a hotel, etc. Presentation devices at an exhibition, ie. using tablets or iPads Being abroad for a certain time, and only occasionally online No network coverage, especially on mobile Bad infrastructure, like ie. in Third World countries Providing a catalogue on CD or USB pen drive Anyway, it doesn't matter really. We should be able to provide a solution for the circumstances of our customers. Presentation during an exhibition Recently, we had the following request from a customer: Is it possible to let us have a desktop version of ResortWork.co.uk that we can use for demo purposes at the forthcoming Ski Shows? It would allow us to let stand visitors browse the sites on an iPad to view jobs and training directory course listings. Yes, sure we can do that. Eventually, you might think why don't they simply use 3G enabled iPads for that purpose? As stated above, there might be several reasons for that - low coverage, expensive data packages, etc. Anyway, it is not a question on how to circumvent the request but to deliver a solution to that. Possible solutions... or not? We already did offline websites earlier, and even established complete mirrors of one or two web sites on our systems. There are actually several possibilities to handle this kind of request, and it mainly depends on the system or device where the offline site should be available on. Here, it is clearly expressed that we have to address this on an Apple iPad, well actually, I think that they'd like to use multiple devices during their exhibitions. Following is an overview of possible solutions depending on the technology or device in use, and how it can be done: Replication of source files and database The above mentioned web site is running on ASP.NET, IIS and SQL Server. In case that a laptop or slate runs a Windows OS, the easiest way would be to take a snapshot of the source files and database, and transfer them as local installation to those Windows machines. This approach would be fully operational on the local machine. Saving pages for offline usage This is actually a quite tedious job but still practicable for small web sites Tool based approach to 'harvest' the web site There quite some tools in the wild that could handle this job, namely wget, httrack, web copier, etc. Screenshots bundled as PDF document Not really... ;-) Creating screencast or video Simply navigate through your website and record your desktop session. Actually, we are using this kind of approach to track down difficult problems in order to see and understand exactly what the user was doing to cause an error. Of course, this list isn't complete and I'd love to get more of your ideas in the comments section below the article. Preparations for offline browsing The original website is dynamically and data-driven by ASP.NET, and looks like this: As we have to put the result onto iPads we are going to choose the tool-based approach to 'download' the whole web site for offline usage. Again, depending on the complexity of your web site you might have to check which of the applications produces the best results for you. My usual choice is to use wget but in this case, we run into problems related to the rewriting of hyperlinks. As a consequence of that we opted for using HTTrack. HTTrack comes in different flavours, like console application but also as either GUI (WinHTTrack on Windows) or Web client (WebHTTrack on Linux/Unix/BSD). Here's a brief description taken from the original website about HTTrack: HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility. It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. And there is an extensive documentation for all options and switches online. General recommendation is to go through the HTTrack Users Guide By Fred Cohen. It covers all the initial steps you need to get up and running. Be aware that it will take quite some time to get all the necessary resources down to your machine. Actually, for our customer we run the tool directly on their web server to avoid unnecessary traffic and bandwidth. After a couple of runs and some additional fine-tuning - explicit inclusion or exclusion of various external linked web sites - we finally had a more or less complete offline version available. A very handsome feature of HTTrack is the error/warning log after completing the download. It contains some detailed information about errors that appeared on the pages and the links within the pages that have been processed. Error: "Bad Request" (400) at link www.resortwork.co.uk/job-details_Ski_hire:tech_or_mgr_or_driver_37854.aspx (from www.resortwork.co.uk/Jobs_A_to_Z.aspx)Error: "Not Found" (404) at link www.247recruit.net/images/applynow.png (from www.247recruit.net/css/global.css)Error: "Not Found" (404) at link www.247recruit.net/activate.html (from www.247recruit.net/247recruit_tefl_jobs_network.html) In our situation, we took the records of HTTP 400/404 errors and passed them to the web development department. Improvements are to be expected soon. ;-) Quality assurance on the full-featured desktop Unfortunately, the generated output of HTTrack was still incomplete but luckily there were only images missing. Being directly on the web server we simply copied the missing images from the original source folder into our offline version. After that, we created an archive and transferred the file securely to our local workspace for further review and checks. From that point on, it wasn't necessary to get any more files from the original web server, and we could focus ourselves completely on the process of browsing and navigating through the offline version to isolate visual differences and functional problems. As said, the original web site runs on ASP.NET Web Forms and uses Postback calls for interaction like search, pagination and partly for navigation. This is the main field of improving the offline experience. Of course, same as for standard web development it is advised to test with various browsers, and strangely we discovered that the offline version looked pretty good on Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but not in Internet Explorer. A quick look at the HTML source shed some light on this, and there are conditional CSS inclusions based on the user agent. HTTrack is not acting as Internet Explorer and so we didn't have the necessary overrides for this browser. Not problematic after all in our case, but you might have to pay attention to this and get the IE-specific files explicitly. And while having a view at the source code, we also found out that HTTrack actually modifies the generated HTML output. In several occasions we discovered that <div> elements were converted into <table> constructs for no obvious reason; even nested structures. Search 'e'nd destroy - sed (or Notepad++) to the rescue During our intensive root cause analysis for a couple of HTML/CSS problems that needed some extra attention it is very helpful to be familiar with any editor that allows search and replace over multiple files like, ie. sed - stream editor for filtering and transforming text on Linux or my personal favourite Notepad++ on Windows. This allowed us to quickly fix a lot of anchors with onclick attributes and Javascript code that was addressed to ASP.NET files instead of their generated HTML counterparts, like so: grep -lr -e '.aspx' * | xargs sed -e 's/.aspx/.html?/g' The additional question mark after the HTML extension helps to separate the query string from the actual target and solved all our missing hyperlinks very fast. The same can be done in Notepad++ on Windows, too. Just use the 'Replace in files' feature and you are settled. Especially, in combination with Regular Expressions (regex). Landscape of browsers Okay, after several runs of HTML/CSS code analysis, searching and replacing some strings in a pool of more than 4.000 files, we finally had a very good match of an offline browsing experience in Firefox and Chrome on Linux. Next, we transferred that modified set of files to a Windows 8 machine for review on Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer 7 to 10, and a Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.7 to check the output on Safari and again on Chrome. Besides IE, for reasons already mentioned above, the results were identical. And last but not least it was about to check web site on tablets. Please continue to read on the following articles: Taking web sites offline for demonstration on Galaxy Tablet Taking web sites offline for demonstration on iPad

  Read the article

• Where should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should they be separate?

  - by Earlz

  I have a small MVC framework I've been working on. It's code base definitely isn't big, but it's not longer just a couple of classes. I finally decided to take the plunge and start writing tests for it(yes, I know I should've been doing that all along, but it's API was super unstable up until now) Anyway, my plan is to make it extremely easy to test, including integration tests. An example integration test would go something along these lines: Fake HTTP request object - MVC framework - HTTP response object - check the response is correct Because this is all doable without any state or special tools(browser automation etc), I could actually do this with ease with regular unit test frameworks(I use NUnit). Now the big question. Where exactly should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should I only test one class at a time(as much as possible) with unit tests? Also, should integration tests be placed in the same testing project as my unit testing project?

  Read the article

• D, Vala or Go for game development [on hold]

  - by Sheosi

  I'm looking forward to choose some compiled language for my 3D engine. The engine it's written in C++, however I would like to help coders by using a language which is good for games. I came with these three: Vala, D and Go. The engine is being made to write as less code as posible, also the "main" language it's going to be Lua so any of these will be the "advanced" one (mainly things which could affect performance or . Because of all this and the fact that I heard that Go is good for small projects I thought it would be a pretty good option, however it does not seems to be made (at least originally) for games and also some say I can have trouble with garbage collection in games. So what do you think? Do you have any experience with any of these three in games? How was it?

  Read the article

• Does TDD lead to the good design?

  - by Eugen Martynov

  I'm in transition from "writing unit tests" state to TDD. I saw as Johannes Brodwall creates quite acceptable design from avoiding any of architecture phase before. I'll ask him soon if it was real improvisation or he had some thoughts upfront. I also clearly understand that everyone has experience that prevents to write explicit design bad patterns. But after participating in code retreat I hardly believe that writing test first could save us from mistakes. But I also believe that tests after code will lead to mistakes much faster. So this night question is asking for people who is using TDD for a long time share their experience about results of design without upfront thinking. If they really practice it and get mostly suitable design. Or it's my small understanding about TDD and probably agile.

  Read the article

• Hack Week 5.0

  w00t! Next week is Novell's Hack Week, 5th edition - but I'm starting this Friday night. I'll spend the next week on two goals for Gendarme.Better handling of defects; andMaking it easier to contribute - and yes the first goal already fills a bit of the second one.I'll also spend some time in my VS2010 VM. I need to do this to ensure the unit tests are executing correctly on Windows / MS.NET. There has been a few failures in the past, mostly because of small, legit differences between xMCS and CSC,...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

• Extended Events Code Generator v1.001 - A Quick Fix

  - by Adam Machanic

  If you're one of the estimated 3-5 people who've downloaded and are using my XE Code Generator , please note that version 1.000 has a small bug: text data (such as query text) larger than 8000 bytes is truncated. I've fixed this issue and am pleased to present version 1.001, attached to this post. Enjoy, and stay tuned for slightly more interesting enhancements! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

  Read the article

• which platform to choose for designing a game

  - by Pramod

  I am new to gaming platform and don't have any experience in gaming as well. I want to develop a small shooting game and don't have any idea from where to start and which platform to use like things. I have some experience in java and .net. Can anyone help me in giving me a start? I don't mind even if this question is voted down or closed. But please do help me. I've tried searching other similar questions but everyone is already into gaming and i can't get any of the words. Please refer me to some books or tutorials

  Read the article

• Should I update blog posts or rewrite them as technology (and me) changes?

  - by Rachel

  I started a programming blog earlier this year, and since I started it some things have changed. Some changes are due to technology changing, some changes are due to my code libraries improving, and some (ok, probably most) are due to me changing as I learn more. I want to go back and completely re-write certain blog posts. Is it better to rewrite posts to remove old information and update them with new stuff, or to create entirely new posts and possibly take down old ones? I'm not talking about small changes to the code, or an extra few sentences, but complete rewrites with new code, new information, etc. Some things to consider are comments on the post, subscribers who receive updates when new posts are created, and user bookmarks.

  Read the article

• How to credit other authors in an open source project

  - by erik

  I have a pet project that I am planning to release as open source at some point in the not-too-distant future. A couple of the files use or are mostly code that was taken from a project released under the New BSD License. While I have changed it to fit my needs and added some small stuff, the algorithm and the functionality is basically exactly the same. I want to make sure that the author of the code gets credit and that the license is not broken, but I also want to make the reader aware that this is not the code as it was orignally released. How should I approach this? Should I isolate the code as much as possible and just retain the original license? Maybe put all the files that contain foreign code in their own folder and add a readme explaining what has been added/removed? There must have been tons of projects using other open source code. What is the standard approach to this?

  Read the article

• Am I permitted to use an LGPL library without releasing the source to the rest of my application, if I dynamically reference the library?

  - by user185812

  I am a bit confused as to what I am/am not allowed to do with a LGPL Library that I intend on using in a small scale commercial C++ Application that I am developing. My current understanding, although I don't know if I am correct, is that I am permitted use the library without releasing the source to the rest of my application if I dynamically reference the library. Does anyone know if this is correct? Are there any restrictions as to how I reference the library? Thank You! I am not a native English speaker and don't understand the licence entirely.

  Read the article

• What tasks should an Architect NOT do or limit to be effective?

  - by GBH

  There are plenty of questions/answers about what an architect does, but what should someone in an Architect role NOT do? What are the boundaries/limits to maintain to be an effective Architect? I'm thinking here of Architect vs Developer and Architect vs Project Manager For example, I'm finding myself in a role where my title is Architect but I am also the coding/development lead and project manager on multiple small enterprise projects. I'm struggling with all the task switching and now I want to limit task switching. Trying to wear every hat just isn't working. What tasks should an Architect not do at all? What tasks should an Architect limit? I do think an Architect needs to keep coding, but how to define an appropriate limit for coding work?

  Read the article

• Recovering domain name from a person I can't find

  - by Daniel Gruszczyk

  I have a problem with one domain and I have no idea how to go about it. I am volunteering for a small charity in Sheffield (UK), more specifically I am redoing their website. A while ago (few years) there was one guy who made that website for them, sorted out a free hosting with another charity, bought domain name etc. Since the domain name is registered in his name, and he disappeared and we have no way of finding/contacting him, we can't move it to different hosting or do virtually nothing about it. Somehow the domain is being renewed every year, we know which domain registration service provider it is registered with, we know the guys name, and that's about it. How would we go about re-registering that domain in the charity's name, instead of that guy, is that at all possible? If we happen to get in touch with him, what should we ask for? Thanks for your help.

  Read the article

• anxiety and programming [closed]

  - by user83379

  I went to the doctor for anxiety and was prescribed a small dose of lexapro to help with anxiety and sleeping better. I am cautious about taking it since this is the first time it's got bad enough for me to talk to someone and I'm concerned it may negatively impact my career as a software developer. I'm also afraid that once I start it may be difficult to come off. Does anyone on here have experience with this? Is it likely that taking lexapro would negatively affect my problem solving skills, passion for programming or job performance? Thanks for any suggestions.

  Read the article

• sqlite3 timestamp (current_timestamp) one hour off

  - by Eiriks

  I run a small crawler on a virtual ubuntu server, initiated by crontab hourly. Datetime is inserted by defaulting the date filed to TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. Table creation looks like this: CREATE TABLE links (page TEXT, link TEXT, date TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, PRIMARY KEY(page,link)); The datetime gets stored fine, but it one hour off (one hour behind) Norwegian time (GMT +1). The server is located where-ever, I just need it to be on GMT+1. By typing datein the ssh session I get: Wed Dec 19 17:26:02 CET 2012 and that is correct (just now). So where does sqlite3 get it's time from? What must I do to set the time so that sqlite3 gets the time right?

  Read the article

• Is it ok to replace optimized code with readable code?

  - by Coder

  Sometimes you run into a situation where you have to extend/improve an existing code. You see that the old code is very lean, but it's also difficult to extend, and takes time to read. Is it a good idea to replace it with modern code? Some time ago I liked the lean approach, but now, it seems to me that it's better to sacrifice a lot of optimizations in favor of higher abstractions, better interfaces and more readable, extendable code. The compilers seem to be getting better as well, so things like struct abc = {} are silently turned into memsets, shared_ptrs are pretty much producing the same code as raw pointer twiddling, templates are working super good because they produce super lean code, and so on. But still, sometimes you see stack based arrays and old C functions with some obscure logic, and usually they are not on the critical path. Is it good idea to change such code if you have to touch a small piece of it either way?

  Read the article

• How and where do you store your private work/sourcecode?

  - by Amir Rezaei

  I have worked as a developer for over 10 years now. During that time I have had my own small projects where I have developed tools, applications and games. I have not found any robust solution to store my work. It’s always fun to get back to your code and see how you did before and how you would do it now. It’s just work that is unfortunate to lose. There are SVN solution such as Google’s Project Hosting. However I’m not interested in sharing my code or making it open source. Currently I’m hosting my own SVN server. So here comes my question: How and where do you store your private work/sourcecode? Requirements: Sourcecode versioning Backup Prefers free Edit: Remote access Edit: I have used Dropbox + TrueCrypt + SVN. Unfortunately you are limited to 5gb.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820  | Next Page >