Webdesign, Coding, Blogging & Internet Culture
Programming
The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition
Jul 12th
This is the second edition of Randall Hyde’s 1996 book on high-level assembler. It provides an introduction to writing assembler programs using the High Level Assembler (HLA) that incorporates many features found in higher-level languages.
The book originally started off in 1989 as a book for students of a course on assembler language the author was teaching and evolved into the first edition in 2003. This updated version was released in 2010. While assembler language is mostly used in the lower reaches of computer platforms in areas such as device drivers, it remains a fact that everything else in modern operating More >
Adobe AIR Programming Unleashed
Feb 9th
Adobe AIR Programming Unleashed teaches readers how to create applications using the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Readers will learn three things: what AIR is and what it offers to developers, the process of creating an application and some good practises for developing your applications.
In a nutshell AIR lets developers write cross-platform applications in ActionScript or JavaScript- though ActionScript is given most of the coverage in the book. If this sounds a bit like Java’s “write once, run (or test) anywhere,” the comparison is a valid one– in fact, with the new 3D animation support and UI toolkit, AIR could be More >
MySQL
Dec 8th
If you include, as the author does, the beginnings with mSQL, then MySQL’s origins can be traced to the late 1970s, though the database we now know as MySQL was released in 1996 so users can probably guess there are a few arcane corners to this open-source poster child– fortunately this book does an excellent job shining a light in all those corners you knew where there– and a bunch you probably didn’t.
The book is written for the 5.x version of MySQL and so there’s coverage of 5.x features like stored procedures, triggers, views, the archive storage engine and a More >
Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Animation, Making things Move!
Jul 27th
It’s worth point out that this book focuses almost exclusively on on animation with ActionScript- there is no coverage of creating forms, buttons or even a lot of the usual flying logos that ActionScript is often used for in web design; Instead it’s choke-full of information required to create realistic animation.
The book starts off gradually, showing the reader how to write a simple ActionScript to display a ball, introduces the events system to make it react to events, and then how to compile the script into a .swf file suitable for displaying in a web browser or stand-alone application. While More >
The Definitive Guide to symfony
Apr 7th
I should state that I started investigating frameworks over a year ago and looked into symfony (around v0.6 at the time) , but now use the CakePHP framework for my current development projects. That said, I think symfony provides the most complete set of features of any PHP framework I’m familiar with- but at the same time, it has a bit of a steeper learning curve due to its flexibility and, some would say, wordy syntax. On balance though, what attracted me to symfony initially, was the excellent documentation, of which this book is part. Since learning a framework involves More >
Pro Javascript Techniques
Jan 20th
The first chapter gives a broad overview of the major topics the book will cover: object-orientated programming, testing, DOM scripting, event handling, CSS, Ajax and browser support. The second chapter starts right into object orientated programming, covering the major features of JavaScript in this area.
In Created Reusable code (chapter three) the book looks at way of simulating inheritance, namespaces and other features found in other OO-languages, but not found natively in JavaScript. They also introduces the Prototype, Dojo and Yahoo!’s YUI libraries. Finally the chapter covers compressing your code with JSMin and Packer, then ends off with JSAN (the JavaScript More >
Dreaming in Code
Dec 6th
The story basically starts off with Mich Kapor, the man who started Lotus Software (best known for Lotus 1-2-3, the spreadsheet everyone used between VisiCalc and Excel). Just before leaving, he created Agenda, a personal information manager that inspired the development of Chandler, the open source project that is the focus of this book.
While the story of Chandler (which at the time of writing is nearing its 0.7 release) is the main thread, Rosenberg also tells the story of how software is written; Keeping in mind, this involves quotes from Apocalypse Now and the re-telling of an ill-conceived Stonehenge recreation More >
Ajax for Web Application Developers
Dec 5th
The book starts off with some examples and quickly moves through XML and JSON to get you up to speed. Chapter 5 covers object orientated Javascript. The speed is good, if you know a bit of Javascript and have a familiarity with object orientated languages, this is quite straightforward. If not, it’s a good introduction to Javascript’s OO features.
Chapter 8 gets into debugging scripts with the web browser. It shows the tools available for Internet Explorer, Safari and an extended look at the Firebug extension for Mozilla Firefox. Oddly, for Firefox, there is no mention of the Venkman Javascript debugger, More >
Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to Professional
Nov 16th
The first chapter gives a brief history of GoogleMaps and its API as well as showing KML, a simple technique for creating maps that I wasn’t aware of ? in fact, it’s probably the quickest way (especially for a non-technical user) to add a map to a web page.
Chapter two covers most of how to add a map onto your web page, setting the area, what controls appear on the map and adding marker points. For many websites, this might be all you need. – then again you could also work this out on-line, but the book is just getting More >
