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  • Creating movement path displays in a top-down 2d RTS

    - by nihohit
    My game is a top-down 2d RTS coded in C# using SFML's libraries. I want that during unit selection, a unit will display it's movement path on the map. Currently, after the path is computed as a list of directions ({left, up,down, down, down, left}, as an example), it's sent to the graphical component to create it's UI equivalent, and here I'm having some problems. current, these I've checked three ways to do it: compute the size of the image (in the example above it'll be a 3*2 rectangle) and create an invisible rectangle, and then go over the directions list and mark each spot with a visible point, so as to get a continous line. This system is slightly problematic because of the amount of large images that I need to save, but mostly because I have a lot of fine detail onscreen, and a continous line obstructs the view. again, compute the size of the image, but now create several (let's say 4) invisible images of that size, and then instead of a single continous line I'll switch between the four images, in each will appear only a fourth of the spots, in a way which creates a path animation. This is nicer on the eye, but here the memory demands, and the amount of time needed to compute each such image-loop is significant. Just create a list of single markers, each on a different spot on the path. This is very quick & easy on memory, but too sparse. Is there a simple or resource-light system to create path-animations?

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  • Day in the Life of Agile - The Forge Michigan November 27, 2012

    - by csmith18119
    Went to training at The Forge yesterday and did a Day in the life of Agile with Pillar.  It was pretty good. Check them out at: http://pillartechnology.com/ Abstract: A single-day agile project simulation that is engaging, educational, provocative, and fun. This simulation introduces concepts like time-boxed iterations, User Stories, collective estimation, commitment to a product owner for iteration scope, formal verification ritual at iteration conclusion, tracking velocity, and making results big and visible through charts. The exercise is designed to simulate not only how agile teams and practices work, but the inevitable challenges that arise as teams attempt to adopt such practices. One of the best parts of this training was getting some hands on experience with agile.  We used a program called Scratch to create an arcade video game.  Our team chose Frogger.  We had 3 iterations at 20 minutes each.  I think we did pretty good but in the panic of trying to get a bunch done in only 20 minutes made it interesting. To check out our project, I uploaded it to my CodePlex site Download Source Code (Under Scratch/Frogger) Cool class! I highly recommend if you get the opportunity.

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  • Combinatorial explosion of interfaces: How many is too many?

    - by mga
    I'm a relative newcomer to OOP, and I'm having a bit of trouble creating good designs when it comes to interfaces. Consider a class A with N public methods. There are a number of other classes, B, C, ..., each of which interacts with A in a different way, that is, accesses some subset (<= N) of A's methods. The maximum degree of encapsulation is achieved by implementing an interface of A for each other class, i.e. AInterfaceForB, AInterfaceForC, etc. However, if B, C, ... etc. also interact with A and with each other, then there will be a combinatorial explosion of interfaces (a maximum of n(n-1), to be precise), and the benefit of encapsulation becomes outweighed by a code-bloat. What is the best practice in this scenario? Is the whole idea of restricting access to a class's public functions in different ways for other different classes just silly altogether? One could imagine a language that explicitly allows for this sort of encapsulation (e.g. instead of declaring a function public, one could specify exactly which classes it is visible to); Since this is not a feature of C++, maybe it's misguided to try to do it through the back door with interaces?

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  • Two Hidden NetBeans Keyboard Shortcuts for Opening & Toggling between Views

    - by Geertjan
    The following are two really basic shortcuts for working with NetBeans editor windows that will be added to the Keyboard Shortcuts card for NetBeans IDE 7.2: Ctrl-Alt-PgUp/PgDown: Shortcuts for switching between editor types (e.g. Source, Design, History buttons). Switching between the editor types is a frequent operation sometimes, e.g., when using GUI builder, and while it can be done easily via mouse, or from View | Editors menu, it is very handy to know the shortcuts as well. Ctrl-PgUp/PgDown: Similarly, these are shortcuts for switching to next/previous opened document (tab). Note this is not like Ctrl-Tab that cycles in the last used order, but going through the tabs as they appear in the editor. Both shortcuts should fit into the "Opening and Toggling between Views" section. These are important to mention on the card because they are not visible anywhere else in the UI (as there are no menu items like "Go to next/previous editor type" or "Go to next/previous document"). Reported by Tomas Pavek from the NetBeans Team, here: http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=213815

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  • Should I indicate that the user exists or was deleted on the error page?

    - by animuson
    On an ordinary public website, the user's profile is always publicly visible to all visitors (such as Stack Overflow), where they can limit certain pieces of information via privacy settings or just removing the information. Now the user has decided to delete their account (in my case deactivate) so that their account doesn't technically "exist" anymore. The way my system is set up, when their account is deactivated, their username for any content connected to them just becomes "Anonymous User" as if it were a guest that posted. I feel like this could cause some confusion for other users. I'm also concerned about what kind of error to display when someone attempts to view their profile page. My gut tells me to just display a standard 404 page to hide the fact that they ever existed, but then you also have to consider that, since usernames must be unique, anyone can go to the register page and type in the username to see if it really exists or not. I have a similar problem with another website, which gives users the ability to hide their profiles from the public and only allow registered users to view it. Again it's with the dilemma of what kind of error message to display when an unregistered users attempts to view their profile with invalid permissions. So, would it be acceptable to display basic errors such as "user has been deactivated" or "you must be logged in to view this profile" in order to give other visitors some idea of why the page can't be displayed, or should I attempt to cover the user's privacy a little and just display a standard 404 without indicating in any way that the user might exist? Are there any other issues that I'm not realizing about either route? To go back to the beginning, should I even bother changing the user's name to "Anonymous User" when their account is deactivated? Would it be acceptable to just display a non-linked version of their username in place of the normal linked display name?

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  • Unable to start after 13.04 > 13.10 udate

    - by romainl
    At the end of the update process, clicking on the Restart button had no visible effect whatsoever. After waiting 5 to 10 minutes, I decided to reboot the computer manually. Since then, I rebooted a good dozen times (not with the hope that it would work but with the hope of reading the messages) with the same non-result and the same symptoms: I get the ASCII text-on-purple Ubuntu 13.10 . . . . splash screen with these messages: * Restoring resolver state... [OK] * Starting crash report submission daemon [OK] * Starting CUPS printing spooler/server [OK] Everything disappears. The whole process hangs at a purple screen with the mouse cursor right in the middle. At this point, I'm unable to use the mouse and the keyboard. Booting from a 12.04 CD works perfectly, Disk Utility says that all my disks are OK and I can mount my main partition without problems. Something obviously went wrong at the end of the upgrade but I have no idea what. I'd appreciate any pointer. This is the kind of moment where you really think "Next time, I'll separate my /home partition for sure". My machine is an aging but working Dell Inspiron 530 with an Intel Core Duo E2160 processor, 2 GHz of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD3650 video card. Thanks.

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  • Lubuntu 12.10: Icon Display Problems

    - by SlcBullseye
    First off, I would like to let you know that I am new to Linux. I finally decided to give it a try and my first project was installing Lubuntu on an old PC and using it for a media server for my PS3. So, one thing that I noticed right away is that my icons for applications, files, folders, etc...are not visible. If I move my mouse over the name of the application or file (It only works if I move the mouse up from the bottom of the name) then the icon will appear, but if I move my mouse back over any other place on the file the icon will disappear again. Also, if I open a folder sometimes an icon or two will be displayed but the rest won't, and like I said before if I move my mouse over the top of the application or file the icon will disappear. Is there any way to fix this? Is this normal? Or could it be a problem with my hardware? I never had this issue when I was running the last OS (Windows XP). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Remember, I am new to Linux so a thorough explanation would be helpful. Also, if there are any tips, tricks, references, or recommendations any of you have to help me jump in and become more familiar with using Linux that would be great! I'm very interested in taking advantage of the power Linux has. Currently I am studying computer programming so maybe one day I will be able to develop my own Linux distribution.

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  • Hard drive skipped in boot

    - by Yasin
    Good evening. I just installed Ubuntu 12.04 using a USB, but right after the install, after restarting the machine, I get a message asking me to insert a bootable drive. My boot settings in Bios have the hard drive first, then DVD, then USB stick, and I have two systems installed, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. I suspected the hard drive got somehow disconnected internally, so I checked but everything was in place. I used the live USB to start Ubuntu, and I could see the hard drive and mount whatever partition I wanted. The one that contains the recently installed Ubuntu, looks the same. (It hasn't been deleted or anything). I'm not sure if this is a hardware problem or a loader(grub) problem, because the hard drive is visible. Only it isn't seen by the BIOS. My only means of internet connection is a USB modem, which doesn't work when I'm using the live USB, so I have can't download anything from the internet, in case someone asks. I also reinstalled Ubuntu 12.04, to no avail. This is my second problem with this laptop, and Ubuntu, and it's not even a week old. I hope this one gets solved. Thank you.

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  • Release Notes for 3/2/2012

    Here are the notes for today’s release: Added a progress indicator when saving issues. Added support for viewing CodePlex RSS feeds in Chrome. Deployed several bug fixes: Fixed an issue where the back button on Internet Explorer was not working as intended when browsing code. Fixed an issue where long commit comments would push the source control info box outside of the boundaries of the page. Fixed an issue where Internet Explorer users were not able to widen the frame of the source code browser until a file was selected. Fixed an issue where opening a source code file directly from a URL in Internet Explorer would cause the source code tree to be collapsed. Fixed an issue where adding a code snippet with long lines of text to a discussion thread using Internet Explorer would needlessly display a vertical scrollbar, limiting the amount of code visible. Fixed an issue where tabbing through some links would render them invisible. We deprecated support for embedding PreEmptive analytics statistics on the project statistics page. If you’re interested in collecting and reporting your own statistics, PreEmptive’s RunTime Intelligence Endpoint Starter Kit offers a good starting point for capturing data. Have ideas on how to improve CodePlex? Visit our ideas page! Vote for your favorite ideas or submit a new one. Got Twitter? Follow us and keep apprised of the latest releases and service status at @codeplex.

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  • Client and Server game update speed

    - by user20686
    I am working on a simple two player networked asteroids game using XNA and the Lidgren networking library. For this set up I have a Lidgren server maintaining what I want to be the true state of the game, and the XNA game is the Lidgren client. The client sends key inputs to the server, and the server process the key inputs against game logic, sending back updates. (This seemed like a better idea then sending local positions to the server.) The client also processes the key inputs on its own, so as to not have any visible lag, and then interpolates between the local position and remote position. Based on what I have been reading this is the correct way to smooth out a networked game. The only thing I don’t get is what value to use as the time deltas. Currently every message the server sends it also sends a delta-time update with it, which is time between the last update. The client then saves this delta time to use for its local position updates, so they can be using roughly the same time deltas to calculate position updates. I know the XNA game update gets called 60 times a second, so I set my server to update the game state at the same speed. This will probably only work as long as the game is working on a fixed time step and will probably cause problems if I want to change that in the future. The server sends updates to clients on another thread, which runs at 10 updates per second to cut down on bandwidth. I do not see noticeable lag in movement and over time if no user input is received the local and remote positions converge on each other as they should. I am also not currently calculating for any latency as I am trying to go one step at a time. So my question is should the XNA client be using its current game time to update the local game state and not being using time deltas sent by the server? If I should be using the clients time delta between updates how do I keep it in-line with how fast the server is updating its game state?

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  • How can I activate a Panel-icon via a script (or get its screen co-ordinates; to click it)?

    - by fred.bear
    This question is in the context of Lucid 10.04 desktop (ie. no Unity). I do most screen navigation via the keyboard (not the mouse), so I'm looking for a script solution to re-activating an app which has been "minimized" to the Panel's Notification Area. I'll use Skype as an example. wmctrl allows me enough access to normally-minimized windows, but when Skype is "minimized" to the Notification Area, it simply goes "off the radar" as far as wmctrl is concerned. Bearing in mind that icon positions in the Notification Area can vary, is there some way to determine the screen co-ordinates of Skype's Panel icon, so I can "click" it using xdotool (or a similar utility)? ...or maybe there is a more direct way to activate the "dormant" Skype? ... (and I don't mean the mouse ;) Here is the script, so far. Hopefully it will make clear what I'm trying to do: #!/bin/bash procname="skype-wrapper" windmask="Skype™" if [[ $(pgrep -x -n -c "$procname") == 1 ]] ; then wintitle="$(wmctrl -l |grep "$windmask" |head -n 1 |sed -n "s/^.\+${HOSTNAME} \(.*\)/\1/p")" if [ "$wintitle" = "" ] ; then echo "Click on Skype's Panel-icon to show the main window" ############################################################### # How can I find the screen co-ordinates of Skype's Panel Icon ############################################################### else # Skype is running, and has (at least) one visible window which matches $windmask. Activate it. wmctrl -a "$wintitle" fi else # The process is not currently running. Start it. ("$procname" &) fi

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  • JavaFX: Use a Screen with your Scene!

    - by user12610255
    Here's a handy tip for sizing your application. You can use the javafx.stage.Screen class to obtain the width and height of the user's screen, and then use those same dimensions when sizing your scene. The following code modifies default "Hello World" application that appears when you create a new JavaFX project in NetBeans. package screendemo; import javafx.application.Application; import javafx.event.ActionEvent; import javafx.event.EventHandler; import javafx.scene.Group; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.control.Button; import javafx.stage.Stage; import javafx.stage.Screen; import javafx.geometry.Rectangle2D; public class ScreenDemo extends Application { public static void main(String[] args) { Application.launch(args); } @Override public void start(Stage primaryStage) { primaryStage.setTitle("Hello World"); Group root = new Group(); Rectangle2D screenBounds = Screen.getPrimary().getVisualBounds(); Scene scene = new Scene(root, screenBounds.getWidth(), screenBounds.getHeight()); Button btn = new Button(); btn.setLayoutX(100); btn.setLayoutY(80); btn.setText("Hello World"); btn.setOnAction(new EventHandler() { public void handle(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("Hello World"); } }); root.getChildren().add(btn); primaryStage.setScene(scene); primaryStage.show(); } } Running this program will set the Stage boundaries to visible bounds of the main screen. -- Scott Hommel

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  • model association or controller?

    - by andybritton
    I'm trying to create a rails app that allows users to submit information about their pets. I've come to a point where my knowledge is limited and I don't know enough about what/how this could be done so I'm hoping this will be relatively easy to answer. At the moment I have a model called Pet, this model currently stores basic information like name, picture etc but it also holds more specific data like type, breed, date of birth etc. What I would like to be able to do is create a page that can match various records without having to be manually categorized if that makes sense so a users pet could be matched to other pets with the same breed, age etc. I've read about nested models as I understand this information could be submitted to 2 models in one form but I am not sure whether this could be done directly in a separate controller which would only be visible to users with pets in these matched "groups" if that makes sense. So in essence is it best practice to use 1 table to store all the information and just use a controller to match pets based on rows having the same values or would it be far simpler to have a form with a nested model and link 2 tables together? The main feature needs to be matching without a user having to create a group or categorize pets so the second model would need to add id's to an array instead of just creating more and more rows.

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  • Overlapping text on top menu in Unity 12.04

    - by mercury
    So I'm new to Linux but am basically blown away by Ubuntu 12.04 and could definitely see this becoming my main desktop over time One small annoyance for me is a tendency for the global menu on the top bar to partially over-write the text description of the active window in the top panel. e.g. I focus on the "Ubuntu Software Centre" window which writes out that label in the leftmost corner of the top menu bar. If I then move the cursor up to the top menu bar to access the "file menu", this will partially overwrite the window name leaving just "Ubuntu" visible. This is a little slice of ugliness I don't want to see every day! Much easier on the eye for me would be to display the active window name at the centre of the top panel, using some of that free space and then have the global menu stay where it is, just to the right of the app launcher. I've found a solution to disable the global menu but I would prefer to keep it and instead move (or disable) the active window name in the top panel. Any way to do this?

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  • Web-Service: How much would you charge? [closed]

    - by jacksbox
    I´ve to make an offer to a client who wants me to develope a web-service for him. I have some trouble calculating the pricing - can you help me? Here is a rough outline of the project: It´s a portal on which various artists and entertainers can register and administrate there profile (texts, gallerie, some embedded videos, choose categories and radius of offer, etc). Other user can browse the artists by 3-4 level categories and countries/staats. If someone wants to hire a artists, he can put them in an "shopping-basket" and can mail everyone in his basket. The Artists can answer them with a form on the website (he doesn't get the email of the other person). Users should be able to comment/rate the artists. But if an artists wants this comments/ratings visible on his profile he must pay, and after that, the admin of the site must activate this comments/ratings. So, no more information given, what would you charge (ca.)? Edit: It´ll be developed with php/codeigniter. A .psd design is already there.

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  • Drawing chunks, and positioning the camera

    - by Troubleshoot
    I've seen many questions and answers regarding how to draw tiled maps but I can't really get my head around it. Many answers suggest either loading the visible part of the map, or loading and unloading chunks of the map. I've decided the best option would be to load chunks, but I'm slightly confused as to how this would be implemented. Currently I'm loading the full map to a 2D array of buffered images, then drawing it every time repaint is called. Q1: If I were to load chunks of the map, would I load the map as a whole then draw the necessary chunk(s), or load & unload the chunks as the player moves along, and if so, how? My second question regards the camera. I want the player to be in the centre of the X axis and the camera to follow it. I've thought of drawing everything in relation to the map and calculating the position of the camera in relation to the players coordinates on the map. So, to calculate the camera's X position I understand that I should use cameraX = playerX - (canvasWidth/2), but how should I calculate the Y position? I want the camera to only move up when the player reaches cameraHeight/2 but to move down when the player reaches 3/4(cameraHeight). Q2: Should I check for this in the same way I check for collision, and move the camera relative to the movement of the player until the player stops moving, or am I thinking about it in the wrong way?

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  • TileEntitySpecialRenderer only renders from certain angle

    - by Hullu2000
    I'm developing a Minecraft mod with Forge. I've added a tileentity and a custom renderer for it. The problem is: The block is only visible from sertain angles. I've compaed my code to other peoples code and it looks pretty much like them. The block is opaque and not to be rendered and the renderer is registered normally so the fault must be in the renderer. Here's the renderer code: public class TERender extends TileEntitySpecialRenderer { public void renderTileEntityAt(TileEntity tileEntity, double d, double d1, double d2, float f) { GL11.glPushMatrix(); GL11.glTranslatef((float)d, (float)d1, (float)d2); HeatConductTileEntity TE = (HeatConductTileEntity)tileEntity; renderBlock(TE, tileEntity.getWorldObj(), tileEntity.xCoord, tileEntity.yCoord, tileEntity.zCoord, mod.EMHeatConductor); GL11.glPopMatrix(); } public void renderBlock(HeatConductTileEntity tl, World world, int i, int j, int k, Block block) { Tessellator tessellator = Tessellator.instance; GL11.glColor3f(1, 1, 1); tessellator.startDrawingQuads(); tessellator.addVertex(0, 0, 0); tessellator.addVertex(1, 0, 0); tessellator.addVertex(1, 1, 0); tessellator.addVertex(0, 1, 0); tessellator.draw(); } }

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  • WPF TreeView MouseDown

    - by imekon
    I've got something like this in a TreeView: <DataTemplate x:Key="myTemplate"> <StackPanel MouseDown="OnItemMouseDown"> ... </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> Using this I get the mouse down events if I click on items in the stack panel. However... there seems to be another item behind the stack panel that is the TreeViewItem - it's very hard to hit, but not impossible, and that's when the problems start to occur. I had a go at handling PreviewMouseDown on TreeViewItem, however that seems to require e.Handled = false otherwise standard tree view behaviour stops working. Ok, Here's the source code... MainWindow.xaml <Window x:Class="WPFMultiSelectTree.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WPFMultiSelectTree" Title="Multiple Selection Tree" Height="300" Width="300"> <Window.Resources> <!-- Declare the classes that convert bool to Visibility --> <local:VisibilityConverter x:Key="visibilityConverter"/> <local:VisibilityInverter x:Key="visibilityInverter"/> <!-- Set the style for any tree view item --> <Style TargetType="TreeViewItem"> <Style.Triggers> <DataTrigger Binding="{Binding Selected}" Value="True"> <Setter Property="Background" Value="DarkBlue"/> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="White"/> </DataTrigger> </Style.Triggers> <EventSetter Event="PreviewMouseDown" Handler="OnTreePreviewMouseDown"/> </Style> <!-- Declare a hierarchical data template for the tree view items --> <HierarchicalDataTemplate x:Key="RecursiveTemplate" ItemsSource="{Binding Children}"> <StackPanel Margin="2" Orientation="Horizontal" MouseDown="OnTreeMouseDown"> <Ellipse Width="12" Height="12" Fill="Green"/> <TextBlock Margin="2" Text="{Binding Name}" Visibility="{Binding Editing, Converter={StaticResource visibilityInverter}}"/> <TextBox Margin="2" Text="{Binding Name}" KeyDown="OnTextBoxKeyDown" IsVisibleChanged="OnTextBoxIsVisibleChanged" Visibility="{Binding Editing, Converter={StaticResource visibilityConverter}}"/> <TextBlock Margin="2" Text="{Binding Index, StringFormat=({0})}"/> </StackPanel> </HierarchicalDataTemplate> <!-- Declare a simple template for a list box --> <DataTemplate x:Key="ListTemplate"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/> </DataTemplate> </Window.Resources> <Grid> <!-- Declare the rows in this grid --> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition/> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <!-- The first header --> <TextBlock Grid.Row="0" Margin="5" Background="PowderBlue">Multiple selection tree view</TextBlock> <!-- The tree view --> <TreeView Name="m_tree" Margin="2" Grid.Row="1" ItemsSource="{Binding Children}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource RecursiveTemplate}"/> <!-- The second header --> <TextBlock Grid.Row="2" Margin="5" Background="PowderBlue">The currently selected items in the tree</TextBlock> <!-- The list box --> <ListBox Name="m_list" Margin="2" Grid.Row="3" ItemsSource="{Binding .}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource ListTemplate}"/> </Grid> </Window> MainWindow.xaml.cs /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml /// </summary> public partial class MainWindow : Window { private Container m_root; private Container m_first; private ObservableCollection<Container> m_selection; private string m_current; /// <summary> /// Constructor /// </summary> public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); m_selection = new ObservableCollection<Container>(); m_root = new Container("root"); for (int parents = 0; parents < 50; parents++) { Container parent = new Container(String.Format("parent{0}", parents + 1)); for (int children = 0; children < 1000; children++) { parent.Add(new Container(String.Format("child{0}", children + 1))); } m_root.Add(parent); } m_tree.DataContext = m_root; m_list.DataContext = m_selection; m_first = null; } /// <summary> /// Has the shift key been pressed? /// </summary> private bool ShiftPressed { get { return Keyboard.IsKeyDown(Key.LeftShift) || Keyboard.IsKeyDown(Key.RightShift); } } /// <summary> /// Has the control key been pressed? /// </summary> private bool CtrlPressed { get { return Keyboard.IsKeyDown(Key.LeftCtrl) || Keyboard.IsKeyDown(Key.RightCtrl); } } /// <summary> /// Clear down the selection list /// </summary> private void DeselectAndClear() { foreach(Container container in m_selection) { container.Selected = false; } m_selection.Clear(); } /// <summary> /// Add the container to the list (if not already present), /// mark as selected /// </summary> /// <param name="container"></param> private void AddToSelection(Container container) { if (container == null) { return; } foreach (Container child in m_selection) { if (child == container) { return; } } container.Selected = true; m_selection.Add(container); } /// <summary> /// Remove container from list, mark as not selected /// </summary> /// <param name="container"></param> private void RemoveFromSelection(Container container) { m_selection.Remove(container); container.Selected = false; } /// <summary> /// Process single click on a tree item /// /// Normally just select an item /// /// SHIFT-Click extends selection /// CTRL-Click toggles a selection /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> private void OnTreeSingleClick(object sender) { FrameworkElement element = sender as FrameworkElement; if (element != null) { Container container = element.DataContext as Container; if (container != null) { if (CtrlPressed) { if (container.Selected) { RemoveFromSelection(container); } else { AddToSelection(container); } } else if (ShiftPressed) { if (container.Parent == m_first.Parent) { if (container.Index < m_first.Index) { Container item = container; for (int i = container.Index; i < m_first.Index; i++) { AddToSelection(item); item = item.Next; if (item == null) { break; } } } else if (container.Index > m_first.Index) { Container item = m_first; for (int i = m_first.Index; i <= container.Index; i++) { AddToSelection(item); item = item.Next; if (item == null) { break; } } } } } else { DeselectAndClear(); m_first = container; AddToSelection(container); } } } } /// <summary> /// Process double click on tree item /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> private void OnTreeDoubleClick(object sender) { FrameworkElement element = sender as FrameworkElement; if (element != null) { Container container = element.DataContext as Container; if (container != null) { container.Editing = true; m_current = container.Name; } } } /// <summary> /// Clicked on the stack panel in the tree view /// /// Double left click: /// /// Switch to editing mode (flips visibility of textblock and textbox) /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void OnTreeMouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { Debug.WriteLine("StackPanel mouse down"); switch(e.ChangedButton) { case MouseButton.Left: switch (e.ClickCount) { case 2: OnTreeDoubleClick(sender); e.Handled = true; break; } break; } } /// <summary> /// Clicked on tree view item in tree /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void OnTreePreviewMouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { Debug.WriteLine("TreeViewItem preview mouse down"); switch (e.ChangedButton) { case MouseButton.Left: switch (e.ClickCount) { case 1: { // We've had a single click on a tree view item // Unfortunately this is the WHOLE tree item, including the +/- // symbol to the left. The tree doesn't do a selection, so we // have to filter this out... MouseDevice device = e.Device as MouseDevice; Debug.WriteLine(String.Format("Tree item clicked on: {0}", device.DirectlyOver.GetType().ToString())); // This is bad. The whole point of WPF is for the code // not to know what the UI has - yet here we are testing for // it as a workaround. Sigh... if (device.DirectlyOver.GetType() != typeof(Path)) { OnTreeSingleClick(sender); } // Cannot say handled - if we do it stops the tree working! //e.Handled = true; } break; } break; } } /// <summary> /// Key press in text box /// /// Return key finishes editing /// Escape key finishes editing, restores original value (this doesn't work!) /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void OnTextBoxKeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e) { switch(e.Key) { case Key.Return: { TextBox box = sender as TextBox; if (box != null) { Container container = box.DataContext as Container; if (container != null) { container.Editing = false; e.Handled = true; } } } break; case Key.Escape: { TextBox box = sender as TextBox; if (box != null) { Container container = box.DataContext as Container; if (container != null) { container.Editing = false; container.Name = m_current; e.Handled = true; } } } break; } } /// <summary> /// When text box becomes visible, grab focus and select all text in it. /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void OnTextBoxIsVisibleChanged(object sender, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { bool visible = (bool)e.NewValue; if (visible) { TextBox box = sender as TextBox; if (box != null) { box.Focus(); box.SelectAll(); } } } } Here's the Container class public class Container : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string m_name; private ObservableCollection<Container> m_children; private Container m_parent; private bool m_selected; private bool m_editing; /// <summary> /// Constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="name">name of object</param> public Container(string name) { m_name = name; m_children = new ObservableCollection<Container>(); m_parent = null; m_selected = false; m_editing = false; } /// <summary> /// Name of object /// </summary> public string Name { get { return m_name; } set { if (m_name != value) { m_name = value; OnPropertyChanged("Name"); } } } /// <summary> /// Index of object in parent's children /// /// If there's no parent, the index is -1 /// </summary> public int Index { get { if (m_parent != null) { return m_parent.Children.IndexOf(this); } return -1; } } /// <summary> /// Get the next item, assuming this is parented /// /// Returns null if end of list reached, or no parent /// </summary> public Container Next { get { if (m_parent != null) { int index = Index + 1; if (index < m_parent.Children.Count) { return m_parent.Children[index]; } } return null; } } /// <summary> /// List of children /// </summary> public ObservableCollection<Container> Children { get { return m_children; } } /// <summary> /// Selected status /// </summary> public bool Selected { get { return m_selected; } set { if (m_selected != value) { m_selected = value; OnPropertyChanged("Selected"); } } } /// <summary> /// Editing status /// </summary> public bool Editing { get { return m_editing; } set { if (m_editing != value) { m_editing = value; OnPropertyChanged("Editing"); } } } /// <summary> /// Parent of this object /// </summary> public Container Parent { get { return m_parent; } set { m_parent = value; } } /// <summary> /// WPF Property Changed event /// </summary> public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; /// <summary> /// Handler to inform WPF that a property has changed /// </summary> /// <param name="name"></param> private void OnPropertyChanged(string name) { if (PropertyChanged != null) { PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name)); } } /// <summary> /// Add a child to this container /// </summary> /// <param name="child"></param> public void Add(Container child) { m_children.Add(child); child.m_parent = this; } /// <summary> /// Remove a child from this container /// </summary> /// <param name="child"></param> public void Remove(Container child) { m_children.Remove(child); child.m_parent = null; } } The two classes VisibilityConverter and VisibilityInverter are implementations of IValueConverter that translates bool to Visibility. They make sure the TextBlock is displayed when not editing, and the TextBox is displayed when editing.

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  • Value cannot be null, ArgumentNullException

    - by Wooolie
    I am currently trying to return an array which contains information about a seat at a theate such as Seat number, Name, Price and Status. I am using a combobox where I want to list all vacant or reserved seats based upon choice. When I choose reserved seats in my combobox, I call upon a method using AddRange. This method is supposed to loop through an array containing all seats and their information. If a seat is Vacant, I add it to an array. When all is done, I return this array. However, I am dealing with a ArgumentNullException. MainForm namespace Assignment4 { public partial class MainForm : Form { // private const int totNumberOfSeats = 240; private SeatManager seatMngr; private const int columns = 10; private const int rows = 10; public enum DisplayOptions { AllSeats, VacantSeats, ReservedSeats } public MainForm() { InitializeComponent(); seatMngr = new SeatManager(rows, columns); InitializeGUI(); } /// <summary> /// Fill the listbox with information from the beginning, /// let the user be able to choose from vacant seats. /// </summary> private void InitializeGUI() { rbReserve.Checked = true; txtName.Text = string.Empty; txtPrice.Text = string.Empty; lblTotalSeats.Text = seatMngr.GetNumOfSeats().ToString(); cmbOptions.Items.AddRange(Enum.GetNames(typeof(DisplayOptions))); cmbOptions.SelectedIndex = 0; UpdateGUI(); } /// <summary> /// call on methods ValidateName and ValidatePrice with arguments /// </summary> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="price"></param> /// <returns></returns> private bool ValidateInput(out string name, out double price) { bool nameOK = ValidateName(out name); bool priceOK = ValidatePrice(out price); return nameOK && priceOK; } /// <summary> /// Validate name using inputUtility, show error if input is invalid /// </summary> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <returns></returns> private bool ValidateName(out string name) { name = txtName.Text.Trim(); if (!InputUtility.ValidateString(name)) { //inform user MessageBox.Show("Input of name is Invalid. It can not be empty, " + Environment.NewLine + "and must have at least one character.", " Error!"); txtName.Focus(); txtName.Text = " "; txtName.SelectAll(); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Validate price using inputUtility, show error if input is invalid /// </summary> /// <param name="price"></param> /// <returns></returns> private bool ValidatePrice(out double price) { // show error if input is invalid if (!InputUtility.GetDouble(txtPrice.Text.Trim(), out price, 0)) { //inform user MessageBox.Show("Input of price is Invalid. It can not be less than 0, " + Environment.NewLine + "and must not be empty.", " Error!"); txtPrice.Focus(); txtPrice.Text = " "; txtPrice.SelectAll(); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Check if item is selected in listbox /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> private bool CheckSelectedIndex() { int index = lbSeats.SelectedIndex; if (index < 0) { MessageBox.Show("Please select an item in the box"); return false; } else return true; } /// <summary> /// Call method ReserveOrCancelSeat when button OK is clicked /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void btnOK_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { ReserveOrCancelSeat(); } /// <summary> /// Reserve or cancel seat depending on choice the user makes. Update GUI after choice. /// </summary> private void ReserveOrCancelSeat() { if (CheckSelectedIndex() == true) { string name = string.Empty; double price = 0.0; int selectedSeat = lbSeats.SelectedIndex; bool reserve = false; bool cancel = false; if (rbReserve.Checked) { DialogResult result = MessageBox.Show("Do you want to continue?", "Approve", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo); if (result == DialogResult.Yes) { if (ValidateInput(out name, out price)) { reserve = seatMngr.ReserveSeat(name, price, selectedSeat); if (reserve == true) { MessageBox.Show("Seat has been reserved"); UpdateGUI(); } else { MessageBox.Show("Seat has already been reserved"); } } } } else { DialogResult result = MessageBox.Show("Do you want to continue?", "Approve", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo); if (result == DialogResult.Yes) { cancel = seatMngr.CancelSeat(selectedSeat); if (cancel == true) { MessageBox.Show("Seat has been cancelled"); UpdateGUI(); } else { MessageBox.Show("Seat is already vacant"); } } } UpdateGUI(); } } /// <summary> /// Update GUI with new information. /// </summary> /// <param name="customerName"></param> /// <param name="price"></param> private void UpdateGUI() { lbSeats.Items.Clear(); lbSeats.Items.AddRange(seatMngr.GetSeatInfoString()); lblVacantSeats.Text = seatMngr.GetNumOfVacant().ToString(); lblReservedSeats.Text = seatMngr.GetNumOfReserved().ToString(); if (rbReserve.Checked) { txtName.Text = string.Empty; txtPrice.Text = string.Empty; } } /// <summary> /// set textboxes to false if cancel reservation button is checked /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void rbCancel_CheckedChanged_1(object sender, EventArgs e) { txtName.Enabled = false; txtPrice.Enabled = false; } /// <summary> /// set textboxes to true if reserved radiobutton is checked /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void rbReserve_CheckedChanged_1(object sender, EventArgs e) { txtName.Enabled = true; txtPrice.Enabled = true; } /// <summary> /// Make necessary changes on the list depending on what choice the user makes. Show only /// what the user wants to see, whether its all seats, reserved seats or vacant seats only. /// </summary> /// <param name="sender"></param> /// <param name="e"></param> private void cmbOptions_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (cmbOptions.SelectedIndex == 0 && rbReserve.Checked) //All seats visible. { UpdateGUI(); txtName.Enabled = true; txtPrice.Enabled = true; btnOK.Enabled = true; } else if (cmbOptions.SelectedIndex == 0 && rbCancel.Checked) { UpdateGUI(); txtName.Enabled = false; txtPrice.Enabled = false; btnOK.Enabled = true; } else if (cmbOptions.SelectedIndex == 1) //Only vacant seats visible. { lbSeats.Items.Clear(); lbSeats.Items.AddRange(seatMngr.ReturnVacantSeats()); // Value cannot be null txtName.Enabled = false; txtPrice.Enabled = false; btnOK.Enabled = false; } else if (cmbOptions.SelectedIndex == 2) //Only reserved seats visible. { lbSeats.Items.Clear(); lbSeats.Items.AddRange(seatMngr.ReturnReservedSeats()); // Value cannot be null txtName.Enabled = false; txtPrice.Enabled = false; btnOK.Enabled = false; } } } } SeatManager namespace Assignment4 { class SeatManager { private string[,] nameList = null; private double[,] priceList = null; private string[,] seatList = null; private readonly int totCols; private readonly int totRows; /// <summary> /// Constructor with declarations of size for all arrays. /// </summary> /// <param name="totNumberOfSeats"></param> public SeatManager(int row, int cols) { totCols = cols; totRows = row; nameList = new string[row, cols]; priceList = new double[row, cols]; seatList = new string[row, cols]; for (int rows = 0; rows < row; rows++) { for (int col = 0; col < totCols; col++) { seatList[rows, col] = "Vacant"; } } } /// <summary> /// Check if index is within bounds of the array /// </summary> /// <param name="index"></param> /// <returns></returns> private bool CheckIndex(int index) { if (index >= 0 && index < nameList.Length) return true; else return false; } /// <summary> /// Return total number of seats /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public int GetNumOfSeats() { int count = 0; for (int rows = 0; rows < totRows; rows++) { for (int cols = 0; cols < totCols; cols++) { count++; } } return count; } /// <summary> /// Calculate and return total number of reserved seats /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public int GetNumOfReserved() { int totReservedSeats = 0; for (int rows = 0; rows < totRows; rows++) { for (int col = 0; col < totCols; col++) { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(nameList[rows, col])) { totReservedSeats++; } } } return totReservedSeats; } /// <summary> /// Calculate and return total number of vacant seats /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public int GetNumOfVacant() { int totVacantSeats = 0; for (int rows = 0; rows < totRows; rows++) { for (int col = 0; col < totCols; col++) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(nameList[rows, col])) { totVacantSeats++; } } } return totVacantSeats; } /// <summary> /// Return formated string with info about the seat, name, price and its status /// </summary> /// <param name="index"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string GetSeatInfoAt(int index) { int cols = ReturnColumn(index); int rows = ReturnRow(index); string strOut = string.Format("{0,2} {1,10} {2,17} {3,20} {4,35:f2}", rows+1, cols+1, seatList[rows, cols], nameList[rows, cols], priceList[rows, cols]); return strOut; } /// <summary> /// Send an array containing all seats in the cinema /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public string[] GetSeatInfoString() { int count = totRows * totCols; if (count <= 0) return null; string[] strSeatInfoStrings = new string[count]; for (int i = 0; i < totRows * totCols; i++) { strSeatInfoStrings[i] = GetSeatInfoAt(i); } return strSeatInfoStrings; } /// <summary> /// Reserve seat if seat is vacant /// </summary> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="price"></param> /// <param name="index"></param> /// <returns></returns> public bool ReserveSeat(string name, double price, int index) { int cols = ReturnColumn(index); int rows = ReturnRow(index); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(nameList[rows, cols])) { nameList[rows, cols] = name; priceList[rows, cols] = price; seatList[rows, cols] = "Reserved"; return true; } else return false; } public string[] ReturnVacantSeats() { int totVacantSeats = int.Parse(GetNumOfVacant().ToString()); string[] vacantSeats = new string[totVacantSeats]; for (int i = 0; i < vacantSeats.Length; i++) { if (GetSeatInfoAt(i) == "Vacant") { vacantSeats[i] = GetSeatInfoAt(i); } } return vacantSeats; } public string[] ReturnReservedSeats() { int totReservedSeats = int.Parse(GetNumOfReserved().ToString()); string[] reservedSeats = new string[totReservedSeats]; for (int i = 0; i < reservedSeats.Length; i++) { if (GetSeatInfoAt(i) == "Reserved") { reservedSeats[i] = GetSeatInfoAt(i); } } return reservedSeats; } /// <summary> /// Cancel seat if seat is reserved /// </summary> /// <param name="index"></param> /// <returns></returns> public bool CancelSeat(int index) { int cols = ReturnColumn(index); int rows = ReturnRow(index); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(nameList[rows, cols])) { nameList[rows, cols] = ""; priceList[rows, cols] = 0.0; seatList[rows, cols] = "Vacant"; return true; } else { return false; } } /// <summary> /// Convert index to row and return value /// </summary> /// <param name="index"></param> /// <returns></returns> public int ReturnRow(int index) { int vectorRow = index; int row; row = (int)Math.Ceiling((double)(vectorRow / totCols)); return row; } /// <summary> /// Convert index to column and return value /// </summary> /// <param name="index"></param> /// <returns></returns> public int ReturnColumn(int index) { int row = index; int col = row % totCols; return col; } } } In MainForm, this is where I get ArgumentNullException: lbSeats.Items.AddRange(seatMngr.ReturnVacantSeats()); And this is the method where the array is to be returned containing all vacant seats: public string[] ReturnVacantSeats() { int totVacantSeats = int.Parse(GetNumOfVacant().ToString()); string[] vacantSeats = new string[totVacantSeats]; for (int i = 0; i < vacantSeats.Length; i++) { if (GetSeatInfoAt(i) == "Vacant") { vacantSeats[i] = GetSeatInfoAt(i); } } return vacantSeats; }

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  • Implementing History Support using jQuery for AJAX websites built on asp.net AJAX

    - by anil.kasalanati
    Problem Statement: Most modern day website use AJAX for page navigation and gone are the days of complete HTTP redirection so it is imperative that we support back and forward buttons on the browser so that end users navigation is not broken. In this article we discuss about solutions which are already available and problems with them. Microsoft History Support: Post .Net 3.5 sp1 Microsoft’s Script manager supports history for websites using Update panels. This is achieved by enabling the ENABLE HISTORY property for the script manager and then the event “Page_Browser_Navigate” needs to be handled. So whenever the browser buttons are clicked the event is fired and the application can write code to do the navigation. The following articles provide good tutorials on how to do that http://www.asp.net/aspnet-in-net-35-sp1/videos/introduction-to-aspnet-ajax-history http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/ajaxhistorymanagement.aspx And Microsoft api internally creates an IFrame and changes the bookmark of the url. Unfortunately this has a bug and it does not work in Ie6 and 7 which are the major browsers but it works in ie8 and Firefox. And Microsoft has apparently fixed this bug in .Net 4.0. Following is the blog http://weblogs.asp.net/joshclose/archive/2008/11/11/asp-net-ajax-addhistorypoint-bug.aspx For solutions which are still running on .net 3.5 sp1 there is no solution which Microsoft offers so there is  are two way to solve this o   Disable the back button. o   Develop custom solution.   Disable back button Even though this might look like a very simple thing to do there are issues around doing this  because there is no event which can be manipulated from the javascript. The browser does not provide an api to do this. So most of the technical solution on internet offer work arounds like doing a history.forward(1) so that even if the user clicks a back button the destination page redirects the user to the original page. This is not a good customer experience and does not work for asp.net website where there are different views in the same page. There are other ways around detecting the window unload events and writing code there. So there are 2 events onbeforeUnload and onUnload and we can write code to show a confirmation message to the user. If we write code in onUnLoad then we can only show a message but it is too late to stop the navigation. And if we write on onBeforeUnLoad we can stop the navigation if the user clicks cancel but this event would be triggered for all AJAX calls and hyperlinks where the href is anything other than #. We can do this but the website has to be checked properly to ensure there are no links where href is not # otherwise the user would see a popup message saying “you are leaving the website”. Believe me after doing a lot of research on the back button disable I found it easier to support it rather than disabling the button. So I am going to discuss a solution which work  using jQuery with some tweaking. Custom Solution JQuery already provides an api to manage the history of a AJAX website - http://plugins.jquery.com/project/history We need to integrate this with Microsoft Page request manager so that both of them work in tandem. The page state is maintained in the cookie so that it can be passed to the server and I used jQuery cookie plug in for that – http://plugins.jquery.com/node/1386/release Firstly when the page loads there is a need to hook up all the events on the page which needs to cause browser history and following is the code to that. jQuery(document).ready(function() {             // Initialize history plugin.             // The callback is called at once by present location.hash.             jQuery.history.init(pageload);               // set onlick event for buttons             jQuery("a[@rel='history']").click(function() {                 //                 var hash = this.page;                 hash = hash.replace(/^.*#/, '');                 isAsyncPostBack = true;                 // moves to a new page.                 // pageload is called at once.                 jQuery.history.load(hash);                 return true;             });         }); The above scripts basically gets all the DOM objects which have the attribute rel=”history” and add the event. In our test page we have the link button  which has the attribute rel set to history. <asp:LinkButton ID="Previous" rel="history" runat="server" onclick="PreviousOnClick">Previous</asp:LinkButton> <asp:LinkButton ID="AsyncPostBack" rel="history" runat="server" onclick="NextOnClick">Next</asp:LinkButton> <asp:LinkButton ID="HistoryLinkButton" runat="server" style="display:none" onclick="HistoryOnClick"></asp:LinkButton>   And you can see that there is an hidden HistoryLinkButton which used to send a sever side postback in case of browser back or previous buttons. And note that we need to use display:none and not visible= false because asp.net AJAX would disallow any post backs if visible=false. And in general the pageload event get executed on the client side when a back or forward is pressed and the function is shown below function pageload(hash) {                   if (hash) {                         if (!isAsyncPostBack) {                           jQuery.cookie("page", hash);                     __doPostBack("HistoryLinkButton", "");                 }                isAsyncPostBack = false;                             } else {                 // start page             jQuery("#load").empty();             }         }   As you can see in case there is an hash in the url we are basically do an asp.net AJAX post back using the following statement __doPostBack("HistoryLinkButton", ""); So whenever the user clicks back or forward the post back happens using the event statement we provide and Previous event code is invoked in the code behind.  We need to have the code to use the pageId present in the url to change the page content. And there is an important thing to note – because the hash is worked out using the pageId’s there is a need to recalculate the hash after every AJAX post back so following code is plugged in function ReWorkHash() {             jQuery("a[@rel='history']").unbind("click");             jQuery("a[@rel='history']").click(function() {                 //                 var hash = jQuery(this).attr("page");                 hash = hash.replace(/^.*#/, '');                 jQuery.cookie("page", hash);                 isAsyncPostBack = true;                                   // moves to a new page.                 // pageload is called at once.                 jQuery.history.load(hash);                 return true;             });        }   This code is executed from the code behind using ScriptManager RegisterClientScriptBlock as shown below –       ScriptManager.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(_Default), "Recalculater", "ReWorkHash();", true);   A sample application is available to be downloaded at the following location – http://techconsulting.vpscustomer.com/Source/HistoryTest.zip And a working sample is available at – http://techconsulting.vpscustomer.com/Samples/Default.aspx

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  • Protecting a WebCenter app with OAM 11g - the Webcenter side

    - by Martin Deh
    Recently, there was a customer requirment to enable a WebCenter custom portal application to have multiple login-type pages and have the authentication be handle through Oracle Access Manager (OAM) As my security colleagues would tell me, this is fully supported through OAM.  Basically, all that would have to be done is to define in OAM individual resources (directories, URLS , .etc) that needed to be secured. Once that was done, OAM would handle the rest and the user would typically then be prompted by a login page, which was provided by OAM.  I am not going to discuss talking about OAM security in this blog.  In addition, my colleague Chris Johnson (ATEAM security) has already blogged his side of the story here:  http://fusionsecurity.blogspot.com/2012/06/protecting-webcenter-app-with-oam-11g.html .  What I am going to cover is what was done on the WebCenter/ADF side of things. In the test application, basically the structure of pages defined in the pages.xml are as follows:  In this screenshot, notice that "Delegated Security" has been selected, and of the absence for the anonymous-role for the "secured" page (A - B is the same)  This essentially in the WebCenter world means that each of these pages are protected, and only accessible by those define by the applications "role".  For more information on how WebCenter handles security, which by the way extends from ADF security, please refer to the documentation.  The (default) navigation model was configured.  You can see that with this set up, a user will be able to view the "links", where the links define navigation to the respective page:   Note from this dialog, you could also set some security on each link via the "visible" property.  However, the recommended best practice is to set the permissions through the page hierarchy (pages.xml).  Now based on this set up, the expected behavior is that I could only see the link for secured A page only if I was already authenticated (logged in).  But, this is not the use case of the requirement, since any user (anonymous) should be able to view (and click on the link).  So how is this accomplished?  There is now a patch that enables this.  In addition, the portal application's web.xml will need an additional context parameter: <context-param>     <param-name>oracle.webcenter.navigationframework.SECURITY_LEVEL</param-name>     <param-value>public</param-value>  </context-param>  As Chris mentions in his part of the blog, the code that is responsible for displaying the "links" is based upon the retrieval of the navigation model "node" prettyURL.  The prettyURL is a generated URL that also includes the adf.ctrl-state token, which is very important to the ADF framework runtime.  URLs that are void of this token, get new tokens from the ADF runtime.  This can lead to potential memory issues.  <af:forEach var="node" varStatus="vs"    items="#{navigationContext.defaultNavigationModel.listModel['startNode=/,includeStartNode=false']}">                 <af:spacer width="10" height="10" id="s1"/>                 <af:panelGroupLayout id="pgl2" layout="vertical"                                      inlineStyle="border:blue solid 1px">                   <af:goLink id="pt_gl1" text="#{node.title}"                              destination="#{node.goLinkPrettyUrl}"                              targetFrame="#{node.attributes['Target']}"                              inlineStyle="font-size:large;#{node.selected ? 'font-weight:bold;' : ''}"/>                   <af:spacer width="10" height="10" id="s2"/>                   <af:outputText value="#{node.goLinkPrettyUrl}" id="ot2"                                  inlineStyle="font-size:medium; font-weight:bold;"/>                 </af:panelGroupLayout>               </af:forEach>  So now that the links are visible to all, clicking on a secure link will be intercepted by OAM.  Since the OAM can also configure in the Authentication Scheme, the challenging URL (the login page(s)) can also come from anywhere.  In this case the each login page have been defined in the custom portal application.  This was another requirement as well, since this login page also needed to have ADF based content.  This would not be possible if the login page came from OAM.  The following is the example login page: <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> <jsp:root xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" version="2.1"           xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"           xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"           xmlns:af="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich">   <jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8"/>   <f:view>     <af:document title="Settings" id="d1">       <af:panelGroupLayout id="pgl1" layout="vertical"/>       <af:outputText value="LOGIN FORM FOR A" id="ot1"/>       <form id="loginform" name="loginform" method="POST"             action="XXXXXXXX:14100/oam/server/auth_cred_submit">         <table>           <tr>             <td align="right">username:</td>             <td align="left">               <input name="username" type="text"/>             </td>           </tr>                      <tr>             <td align="right">password:</td>             <td align="left">               <input name="password" type="password"/>             </td>           </tr>                      <tr>             <td colspan="2" align="center">               <input value=" login " type="submit"/>             </td>           </tr>         </table>         <input name="request_id" type="hidden" value="${param['request_id']}"                id="itsss"/>       </form>     </af:document>   </f:view> </jsp:root> As you can see the code is pretty straight forward.  The most important section is in the form tag, where the submit is a POST to the OAM server.  This example page is mostly HTML, however, it is valid to have adf tags mixed in as well.  As a side note, this solution is really to tailored for a specific requirement.  Normally, there would be only one login page (or dialog/popup), and the OAM challenge resource would be /adfAuthentication.  This maps to the adfAuthentication servlet.  Please see the documentation for more about ADF security here. 

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  • AngularJs ng-cloak Problems on large Pages

    - by Rick Strahl
    I’ve been working on a rather complex and large Angular page. Unlike a typical AngularJs SPA style ‘application’ this particular page is just that: a single page with a large amount of data on it that has to be visible all at once. The problem is that when this large page loads it flickers and displays template markup briefly before kicking into its actual content rendering. This is is what the Angular ng-cloak is supposed to address, but in this case I had no luck getting it to work properly. This application is a shop floor app where workers need to see all related information in one big screen view, so some of the benefits of Angular’s routing and view swapping features couldn’t be applied. Instead, we decided to have one very big view but lots of ng-controllers and directives to break out the logic for code separation. For code separation this works great – there are a number of small controllers that deal with their own individual and isolated application concerns. For HTML separation we used partial ASP.NET MVC Razor Views which made breaking out the HTML into manageable pieces super easy and made migration of this page from a previous server side Razor page much easier. We were also able to leverage most of our server side localization without a lot of  changes as a bonus. But as a result of this choice the initial HTML document that loads is rather large – even without any data loaded into it, resulting in a fairly large DOM tree that Angular must manage. Large Page and Angular Startup The problem on this particular page is that there’s quite a bit of markup – 35k’s worth of markup without any data loaded, in fact. It’s a large HTML page with a complex DOM tree. There are quite a lot of Angular {{ }} markup expressions in the document. Angular provides the ng-cloak directive to try and hide the element it cloaks so that you don’t see the flash of these markup expressions when the page initially loads before Angular has a chance to render the data into the markup expressions.<div id="mainContainer" class="mainContainer boxshadow" ng-app="app" ng-cloak> Note the ng-cloak attribute on this element, which here is an outer wrapper element of the most of this large page’s content. ng-cloak is supposed to prevent displaying the content below it, until Angular has taken control and is ready to render the data into the templates. Alas, with this large page the end result unfortunately is a brief flicker of un-rendered markup which looks like this: It’s brief, but plenty ugly – right?  And depending on the speed of the machine this flash gets more noticeable with slow machines that take longer to process the initial HTML DOM. ng-cloak Styles ng-cloak works by temporarily hiding the marked up element and it does this by essentially applying a style that does this:[ng\:cloak], [ng-cloak], [data-ng-cloak], [x-ng-cloak], .ng-cloak, .x-ng-cloak { display: none !important; } This style is inlined as part of AngularJs itself. If you looking at the angular.js source file you’ll find this at the very end of the file:!angular.$$csp() && angular.element(document) .find('head') .prepend('<style type="text/css">@charset "UTF-8";[ng\\:cloak],[ng-cloak],' + '[data-ng-cloak],[x-ng-cloak],.ng-cloak,.x-ng-cloak,' + '.ng-hide{display:none !important;}ng\\:form{display:block;}' '.ng-animate-block-transitions{transition:0s all!important;-webkit-transition:0s all!important;}' + '</style>'); This is is meant to initially hide any elements that contain the ng-cloak attribute or one of the other Angular directive permutation markup. Unfortunately on this particular web page ng-cloak had no effect – I still see the flicker. Why doesn’t ng-cloak work? The problem is of course – timing. The problem is that Angular actually needs to get control of the page before it ever starts doing anything like process even the ng-cloak attribute (or style etc). Because this page is rather large (about 35k of non-data HTML) it takes a while for the DOM to actually plow through the HTML. With the Angular <script> tag defined at the bottom of the page after the HTML DOM content there’s a slight delay which causes the flicker. For smaller pages the initial DOM load/parse cycle is so fast that the markup never shows, but with larger content pages it may show and become an annoying problem. Workarounds There a number of simple ways around this issue and some of them are hinted on in the Angular documentation. Load Angular Sooner One obvious thing that would help with this is to load Angular at the top of the page  BEFORE the DOM loads and that would give it much earlier control. The old ng-cloak documentation actually recommended putting the Angular.js script into the header of the page (apparently this was recently removed), but generally it’s not a good practice to load scripts in the header for page load performance. This is especially true if you load other libraries like jQuery which should be loaded prior to loading Angular so it can use jQuery rather than its own jqLite subset. This is not something I normally would like to do and also something that I’d likely forget in the future and end up right back here :-). Use ng-include for Child Content Angular supports nesting of child templates via the ng-include directive which essentially delay loads HTML content. This helps by removing a lot of the template content out of the main page and so getting control to Angular a lot sooner in order to hide the markup template content. In the application in question, I realize that in hindsight it might have been smarter to break this page out with client side ng-include directives instead of MVC Razor partial views we used to break up the page sections. Razor partial views give that nice separation as well, but in the end Razor puts humpty dumpty (ie. the HTML) back together into a whole single and rather large HTML document. Razor provides the logical separation, but still results in a large physical result document. But Razor also ended up being helpful to have a few security related blocks handled via server side template logic that simply excludes certain parts of the UI the user is not allowed to see – something that you can’t really do with client side exclusion like ng-hide/ng-show – client side content is always there whereas on the server side you can simply not send it to the client. Another reason I’m not a huge fan of ng-include is that it adds another HTTP hit to a request as templates are loaded from the server dynamically as needed. Given that this page was already heavy with resources adding another 10 separate ng-include directives wouldn’t be beneficial :-) ng-include is a valid option if you start from scratch and partition your logic. Of course if you don’t have complex pages, having completely separate views that are swapped in as they are accessed are even better, but we didn’t have this option due to the information having to be on screen all at once. Avoid using {{ }}  Expressions The biggest issue that ng-cloak attempts to address isn’t so much displaying the original content – it’s displaying empty {{ }} markup expression tags that get embedded into content. It gives you the dreaded “now you see it, now you don’t” effect where you sometimes see three separate rendering states: Markup junk, empty views, then views filled with data. If we can remove {{ }} expressions from the page you remove most of the perceived double draw effect as you would effectively start with a blank form and go straight to a filled form. To do this you can forego {{ }}  expressions and replace them with ng-bind directives on DOM elements. For example you can turn:<div class="list-item-name listViewOrderNo"> <a href='#'>{{lineItem.MpsOrderNo}}</a> </div>into:<div class="list-item-name listViewOrderNo"> <a href="#" ng-bind="lineItem.MpsOrderNo"></a> </div> to get identical results but because the {{ }}  expression has been removed there’s no double draw effect for this element. Again, not a great solution. The {{ }} syntax sure reads cleaner and is more fluent to type IMHO. In some cases you may also not have an outer element to attach ng-bind to which then requires you to artificially inject DOM elements into the page. This is especially painful if you have several consecutive values like {{Firstname}} {{Lastname}} for example. It’s an option though especially if you think of this issue up front and you don’t have a ton of expressions to deal with. Add the ng-cloak Styles manually You can also explicitly define the .css styles that Angular injects via code manually in your application’s style sheet. By doing so the styles become immediately available and so are applied right when the page loads – no flicker. I use the minimal:[ng-cloak] { display: none !important; } which works for:<div id="mainContainer" class="mainContainer dialog boxshadow" ng-app="app" ng-cloak> If you use one of the other combinations add the other CSS selectors as well or use the full style shown earlier. Angular will still load its version of the ng-cloak styling but it overrides those settings later, but this will do the trick of hiding the content before that CSS is injected into the page. Adding the CSS in your own style sheet works well, and is IMHO by far the best option. The nuclear option: Hiding the Content manually Using the explicit CSS is the best choice, so the following shouldn’t ever be necessary. But I’ll mention it here as it gives some insight how you can hide/show content manually on load for other frameworks or in your own markup based templates. Before I figured out that I could explicitly embed the CSS style into the page, I had tried to figure out why ng-cloak wasn’t doing its job. After wasting an hour getting nowhere I finally decided to just manually hide and show the container. The idea is simple – initially hide the container, then show it once Angular has done its initial processing and removal of the template markup from the page. You can manually hide the content and make it visible after Angular has gotten control. To do this I used:<div id="mainContainer" class="mainContainer boxshadow" ng-app="app" style="display:none"> Notice the display: none style that explicitly hides the element initially on the page. Then once Angular has run its initialization and effectively processed the template markup on the page you can show the content. For Angular this ‘ready’ event is the app.run() function:app.run( function ($rootScope, $location, cellService) { $("#mainContainer").show(); … }); This effectively removes the display:none style and the content displays. By the time app.run() fires the DOM is ready to displayed with filled data or at least empty data – Angular has gotten control. Edge Case Clearly this is an edge case. In general the initial HTML pages tend to be reasonably sized and the load time for the HTML and Angular are fast enough that there’s no flicker between the rendering times. This only becomes an issue as the initial pages get rather large. Regardless – if you have an Angular application it’s probably a good idea to add the CSS style into your application’s CSS (or a common shared one) just to make sure that content is always hidden. You never know how slow of a browser somebody might be running and while your super fast dev machine might not show any flicker, grandma’s old XP box very well might…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in Angular  JavaScript  CSS  HTML   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • What's up with OCFS2?

    - by wcoekaer
    On Linux there are many filesystem choices and even from Oracle we provide a number of filesystems, all with their own advantages and use cases. Customers often confuse ACFS with OCFS or OCFS2 which then causes assumptions to be made such as one replacing the other etc... I thought it would be good to write up a summary of how OCFS2 got to where it is, what we're up to still, how it is different from other options and how this really is a cool native Linux cluster filesystem that we worked on for many years and is still widely used. Work on a cluster filesystem at Oracle started many years ago, in the early 2000's when the Oracle Database Cluster development team wrote a cluster filesystem for Windows that was primarily focused on providing an alternative to raw disk devices and help customers with the deployment of Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC). Oracle RAC is a cluster technology that lets us make a cluster of Oracle Database servers look like one big database. The RDBMS runs on many nodes and they all work on the same data. It's a Shared Disk database design. There are many advantages doing this but I will not go into detail as that is not the purpose of my write up. Suffice it to say that Oracle RAC expects all the database data to be visible in a consistent, coherent way, across all the nodes in the cluster. To do that, there were/are a few options : 1) use raw disk devices that are shared, through SCSI, FC, or iSCSI 2) use a network filesystem (NFS) 3) use a cluster filesystem(CFS) which basically gives you a filesystem that's coherent across all nodes using shared disks. It is sort of (but not quite) combining option 1 and 2 except that you don't do network access to the files, the files are effectively locally visible as if it was a local filesystem. So OCFS (Oracle Cluster FileSystem) on Windows was born. Since Linux was becoming a very important and popular platform, we decided that we would also make this available on Linux and thus the porting of OCFS/Windows started. The first version of OCFS was really primarily focused on replacing the use of Raw devices with a simple filesystem that lets you create files and provide direct IO to these files to get basically native raw disk performance. The filesystem was not designed to be fully POSIX compliant and it did not have any where near good/decent performance for regular file create/delete/access operations. Cache coherency was easy since it was basically always direct IO down to the disk device and this ensured that any time one issues a write() command it would go directly down to the disk, and not return until the write() was completed. Same for read() any sort of read from a datafile would be a read() operation that went all the way to disk and return. We did not cache any data when it came down to Oracle data files. So while OCFS worked well for that, since it did not have much of a normal filesystem feel, it was not something that could be submitted to the kernel mail list for inclusion into Linux as another native linux filesystem (setting aside the Windows porting code ...) it did its job well, it was very easy to configure, node membership was simple, locking was disk based (so very slow but it existed), you could create regular files and do regular filesystem operations to a certain extend but anything that was not database data file related was just not very useful in general. Logfiles ok, standard filesystem use, not so much. Up to this point, all the work was done, at Oracle, by Oracle developers. Once OCFS (1) was out for a while and there was a lot of use in the database RAC world, many customers wanted to do more and were asking for features that you'd expect in a normal native filesystem, a real "general purposes cluster filesystem". So the team sat down and basically started from scratch to implement what's now known as OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster FileSystem release 2). Some basic criteria were : Design it with a real Distributed Lock Manager and use the network for lock negotiation instead of the disk Make it a Linux native filesystem instead of a native shim layer and a portable core Support standard Posix compliancy and be fully cache coherent with all operations Support all the filesystem features Linux offers (ACL, extended Attributes, quotas, sparse files,...) Be modern, support large files, 32/64bit, journaling, data ordered journaling, endian neutral, we can mount on both endian /cross architecture,.. Needless to say, this was a huge development effort that took many years to complete. A few big milestones happened along the way... OCFS2 was development in the open, we did not have a private tree that we worked on without external code review from the Linux Filesystem maintainers, great folks like Christopher Hellwig reviewed the code regularly to make sure we were not doing anything out of line, we submitted the code for review on lkml a number of times to see if we were getting close for it to be included into the mainline kernel. Using this development model is standard practice for anyone that wants to write code that goes into the kernel and having any chance of doing so without a complete rewrite or.. shall I say flamefest when submitted. It saved us a tremendous amount of time by not having to re-fit code for it to be in a Linus acceptable state. Some other filesystems that were trying to get into the kernel that didn't follow an open development model had a lot harder time and a lot harsher criticism. March 2006, when Linus released 2.6.16, OCFS2 officially became part of the mainline kernel, it was accepted a little earlier in the release candidates but in 2.6.16. OCFS2 became officially part of the mainline Linux kernel tree as one of the many filesystems. It was the first cluster filesystem to make it into the kernel tree. Our hope was that it would then end up getting picked up by the distribution vendors to make it easy for everyone to have access to a CFS. Today the source code for OCFS2 is approximately 85000 lines of code. We made OCFS2 production with full support for customers that ran Oracle database on Linux, no extra or separate support contract needed. OCFS2 1.0.0 started being built for RHEL4 for x86, x86-64, ppc, s390x and ia64. For RHEL5 starting with OCFS2 1.2. SuSE was very interested in high availability and clustering and decided to build and include OCFS2 with SLES9 for their customers and was, next to Oracle, the main contributor to the filesystem for both new features and bug fixes. Source code was always available even prior to inclusion into mainline and as of 2.6.16, source code was just part of a Linux kernel download from kernel.org, which it still is, today. So the latest OCFS2 code is always the upstream mainline Linux kernel. OCFS2 is the cluster filesystem used in Oracle VM 2 and Oracle VM 3 as the virtual disk repository filesystem. Since the filesystem is in the Linux kernel it's released under the GPL v2 The release model has always been that new feature development happened in the mainline kernel and we then built consistent, well tested, snapshots that had versions, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8. But these releases were effectively just snapshots in time that were tested for stability and release quality. OCFS2 is very easy to use, there's a simple text file that contains the node information (hostname, node number, cluster name) and a file that contains the cluster heartbeat timeouts. It is very small, and very efficient. As Sunil Mushran wrote in the manual : OCFS2 is an efficient, easily configured, quickly installed, fully integrated and compatible, feature-rich, architecture and endian neutral, cache coherent, ordered data journaling, POSIX-compliant, shared disk cluster file system. Here is a list of some of the important features that are included : Variable Block and Cluster sizes Supports block sizes ranging from 512 bytes to 4 KB and cluster sizes ranging from 4 KB to 1 MB (increments in power of 2). Extent-based Allocations Tracks the allocated space in ranges of clusters making it especially efficient for storing very large files. Optimized Allocations Supports sparse files, inline-data, unwritten extents, hole punching and allocation reservation for higher performance and efficient storage. File Cloning/snapshots REFLINK is a feature which introduces copy-on-write clones of files in a cluster coherent way. Indexed Directories Allows efficient access to millions of objects in a directory. Metadata Checksums Detects silent corruption in inodes and directories. Extended Attributes Supports attaching an unlimited number of name:value pairs to the file system objects like regular files, directories, symbolic links, etc. Advanced Security Supports POSIX ACLs and SELinux in addition to the traditional file access permission model. Quotas Supports user and group quotas. Journaling Supports both ordered and writeback data journaling modes to provide file system consistency in the event of power failure or system crash. Endian and Architecture neutral Supports a cluster of nodes with mixed architectures. Allows concurrent mounts on nodes running 32-bit and 64-bit, little-endian (x86, x86_64, ia64) and big-endian (ppc64) architectures. In-built Cluster-stack with DLM Includes an easy to configure, in-kernel cluster-stack with a distributed lock manager. Buffered, Direct, Asynchronous, Splice and Memory Mapped I/Os Supports all modes of I/Os for maximum flexibility and performance. Comprehensive Tools Support Provides a familiar EXT3-style tool-set that uses similar parameters for ease-of-use. The filesystem was distributed for Linux distributions in separate RPM form and this had to be built for every single kernel errata release or every updated kernel provided by the vendor. We provided builds from Oracle for Oracle Linux and all kernels released by Oracle and for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SuSE provided the modules directly for every kernel they shipped. With the introduction of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux and our interest in reducing the overhead of building filesystem modules for every minor release, we decide to make OCFS2 available as part of UEK. There was no more need for separate kernel modules, everything was built-in and a kernel upgrade automatically updated the filesystem, as it should. UEK allowed us to not having to backport new upstream filesystem code into an older kernel version, backporting features into older versions introduces risk and requires extra testing because the code is basically partially rewritten. The UEK model works really well for continuing to provide OCFS2 without that extra overhead. Because the RHEL kernel did not contain OCFS2 as a kernel module (it is in the source tree but it is not built by the vendor in kernel module form) we stopped adding the extra packages to Oracle Linux and its RHEL compatible kernel and for RHEL. Oracle Linux customers/users obviously get OCFS2 included as part of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, SuSE customers get it by SuSE distributed with SLES and Red Hat can decide to distribute OCFS2 to their customers if they chose to as it's just a matter of compiling the module and making it available. OCFS2 today, in the mainline kernel is pretty much feature complete in terms of integration with every filesystem feature Linux offers and it is still actively maintained with Joel Becker being the primary maintainer. Since we use OCFS2 as part of Oracle VM, we continue to look at interesting new functionality to add, REFLINK was a good example, and as such we continue to enhance the filesystem where it makes sense. Bugfixes and any sort of code that goes into the mainline Linux kernel that affects filesystems, automatically also modifies OCFS2 so it's in kernel, actively maintained but not a lot of new development happening at this time. We continue to fully support OCFS2 as part of Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and other vendors make their own decisions on support as it's really a Linux cluster filesystem now more than something that we provide to customers. It really just is part of Linux like EXT3 or BTRFS etc, the OS distribution vendors decide. Do not confuse OCFS2 with ACFS (ASM cluster Filesystem) also known as Oracle Cloud Filesystem. ACFS is a filesystem that's provided by Oracle on various OS platforms and really integrates into Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). It's a very powerful Cluster Filesystem but it's not distributed as part of the Operating System, it's distributed with the Oracle Database product and installs with and lives inside Oracle ASM. ACFS obviously is fully supported on Linux (Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) but OCFS2 independently as a native Linux filesystem is also, and continues to also be supported. ACFS is very much tied into the Oracle RDBMS, OCFS2 is just a standard native Linux filesystem with no ties into Oracle products. Customers running the Oracle database and ASM really should consider using ACFS as it also provides storage/clustered volume management. Customers wanting to use a simple, easy to use generic Linux cluster filesystem should consider using OCFS2. To learn more about OCFS2 in detail, you can find good documentation on http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2 in the Documentation area, or get the latest mainline kernel from http://kernel.org and read the source. One final, unrelated note - since I am not always able to publicly answer or respond to comments, I do not want to selectively publish comments from readers. Sometimes I forget to publish comments, sometime I publish them and sometimes I would publish them but if for some reason I cannot publicly comment on them, it becomes a very one-sided stream. So for now I am going to not publish comments from anyone, to be fair to all sides. You are always welcome to email me and I will do my best to respond to technical questions, questions about strategy or direction are sometimes not possible to answer for obvious reasons.

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  • Minecraft Style Chunk building problem

    - by David Torrey
    I'm having some problems with speed in my chunk engine. I timed it out, and in its current state it takes a total ~5 seconds per chunk to fill each face's list. I have a check to see if each face of a block is visible and if it is not visible, it skips it and moves on. I'm using a dictionary (unordered map) because it makes sense memorywise to just not have an entry if there is no block. I've tracked my problem down to testing if there is an entry, and accessing an entry if it does exist. If I remove the tests to see if there is an entry in the dictionary for an adjacent block, or if the block type itself is seethrough, it runs within about 2-4 milliseconds. so here's my question: Is there a faster way to check for an entry in a dictionary than .ContainsKey()? As an aside, I tried TryGetValue() and it doesn't really help with the speed that much. If I remove the ContainsKey() and keep the test where it does the IsSeeThrough for each block, it halves the time, but it's still about 2-3 seconds. It only drops to 2-4ms if I remove BOTH checks. Here is my code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using OpenTK; using OpenTK.Graphics.OpenGL; using System.Drawing; namespace Anabelle_Lee { public enum BlockEnum { air = 0, dirt = 1, } [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential,Pack=1)] public struct Coordinates<T1> { public T1 x; public T1 y; public T1 z; public override string ToString() { return "(" + x + "," + y + "," + z + ") : " + typeof(T1); } } public struct Sides<T1> { public T1 left; public T1 right; public T1 top; public T1 bottom; public T1 front; public T1 back; } public class Block { public int blockType; public bool SeeThrough() { switch (blockType) { case 0: return true; } return false ; } public override string ToString() { return ((BlockEnum)(blockType)).ToString(); } } class Chunk { private Dictionary<Coordinates<byte>, Block> mChunkData; //stores the block data private Sides<List<Coordinates<byte>>> mVBOVertexBuffer; private Sides<int> mVBOHandle; //private bool mIsChanged; private const byte mCHUNKSIZE = 16; public Chunk() { } public void InitializeChunk() { //create VBO references #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine ("Initializing Chunk"); #endif mChunkData = new Dictionary<Coordinates<byte> , Block>(); //mIsChanged = true; GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.left); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.right); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.top); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.front); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.back); //make new list of vertexes for each face mVBOVertexBuffer.top = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.left = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.right = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.front = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.back = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Initialized"); #endif } public void GenerateChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Generating Chunk"); #endif for (byte i = 0; i < mCHUNKSIZE; i++) { for (byte j = 0; j < mCHUNKSIZE; j++) { for (byte k = 0; k < mCHUNKSIZE; k++) { Random blockLoc = new Random(); Coordinates<byte> randChunk = new Coordinates<byte> { x = i, y = j, z = k }; mChunkData.Add(randChunk, new Block()); mChunkData[randChunk].blockType = blockLoc.Next(0, 1); } } } #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Generated"); #endif } public void DeleteChunk() { //delete VBO references #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Deleting Chunk"); #endif GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.left); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.right); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.top); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.front); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.back); //clear all vertex buffers ClearPolyLists(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Deleted"); #endif } public void UpdateChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Updating Chunk"); #endif ClearPolyLists(); //prepare buffers //for every entry in mChunkData map foreach(KeyValuePair<Coordinates<byte>,Block> feBlockData in mChunkData) { Coordinates<byte> checkBlock = new Coordinates<byte> { x = feBlockData.Key.x, y = feBlockData.Key.y, z = feBlockData.Key.z }; //check for polygonson the left side of the cube if (checkBlock.x > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x - 1, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.left); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.left); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.x < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x + 1, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.right); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.right); } if (checkBlock.y > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y - 1, checkBlock.z)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.bottom); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.bottom); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.y < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y + 1, checkBlock.z)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.top); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.top); } if (checkBlock.z > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z - 1)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.back); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.back); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.z < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z + 1)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.front); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.front); } } BuildBuffers(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Updated"); #endif } public void RenderChunk() { } public void LoadChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Loading Chunk"); #endif #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Deleted"); #endif } public void SaveChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Saving Chunk"); #endif #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Saved"); #endif } private bool IsVisible(int pX,int pY,int pZ) { Block testBlock; Coordinates<byte> checkBlock = new Coordinates<byte> { x = Convert.ToByte(pX), y = Convert.ToByte(pY), z = Convert.ToByte(pZ) }; if (mChunkData.TryGetValue(checkBlock,out testBlock )) //if data exists { if (testBlock.SeeThrough() == true) //if existing data is not seethrough { return true; } } return true; } private void AddPoly(byte pX, byte pY, byte pZ, int BufferSide) { //create temp array GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, BufferSide); if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.front) { //front face mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.right) { //back face mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.top) { //left face mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.bottom) { //right face mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.front) { //top face mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.back) { //bottom face mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } } private void BuildBuffers() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Building Chunk Buffers"); #endif GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.front); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.front.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.back); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.back.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.left); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.left.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.right); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.right.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.top); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.top.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer,0); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Buffers Built"); #endif } private void ClearPolyLists() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Clearing Polygon Lists"); #endif mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Clear(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Polygon Lists Cleared"); #endif } }//END CLASS }//END NAMESPACE

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  • Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

    - by Roger Hart
    Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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