Marjan Venema

3,576 reputation

21021

bio	website	bjmsoftware.com
	location	Netherlands
	age	51
visits	member for	2 years, 10 months
	seen	1 hour ago
stats	profile views	391

Software developer since 1985. Started in Cobol, moved via Clipper/VB to Delphi. Delphi developer since 1998. Work(ed) both self-employed and employed.

Questions

When you ask a question, show your effort, provide all the details that will help someone to help you and be precise.

Answers

When you answer a question, don't just paste your code. Your answers will be much better when you explain why your code is doing what it does and how it achieves the asker's goal. It makes it a whole lot easier to follow along. As it is I am much more inclined to up-vote answers that have explanatory text about what the code is doing and why it is written as it is.

Answers that just contain links aren't likely to get an up-vote from me either

Other

Obligatory link whenever someone thinks they are improving security by imposing all sorts of rules on password composition: Password strength

	3,576 reputation	bio	website	bjmsoftware.com	visits	member for	2 years, 10 months
21021 badges		location	Netherlands		seen	1 hour ago

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Aug 24	comment	Keyboard shortcut for “Submit form” Ctrl-Enter is the usual substitute for a new line in these scenario's.
Aug 24	comment	Keyboard shortcut for “Submit form” Yep, new lines could and usually are added by Ctrl-Enter in these circumstances.
Aug 23	answered	Disabled buttons while long running task
Aug 23	comment	What's the best way to handle deleted user accounts on a social app? @ChrisF: Thanks. But don't understand last sentence. Click on any name (changed or not) and you are taken to a link which contains the id? Or do you mean that the names of deleted users are non-clickable? Just like they are when questions are migrated for contributions by people who do not have an account on the target site?
Aug 23	comment	What's the best way to handle deleted user accounts on a social app? @ChrisF: Out of interest: is the account only renamed, or is its id also changed (and all relations cascade updated)? Otherwise I'd still be able to tell who it was if I had recorded the userid/name combination...
Aug 22	comment	What does “end-user” mean? Programmers are end-users too. For one they are end-users of their development environments. If they use a library to take care of something they do not want to code themselvs, they are the end-users of that library. The end-user of the software these programmers create couldn't care less how they put it together or how easy or difficult your library is to use.
Aug 21	comment	Does changing behaviour of a link depending on which mouse button is clicked affects usability? Actually, GMail does it the other way round. If you simply click Compose or Reply, it opens up in the current tab. If you shift-click Compose or Reply it opens up in a new window.
Aug 21	awarded	Yearling
Aug 20	comment	What is the best format for a countdown timer? I would expect urgency to be conveyed better by smaller numbers? E.g. 2 days instead of 48 hours? Are you saying that in these cases the "days" weigh more heavily than the "hours"? If there is any, I would be interested in reading any research into how words and numbers affect each other in this respect.
Aug 19	answered	Using color range to make votes and replies stand out (without confusing the user in the process)?
Aug 19	comment	What is the best format for a countdown timer? Most people don't think in hours but in days. So why would you want to make them calculate when you (the computer) can do it for them? 36 hours requires calculation to be meaningful, whereas 1 day 12 hours conveys meaning immediately.
Aug 18	comment	Giving my clients all of the information… or not @DalexL: When using location awareness, just be sure that it is clear the price is dependent on the location. The mobile user may not be at the location of the car when using the site...
Aug 17	comment	How should I design an MS Access application for Excel users? And they are right. I didn't say it was an ideal solution. But if you want to avoid the drawbacks you mentioned...
Aug 17	comment	How should I design an MS Access application for Excel users? No, I mean using Access as the database and using Excel as the front end to that database.
Aug 17	comment	How do I improve the readability of body text? @PhilipW: I think Readability is fine. Even according to the wikipedia article it has to do with ease of reading. Font choice (both face and size), while primarily addressing legibility, plays a big factor in readability and is affected by other layout factors such as line spacing, word spacing, character spacing (please no variable char spacing), line length, raffled or lined-up line-endings, white space between paragraphs, white space between headings and paragraphs etc.
Aug 17	comment	How should I design an MS Access application for Excel users? You are right, Excel as a database is too unwieldy and Access as a replacement can be a lot of work and may not be maintainable when you are gone. Why not marry the two? Excel is perfectly capable to work with MS Access as a "data provider", MS Access is perfectly suited to avoid data duplication and your users get to keep an interface that they know...
Aug 16	comment	How should the Global Network Auto-Login on SE work? @Daniel: yeah, see that now. Missed it at first reading, sorry.
Aug 16	comment	Use of 'she' in scientific literature No, that would be stretching statistics a bit :-). I don't think one can glean "concern" from frequency of use. Maybe they just are a teensy bit OCD in their use of the term...
Aug 16	comment	Use of 'she' in scientific literature Well, I have found that while it may be an attempt to balance out the sexism, another one has been introduced by it. When talking about users not reading messages and other behaviour you need to design around, quite often "she" is used. While when talking about smart design(er)s, or program(mer)s "he" tends to get used... But then again, maybe my gender is making me more sensitive to these things and I don't notice the occurences where it is the other way round... :-)
Aug 16	comment	How should the Global Network Auto-Login on SE work? Don't agree. When I follow a link to another stackexchange site, I do not want to have an account created for me automatically. That would add it to my network profile and that is something I do not want to have "edited" by casual visits to sites I may never visit again. Plus the single sign-in when I do choose to add an account on another sites, makes it a pretty painless process.