Visual Studio 2010 mockup tools support for dialog editor

 

Image (C) Microsoft.com Visual Studio 2010 has an excellent facility in the dialog editor to design the dialog with a mockup image. The resource editor represents the dialog and controls in DLUs(dialog units) and probably it’s hard to design with “pin-pixel” perfection. In the professional software development, the UIs are not really designed by programmers. It’s the task of UX person. Probably they will come up with a mock-up image designed some UI design tools (like Visio, Adobe Flash, Photoshop etc…) and it’s programmer’s responsibility to implement them in the actual software. I’ve used “SetWindowPos” and “MoveWindow” APIs in my dialog implementation code to layout the controls to match with in the exact specification.

Take an example. If you’re developing an application which showing the news feed from facebook and your application wants to have the same login controls and layout for making it more compatible with facebook. How we can do that? Here I am taking login screen of facebook. ( the home page design is © to facebook.com and I using this only for the demo purpose). Also I’ve not seen any application helps to sign up with facebook. I am just trying to make my mockup image a bit big.

Consider the following image as the mockup image.

Facebook

Now lets load this in the resource editor. You can see the mockup controls at the bottom of the resource editor by default.

  • Enable the mockup image by clicking the checkbox
  • Load mockup image by clicking browse button
  • Change the transparency suitable for you. Also you can change the X,Y offset of the image to be appeared behind dialog.
  • You can also show/hide the image using the check box left to “Mockup Image”.

mockuploaded

Preview the image (Ctrl+T) and see how it appears!

More Info:

 

There’s only one God in Cricket, it’s Sachin Tendulkar

 

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[Image © Associated Press]

Sachin, without any doubts I’d say “The God of Cricket”. The legendry Indian cricketer, master blaster Sachin Tendulkar conquered one more record under his feet, “The first man in this planet ever scored a double century in cricket, which happens to be the world record so far”. On the match again South Africa (24/02/2010), Sachin scored 200 (not out) in just 147 balls which includes 25 fours (that’s even constituted one century), 4 sixes.

Few years back, on most of the matches Sachin was breaking his own records. Later injuries and form out haunted him, many people have said Sachin should stop playing cricket and give opportunity to the new comers. With the right spirit, right form he came back and savior of India in the recent games.

He well deserves every record he owns. Never created by miracle. He fought and won the battles than any other cricketer with great perfection and beauty.

The moment Sachin scored 200, I was on the way back from Office. The excitement could hear from my friends over phone. Dhoni shown a blasting performance in the end, in fact it looked as a selfish play. Even in the last over Dhoni was unable to give strike to Sachin. Everyone blamed him. If Sachin got more strikes in the last 3 overs, his record would be even more intact and unbeatable to anyone. I thought the game would slow up when he was in 170’s and approaching the record but never. Smashe kallis to boundary many times without any fear and careless about records. He still have enough Youth and passion left for cricket. Yet another amazing stuff is that, just after finishing his 200, he came for fielding even from the first over. What a man, what a spirit! Who can do this? As Sanjay Manjarekar said, ‘No one deserved record more than Tendulkar’

Bowing our heads to Sir Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

 

How to Integrate Facebook Chat with iChat, Adium etc.

 

Facebook opened their chat outside the facebook webpage. Now you can chat with your facebook buddies through your instant messaging (IM) client. Facebook using the Jabber/XMPP protocol for connecting with the clients. Which means any IM Client (like Adium,pidgin etc.) can be used to connect with facebook chat.

Audium is the easiest way to install facebook chat. Just give the email/user id and password. Go! You’re in facebook chat.

iChat is more fun with your facebook friend groups (I dint check Adium has this feature or not). But we have to manually enter the server information.

Account Type: Jabber Account

Account Name: yourfacebookid@chat.facebook.com

Password: I don’t know about it :)

Server: chat.facebook.com

Port: 5222

Hope you enjoyed it :)