Usability Testing Videos

The Better Desktop project has released a set of usability videos, showing testing of Linux applications and operating system. To quote:-

Better Desktop is a project dedicated to sharing usability data with Linux developers. Over the past year, we have conducted many usability tests on different parts of the KDE and GNOME desktops. We created this site to serve as a place where developers can watch videos of these tests. Here you will find over 200 videos of people using Mozilla Firefox, Evolution, Open Office, Banshee, F-Spot and other applications.

Decision Based Design

Dan Brown has written about designing an Information Architecture around the sets of Decisions that the end-users will be making, in GreenOnions.com on 14-Oct-2005. To quote:-

One of the major conclusions of my work in content management theory is that systems designed to enforce decisions will fail. Consider a workflow system that forces users through the same process, regardless of circumstances. Invariably, situations arise where the basic workflow doesn’t hold — authors are absent from work, editors don’t have the right expertise to review a document, the content demands a new structure. Yet the majority of content management systems — indeed, most business systems — prevent humans from accommodating these scenarios because they are confined by the rules imposed by the computer.

I realized that computers should stick with what they’re good at — serving up information — and humans should be allowed to do what they’re good at — making decisions about day-to-day situations.

Scripting XML processing using E4X

DJ Walker-Morgan has written about "Scripting XML processing using E4X" in Builder.AU on 11 October 2005. To quote:-

Enter E4X, ECMAScript for XML, a BEA developed extension to the JavaScript language (known as ECMAScript in its formal standardised form). JavaScript is having something of a resurgence thanks to the AJAX methodology using it to add dynamic elements to web pages. E4X extends ECMAScript by making XML a native type within the language and as easy to work with as other native types.

More signifigantly, E4X capability is implemented in the Mozilla Rhino JavaScript engine using the XmlBeans library. Rhino in turn is a part of the reference implementation of JSR 223 (Scripting for Java Platform) which is in turn incorporated into Java 6, codenamed "Mustang".

JBoss salivates over Drools

Ingred Marson has written in CNET News.com on 11-Oct-2005, about the addition of a business rules engine, known as Drools, to the JBOSS open-source software stack. To quote:-

Marc Fleury, founder and chief executive of JBoss, said in his keynote speech at JBoss World in Barcelona that his company decided to work with Drools after repeated customers requests.

Fleury claimed that Drools is a "very mature project" that is already used by a number of large companies, including Japanese car manufacturer Toyota and French bank Societe Generale. JBoss has hired the founder and lead developer of Drools and will start offering product support and services in the first quarter of 2006.

Drools is a rules engine implementation based on the Rete pattern-matching algorithm. The Drools team has adapted the algorithm so it can be used with object-oriented programming languages such as Java, Python and Groovy.

On My Wish List (USB Keys, bootable and other fancy uses)

Clive Wright has written about uses of USB Keys in his column "The Edge" in The Age on 11-Oct-2005. To quote:-

Perhaps the most useful thing you can do with a 256MB USB key is to use it as the next generation Windows XP rescue platform.

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As we were writing this, we read a story about the music industry beginning to look at USB drives as a medium for selling album collections. They're clearly following the lead of Magnatune.

JSR 283: Content Repository for JavaTM Technology API Version 2.0

"JSR 283: Content Repository for JavaTM Technology API Version 2.0" in "The Java Community Process(SM) Program" on 19-Sep-2005. To quote:-

Since this JSR represents an enhancement of JSR-170, the same general goals apply to this JSR as to JSR-170 (from the JSR-170 proposal):

The aim is to produce a content repository API that provides an implementation independent way to access content bi-directionally on a granular level. A content repository is a high-level information management system that is a superset of traditional data repositories. A content repository implements ?content services? such as: author based versioning, full textual searching, fine grained access control, content categorization and content event monitoring. It is these ?content services? that differentiate a content repository from a data repository. Many of today?s (web) applications interact with content repositories in various ways. This API proposes that content repositories have a dedicated, standard way of interaction with applications that deal with content. This API will focus on transactional read/write access, binary content (stream operations), textual content, full-text searching, filtering, observation, versioning, handling of hard and soft structured content.