Software Reference

Are refactoring tools, such as those in Eclipse, changing the balance of importance between various stages of the software development lifecycle? If so, is this a good thing?...

Although we might spend most of our time struggling with applications that don't perform as well as we would wish, occasionally everyone finds a little gem. Some software is a pleasure to use. When you come to use a new feature for the first time, it just works! Why not share your experiences with other people here, spreading the word about well-designed software?

The Arduino is a small, cheap hardware component for hobbyists. It includes a processor and a serial interface, and you can add all sorts of sensors, switches and so on to create projects for sensing and control. For example, you could wire up a project with a light sensor and a motor to close your curtains automatically once it becomes dark outside. Both the software and the hardware are open source.

Have you tried using the Arduino? Are you interested? Would you buy a book about it?

By default, Google Mail shows only a high-level representation of an email's headers: who it was sent from and to, the date and the subject. If you want to see more information from the headers, you can if you know how.

I have found a good way of recording ideas that are not yet ready for publication. These are likely to form the basis of articles or blog entries that I publish in the future, but are generally things that need a bit of research and polishing up first.

The Office Watch website has collected together the links to updated help files for the Microsoft Office 2007 components, and provided some advice about installing them.

Let's hope there's been some improvement. The inadequacy of the online help, particularly context-sensitive help, for Word was a major motivation behind our writing Microsoft Office Word 2007 Essential Reference for Power Users.

I like the intention behind Word 2007's handling of synonyms. In theory, you right-click in a word that you want to change (perhaps because you've already used it nearby) and hover the mouse pointer over Synonyms in the menu to see a list of alternatives. Click the best alternative and Word makes the change for you. When it works, it's a very efficient way to make the change.

Unfortunately, the list of alternatives often isn't very good.

Aubrey Johnson is planning to bring all your programming and reference tables and lists together in one convenient volume. Please send us your ideas!

The Software Reference website has been moved across to Drupal.