Assignment 1

Assignment 1

Evaluate the Usability of a User Interface Tool or Toolkit

T. H Ranasinghe

IT12406586

Part A

Tool #1

Microsoft visual studio

http://www.visualstudio.com/

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs for Microsoft Windows, as well as web sites, web applications and web services. It supports different programming languages include C#, VB.NET, C, C++, F#, Python, and Ruby.

Microsoft Visual Studio is available in the following editions

• Visual Studio Express

• Visual Studio Professional

• Visual Studio Community

• Visual Studio Premium

• Visual Studio Ultimate

• Visual Studio Test Professional

Tool #2

NetBeans

https://netbeans.org/downloads/

NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing primarily with Java, but also with other languages, in particular PHP, C/C++, and HTML5. It is also an application platform framework for Java desktop applications and others.

Can run on Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris and other platforms supporting a compatible JVM

Tool #3

Xcode

https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action

Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) that you use to build apps for Apple products such as the iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

Xcode supports C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python, Ruby, Rez, and Swift source code with a variety of programming models

Part B

THE LATEST VERSION OF VISUAL STUDIO IS ALSO DESIGNED TO BE OPTIMIZED FOR TOUCH

10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

Visibility of system status

Match between system and the real world

User control and freedom

Consistency and standards

Error prevention

Recognition rather than recall

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Aesthetic and minimalist design

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Help and documentation

Part C

Match between system and the real world

Built-in several languages include C, C++, C#(via Visual C#) VB.NET (via Visual Basic .NET), and F# (as of Visual Studio 2010) . words are using in these languages are known by programmers

ex: Inheritance and Constructors, Polymorphism

key words – string, namespace, static

Error prevention

It has the code completion component as well as code refactoring

Autocomplete suggestions appear

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Visual Studio includes a host of visual designers to aid in the development of applications. Such as Windows Forms Designer (Layout can be controlled by housing the controls inside other containers or locking them to the side of the form)

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Has user friendly and easily understandable error messages.

Help and documentation

There is fast and professional way to help users in Visual Studio applications

Online and local help

Documentation provides resources for learning how to use VS to create desktop and web application

Benefits

Supports different programming languages

Code completion component and code refactoring component

Provides online help system

Developer/ user friendly

Web Project facility

Support huge DB functions

Drawbacks

Sometimes crashes with HTML pages

Cannot, easily, be transferred to other operating systems

No clear backup solution

Managed code can be slower than native code