Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [user-interface]

Questions regarding software interaction with its human users.

203 questions
239
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14 answers

How can a code editor effectively hint at code nesting level - without using indentation?

I've written an XML text editor that provides 2 view options for the same XML text, one indented (virtually), the other left-justified. The motivation for the left-justified view is to help users 'see' the whitespace characters they're using for…
pgfearo
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25 answers

How far should one take e-mail address validation?

I'm wondering how far people should take the validation of e-mail address. My field is primarily web-development, but this applies anywhere. I've seen a few approaches: simply checking if there is an "@" present, which is dead simple but of course…
Lauren
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17 answers

Is it a good idea to design an architecture thinking that the User Interface classes can be replaced by a command line interface?

In Code Complete page 25, it's said that it's a good idea to be able to easily replace the regular user interface classes by a command line one. Knowing its advantages for testing, what about the problems it may bring? Will this extra work really…
Julio Rodrigues
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54
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24 answers

Why do some programmers hate the UI part of the development?

Lots of programmers that I've met always says that "He is not a UI guy." The fact is that development nowadays, whether web, Windows, Linux, OSX, or any other type of development now comprises software with a good-looking UI. Why do so many…
zero95teen
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47
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9 answers

Generally speaking, is it better to make all the functional parts or get UI working first - or a mix of the two?

Generally speaking, is it better to make all the functional parts or get UI working first - or a mix of the two? Assuming you're working on something large, is it generally accepted practice to get all the functional data harvesting blobs working…
RobotHumans
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38
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4 answers

Why is it the caller's responsibility to ensure thread safety in GUI programming?

I have seen, in many places, that it is canonical wisdom1 that it is the responsibility of the caller to ensure you are on the UI thread when updating UI components (specifically, in Java Swing, that you are on the Event Dispatch Thread). Why is…
durron597
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6 answers

How much information about an error should be shown to the user?

Applications can always throw errors. If such an error occurs, the user should be notified, because what he asked the application to do has not succeeded. However, how much information should the user be given? I think most of us agree on not…
Nzall
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34
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7 answers

Why would patient management systems not assert limits for certain biometric data?

I think many people with even a small experience in designing UI/UX to handle user data will be familiar with the perils of putting in input field/database limits for personal data, such as names. However, when it comes to storing biometric data,…
Sphaerica Pullus
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23
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14 answers

What problem does automated user interface testing solve?

We are currently investigating automated user interface testing (we currently do automated unit and integration testing). We've looked at Selenium and Telerik and have settled on the latter as the tool of choice due to its much more flexible…
IThasTheAnswer
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21
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2 answers

How can I separate the user interface from the business logic while still maintaining efficiency?

Let's say that I want to show a form that represents 10 different objects on a combobox. For example, I want the user to pick one hamburguer from 10 different ones that contain tomatoes. Since I want to separate UI and logic, I'd have to pass the…
Uri
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21
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4 answers

JavaScript's prompt, confirm and alert considered "old-fashioned"

Lately I've been developing a web-based management system for a gym. Their previous app was developed in Visual Basic. For the new app, all the front-end scripting uses jQuery, the server is running PHP & MySQL... you know, the typical el-cheapo…
José Tomás Tocino
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18
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12 answers

What are the pros (and cons) of using “Sign in with Twitter/Facebook” for a new website?

Myself and a friend are looking to launch a little forum site. I’m considering using the “Sign in with Facebook/Twitter” APIs, possibly exclusively (a la e.g. Lanyrd), for user login. I haven’t used either of these before, nor run a site with user…
Paul D. Waite
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18
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3 answers

Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like…
Eric Packwood
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17
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4 answers

How to write maintainable, not brittle, unit tests for a GUI?

I tried writing UI unit tests for my GUI apps and I face the problem that, while they work well when I initially write them, they turn out to be brittle and they break whenever the design changes (that is, quite often). I'm struggling to find a set…
mik01aj
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17
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6 answers

Where can I find inspiration for a good user interface?

I've got a mental block as far as desigining the main screen interface for a desktop application that I'm currently upgrading. When I first developed this program the screen resolution was 640 X 480. Today there are multiple screen resolutions out…
Michael Riley - AKA Gunny
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