The Whiteboard

user41796

2:17 AM

@MichaelT - if you call that a diss... That's a compliment.

user55340

2:58 AM

@GlenH7 All depends on one's perspective. (Escape Meta Alt Control Shift what?)

MadKeithV

9:44 AM

@MichaelT Emacs is awesome. All it's missing is a good text editor.

Randy E

10:54 AM

@GlenH7 me and my partner are currently using VS 2010, and thinking of upgrading to 2012. What are some key take-aways when doing the upgrade? Is there anything in 2012 that isn't in 2010 (besides no install shield)? We've tested it but we're looking for a good summary. If you know of a link that does a fair comparison between the two that would be great, all we're finding really is reviews of 2012 rather then a 1:1 comparison.

user41796

12:23 PM

@RandyE - google "kathleen dollard visual studio 2012" to get a wide variety of hits regarding features within 2012. Power Tools has been updated for 2012, and while there is some feature loss it's not too great. I think implied search worked better in VS2010+PT. On the flip side, the ability to see a preview of the code instead of a scroll bar is really slick. Generally speaking, there are enough benefits to outweigh the hideous UI that they switched to.

user41796

Get the Color Theme Editor along with Power Tools. Those two allow you to tweak the UI almost back to a usable aspect. There's another tool out on codeproject that allows you to extract the 2010 icons and insert them into 2012. The first time I tried to use that package, I couldn't get it to work. However, I suspect user error as opposed to the package being borked.

MadKeithV

12:48 PM

I must be the only person in the world (read that in your best Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson voice) that prefers the new VS2012 GUI to the old one then ;-)

Randy E

:@GlenH7 thanks for that info, that's a good string to search in google, quite a few interesting hits. The UI is what I'm afraid of. That and the lack of an installer (having to get the 3rd party app...) but I think we'll probably end up making the move anyway. We're in early stages of development and it pays to be up to date...plus we're a member of BizSpark so the price isn't holding us back. I will do more reading and give it a test drive.

Rachel

1:34 PM

Is the edit done to this question enough to get it reopened?

5

Q: How should I create lo-fi (non-interactive) UI prototypes?

I'm currently working on throwing together some basic prototypes, partly to gather requirements and partly to design the final UI. At the moment I'm trying building up the screen using Post-it notes, with yellow notes for information and pink for actions (buttons or menus). The idea being that ...

prototyping

The initial version was a poll (What do you use to create non-interactive UI prototypes), so I changed it to be a more solidi question for SE (What is the recommended way for developers to efficiently create non-interactive UI prototypes?). I found the answers quite useful a few years ago, as one of them actually lead me to my prototyping tool of choice that I use today (Balsamiq)

user55340

A difficulty that I see is that the answers no longer match the question. Very few of them even glance upon the 'why'.

Rachel

@MichaelT The "Why" existed there since the beginning of the question, and looks like it was added in some form to most of the answers

Although to be fair, mine didn't include a "Why" (it's edited to include one now) :) Honestly I don't care about my answer though... I considered deleting it because it was one of the first answers I posted and I don't think it's very good now, however it covers something the other answers don't so I figured I'd leave it and just try expand it into a more complete answer.

Whiteboard: "It makes it easy to change as you make decisions without redrawing the whole thing. It's easy to share with other (nearby) developers. It's easy to annotate using sticky-notes or other colors."

Balsamiq: "almost as quick as using a pen and paper and reusable", and "you can add some degree of interactivity"

The Pencil Project: "nice and simple mockups"

I don't see a lack of Whys in the answers :)

user55340

1:49 PM

Just a preference for a 'why' question to have more than a one sentence answer to try to justify (what amounts to) a one word answer.

MadKeithV

2:00 PM

@Rachel I still struggle when reading that question to tell myself that the 'why' does not apply to 'why make lo-fi prototypes', but to 'why use the method or tool you are suggesting in your answer'.

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