Genii Weblog


Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Fri 29 Jul 2005, 10:25 AM
This is one of those long requested items by regular readers which was a lot harder to add because of the way I integrated the weblog into the home page.  Nonetheless, it is here at last, so you can search for dating advice or search for whatever you like.  The search link is on the left, and I probably need to do something to make it easier to find.  I tried to add a quick search there, but there is some problem with submitting from Firefox from there, so I will add that later.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 28 Jul 2005, 03:20 PM
I had a long time customer contact me because the screenshot I posted (slightly larger version below) reminded him of a question:
I know Midas is flexible and makes these nested reports, but I need a Top Five style report sorted by the total sales posted by each sales person.  Do I have to pre-process all the sales, sort them and then create a report or can Midas do this somehow?
It took me a few minutes to be sure.  I remember that this used to be one of the (very few) popular features of ReportLogic, our ill fated report writer, but ReportLogic used custom API code to do it.  Then it struck me.  I just need to put the total in the tab label, sort the table tab label, which Midas can do, remove all but the first five rows, then clean up the tab labels.  I added this to the Report It! sample db to be sure I was right.

This added a bit of code, although it took away some code too, as it never creates the nested tabbed table.  It simply creates a tab for each city/state combination, adds totals to their tabs, sorts by tab value, removes extra rows (all 63 of them) and then cleans up the remaining tab labels.  You could do the same thing with collapsed sections, and I might add that as well to the Report It! sample.

Report It! sample db - Create nested tabbed tables before Top 5 processing




Report It! sample db - Create Top Five Performing Cities


Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Thu 28 Jul 2005, 08:28 AM
The screen shots I made for CoexEdit have been very popular (see CoexEdit screenshots), partly because they tell a story and partly because people like eye candy (see Ed Brill's comment on Hannover screenshots near the bottom of this post).  Now, I working with our other products, and creating screenshots for those as well.  The first is the Midas Rich Text LSX, since it is our most popular and long lived product.

My first thought was to have a [screenshot] + Midas = [screenshot] layout, like that below, with each screen shot clickable to get a larger version, but even two examples such as these two below lead to redundancy.  The reports example can lead from the view to several different possible reports, so should each one start with the same view screen shot and lead to the report? Should I skip the A + B = C approach and just show the different reports as screen shots?  

My second thought was that I could turn this into a story the way I did with CoexEdit, but I don't think Midas needs explaining in the same way CoexEdit does.  Should I skip the A + B = C approach and just show the end results?  

Finally, whichever way I do this, do you think I should include snippets of Midas code as screenshots or as a page of textual code?

Any ideas?  Any reaction?

Report It! sample db - Create nested tabbed tables







Report It! sample db - Create clickable summary reports





Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 27 Jul 2005, 09:28 PM
OK, not me, but my nine year old son was one of two grand prize winners for the Shaker Heights Library Fantastical Creatures Essay Contest.  He is going into 5th Grade, and the contest was supposed to be for those going into 6th through 12th, but they said it was fine for him to give it a try.  He wrote a very cool essay about an imaginary fantastical creature (he calls it the Nyred (pronounced Near-Red).  His prize was a brand new copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Pretty cool, and a real keepsake.

I am, of course, bursting with pride, not just for his winning, but for his deciding to enter and having the courage to send in his entry after writing it even with all those "big kids" doing it as well.
 
 
 

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 27 Jul 2005, 12:44 AM
I'm afraid I don't even know what language it is, but on this page:
Inline JPEG image

way down you see the red WYSIWYG?  That is a link to our Web Editors page.

Inline JPEG image

I don't even recognize the date.  Where is the current year 1384, does anybody know?

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Fri 22 Jul 2005, 11:56 AM
I have a customer who reports that GeniiSoft.com has been down for the past couple of days.  The problem is, it is not down and hasn't been down.  There are still lots of visitors from many places.  Here are just the past few minutes from Nedstat, and there are visits from Albania to Greece to London, but this customer still can't get through.  

What could cause that?  I assume it is DNS related, but my knowledge stretches awfully thin in that area.  Any ideas from those wiser and more technical than I am?
Inline JPEG image

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.