Dexterity Matters

• David.Poole

  SSC Guru

  Points: 76000

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  March 29, 2016 at 3:16 am

  #1868157

  I used to work for a web company that was proud of it's triple AAA usability designs. They allowed for visual impairments, cognitive difficulties, mobility disabilities etc.

  Arthritis is a particular problem when using smartphone/tablets and doesn't get much better when using a mouse.

  One of my friends had a stroke and although back in work finds that websites with swoopy banner displays induce motion sickness.

  Some websites adapt brilliantly to the different form factors offered by the various tablets. Others get it horribly wrong. what works well on my wife's Nexus 10 just doesn't work on my Nexus 7.

  There are loads of product designs that are cool in theory but awful to use in practice. Rather like inflatable dart boards.

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• Rod at work

  SSC-Dedicated

  Points: 34007

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  March 29, 2016 at 8:48 am

  #1868275

  Eric M Russell (3/28/2016)

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  It's important for a software tool, especially a database management tool like SSMS or VS, to provide a visual queue that environmental context has changed. I believe we've all experienced that moment of horror when, after clicking the execute button on a batch of T-SQL, we suddenly realize the query window is pointing to production instead of development. That's why I now use connection color coding.

  http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Management+Studio+(SSMS)/101920/

  Another potential pitfall are DDL schema comparison / deployment tools when attempting to sync from production to development. Get your connections backward, and the rest of your day is blown (to say the least!).

  Hi Eric,

  I wasn't aware of the color coding until you mentioned it. I went to the link you specified to read about it. I opened up the Registered Servers in my SSMS (I'm using SQL 2012 Developer Edition on my dev. box), but really didn't see anything at all promising. I would dearly love to show you what I saw, but my employer blocks a lot of websites, including all image sharing websites. So I'll have to describe what I see in the Registered Servers window:

• There's the Database Engine node
• Under that is a Local Server Groups node, with just one member - my PC
• Under that and at the same level as the Local Server Groups node is a folder named Central Management Servers. I can't open it.

So it doesn't look as though I can take advantage of this feature of SSMS. Any suggestions?

Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.