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Fluency with Information Technology

1. Amek Everptat has the male life libertari seiner perei Except for the bold form of Article the result looks like the original document with only new line pairs and no singletons One final replacement Article lt Article completes the task To summarize the Placeholder Technique is used to remove short search strings that are part of longer strings that we want to keep If we removed the short strings directly we d trash the longer strings The idea is to change the longer strings into the placeholder temporarily Of course a single placeholder character can replace the long strings because all we re keeping track of is where the longer string is located With the longer strings replaced by the placeholder it is safe to remove the short strings Once they are gone the longer string can replace the placeholder The substitution expres sions LongStringsContainingInstance s OfAShortString lt Placeholder ShortString Placeholder lt LongStringsContainingInstance s OfAShortString summarize the idea How Often No rule says when to back up Organizations must follow a fixed sched ule but individuals can simply assess the risk of losing everything Hard use makes laptops more likely to fail than desktops very new and very old equipment is more likely to fail than a middle aged system There is always risk 31 32 Chapter 2 CHECKLIST xe What the Digerati Know THINKING ABOUT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
2. Can I customize the technology I m using to make myself more produc tive amp Have I assessed my uses of information technology recently These and similar questions can help us use technology more effectively in our work and in our personal lives Information technology being a means rather than an end should be continually assessed to assure that it is fulfilling those needs as they and the technology change and evolve SUMMARY This chapter began by asking you to think about how people learn to use technology We concluded that people must either be taught technology or figure it out on their own We can figure out software because designers use consistent interfaces metaphors standard functionality and so on We admired how the perfect GUI was perfectly intuitive allowing us to apply our previous experience to learn new applica tions just like the digerati We learned that in computer software nothing will break when we make mistakes so we should explore a new application by clicking around We should also try it out by blazing away knowing that we will mess up when we do we will throw away our work by exiting and starting over getting out and getting back in Exploration is not the only way to learn however Some functions of a new appli cation like the shift select are not obvious so we should watch other users and ask questions You re not a dummy if you ask only if you don t We a
3. 10 ll 12 13 14 15 16 17 Using your favorite browser as an example list the ways it gives feedback about its operation Why is no feedback shown for any calculator operation Describe what you might do when clicking around a new application What is the basic rule of information technology as described in this chapter Find a new application on your computer or the labs computer and click around List ten icons you discover noting which are new and which you ve seen before Compare the standard operations given in Figure 2 6 with those of the application noting which are available and any differences in shortcuts In the stoplight example in Figure 2 11 the goal was to change the color of only the red and green lights Explain how you could do this by changing the red and green lights at the same time but without using select with shift Using the application you chose in Exercise 10 spend 20 minutes blazing away Begin with a blank instance and try to use the application Try to do as much as possible Print your final result A basic conclusion described as form follows function can be drawn from the fact that information technology is governed by the laws of nature What is it If you are a PC user find a Macintosh If you are a Mac user find a Windows PC Explore the machine looking under the Start or Apple menus Check out the control panels Start up
4. COMPUTERS CAN DO ALMOST O0 EVERYTHING O NOTHING Limits to Computation Can Computers Think Acting Intelligently Creativity Universality Practical Consequences of Universality Macintosh versus PC Faster and Slower How Tough Can IT Be COMMENCEMENT A Fluency Summary The Ideas of IT Fluency s Detail Spectrum Lifelong Learning License to Drive FETC RA 1 WHAT THE DIGERATI KNOW Exploring the Human Computer Interface gt Learn to teach yourself new applications gt Acquire the skills of experienced users learning Lt objectives e Use consistent interfaces e Expect feedback from applications e Don be afraid to make mistakes e Try new applications gt Understand that process follows function gt Learn the basics of text searching including the Placeholder Technique gt Learn to think abstractly about technology Digerati is a new word for knowledgeable in digital technology analogous to literati PERHAPS the most uncomfortable part of being an inexperi enced computer user is the suspicion that everyone but you innately knows how to use technology They seem to know intuitively what to do in any situation Maybe you think they have all come from the same alien planet that computers have Of course experienced users aren t really born knowing how to use computers They have learned through experience what to expect and how to respond in most situations In this chapter we rev
5. Figure 2 5 Notice that now the direction of the pointer is reversed Clicking on that triangle again hides the information m m i Figure 2 4 Audio CD player GUI with track numbers hidden DER Figure 2 5 Audio CD player GUI displaying the track numbers Close Boxes Any open window can be closed and most GUIs give the user a way to do it with a click On the Macintosh clicking on the empty box 1 in the upper left corner closes the window On Windows systems clicking on the X button E in the upper right corner closes the window A Windows application ends when its main or only win dow is closed but if just its subwindows are closed the application generally contin ues running These are just a few of the metaphors software designers use There are many oth ers and beginning users should get to know them quickly The point here is that com puter applications have many operations in common and software designers try to make interfaces look familiar so they can take advantage of the users knowledge and experience Experienced users look for metaphors and when they find a new metaphor they add it to their repertoire Mac or PC Is the Macintosh better than the PC or vice versa The question usually sets off a pointless argument Some people wrongly conclude that the system they don t know must be very different and hard to use In fact the two systems are much more alike than they are different sharing the co
6. picturing the inside of the lock we can imagine that the top of the knob is attached to the bar When the knob is pointing left the bar must be pulled back that is unlocked When the knob is positioned to the right the bar is extended so the door is locked Recognizing this means that we can see at a distance whether the door is locked or unlocked It s not a big deal but it might save us from getting up off the sofa and trying the door to see if it s locked lt ian Shel PoS i ee f l fn io gt 2 is Y iagi F p FJ eat es gal a b c Figure 2 13 Deadbolt lock a The external view b Internal components unlocked c Internal components locked Thinking about how the deadbolt works allows us to see at a glance whether the door is locked or not EXERCISES 1 How do people learn to use technology 2 Many computers come with a calculator application Find the calculator application on your computer and list the GUI features that help people use it 3 The audio CD players in Figures 2 2 and 2 3 are from the same generation operating systems Compare and contrast how the two designs help the user understand how it operates 4 Describe the standard icons for the following operations Cut Copy Paste Print Save Search and Help 5 What are the shortcuts for the standard operations New Open Save Print Cut Copy Paste Undo and Exit 36 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know
7. seem very fast If you see an operation that you do not understand ask what the person did Rather than thinking that you are a dummy most people will be eager to show off their know how Many an obscure feature trick or shortcut is learned while looking over the shoulder of an experienced user so it pays to pay attention Toggling shift select Generally when you use shift select one or more additional items will be selected because the click is applied to an unselected item But what hap pens when you use shift select on an item that is already selected It deselects that item only leaving all other items selected This property of changing to the opposite state selecting if not selected deselecting if selected is called toggling It is a handy feature in many situations A BASIC IT PRINCIPLE PROCESS FOLLOWS FUNCTION A theme of this chapter is that computer systems are very similar because the designers of software want users to figure out on their own how a system works based on prior experience To help this self instruction process designers use consistent interfaces and suggestive metaphors Designers could be extremely creative thinking up wild new interfaces and unusual operations Such GUIs might be quite interesting and very cool rather like video games with a practical purpose but it might take years to learn and be effective with such tools Few of us can take that much time to learn So instead designers make use of t
8. substitution expres sions for ourselves In the find and replace of an application as in Figure 2 12 simply leave the replacement string empty Editing Text Using Substitution 29 The formatting is a mess Displaying the text with the formatting characters reveals cee riche TALL bomen beings r bonr ierant egali daniyan nghas hiyi enera tiiis tinl dhii a e aae ef bratherbesd _ 1 Ale d Eeyore is enn thed toad he nieba and feedom serforth tthe Tecbrasion wid distr oP amy kind ach moe coke een brge eligon polia eruther opusiom minao mahanga o_o property bathe other sani s Puavhenisore eatre hier helle ake athe baia political jun schononal arinena saree a thecam or emir iehi h agers belongs achether it be independere trari an H gmemiag ertmler imiy lher nare a a ola le I Eryo hee the nighe e Jiban and seri nad pern We see that extra spaces and new line characters have been inserted when we import ed the text into the document Clearly removing the groups of eight leading blanks is simple Replace them with nothing When writing the substitution expression we express nothing with the Greek letter epsilon which is called the empty string that is the string with no let ters eoeeeeee CE Removing the leading blanks was easy because they are only at the beginning of the lines and nowhere else Correcting the new line characters is more o
9. treads ons another in a spini of brotherhood 4orticle T Everyone i emiled te all the ngher and freed oct forth in the Deckaration withret dissection of amy king rechas rare colo om bogie mligi poleical or other opinion mama or msia coupes property birth or other rahs Furthermnr no dettinctios shall be made on the bass of political peocticeal or inmenoticeal sth of the comniry or entary to which a perma belongs whether af be independen trust nom acll gowrmamg of tinker may other liaii et rreren Artide i Pvayone bai the nighe to liie beberty aad inamay of perso But when you copy the first three articles and paste them into your document they come out looking this way Armele 1 Al hrn betes ort bam fese mid equal in deny and nebas They ae endowed with amn and onsa tid shoddact hoards one aber in a gri of broiherhead Actcle 2 Everyone is entitled tall the right and ferder oct froth in bei Debiri wether dia of any kind wach as mer color sea biia relion pelineal ar other opion erial or social ongin property birth or other riana Furthermore mo brineta iall be meade on the basis of political pinsdbsnenal or diera san of the country or texritury to which a person belougs whether i be indepemene mast dwieli governing or mjer aay other limitations sovereign Acticle 3 Everyone bem the night im hfe liberty and sccunty of perm Notice that epsilon is used only for writing out
10. was a 7 improvement and that El Guerrouj s speed was about a factor of 2 times faster than the speed of an aver age person There is a difference between expressing improvement as a percentage and expressing improvement as a factor We find a factor of improvement by dividing the new rate by the old rate So to find El Guerroujs improvement over Bannister we divide their rates 16 134 15 038 to get 1 07 Percentages are found by dividing the amount of change by the old rate 16 134 15 038 15 038 0 07 and multiply ing the result by 100 Some people find the percentage confusing so we use the simpler factor of improvement method El Guerrouj was a factor of 1 07 times faster than Bannister and about a factor of 2 times faster than an average person Exercises 35 OPERATIONALLY ATTUNED S larry In our daily lives we use hundreds of devices systems and processes For some of these like the ignition on the car we quickly learn which way to turn the key because it only turns in one direction We don t think about how it works Using it becomes a habit Other gadgets are more complicated and we have to pay attention to how they work One example is a deadbolt lock which moves a metal bar from the door to the doorframe so the door can t be opened Thinking how the lock works can remind us whether the door is locked or not Look at Figure 2 13 and notice which way the knob is turned By
11. ABSTRACTLY We began this chapter promising to reveal some secrets known to expert computer users And we have Now it is not so miraculous that the digerati appear to know how to use software they have never seen before Then we observed that application software systems must behave in ways gov erned by the functions they provide Form follows function was our description of it So creating and editing keyboard input requires a small set of basic operations that all editing and word processing systems must have The same applies to browsers spread sheets and so forth This means that when we learn specific software for a specific task we are learning both its core operations common to all software for that applica tion as well as the bells and whistles of its GUI So once we ve learned one vendor s software for a task we should expect to be able to use anothers for the same task without much difficulty Our introduction to the core ideas of searching and substitu tion illustrated the point We learned the basics without needing to look at any specific software In addition we learned some useful skills for example the Placeholder Technique But the chapter s topic really concerned information technology more abstractly We considered how people learn technology generally and information technology in particular Because no one is born knowing how to use technology users must learn each new tool The best case is when the traini
12. TABLE OF CONTENTS chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3 chapter 4 chapter 5 TERMS OF ENDEARMENT Defining Information Technology Why Know Just the Right Word in Information Technology A Few Basic Terms about Hardware A Few Basic Terms about Software A Few Basic Terms about Ideas Analytical Thinking WHAT THE DIGERATI KNOW Exploring the Human Computer Interface Learning about Technology Learning to Use the Graphical User Interface Basic Metaphors of Software Standard GUI Functionality Learning through Feedback Learning More Advanced GUI Features A Basic IT Principle Process Follows Function Searching Text Using Find Editing Text Using Substitution Thinking about Information Technology Abstractly MAKING THE CONNECTION The Basics of Networking How Have Networked Computers Changed Our Lives Communication Types Some Comparisons How Networking Takes Place or The Medium of the Message The World Wide Web The Internet and the Web MARKING UP WITH HTML A Hypertext Markup Language Primer Marking Up a Web Page with HTML Structuring Documents Marking Links with Anchor Tags Including Pictures with Image Tags Handling Color in HTML Handling Lists in HTML Handling Tables in HTML HTML Wrap Up SEARCHING FOR TRUTH Locating Information on the WWW Searching in All the Right Places How Is Web Page Information Organized How Is Web Site Information Organized ii Table of Contents chapter 6 chap
13. a minute it rarely takes more time to study the GUI s graphics amp Open each window to see what operations are available amp Determine the purpose of icons and controls amp Pass the cursor over the icons and controls with the balloon help or whats this turned on for a short explanation of what each does Pirat freshest Hits Figure 2 10 Customized Audio CD player GUI Learning Through Feedback Clicking around is the process of figuring out what operations are available with a software application without having to read the manual or getting instructions from someone else Software manuals can be dull reading and hard to use But clicking around is not going to make them obsolete Manuals they re mostly online and called Help are still necessary and useful Clicking around works because a we come to the new software with technological experience and b software designers try to build on what we know When the new software works like the last software did we already know how to use it The manual is usually needed only to understand advanced features that may not be obvious Ironically the manual is most useful once we have become experienced users not as beginners Returning to the audio CD GUI of Figure 2 4 when we click on the down trian gle we see the track list shown in Figure 2 5 As new users of this software we may not immediately understand what the list is for espec
14. another vendors software for an application we know well we should expect to use its basic features immediately e When we are frustrated by one vendors software we should try another vendors software Using our experience with the first system we will learn the new system quickly And voting by buying better software should help improve overall software quality In summary because the function controls how a system works different software implementations must share basic characteristics You don t need to feel tied to a par ticular software system that you learned years ago You should experiment with new systems you already know the basic functional behavior Searching Text Using Find 23 SEARCHING TEXT USING FIND The idea that form follows function has another advantage It lets us learn how to use software without referring to any specific software system Of course we must focus only on the fundamental processing behavior rather than on the bells and whistles of the GUI but learning in this way lets us apply what we know to any implementation We demonstrate this kind of learning with text searching Many applications let us search text Often called find text searching is found in word processors browsers to look through the text of the current page email read ers operating systems and so on Find is typically available under the Edit menu because locating text is often the first step in editing it In ca
15. asked for If the operation can be performed instantaneously that is so fast that a person would not have to wait for it to be finished the user interface will simply show that the oper ation is complete When the operation is an editing change the proof that it is done is that the user can see the revision For other tasks highlighting shading graying or some other color change or underlining tell the user that the operation is done The most familiar form of feedback is the indication that the computer is continu ing to perform a time consuming operation As the operation is being carried out the cursor is replaced with an icon that shows elapsing time On Windows systems the icon is an hourglass E and on Macintosh systems it is a wristwatch with a hand advancing amp Applications can also give the user custom feedback Claris software uses a circle divided into quarters two white and two black that revolves The file transfer application Fetch turns the cursor into a running dog When the completion time can be predicted accurately some applications show a bar that is filled as the operation progresses Often these displays tell you when 100 will be reached Finally when an operation is processing a series of inputs a completion count tells the user how many are done and how many remain 18 Chapter 2 TIP CHECKLIST gt What the Digerati Know Following Protocol Our normal interactive us
16. d F and so on Thats a New month ready to receive its content Table 2 1 Standard Shortcuts These common shortcut letters for standard software operations combine with Command for Mac OS and Control for Windows TIP Learning Through Feedback 17 J Document Microsofts Word Be Edt ew esi Font Joo Table Hah Bis Helm Dae ea Se ao BO mm Tries Mow Roman 12 Ble fhe o aA Ae Choe text ber ook a a Ba Ina ial Figure 2 9 Selected text in a word processing application Be Selective New users are often confused when a menu operation they want to use is not available that is it is shown in gray Often this is because the operation requires the user to select something and nothing is selected For example the computer can not perform Copy until you have told it what you want copied See Figure 2 9 for a sample of selected and unselected text LEARNING THROUGH FEEDBACK A computer is the user s assistant ready to do whatever it is told to do It is natural that an assistant should report back to the person who made a request and tell him or her whether the job was done This is especially true when the assistant is a computer and therefore not very clever because the person needs to know that the task was done and when to give the next command A user interface will always give the user feedback about whats happenin Feedback takes many forms depending on what operation a user has
17. does not have a shortcut to prevent accidents Notice that double click two clicks with the left mouse button often means Open Notice that New under the File menu creates a blank instance What is blank information To understand this fundamental idea notice that all information is grouped into types based on its properties So photographs digital images are a type of information and among the properties of every image is its length and width in pixels Monthly calendars are a type of information with properties such as the number of days year and day of the week on which the first of each month falls Text documents are another type and the length of a document in characters is one proper ty Any piece of information image month or document is an instance of its type Your term paper is an instance of the document type of information June 2003 is an instance of calendar type information To store or process information of a given Tle Emeis Edit Funchons type the computer sets up a structure to record all of the properties and store its New N Cut X content A new or blank instance is Open O Copy C simply the structure without any proper ties or content filled in As an example Save 5 Paste V oe imagine a blank monthly calendar as ae p Select All A shown in Figure 2 8 seven columns of Quit Q Undo Z squares headed with the days of the Redo Y week a place to enter the month name Fin
18. e dar the nahr m life Dhery md secan of person The new lines that remain are the ones to be removed so we need to replace them with nothing dee The resulting text has no new line characters left Acmudie L Al haan betiga are bon Tree e gaa anig he The yar endowed wih masanda ami oldar ewar ee another ina gineod brotherhood Aike I Every i eiaded to allea iti iel free donne et Toriras Diela wibo daimia asy kind maha mr color sex mge eain politionl or sheron maHa araia orin property birthorother rame F Panbermora m dotincticer hdl benie onthe hatra political junini ienaa rth aihe wmi or emar e Wch iperen belorgi whether othe indepeodent mis nema aovenire durier anther limimnonod serrian AA mole Beervone has the mahr o He libaryask srmn paran BITS amp BYTES Editing Text Using Substitution Finally replace the placeholder with the desired character string oe do which gives us Amole All haman bineta bonfires ands gad iien and nighn Thep ar dwed wih masman and baiard onmeanather ima spinor brotherhbond Anek I Everposse ented o allibera hired ree do at orth raae Li chanel in aay boat ie beet rede odor en Lier pHini ar etheropuon maaori property birtherother iani Penha odi soto shied basear the bani s of polina jinsia inenmmtaai sime ofthe cmai or miari which a person belongs whederi be imdepenieni inu non oeclf govereing render an other hmin orverrigny
19. e formatting tags to the user but they are there For example the balcony scene from Shakespeare s Romeo and Juliet appears in print as SCENE II Capufer s orchard Enter Romeo Romeo He jesis at scars that newer felt a woirnd imie appears moe al oe wines Bai soft what light through yonder window breaks Te ia the ari and Juliet nthe ann Tags will be needed often in our study so backslash will be used here for the tags of our generic applica tion to distinguish them from later uses in HTML the OED digitization and XML Searching Text Using Find But it might be stored in the computer as SHE Ii tl bal gt Capulet s orchard lt tal gt LetCentec talsEntert Italthenes t1Centert tl tal honed t 1 ital she jacta ab atare thats ever fale wound Right SfealeJollet appaare above dba wd do w t Teal gt lt Right gt Bue aoft what light through yonder window k reaks JTt is the east tand dulietsis the sun The word processor s tags surround the italic text lt Ital gt lt Ital gt and the text to be centered lt center gt lt Center gt or right justified lt Right gt lt Right gt The user typed the other characters and they are the ones we are interested in now These characters include the text we see as well as formatting characters we can t see spaces tabs 9 and new lines 1 Because these characters control formatting and have no
20. e of computers alternates between our telling the computer to do something and the computer doing it If it can t finish immediately it gives us feedback showing the operation is in progress If its done we can see the effects of the command Be attuned to this protocol Notice the effect the command had If nothing seems to be happening the computer is waiting for you to give a command Clicking Around When the digerati encounter new software they expect a consistent interface They expect basic metaphors standard operations and feedback They automatically look for these essential features of the interface as they begin exploring The purpose of the exploration is to learn what the software can do Exploring a user interface will be called clicking around It involves noting the basic facilities presented by the GUI and checking each menu to see what operations are available So for example the experienced users response to seeing a slide bar is to slide it to see what happens On the Mac audio CD GUI shown in Figure 2 2 when we slide the bar up and down the speaker icon above it shows more and larger or fewer and smaller white arcs to its right We guess these arcs stand for more or less sound coming from the speaker If the CD is playing we ll also notice that the volume increases or decreases Either way we know that this is the volume control Hints for a Fast Start When you re using software for the first time Take
21. e right side We don t type the arrow in applications It is only for our use here Find and Hepkrr Figure 2 12 A word processor s Find and Replace window Unwanted Spaces In the last section we noted that multiple spaces separating words in a text compli cates searching for multiword strings Substitution can fix the multiple spaces in a document problem Simply collapse double spaces to single spaces That is if the search string is and the replacement string is a search and replace over the whole document results in all pairs of spaces becoming single spaces Expressed using the arrow notation the two spaces are replaced by one substitution is Of course in some places such as at the end of sentence we might want double spaces Such cases can be fixed with substitutions of the form 2s Des le amp lee which will restore the sentence ending double blanks after the three punctuation char acters Performing multiple changes on text is a valuable technique 28 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know Multiple Changes One situation where substitution is particularly handy is when text is imported into a document from another source and the formatting becomes messed up For example you find the Articles from the UN s Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Web Artick 1 A bomen bese are bom free and equed m dignety aed mghis They are endoeed with reason amd conscicnos and shouldact
22. eal some secrets of the digerati so you too can join the club The major goal for this chapter is to show you how to think about technology abstractly We do this by asking how people learn technical skills and by considering what the creators of technology expect from us as users This chapter will help you understand 1 that computer systems present consistent interfaces standard metaphors and common operations 2 that computer systems always give feedback while they are working 3 that making mis takes will not break your computer 4 that the best way to learn new computer software is to try it out expecting to make mistakes and 5 that asking questions of other computer users does not mean that you are a dummy but proves that you have an inquiring mind These ideas can help you learn new software quickly A key abstract idea about software is that it obeys fundamental laws of nature This idea can help you in your everyday software usage Finally we demonstrate these laws using basic text searching help ing you to know how to use any vendor s software In other words when you know the basics you can learn any system You too can become one of the digerati LEARNING ABOUT TECHNOLOGY People know innately how to chew cough stand blink smile and so forth However they do not know how to ride a bicycle drive a car use a food processor or start a lawnmower For any tool more complicated than a stick a pe
23. ech and grind to a halt and then plop onto the floor with a clunk When you make a mistake the software may crash but noth ing will actually break Most of the time nothing happens The software catches the mistake without doing anything and displays an error message By paying attention to these messages you can quickly learn whats legal and what isn t Therefore blazing away can be an effective way to learn about the application even if you make mistakes Of course you can still get into a mess by blazing away Creating a mess is often very easy Beginners and experts do it all the time The difference between the two is experts know another basic rule of information technology When stuck start over That may mean exiting the software It may mean rebooting the computer It may sim ply mean undoing a series of edits and repeating them The simple point is that the mess does not have to be straightened out because it didn t cost anything to make it in the first place except for your time Because that time will be chalked up to experi ence or user training there is no harm in throwing the mess out Thus an experi enced user who is blazing away on a new software system will probably exit the soft ware and restart the application over and over without saving anything 19 20 Chapter 2 TER What the Digerati Know Getting Out More Starting over happens so often it is called gettin
24. example the search string That s one small step for a man will not be found in the quote That s one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind from Neil Armstrongs words on stepping onto the surface of the moon because there are two spaces between a and man in the text We could be careful about sep arating words by only one space when we type but often we do not type the text we search For that reason it is a good idea to avoid multiword searches and look instead for single words that apply to the context For example looking for leap or mankind might work because they were probably not used again while Armstrong was on the moon In summary searching is the process of locating a sequence of tokens the search string or in a longer sequence of tokens the text Character searches are usually limit ed to the characters the user has typed though other characters may be there User typed characters can include nonprintable formatting characters like new line Searches look for token sequences and the tokens for example characters are often more primitive than what we can build from them for example words To be suc cessful we must think up search strings so that we find all the matches we re interest ed in EDITING TEXT USING SUBSTITUTION Search and replace also known as substitution is a combination of searching and editing to make corrections in documents The string replacing the
25. f a problem We want to get rid of the new lines that have been inserted within a paragraph and keep the paired new lines that separate the paragraphs But getting rid of single new lines od HE will also get rid of all the new lines How can we keep the paired new lines but remove the singles 30 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know The Placeholder Technique An easy strategy called the Placeholder Technique solves such problems It begins by substituting a placeholder character for the strings we want to keep that is the new line pairs We pick as the placeholder because it doesn t appear anywhere else in the document but any unused character or character string will work The substitution expression is JJ e Our text without the leading blanks and double new lines now looks like this Amice All borer bringrars bom free amiapl indignant righer Theyarerninardwiih pesanerand _ coment occa shoal desewrhron amar heeraer or apurit ef tira heerlen dt Arvele 2 Everyoneta eut the dtaa te entire aed ree deans et fort ior this Tier laren wnb Aisin zeny kinilala moe balor se Liman rele oom pali ical emo ther opinios nertenial ar arial Popy Sith oiher dane Petheee ner distinc an shell berre tar hr baal _ political jurindictenal or aeiterreviienal imr the nuneiny urk miery tuwha pene bekan whether dbe inikepiideni mas iii iel gover aunir am mher Baimionoi sover igan Airmhe 4 Everyon
26. g out and getting back in that it has become the subject of some geek humor A mechanical engineer an electrical engineer and a computer engineer are camped at Mt Rainier In the morning they pack up to leave and get into their car but it doesn t start The ME says The starter motor is broken but I can fix it and he gets out of the car The EE says No way Its the battery but I know what to do and she gets out of the car The CE says while getting out of the car Now lets get back in Usually we are working with new software because we want to do something in particular so it pays to focus on getting that task done This means that we should blaze away on those operations that will help us complete the task It is not neces sary to become an expert only to complete the task Indeed it is common for Fluent users to know only the basics of the software systems they don t use very often And because they are not regular users they often forget how the applications work and have to click around and blaze away all over again It is obvious that if you are blazing away and throwing away your efforts when you get into trouble you shouldn t spend too much time creating complicated inputs For example if the software asks for text input and gives you space for several para graphs just enter Test text and go on exploring Once you understand the sys tem you can focus on using the software pr
27. he fact that consistency and familiarity help users learn quickly But a much deeper principle is also at work here Designers are not just using good sense developing software that behaves in a consistent way They are also obeying laws of nature Logic puts limits on what information can be recorded or what opera tions can be computed The laws governing information and computation are too complicated for this textbook but they are just as fundamental as the laws that govern the structure of the atom 22 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know These laws tell us an important fact about information technology The task not the specific software implementation dictates the behavior of a solution We should expect different software implementations for a task to be similar not only because designers want them to be easy to learn but also because they perform the same basic functions We describe this property by the design maxim form follows function When we say form follows function in software we do not mean that the sys tems look alike Application software from different makers can look and feel very dif ferent even though it is for the same task The form we are talking about is the way the basic operations of the software work Similar Applications Have Similar Features So for example word processors all do the same sorts of things in similar ways no matter which software company created them The differences and there a
28. hey are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness To find unalienable rights in a text that uses the original capitalization we would have to ignore the case Search facilities will be case sensitive if case is impor tant to the application For example word processors are usually case sensitive but operating systems may not be If the search is case sensitive the user will have the option to ignore case Format Tags Characters are stored in the computer as one continuous sequence The characters are of two types the keyboard characters that we type and possibly formatting information added by the software application Because every system uses a different method for the formatting information and because it is usually not important to the search anyhow we will show the formatting information here using our own invented tags Tags are abbreviations in paired angle brackets such as lt Ital gt that describe additional information about the characters in this case that they should be printed in italics Tags generally come in pairs so that they can enclose text like paren theses The second of the pair is like the first except with a slash or backslash in it For example to show that the word Enter should be printed in italics a soft ware application might represent it as lt Ital gt Enter lt Ital gt The application won t show thes
29. ially if the real CD players we are familiar with do not have a play list But by clicking around we notice either that Track 1 can be selected like text or that when we move the cursor across the text it changes into the I beam text editing cursor Both tell us that we can add text Or perhaps we just guess that the track list doesn t need a large text box reading Track 1 and so on so there must be some other reason for it No matter how clicking around cues us we discover that we can edit the entries We figure out from the edit ing capability that we can customize the title and songs on each track as shown in Figure 2 10 Clicking around is exploration and is not guaranteed to lead us to all the fea tures of the software We may need to experiment and test repeatedly or give up and try again later But we are bound to learn something If we don t the software product designer has undoubtedly failed to some extent Blazing Away After familiarizing ourselves with a software application by clicking around the next step is to try it out We use the term blazing away for trying out features assertively perhaps without a clear idea of what they will do Blazing away can be difficult for beginning users because they re afraid something will break if they make a mistake A basic rule of information processing is Nothing will break If you make a mistake the software is not going to scre
30. le Macintosh computers when a user inserts an audio CD into the computers CD drive the graphical user interface GUI shown in Figure 2 2 appears on the screen A GUI pronounced gooey is the visual display through which users interact with computer programs This GUI appears on the screen because the Macintosh s operating system noting that a CD has just been inserted into the drive and recognizing that it is an audio CD assumes the user wants to listen to it So it starts the software that plays audio CDs displays the GUI to find out what the user wants to play and waits for a response As first time users of this software we look at the GUI wondering what the soft ware does and how to use it There is an online users manual but we will not need it The GUI tells the whole story The GUI shows us a familiar picture of a CD player complete with digital readout in green LCD numerals metallic buttons with the stan dard icons and so on No physical CD player looks exactly like this one for example the CD slot is the wrong size but it is so much like a real CD player that anyone who has seen one recognizes this picture immediately So we guess that pressing the button with the Play icon will make the computer play the CD But because this is a GUI we can t really press a button Instead the action analogous to pressing is clicking with the mouse We know this from experience Clicking on the button with the icon f
31. le who use an application intensively The shortcut key combination can be set or changed in most systems Other kinds of shortcuts for menu entries include icons such as the printer and disk icons in a Windows toolbar Picture Object WA Hyperlink ChrH k STANDARD GUI FUNCTIONALITY There are some operations that almost all personal computer applications do That is whether the information is text or spreadsheets or circuit diagrams or digitized photo graphs the fact that it is information stored in a computer means that certain opera tions will be available For example the information should be printable It should be possible to save the information to a file open a file containing the saved information create a new instance and so on You should expect to find all of these functions in almost every software application To help users the standard operations are grouped usually with other operations specific to the application into two menus labeled File and Edit refer back to Figure 2 6 Generally the operations under the File menu apply to whole instances of the information being processed by an application For example in word processing the instance is the entire document being processed so File menu items treat a whole doc ument You can expect to see the following items under the File menu New Create a blank instance of the information Open Locate a file in permanent storage containi
32. lso learned that form follows function so although software systems for a given task might look different there are basic operations that they must have in common If we look past the flash to these basic operations we can easily learn to use another vendors software for the task To demonstrate this we studied searching and substitution which are available with many applications And we learned the Placeholder Technique for editing text Finally we discussed thinking abstractly about technology We must continually con sider whether the technology we are using is helping us whether we can be more pro ductive with the technology we use and whether we need to expand our uses of tech nology 34 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know zz E Te MILE RUN moments great When Moroccan miler Hicham El Guerrouj broke the world record on July 7 1999 news reports trumpeted that he smashed eclipsed and shattered the world s record set six years earlier by Noureddine Moreceli of Algeria El Guerrouj had run a mile in an astonishing 3 minutes 43 13 seconds an impressive 1 26 seconds faster than Moreceli The descriptions were not hyperbole People around the world truly marveled at El Guerroujs accomplishment even though 1 26 seconds seems like a small amount of time To put El Guerrouj s run into perspective notice that 45 years had passed since Eng lishman Roger Bannister attracted world atte
33. m the menu or pressing Cancel That is clicking on Cancel is the same as never having looked at the menu in the first place no matter how much information you ve entered Menus in most consumer software give more information that just the item list They tell you which operations are available which ask you for more input and which have shortcuts Look at Figure 2 6 as you read these descriptions Which Operations Are Available Unlike restaurant menus that are printed and reused occasionally requiring the server to indicate that certain items are not available GUI menus are created each time they are opened Because of this they tell you exact ly which operations are available An operation may not apply in every context For example Paste is not available if nothing has been Cut or Copyed Operations that are available are usually shown in a solid color and operations that are not available are shown in a lighter color or gray as shown for the Paste operation in Figure 2 6 Unavailable items are not highlighted as the cursor passes over them and of course they cannot be selected Is More Input Needed Some operations need further specification or additional input Menu items that need more information might have a triangle pointer at the right end of the entry Selecting such an item pops up a menu with the additional choices Making a selection causes the operation to be performed unless it requires still more selectio
34. ncepts of this chapter and much much more Any competent user of one can quickly and easily learn to use the other And every Fluent user should Basic Metaphors of Software 13 File Edit New Cer l H indo Ctrl i Open Ctrl o Repeat Cerl y Close Copy Cerl ec save Cerl s Cut Ctrl x Save AS 46 Page Setup Clear Peint Eerlt e Select All Print Preview Exit Figure 2 6 Generic File and Edit menus Menus The main way users interface with software is through menu choices Menus list the operations that the software can do A menu groups operations that are similar Menus are either listed across the top of a window in which case they are pull down or drop down menus or they appear wherever the mouse is pointing when a mouse button is clicked in which case they are pop up menus Both menu types work the same way Pulling down or popping up a menu shows a list of operations Sliding the mouse down the list causes the items to be highlighted as it passes over them and clicking or releasing the mouse button selects a menu item If the software has enough informa tion it does the operation immediately and the window closes If not it asks the user for more information by opening a new window Sometimes it keeps asking for infor mation opening more windows but eventually it will get enough information and the operation will be performed At any time during this dialog you can stop simply by moving your cursor away fro
35. ng an instance of the information and read it in Standard GUI Functionality Close Stop processing the current instance of the information but keep the pro gram available to process other instances Save Write the current instance to permanent storage such as the hard disk or floppy disk using the previously given name and location Save As Write the current instance to permanent storage with a new name or loca tion Page Setup Specify how the printing should appear on paper changes to the setup are rare Print Print a copy of the current instance of the information Print Show the information as it will appear on the printout Exit or Quit End the entire application Notice that lines further subdivide the operations The Edit operations let you make changes within an instance They often involve selection and cursor placement The operations are performed in a standard sequence Select Cut Copy Indicate Paste Revise Selection identifies the information to be moved or copied Selection is usually done by moving the cursor to a particular posi tion and while holding down either the mouse button or keyboard keys moving the cursor to a new position All information between the two positions is selected Highlighting usually color reversal identifies the selection If the information is to be moved it must be removed from its present position with the Cut command other wise Copy saves the selected information Next the ne
36. ng is simply a users previous experience with technology In such cases the technology operates exactly the way users expect Software designers try for this by using familiar interfaces consistency standard metaphors standard operations and so on So one way to explore new software is to click around learning it by applying what we already know and by not being afraid to make mistakes Thinking from the abstract to the specific guided us to using tech nology well The larger lesson of this chapter then is to think about information tech nology abstractly Looking Ahead Thus as members of the digerati we will think about technology abstractly and we re likely to ask such questions as amp What do I have to learn about this software to do my task amp What does the designer of this software expect me to know amp What does the designer expect me to do amp What metaphor is the software showing me amp What additional information does this software need to do its task amp Have I seen these operations in other software CHECKLIST gt gt Summary 33 When we think about information technology in terms of our personal or workplace needs we may ask questions such as amp Is there information technology that I am not now using that could help me with my task amp Am I more or less productive using this technological solution for my task amp
37. ns Some items show they need more input with an ellipsis after 14 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know their name Selecting the item opens a dialog ss window For example in Figure 2 7 Break has Break an ellipsis because the user must give the name of the file to be opened Page Numbers Is There a Shortcut Sometimes it is more convenient to type a keyboard character than Date and Time Symbol to point and click with the mouse A shortcut is a set of keyboard characters shown next to the menu item which when typed invokes the operation as if the menu item had been select ed For example in Microsoft Windows the menu choice Copy has the shortcut Ctrl C and Paste has the shortcut Ctrl V Like the shift key the control key Ctrl is held down while typing the associated character To use the Figure 2 7 Menu showing ellipsis copy shortcut you would hold down the con and triangle pointer trol key and type the letter c Although the character is shown as a capital you should not also press the shift key A control plus character combination is required so that the operating system can distinguish between the menu choice and a plain character The Macintosh uses Command C and Command V for these operations that is the same letters The Command key is labeled with the clover symbol Notice the simi larity between the two operating systems Shortcuts are handy for peop
38. ntion as the first man in recorded history to run a mile in less than 4 minutes His time was 3 59 4 In 45 years the world s best run ners improved the time for the mile by an astonishing 16 27 seconds Notice that El Guerroujs 1 26 seconds was a big part of that As a rate 16 27 seconds represents an improvement from 15 038 miles per hour to 16 134 miles per hour or just over 7 Given that Bannister s world class time was the starting point an improvement in human performance of that size is truly something to be admired How do these world champions compare to average people Most healthy people in their early 20s the age group of the world record setters can run a mile in 7 5 min utes This number includes a majority of the people in the age range and it is approxi mately twice the time El Guerrouj needed To say El Guerrouj is twice as fast as an aver age person is to say he is faster by a factor of 2 This factor of 2 difference is a rough rule for the performance gap between an average person and a world champion for most physical strength activities such as running swimming jumping and pole vaulting The factor of 2 rule tells us that no matter how hard most people try at physical activities their performance can improve by at most twice Of course most of us can only dream of that factor of 2 potential Nevertheless the factor of 2 human standard is an impor tant benchmark When we compared world champions we said there
39. oductively LEARNING MORE ADVANCED GUI FEATURES Clicking around and blazing away are the first steps when learning new software because all you need are your own observation and reasoning skills If you need to know something very specific about the software you can always read the manual or online help However complicated software systems usually have some features that are too advanced or specialized to discover on your own by clicking around but that you would not think to look up They are GUI features most of us don t even know we need The Shift Select Operation An example of this kind of feature is the use of the shift key in selection operations Suppose we want to select the red and green circles of the stoplight in Figure 2 11a so that we can change their color but not the yellow circle Clicking on the red circle selects it Figure 2 11b as shown by the small boxes around the circle Clicking on the green circle selects it and deselects the red circle Figure 2 11c Dragging the cur sor across the red to the green selects all the circles Figure 2 11d But how do we select just red and green without the yellow The problem is that when we select something e g the green circle anything that iel idl bel is already selected e g the red circle becomes deselected auto Figure 2 11 Examples of selection matically We need some way to O 000 Notice that for text shift select usually resul
40. or Play starts the CD playing Because it worked we know that the analogy of the 10 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know wT Audio CD E norte swr eros M Mio RB mm er Figure 2 2 Graphical user interface for one version of an Apple Macintosh audio CD player GUL to a physical CD player is correct and from then on we have a basic idea of how to operate the software We didn t need lessons no one had to help us Understanding the Designer s Intent The use of the physical analogy to help the user understand how to operate the CD player software demonstrates a basic idea of consumer software Like anyone who invents a new tool software designers have to teach users how to operate their inven tions They write manuals explaining all of the softwares slick features but its much better if users can figure them out without studying the manual So software design ers like CD player designers try to pick easy to understand interfaces to their soft ware The designers guessed that a picture of a CD player would be the easiest way to teach the user how to use their software They put a lot of time and effort into making Amazingly the LCD their GUI look real by using LCD numerals metallic buttons the standard button numerals even have the icons a slot for the CD which plays no role but to support the metaphor slider shadow characteristic of volume control and so forth And they guessed right Anyone
41. printable form there is no standard for how they are displayed for example new line is the paragraph symbol T in some systems Users can ask that all the char acters they type be displayed SCEWE I1 Capulet a rorchard al Enter Roms al al Romad Hee jerks ab care thit never palti woud al Juliet sappeare above a8 a window But soft l what light through yonder window breaka al It ig tho aast tande Juliet ia tha sun Because the effects of the formatting are shown it is easy to see where the non printed formatting characters are During a search the software s formatting tags are generally ignored but all of the characters typed by the user are considered Some sys tems do allow tags to be searched by giving you a way to search for formatted text such as italic More Techniques of Searching It gets more complicated when we think of search strings as having a meaning more complex than tokens For example we often look for words though the tokens are characters The problem is that the software searches for token sequences not the more complicated objects that we may have in mind For example searches for the search string you in President John Kennedy s inaugural address turn up five hits And so my follow Americans Ask not what your country will do for you ask what you can do for your country My fellow citizens of the world Ask not what America will do for you but
42. re GUIs Most have graphics that look familiar and we see them in the audio CD player Once we learn these metaphors we can easily guess how to interact with most software The following basic metaphors are universal They are no longer unique to Apple which introduced them in consumer software or Microsoft which gives them their widest distribution They generally have a consistent meaning though sometimes slightly different graphic forms Command Buttons As shown below command buttons usually look like a 3D rectangle highlighted and with an icon or text centered on the button as explained in Chapter 1 This text label names the command To invoke the command that is to tell the software to perform the operation shown on the label we are expected to press the button by clicking on it with the mouse A click is enough it is not a good idea to press down on the mouse button for long time We then get feedback telling us that the button has been clicked usually a change of color shadow or high light some text icon change or other indicators including an audible click Some people think such indicators are obsessive attempts at realism but some form of feedback is essential to effective computer use as explained below Slider Controls The volume control b is a slider control Slider controls set a value from a continu ous range such as volume To move the slider place the mouse pointer on the
43. re always differences often big differences are limited to the look feel and convenience of the software the core functions are still the same Word Perfect Word NotePad Apple Works Simple Text BBText and a dozen other systems give you a basic set of opera tions on text characters They let you move a cursor around the text to select text char acters and to create copy insert and delete characters They let you create an empty file of text systems use the term new as well as save it name it display it and print it All of those features are fundamental to text processing they were not invented by the software companies The same thing applies to browser programs spreadsheet programs drawing pro grams and so on When we learn to use an application from one software maker we learn the core operations for that task and the features and quirks of that vendors product When we use software from a different vendor we should look for and expect to recognize immediately the same basic operations They may have a different look and feel in the second vendors software but they will still be there Taking Advantage of Similarities Recognizing common basic operations in programs that do the same task frees us in at least three ways e When a new version of software is released we should expect to learn it very quickly because it will share the core functions and many of the quirks of the earlier version e When we get
44. rson needs some expla nation about how it works and possibly some training in its use Parents teach their children how to ride bicycles drivers training classes explain to teenagers how to drive safely and most products come with an owners manual Some tools such as portable CD players are so easy to use that most people living in a technological society find their operation obvious They don t need to look at the owners manual For example given a CD and the player and having seen one in use you can guess what the controls do If you didn t know the icons on the buttons as Learning to Use the Graphical Interface Figure 2 1 Controls on a portable CD player shown in Figure 2 1 would probably make little sense And people from technologi cal societies can usually recover from mistakes For example if you insert the CD upside down it wont work so you d turn it over and try again But this doesn t mean that we have any innate technological abilities Instead the fact that you know how a CD player works without being told emphasizes two facts about technology e Our experience using related devices found in our technological society guides us in what to expect e The designers who create these devices know we have that experience and design their products to match what we already know These two facts are key to success with information technology LEARNING TO USE THE GRAPHICAL INTERFACE On certain App
45. s use many clever ways to search text the easiest one to under stand is to think of sliding the search string along the text comparing at each posi tion to see if there is a token match This simply means looking at corresponding token pairs to see if they are the same I have a dream content Notice that spaces are characters too If there is a match then the process stops and you are shown the found instance But if there is no match slide the search string one position along and repeat by the content of cceccccccontent 24 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know If the search string is not found when the end of the text is reached the search stops and is unsuccessful Search facilities typically give you the option to continue searching from the beginning of the text if the search did not start there The search ends where it began when the search string is not found Character searching is easy but to be completely successful we must be opera tionally attuned One complication is that the characters stored in a computer are case sensitive meaning that the uppercase letters such as R and lowercase letters r are different So a match occurs only when the letters and the case are identical A case sensitive search for unalienable rights fails on Jefferson s most famous sentence from the Declaration of Independence We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that t
46. search string is called the replacement string Though substitution can apply to only one occurrence of the search string in the text there is little advantage of search and replace over sim ply searching and editing the occurrence directly The real power of substitution comes from applying it to all occurrences of the search string For example if you typed west coast in your term paper but forgot that regions are usually capitalized it is a simple matter to search for all occurrences of west coast and replace them with West Coast Editing Text Using Substitution 27 Because substitution can be a powerful tool that we want to study closely we will express it in this book using a left pointing arrow lt between the search string and the replacement string The capitalization example is shown as west coast West Coast Such an expression can be read west coast is replaced by West Coast or West Coast substitutes for west coast Another example is Norma Jeane Mortensen Marilyn Monroe describing her 1946 name change when she signed her first movie contract We emphasize that the arrow is only a notation that helps us discuss substitutions in this book When you are using an application a GUI will specify the replacement For example look at Figure 2 12 The two text windows of the GUI correspond to the information on each side of the arrow Find is the left side of the arrow and Replace is th
47. ses where editing doesn t make sense say when looking through a file structure in an operating system find may be listed under the File menu or as a top level application The shortcut for find Command F for Mac OS and Ctrl F for Windows is standard with most appli cations The things to be searched for are called tokens Most often the tokens are simply the letters numbers and special symbols like and amp from the keyboard which are called characters However sometimes we search for composite items such as dates that we want to treat as a whole In such cases the date would be the token not its letters and digits For the purposes of searching tokens form a sequence called the text and the tokens to be found are called the search string One property of the search string is that it can be made of any tokens that could be in the text That is if the text can contain unprintable characters like tab the search string must be allowed to have those characters How Is a Basic Text Search Done To illustrate searching suppose the search string is content and the text is a sen tence from Martin Luther King s I Have a Dream speech I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character Searching begins at the beginning or the current cursor position if there is a cur sor Though computer
48. slider hold down the mouse left button and move in the direction of change The most common sliders are the scroll bars in a window display a usually shown at the right and bottom of the window When a window is not large enough to display all of the information in either the horizontal or vertical direction a scroll bar is shown for each orientation in which information has been clipped So for example for a word processor document that doesn t all fit in a window a scroll bar will let you move up and down or side to side so you can read all the text Often the size of the slider of the scroll bar is scaled to show what proportion of that dimension is displayed Thus if the slider takes up half of the length of the slot about half of the information is displayed if the slider is a tenth of the length of the slot about a tenth of the informa 12 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know tion is shown There are usually directional triangles at one or both ends of the scroll bar clicking on them moves the slider one unit in the chosen direction Triangle Pointers To reduce clutter in a GUI designers hide information until the user needs or wants to see it A triangle indicates the availability of hidden information Clicking on the trian gle reveals the information You can see a triangle in Figure 2 4 E below the Normal button Clicking on the triangle pointer in Figure 2 4 for example would result in
49. ter 7 chapter 8 chapter 9 chapter 10 chapter 11 Searching the Web for Information Search Engines Web Page Information Truth or Fiction Case Study The Burmese Mountain Dog Page SEARCHING FOR GUINEA PIG B A Case Study in Online Research Getting Started on Online Research R Buckminster Fuller Case Study Primary Sources Secondary Sources Case Study Wrap Up Recording the Research Path TO ERR IS HUMAN An Introduction to Debugging Precision What Exactly Do You Mean Debugging What s the Problem Debugging a VCR A Five Step Strategy HTML Butterflies and Bugs A Case Study in Web Page Debugging The Printer Is Not Printing A Classic Scenario in IT System Debugging BITS AND THE WHY OF BYTES Representing Information Digitally Digitizing Presence and Absence PandA of a Phenomenon The Hex System Explained How Text Is Digitized Using the PandA Representation The Oxford English Dictionary A Case Study in Digitization FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS Principles of Computer Operation Computers Instruction Execution Engines Performing Computer Instructions The Fetch Execute Cycle Anatomy of a Computer Integrated Circuits How Semiconductor Technology Works Combining the Ideas A TO Z WITH AUDIO CDS Algorithmic Thinking Algorithm A Familiar Idea The Anatomy of an Algorithm Alphabetizing CDs Looking to the Future BITS ARE IT Representing Multimedia Digitally Digitizing Color Digitizing Pho
50. tographs Digitizing Sound chapter 12 chapter 13 chapter 14 chapter 15 chapter 16 Table of Contents Digitizing a Still Web Picture or Video Digital Representation of Virtual Reality Bits Are It The Bias Free Universal Medium Principle RELATIONSHIPS AND RESPONSIBILITIES Using Computers in Polite Society Improving the Effectiveness of Email Creating Good Passwords Reducing the Risk from Viruses and Worms Protecting Intellectual Property Copyright Ensuring the Reliability of Software TUPLES AND TABLES Principles of Databases You Can Look It Up Defining Tables Operations on Tables Join the Team A TABLE WITH A VIEW Database Queries DB Redundancy Is Bad Very Very Very Bad References and Relationships Building a Database Queries Creating Views Database Systems ER without Trauma HAI Adventure Case Study in Database Design Strategy The Problem Needs Analysis Table Design The Relationships Assessment Implementation Building the Database Viewing the Database Creating the View Queries View Implementation Data Entry Lessons Dives and Climbs eCOMMERCE Interactive Networking for Business The Six Big Challenges of eCommerce The Challenge of Variation iii Table of Contents chapter 17 chapter 18 chapter 19 chapter 20 The Challenge of the Structure of the Setting The Challenge of Separate Events The Challenge of Everything at Once The Challenge of Interoperabilit
51. ts in the selection of all of the text between the cursors previous position and its new position it is not usually possible to select disconnected sequences of text TIP A Basic IT Principle Process Follows Function 21 get around that automatic protocol The solution is to select the first item e g the red circle and then hold down the shift key while selecting the second item e g the green circle Using the shift key during a selection means continue selecting everything that is already selected Because the red circle is already selected when the green is clicked with shift both become selected which is what we wanted to do The click with shift or shift select operation meaning continue to select the item s already selected is a common feature in commercial software although the exact meaning differs with different applications Without knowing about shift select however we probably wouldn t discover it by clicking around or blazing away We would not think to try it We might not even know that we need the feature in the first place So how do we learn about this kind of feature We could take a course on the specific software or read the whole users manual But perhaps the best thing to do is to watch other users when they are using the soft ware As you watch someone using an application that you are also familiar with you should be able to follow what he or she is doing though it might
52. w location for the information is indicated although in many applications the Indicate step is skipped and the pasted information is placed in a standard position The Paste copies the information from temporary memory into the indicated position Because a copy is made the informa tion can be pasted again and again Often revisions or repositioning are required to complete the editing operation You can expect to see the following facilities under the Edit menu refer back to Figure 2 6 Undo Cancel the most recent editing change returning the instance to its previous form Repeat Apply the most recent editing change again Copy Keep a copy of the selected information in temporary storage ready for past ing Cut Remove the selected information and save it in temporary storage ready for pasting Paste Insert the information saved by Cut or Copy it is placed either at the cursor position or at a standard position depending on the application Clear Delete the selected information Select All Make the selection be the entire instance Notice that Undo is not always available because not all operations are reversible 16 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know Figure 2 8 Blank monthly calendar showing one month i e a blank instance Because these operations are standard available for most applications and on most operating systems it is a good idea to learn their shortcuts given in Table 2 1 Clear often
53. what together we can do for the freedom of man 25 26 Chapter 2 What the Digerati Know Of the five hits only three are the actual word we re looking for the other two hits contain the search string To avoid finding your we could search for you because words in text are usually surrounded by spaces However that search discov ers no hits in this quote because you doesn t appear with spaces on both sides The five hits for you are followed by r a hyphen a new line an r and a comma respectively The you at the end of the second line probably should have had a space between it and new line but the typist left it out Because looking only for the word you and avoiding your would mean checking for all of the possible starting and ending punctuation characters as well as blank it is probably better to give up on finding the exact word matches and simply ignore the cases where the search string is part of another word If the search is part of the system where words are primitive such as a word processor the ability to search for words will be available Such cases are the same as changing the tokens from characters to words A similar problem happens with multiword search strings The words of a multi word string are separated by spaces but if the number of spaces in the search string is different from the number in the text being searched no match will be found For
54. who used a CD player unilluminated segments will know how this software works or at least its basics The Microsoft Windows that would make up a operating system audio CD player for the same software generation also uses some of physical LCD digit dis these features of the physical analogy as shown in Figure 2 3 play though they may not So it is in a software designer s interest to make the GUI easy for us to figure out be visible in the Figure on our own Though they do not always succeed as brilliantly as the designers of the 2 2 screen shot G CO Plapes x Dec View Diptone Help EEA Amiet Ha akal Mma se THs Fieve Tite Treck Tieck 1 alls Total Play 7259me Tk AS mes Figure 2 3 Audio CD player GUI for the Windows operating system Basic Metaphors of Software 11 Macintosh audio CD GUI we should expect as users that the software has been well crafted and that we can brain out how it works We use this idea every time we meet new software BASIC METAPHORS OF SOFTWARE Looking again at Figure 2 2 there s more to the CD player GUI than just the seven standard buttons Stop Play Eject Last Track Next Track Backward Forward How are we supposed to know about those other features We can guess what some of them do like Shuffle because we are familiar with real CD players But we can figure out other parts of this software based on standard metaphors used in almost all consumer softwa
55. y The Challenge of Uncertainty PRIVACY AND SECURITY When and How to Protect Information Whose Information Is It Keeping Information Private The Cookie Monster Possible Abuses of Web Security Encryption and Decryption FOUNDATIONS OF PROGRAMMING Concepts Expressed in JavaScript Review and Plan of Attack Variables Names and Values Declarations String Literals Booleans and Data Types Assignment Expressions Conditionals The Espresso Program Execution for a Double Tall Latt THE BEAN COUNTER A JavaScript Program Preliminaries Getting Started Creating the Interface Page Event based Programming Critiquing the Bean Counter Revising the Bean Counter Review THINKING BIG Abstraction and Functions Abstraction Functions Applying Functions Rules for Functions The Memory Bank Electronic Coin Flipping Final Touches chapter 21 chapter 22 chapter 23 chapter 24 Table of Contents ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH Iteration Principles Play It Again Sam Range of Variation The Principles of Iteration Experiments with Flipping Electronic Coins Indexing Regularizing Array References Animation ALGORITHMIC PROBLEM SOLVING The Smooth Motion Case Study The Task A Strategy for Problem Solving Basic Structural Web Page Task Animating the Grid Task The Best Laid Plans Sensing the Keys Task Detecting the Staircase Task Overall Design Task Finishing the Web Page Task Assessing and Looking Back
56. your usual Web browser if it is available on the machine or another browser if it is not List ten differences and ten similarities that you note The basic operation of a text searcher is match the search string to the current position in the text if there is a match stop and report the search string found otherwise move the search string one position right and repeat How many times would that basic operation be done to find content in Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech Find a new word processor possibly on the machine used in Exercise 14 Enter the following text including all formatting as shown To see the world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour William Blake Auguries of Innocence Use Bookman Old Style and make your text 12 pt with 3 inch wide lines and an additional half inch more overhang Right justify the author and source After the text write a paragraph Times Roman font 10 point normal spacing and margins about the similarities and differences of the new word processor versus your usual word processor Print the document What happens when we apply the lt replacement to Try this out on your favorite text editor

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