Summa

The following blog post is written for any developer who has experienced working on a web based application, and during such project, altered the front end code (css, html, jsp, xhtml, aspx, php, etc.)…

After consulting as a UI developer on a range of web applications, I’ve run into many different coding behaviors/standards. These projects range from annoyingly brittle to flexible and well designed. Yet, in every single one of these web projects, I found a troubling coding “pattern” that would eventually lead to maintenance headaches. What is this horrible “pattern” you ask? It is… (drum roll) the prevalent usage of inline styling (CSS)… ugh.

I can already imagine some developers scoffing (laughing?) at the idea that inline styling could be “troubling”. Well, let me stop and boldly say… it is bad practice that will ultimately hurt a project in the long run.

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Summa is a sponsor of IBM’s premiere SOA conference, IMPACT 2010, being held at the Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from May 2 through May 7, 2010. We will be presenting five sessions at the conference, along with a “Birds of a Feather” Breakout Session focused on “The Transformative Role of IT in Healthcare.”  The sessions include:

• UPMC Modernizes Healthcare Interoperability with WebSphere Process Server (Session ID: TIH-1218A)
  
• Highmark Modernizes Healthcare Insurance Sales Process with WebSphere Message Broker (Session ID: TCE-2182A)
  
• The Real TCO of WAS vs. JBoss and other Open Source JEE Runtimes (Session ID: TDW-2420A)
  
• Accelerate Your Cloud CRM Deployments with WebSphere (Session ID: TCE-1477A)
  
• Panel Discussion: WAS vs. JBoss and Tomcat: Customer Insights and Perspectives (Session ID: TDW-2671A)

If you are going to Impact 2010, stop by the Summa booth # IZ16 in the Industry Zone.  We are  highlighting solutions in Healthcare, SaaS/Cloud Integration, Application Modernization, and SOA, BPM, CRM and Connectivity.

For more information and more details about Summa’s sessions and the IMPACT 2010 conference, visit http://www.summa-tech.com/news/impact2010.php4.

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In a recent project the interface designer in my team asked whether we could disable the anchor tag (for expand/collapse) on the disclosure panel header and have a single button do the job, helping the user with a hint that this panel is actually expandable. I said OK, let’s see the DisclosurePanel javadoc. Suprise! All you can do is have a header and that itself is surrounded by the clickable anchor… time to extend Composite!

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