My thoughts as an enterprise Java developer.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Dragging in UI and finishing with a quick movement

When the user drags an item to a location, slows movement, and then makes a quick movement right before finishing the drag, the user probably wanted the ending location to be the mouse location right before the quick movement. The user should be prompted for which target they want if the quick movement changed the target. With normal mice there probably isn't often a quick movement but I use a pen (an old version of the Intuos 6x8) for ergonomic reasons and I often have a quick movement as I let go of the button on the pen.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Google Desktop Rocks!

I was developing a new feature and needed to add a new column to the database. I didn't remember the exact syntax so I went to look for a sample on my computer. A few weeks ago I had installed Google Desktop (because I had done some searching using Windows search that took an hour!) so I thought I would give that a try. I knew the command started with alter table so I first typed that into the search. In less than a second it gave 6 results but the first result wasn't useful. So I added quotes around the search words and an instant later it showed 6 results and the first result was exactly what I wanted! I was quite surprised by how fast and easy that was! I even had to show it to my co-worker LaMoine.
Just for comparison we went through the steps of doing it the old way. I knew there was probably an example in a specific directory (5 levels deep) so I clicked on the button for Windows Explorer in the task bar and did 5 clicks to get to that directory. I then did a search for the same term (without the quotes) and it gave the same file as the first result.
It took over 25 seconds compared to under 10 seconds for Google Desktop! That savings in time would be significant in keeping me "in the zone" except that I was so surprised by how good it was that I had to show LaMoine and write this blog entry. Anyway the next time I have to search for something on my computer (when not in an editor) I will be using Google Desktop! (I have no ties to Google -- I am just a satisfied customer).