Tools

Thinking about a tool, what comes into mind first? Hammer?

So tool can be anything that makes our life easier. It is present in each category i.e. mechanical, electrical, electronics, Software etc. Tool is such a general word to use. Herein my blog since most of the things are technical related to computer industry so I would be describing how software tools makes our life easier.

A programming tool or software development tool is a program or application that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can be combined together to accomplish a task, much as one might use multiple hand tools to fix a physical object. The ability to use a variety of tools productively is one hallmark of a skilled software engineer. source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_tool

Lets talk about Java, which is a programming tool responsible for development of softwares in today's era. Whether enterprise, mobile or general purpose desktop machine independent software Java is used almost everywhere for the development. Java is such programming language tool which provides security, simplicity, portability, robustness and many other pro's all in one hand. The industry today have become so much dependent on this excellent programming tool, that the requirement of development labour has shown a massive growth with this programming language skills.

Image Credits: http://www.ksquareit.com/learnmore/2011/2/17/mobile-job-prospects.html#.U3a84F7jTFI

The graph clearly show the requirement of java developers since the year of 2011.

Styling Web- CSS

Cascading Style Sheets popularly known as CSS are very popular for providing a look to a web page or sometimes applications. These are generally used in combination with HTML and XHTML. How is the elements in the site going to look is decided with the CSS. 

Image credits:http://www.onbile.com/info/how-to-build-a-mobile-website/

CSS provides the beauty to a web page. Like how should be the background color of a page should be, what font style should be used and many small small things used for beautification is used with done using a CSS.

Lets study a example for better understand of CSS

I have created a block in div tag in HTML

i.e.

<div class="sample-class" id="sample">

This is a sample block

</div>

Now I want to style this block according to my requirement.

So I will define the CSS class (or may be ID) with the properties of its appearance.

<style>

.sample-class{

width:400px; //defines the width of the above block(sample-class) as 400px

height:300px; //defines the height of the above block(sample-class) as 300px

background-color:#111; //Define the background color of the block as shade of grey #111111(near to black)

color:#fff; //defines the color of the text as white (#ffffff)

}

</style>

Test this fiddle and make modification in it to learn the power of CSS http://jsfiddle.net/BfvC8/

I would highly recommend to visit this site, if people are interested in learning CSS tricks: http://css-tricks.com

For people who are interested in learning CSS from scratch: http://www.w3schools.com/css/DEFAULT.asp

Beta Testing

Two very important phases of the testing are alpha testing and beta testing. But when it comes to real environment Beta testing is one that helps companies, corporates or individuals releasing their applications. 

Whenever a product is developed, it's quality is assured internally by the testing teams. But this is not enough to make the release. We never know what people expect from the application and what all bugs in the system exist or may be some feedback they can come produce (as per user prospective).  It is always a great idea to get the product tested by the actual group of users who are going to use it because it is ultimately made for their convenience. 

There is nothing special that the users does but access the product as normal user does. Some might not be even aware of what actually beta in the site or product means. Whenever a user gives feedback about the feedback is noted down and the team makes the improvement to produce in the final release. In this was beta testing helps corporates to produce their best in software according to end user requirements.

So every time before launching the real product a beta version is launched to make is completely tested by end user and also this version has beta written on it.

As this image suggests, before the actual version of android is made available to users, its beta version is made available to a group of users so that it may be tested well and all the issues are fixed.

Image Credits: http://theflud.tumblr.com/post/6471987342/finally-flud-for-android-beta-testers-wanted