Hi, sorry for going off-topic but I know there are a lot of people here who are passionate about usability - chances are you know the site I''m looking for... A while back I came across a site where someone (for a thesis I think) had gathered some fairly comprehensive stats on the most popular locations for elements on a web page. I.e. help was in the top-right corner on x% of sites, x% had horizontal navigation while y% used vertical - yadda yadda yadda. It seemed pretty thorough and I *thought* I bookmarked it but... Does this ring a bell for anyone? Thanks for listening, Trevor
Eyetrack, perhaps? http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm On 6/21/05, Trevor Squires <trevor-k8q5a0yEZAgS+FvcfC7Uqw@public.gmane.org> wrote:> Hi, > > sorry for going off-topic but I know there are a lot of people here who > are passionate about usability - chances are you know the site I''m > looking for... > > A while back I came across a site where someone (for a thesis I think) > had gathered some fairly comprehensive stats on the most popular > locations for elements on a web page. I.e. help was in the top-right > corner on x% of sites, x% had horizontal navigation while y% used > vertical - yadda yadda yadda. > > It seemed pretty thorough and I *thought* I bookmarked it but... > > Does this ring a bell for anyone? > > Thanks for listening, > Trevor > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-- Nathan Colgate Clark Web Developer, Jews for Jesus http://www.jewsforjesus.org
On 21-Jun-05, at 10:12 AM, Nathan Colgate Clark wrote:> Eyetrack, perhaps? > > http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htmThanks Nathan, that wasn''t it (interesting tho) but it did lead me to what I wanted - ultimately I was mashing up the memory of two different sites. For anyone interested: http://www.webdesignpractices.com/ http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/41/web_object-ecom.htm Thanks, Trevor
I am developing an application that organizes recurring billing information. I would appreciate some suggestions on designing the model/view for a recurring fee. I would like to store the following information for a fee: a) billing date, b) frequency (monthly, annually, yearly, etc), and c) amount. Use Case: customers are billed an annual fee, but they may elect to pay the hefty annual fee in micro-payments throughout the year. My main questions are: A) Are there patterns available to developers for modeling date recurrence? B) Can I use DateHelper to assist in the task of viewing/modeling the frequency data? C) Can I create a view that includes a drop-down list with the following options: weekly, yearly, monthly, etc, but that is mapped to the appropriate database row? Thanks, John Greek
Sounds like fun. I''d run a script each day to see which people need to be billed, based on their selections, and have a table called "payments" that can store pre-paid payments in it in addition to late payments and all that, if they are billed and they have already paid, it doesn''t bother them. If they''re billed and they still haven''t paid their last bill, it cancels service, etc. I wouldn''t expect datehelper to be all that useful. There are circumstances where you want other date information, for example I have a field that I select the day of the week users want a weekly email sent out to them, and I just had to come up with something on my own. It''s really just an enumerable column. Perhaps a way to represent an "enum" column type as a drop down list is in order. -Jeff ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Greek" <johngreek-rphTv4pjVZMJGwgDXS7ZQA@public.gmane.org> To: <rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 3:55 PM Subject: [Rails] Data Modeling: Date Recurrence>I am developing an application that organizes > recurring billing information. > > I would appreciate some suggestions on designing the > model/view for a recurring fee. I would like to store > the following information for a fee: a) billing date, > b) frequency (monthly, annually, yearly, etc), and c) > amount. > > Use Case: customers are billed an annual fee, but they > may elect to pay the hefty annual fee in > micro-payments throughout the year. > > My main questions are: > > A) Are there patterns available to developers for > modeling date recurrence? > > B) Can I use DateHelper to assist in the task of > viewing/modeling the frequency data? > > C) Can I create a view that includes a drop-down list > with the following options: weekly, yearly, monthly, > etc, but that is mapped to the appropriate database > row? > > Thanks, > John Greek > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
On 6/22/05, John Greek <johngreek-rphTv4pjVZMJGwgDXS7ZQA@public.gmane.org> wrote:> I am developing an application that organizes > recurring billing information. > > I would appreciate some suggestions on designing the > model/view for a recurring fee. I would like to store > the following information for a fee: a) billing date, > b) frequency (monthly, annually, yearly, etc), and c) > amount. > > Use Case: customers are billed an annual fee, but they > may elect to pay the hefty annual fee in > micro-payments throughout the year. > > My main questions are: > > A) Are there patterns available to developers for > modeling date recurrence?Here''s a really quick example. class Payment < ActiveRecord::Base #payment date, amount etc. belongs_to :payment_frequency def create_next_payment next_date = self.payment_date + payment_frequency.interval_between_payments Payment.create(..., "payment_date"=>next_date) end end class PaymentFrequency < ActiveRecord::Base # id, some kind of printable description # and the unit of time to add when creating the next payment end You''re done, once you handle retries and quirky frequencies like ''4th friday of even months and 3rd friday of odd months'' (I shit you not, that''s one of ours). Depending on your requirements, you may want to create a class like PaymentInstruction which captures the things which don''t every payment, i.e. the account, the amount etc. Good luck.> B) Can I use DateHelper to assist in the task of > viewing/modeling the frequency data?I don''t think DateHelper is what you''re really after here.> C) Can I create a view that includes a drop-down list > with the following options: weekly, yearly, monthly, > etc, but that is mapped to the appropriate database > row?If you create PaymentFrequency like I did above, you can use collection_select quite happily.> Thanks, > John Greek > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-- Cheers Koz
On 21-Jun-05, at 2:55 PM, John Greek wrote:> > A) Are there patterns available to developers for > modeling date recurrence? >Martin Fowler published some stuff on temporal patterns and (as luck would have it) you can find the links to his patterns if you go to: http://runt.rubyforge.org/ which happens to be a ruby impl of some of the patterns. HTH Trevor