It’s such a common bit of code that crops up everywhere. That familiar line:
if(var != null && var.length() > 0)
There are slight variations. Some use
if(var != null && !var.equals(""))
They’re all there to achieve the same purpose: check whether a String is null or empty.
I’ve always thought “there really should be a utility for this”, but written the code anyway. Today, when faced with repeating this pattern about 10 times, I finally decided to go and check the Apache Commons Lang javadoc and see if there was such a method. Unsurprisingly, there is, in StringUtils.
On Sunday, I experienced the joys of Virgin Media’s website. Today, at work, I sat through a presentation of the results of a usability study on the product I work on. What surprised me were not the results of the study, but that our bad documentation and lack of usability seem to come as a shock to so many. Hopefully it will spur some improvement.
Finally, this evening Symantec Client Firewall popped up this handy dialogue
Symantec Usability Fail
The path is very often a field which proves useful; it tells you where the file resides. “setup.exe” is a bit non-specific, and that information would have helped me arrive at a decision. No scrollbars, and no resize conspire to make this a thoroughly useless window.
Looking at the time of the football this afternoon, I spotted that the match was on Sky. For a laugh, I thought I’d have a look to see how much adding sky to my Virgin Media account was (£24 for 1 channel, for reference).
Virgin have an online add-to-your package facility. First you enter your postcode, and then choose your number from a list. Pretty simple from a usability perspective, you’d think?
Virgin Media usability fail
That took me far too long to find my number. I missed it on the first 2 scans through the list.
I was recently browsing my deviantArt gallery, and looking at the old stuff I created during my Trillian skinning days.
I came across the TechNought wallpaper I made. It, of course, turned out nothing like I was intending. But in the end I was very happy with the result.
And although I often look back at things I made years ago and am unimpressed, I still really like it, and am using it once more as my wallpaper. 1024×768 seems too small to me now though.
This year, we stayed on the mainland, and headed along the west coast. We got all the way to Cape Wrath, then headed a little east before being forced to return.
Whilst on the holiday, we visited so many great places, I finally feel compelled to do that which I have been meaning to for a while; create this website and keep track of the places I go, the things I see/do etc etc.
So here it is. It will probably be slow going at first, but fingers crossed, eh.
