Monday 14 June 2010 @ 9:36 am
Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers
If you want to learn more about Flex, this is the book for you. It is intended for readers who want to take their knowledge further with quick-fire solutions to common problems and best practice techniques to improve their Flex skills for Rich Internet Application development.
Moreover, this book is also aimed at readers who do not know Flex, but want to learn what they can do with Flex by using real-world examples. Whether you are a Windows, Mac, or Linux developer, this book will work for you. Solutions and examples are intended for all platforms. Throughout the chapters you’ll find detailed information that takes into account the differences between these platforms
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Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers
Monday 7 June 2010 @ 5:06 am
CSS Mastery - Advanced Web Standards Solution
There are an increasing number of CSS resources around, yet you only have to look at a CSS mailing list to see the same questions popping up time and again: How do I center a design? What is the best rounded-corner box technique? How do I create a three-column layout? If you follow the CSS design community, finding the solution is usually a case of remembering which website a particular article or technique is featured on. However, if you are relatively new toCSS, or don’t have the time to read all the blogs, this information can be hard to track down.
Even people who are skilled at CSS run into problems with some of the more obscure aspects of CSS such as the positioning model or specificity. This is because most CSS developers are selftaught, picking up tricks from articles and other people’s code without fully understanding the specifications. And is it any wonder, as the CSS specification is complex, often contradictory, and written for browser manufacturers rather than web developers?
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CSS Mastery – Advanced Web Standards Solution
Sunday 6 June 2010 @ 5:03 am
Ajax The Complete Reference
This book is meant for Web professionals with background in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The related texts HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference and JavaScript: The Complete Reference are considered background for the material presented in this work. Where possible, the content and examples have been made as accessible as possible to the widest range of readers.
A few appendixes provide some background material for those looking to
jump straight into Ajax. However, by my experience teaching this material for the past two years, I know readers will find that whatever order they approach mastering client-side Web development, foundational work will eventually be required for full enjoyment.
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Ajax The Complete Reference
Friday 21 May 2010 @ 3:36 am
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Sunday 16 May 2010 @ 1:45 am
Enterprise Development with Flex
Whenever the subject of third-party architectural frameworks is raised at a gathering of Flex developers, the developers are quick to start explaining how they use and like a particular framework. But a simple question like, “Why do you use this framework?” often catches them off guard. Many enterprise developers, especially those who came to Flex after spending some time developing Java EE applications, just know that using
these frameworks is the right thing to do. Is it so?
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Enterprise Development with Flex
Saturday 1 May 2010 @ 7:14 am
The Essential Guide to Flex 3
can’t believe that we have now reached the second generation of Flex. It seemed like I had just finished the first edition and, within a few weeks, we were in a long and ever-changing series of betas for Flex 3. In the course of that period, many of the chapters you read in this book were rewritten three or four times. Let me begin by thanking the many readers who took the time to write kind reviews for Amazon.com and other places. I read nearly every suggestion and incorporated them into this edition. I cut down a bit on the technical ActionScript explanations and focused on the
features of Flex itself. After years of doing technical training, where I have only a couple of days to cover large topics,
I have learned to substitute shorter, and more pointed, explanations that clarify a concept in place of larger, more technical (and often confusing) explanations. In other words, I often like to get right to the heart of the matter, without taking circuitous routes.
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The Essential Guide to Flex 3
Thursday 22 April 2010 @ 9:48 am
Learning Flex
Flex is the next step in the development of RIAs. The phrase rich Internet applications was coined by Macromedia (now Adobe) in 2002 to account for the trend in more expressive applications on the web. In the beginning, HTML documents on the web were just that, documents. They were text and, later, images and multimedia. This client-server paradigm meant a user, by typing a URL in their browser, would request a document. The web being so far-reaching, savvy folks quickly learned to create server-based applications, programs, which a user could access online. Think of all those forms you’ve filled out, where you type your name and address and hit the submit button. After a few moments, you’re greeted with an entirely new page telling you your form was submitted (or that you had some errors you have to fix first). This was a client-server model, where a “thin” client (a browser) requested content and sent it back to a server for processing. To create dynamic HTML pages, a server had to create the HTML and send it to the client, which would read it like any other page. This took time. Then, with the advent of JavaScript came the power to offload some application workload onto the client. For instance, when configuring an item in an online store, it used to be necessary send all calculations like shipping or sales tax back to the server. With scripting, it was possible to calculate that information right on the client machine and update the layout of the page based on user interaction. Dubbed a “thick” client in contrast to the thin client, a user’s computer needed to be a bit more powerful in order to run the scripts and re-render the page.
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Learning Flex
Wednesday 21 April 2010 @ 9:44 am
Joomla Start to Finish
As web developers, we have to get smarter about marketing ourselves and what skillsets we bring to the table to solve our client’s problems. We need to understand what our client does in their organization and how they serve their clients in order to understand what technology can do to solve their problems. Most technical books cover button-clicking really well.
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Joomla Start to Finish
Tuesday 20 April 2010 @ 9:56 am
Professional Blackberry
The RIM BlackBerry has become synonymous with always-on, real-time wireless e-mail. Other companies provide similar solutions, but they are a very distant second to the wide acceptance of the BlackBerry. BlackBerry usage is virtually exploding right before our eyes, and in some cities around the world, you see a BlackBerry user every few steps. There is even a new affliction that has been termed “BlackBerry Thumb,” which is a repetitive stress injury to the thumbs from using them in ways in which they were never meant to be used. The BlackBerry can be used for real-time push e-mail, but it also supports real-time wireless synchronization of Personal Information Manager (PIM) data and has the capability to connect the user to systems back in the office in a very secure manner. The aim of this book is to cover two main topics that relate to the BlackBerry environment. In the first section, we start off by discussing how the BlackBerry works and the different components that make up the BlackBerry environment. We then move on to discussing how to install a BlackBerry server and how to prepare for a BlackBerry pilot. Finally, we discuss how to roll out BlackBerrys and the desktop software (if you need it) and how to maintain your BlackBerry environment.
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Professional Blackberry
Tuesday 13 April 2010 @ 9:57 am
Flex on Java
In 1995, Sun introduced the first Java platform and with it birthed the “applet.” The applet allowed Java applications to run inside the browser with rich functionality and all the benefits of the Java framework, including connecting to the server side. The applet became hugely popular for a couple of years but then its popularity waned. The applet adoption rate dropped mainly because of problems surrounding the browser plugin. Building features in an applet from scratch or even other rich implementations can be expensive compared to the
simplicity of using the Flex framework.
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Flex on Java
