Tag Archives: programming

User Centered Usability Design

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This week I’ve learned about usability design centered on the users’ perspective, here are my favorites quotes from the book I’m reading:

“include in the definition of ’users’ those who manage direct users, those who receive products from the system, those who test the system, those who make the purchase decision and those who use competitive products”.

“When we talk about identifying needs, therefore, it is not simply a question of asking people, ‘what do you need?’ and then supply it, because people doesn’t necessary know what is possible” … “Instead, we have to approach it by understanding the characteristics and capabilities of the users, what they are trying to achieve, how they achieve it currently, and whether they would achieve their goals more effectively and have a more enjoyable experience if they were supported differently”.

“it is always tempting for developers to create products they would want to use or similar to what they have done before”.

Pay attention to your users. :)

Zend Debugger + Eclipse + Apache

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I wanted to install the zend debugger with eclipse and apache, and found this spanish tutorial, and want to resume the steps I followed:

I assume you have already installed eclipse 3.3 + pdt.

1. Download the corresponding debugger from: http://downloads.zend.com/pdt/server-debugger/, I use amd64 so I got ZendDebugger-5.2.12-linux-glibc23-x86_64.tar.gz.

2. Untar the file in a directory in your home, I used /home/user/Bin/ZendDebugger.

3. Edit your php.ini file and add the following directives:
zend_extension=/home/<user>/Bin/ZendDebigger/5_2_x_comp/ZendDebugger.so
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1
zend_debugger.expose_remotely=always

4. Verify that the extension is loaded with the simple function:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>

5. Restart eclipse and start debugging!
screenshot-eclipse.png

PHP MSSQL 2005 Problem – Solved

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Trying to make a connection to a MS SQL Server 2005 database from PHP, I always got an error message using the mssql_connect saying:

Warning: mssql_connect() [function.mssql-connect]: Unable to connect to server: {servername}.

I tried several solutions like, updating the ntwdblib.dll (on windows; I had the same error on linux) library, configuring the tcp/ip properties on sqlexpress but nothing I still having the same error.

At the end I changed the ip address on the server name by the respective server name and finally worked!.

So instead of:


$server = 192.168.50.1;
$user = 'sa';
$password = 'sapassword';
$conn = mssql_connect($server, $user, $password);

Changed for:

$server = cmanonserver;