Best of
Web

2008

JavaScript: The Good Parts


Douglas Crockford - 2008
    This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:SyntaxObjectsFunctionsInheritanceArraysRegular expressionsMethodsStyleBeautiful featuresThe real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions: A Web Standardista's Approach


Christopher Murphy - 2008
    That said, we felt the time was right for this sort of book. There are a lot of excellent books that we point our students toward: Dan Cederholm's inspiring Web Standards Solutions; Paul Haine's meticulous HTML Mastery; and Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, and Simon Collison's indispensable CSS Mastery, to name but a few. All are fantastic books and we urge our s- dents to buy every one; however, none of them seemed to cover everything our students needed to embark on a well-grounded, web standards-based approach in one package: namely, a solid foundation in well-structured XHTML coupled with a comprehensive int- duction to CSS. Cue Web Standardistas.

eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Digital Marketing


Rob Stokes - 2008
    

Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns


Scott Millett - 2008
    Design patterns are time-tested solutions to recurring problems, letting the designer build programs on solutions that have already proved effective Provides developers with more than a dozen ASP.NET examples showing standard design patterns and how using them helpsbuild a richer understanding of ASP.NET architecture, as well as better ASP.NET applications Builds a solid understanding of ASP.NET architecture that can be used over and over again in many projects Covers ASP.NET code to implement many standard patterns including Model-View-Controller (MVC), ETL, Master-Master Snapshot, Master-Slave-Snapshot, Facade, Singleton, Factory, Single Access Point, Roles, Limited View, observer, page controller, common communication patterns, and more

The C# Programming Language


Anders Hejlsberg - 2008
    Updated to cover the new features of C# 4.0, including dynamic binding, named and optional parameters, and covariant and contravariant generic types, this release takes the language to the next level by adding the ability to cleanly write programs that don't rely on static type definitions. This allows dynamic programming languages such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript to feel native to C#. The C# Programming Language, Fourth Edition, continues to be the authoritative and annotated technical reference for C# 4.0. Written by Anders Hejlsberg, the language's architect, and his colleagues, Mads Torgersen, Scott Wiltamuth, and Peter Golde, this volume has been completely updated for C# 4.0. The book provides the complete specification of the language, along with descriptions, reference materials, code samples, and annotations from twelve prominent C# gurus. The many annotations bring a depth and breadth of understanding rarely found in any programming book. As the main text of the book introduces the concepts of the C# language, cogent annotations explain why they are important, how they are used, how they relate to other languages, and even how they evolved. This book is the definitive, must-have reference for any developer who wants to understand C#. With annotations from: Brad Abrams, Joseph Albahari, Krzysztof Cwalina, Jesse Liberty, Eric Lippert, Christian Nagel, Vladimir Reshetnikov, Marek Safar, Chris Sells, Peter Sestoft, Jon Skeet, and Bill Wagner.

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks


Luke WroblewskiMicah Alpern - 2008
    In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms.

Beyond Masculinity: Essays by Queer Men on Gender and Politics


Trevor Hoppe - 2008
    Part audiobook, part-blog, and part-anthology, brings together a smart, diverse group of queer male writers all critically examining maleness and the construction of masculinity and gender norms for men.

Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual


Lesa Snider - 2008
    But with all its fantastic new features and options, the CS4 version can bewilder even the most seasoned professional. That's where Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual comes in: packed with tips, tricks, and lots of practical advice, this visually rich four-color guidebook teaches you everything you need to know to edit photos and create beautiful documents in Photoshop. Whether you're an absolute beginner or a power user ready to try some advanced techniques, author and graphics pro Lesa Snider King offers crystal-clear, jargon-free instructions to help you take advantage of these powerful tools -- not only how they work, but when you should use them. You'll quickly get up to speed on new CS4 features such as:Photoshop's completely revamped workspace Smoother image display and quick zoom, including the new pixel grid view New Masks and Adjustments panels The Vibrance adjustment layer Hand-painting adjustments and using graduated filters in Camera Raw Enhanced Adobe Bridge And much more. You'll also find out which features work well, and which aren't worth your time. Written with the clarity, humor, and objective scrutiny that are hallmarks of the Missing Manual series, Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual is the friendly, thorough resource you need. Why settle for anything less? "Lesa did a great job on the book, and in my mind, it is the new Photoshop Bible." -- Scott Kelby, Photoshop Insider

Adobe AIR in Action


Joseph Lott - 2008
    This exciting new technology is still in beta, but it's already being adopted by such web giants as eBay. With AIR, Web developers use their existing skills to build rich applications that flow seamlessly between the internet and the desktop.Adobe AIR in Action introduces AIR to developers familiar with Flex and JavaScript, showing them how to build solid AIR-driven desktop and hybrid applications. Using small examples, the expert authors walk web developers through the new topics they will need to develop AIR applications for the desktop. Readers will learn the essential features of the AIR API with examples and code samples that web professionals can use to get up and running in AIR quickly. The book describes how to create and customize native windows, read and write files and folders on the local file system.Web developers who read this book will be able to take instant advantage of the increased resources available to desktop applications. Sometimes-connected, web-enabled applications are gaining in popularity, and web developers of all stripes will want to add these skills to their toolbox.Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

Helping Students Learn in a Learner-Centered Environment: A Guide to Facilitating Learning in Higher Education


Terry Doyle - 2008
    Terry Doyle's book brings together findings that will enable us to answer what so many college & university faculty members want to know: How do we enable our students to learn to learn (and love it)? If your goal is to develop lifelong learners, this book is a guidebook for your practice."--Laurie Richlin, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Health Sciences"This book is brilliant in that it does three things very simply and without unnecessary complexity: it explains why learner-centered environments should be used, how to create them (complete with how to sell students on an approach that will actually help them), and how to tell when students are learning. What is different about this book is that Terry Doyle outlines WHY students will resist this change. His point-by-point guidance on creating a learner-centered classroom incorporates a strategy for bringing the students along as willing participants."--Todd Zakrajsek, Director of the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching at Central Michigan UniversityTaking as his starting point students' attitudes toward, and unfamiliarity with, learner-centered classrooms, Terry Doyle explains that motivating students to engage with this practice first of all requires explaining its underlying rationale, and then providing guidance on how to learn in this environment. This book is about how to help students acquire the new skills and knowledge they need to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities.

Django 1.0 Template Development


Scott Newman - 2008
    Getting the most out of its template system allows programmers and designers to easily and efficiently output their content in a flexible, extendable, and maintainable manner. This book will help you to master the Django template system. Built-in template tags and filters are explained with examples and usage notes, as well as information on building custom tags and filters to extend the system for your needs. You will learn to use inheritance to create modular templates that are easy to maintain. You will learn how to serve multiple templates from within the same Django project, with an example of how to serve different templates for a mobile version of your site without having to change any code in your views. Pagination, internationalization, caching, and customization of the automatic admin application are also covered. What you will learn from this book? Meet the Django template system and understand how it works Understand URL configurations, views, and generic views and streamline your project's development Master built-in tags and filters to use them efficiently in your project Split your output into manageable pieces using pagination libraries Extend your templates through inheritance Customize the look of the admin interface as you like to administer your website with ease Create and deploy custom tags and filters according to your needs Internationalize your templates to present your site in multiple languages from the same template files Improve your site's performance by using the cache framework Serve multiple sets of templates from the same project easily Approach This book is designed for readers who learn by doing and employs many examples and screenshots to let the reader dig in and start coding. This book isn't designed to be a reference; instead it has a practical, example-driven approach that teaches you by following along with the examples in the chapters. When you have completed this book, you will fully understand how the template system works, how to extend it when you have specialized needs, and how to optimize the performance and usability of your content. Who this book is written for? This book is for web developers and template authors who want to fully understand and utilize the Django template system. The reader should have completed the introductory tutorials on the Django project's website and some experience with the framework will be very helpful. Basic knowledge of Python and HTML is assumed.

MySpace Marketing: Creating a Social Network to Boom Your Business


Sean Percival - 2008
    Web developer Sean Percival presents a roadmap to help businesses gain maximum exposure using MySpace

Scientific Collaboration on the Internet


Gary M. Olson - 2008
    Historically, scientific collaborations were carried out by scientists in the same physical location--the Manhattan Project of the 1940s, for example, involved thousands of scientists gathered on a remote plateau in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today, information and communication technologies allow cooperation among scientists from far-flung institutions and different disciplines. Scientific Collaboration on the Internet provides both broad and in-depth views of how new technology is enabling novel kinds of science and engineering collaboration. The book offers commentary from notable experts in the field along with case studies of large-scale collaborative projects, past and ongoing. The projects described range from the development of a national virtual observatory for astronomical research to a National Institutes of Health funding program for major multi-laboratory medical research; from the deployment of a cyberinfrastructure to connect experts in earthquake engineering to partnerships between developed and developing countries in AIDS research. The chapter authors speak frankly about the problems these projects encountered as well as the successes they achieved. The book strikes a useful balance between presenting the real stories of collaborations and developing a scientific approach to conceiving, designing, implementing, and evaluating such projects. It points to a future of scientific collaborations that build successfully on aspects from multiple disciplines.ContributorsMark S. Ackerman, Paul Avery, Matthew Bietz, Jeremy P. Birnholtz, Nathan Bos, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Randal Butler, David Conz, Eric Cook, Dan Cooney, Jonathon Cummings, Erik Dahl, Mark Ellisman, Ixchel Faniel, Thomas A. Finholt, Ian Foster, Jeffrey S. Grethe, Edward J. Hackett, Robert J. Hanisch, Libby Hemphill, Tony Hey, Erik C. Hofer, Mark James, Carl Kessleman, Sara Kiesler, Timothy L. Killeen, Airong Luo, Kelly L. Maglaughlin, Doru Marcusiu, Shawn McKee, William K. Michener, James D. Myers, Marsha Naidoo, Michael Nentwich, Gary M. Olson, Judith S. Olson, James Onken, Andrew Parker, John N. Parker, Mary Puetz, David Ribes, Kathleen Ricker, Diana Rhoten, Michael E. Rogers, Titus Schleyer, Diane H. Sonnenwald, B. F. Spencer, Jr., Stephanie D. Teasley, Anne Trefethen, Robert B. Waide, Mary C. Whitton, William Wulf, Jason Yerkie, Ann Zimmerman

Write me a Web Page, Elsie!


Rachel McAlpine - 2008
    Essential reading for anyone who writes or manages web content, this book is firmly grounded in the digital workplace of business, government and education.

The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age


Lokman Tsui - 2008
    Bringing together a prominent array of thinkers from industry and the academy, The Hyperlinked Society addresses a provocative series of questions about the ways in which hyperlinks organize behavior online. How do media producers' considerations of links change the way they approach their work, and how do these considerations in turn affect the ways that audiences consume news and entertainment? What role do economic and political considerations play in information producers' creation of links? How do links shape the size and scope of the public sphere in the digital age? Are hyperlinks "bridging" mechanisms that encourage people to see beyond their personal beliefs to a broader and more diverse world? Or do they simply reinforce existing bonds by encouraging people to ignore social and political perspectives that conflict with their existing interests and beliefs?This pathbreaking collection of essays will be valuable to anyone interested in the now taken for granted connections that structure communication, commerce, and civic discourse in the world of digital media."This collection provides a broad and deep examination of the social, political, and economic implications of the evolving, web-based media environment. The Hyperlinked Society will be a very useful contribution to the scholarly debate about the role of the internet in modern society, and especially about the interaction between the internet and other media systems in modern society." ---Charles Steinfield, Professor and Chairperson, Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media, Michigan State UniversityJoseph Turow is Robert Lewis Shayon Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. He was named a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association and a Fellow of the International Communication Association in 2010. He has authored eight books, edited five, and written more than 100 articles on mass media industries. His books include Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age and Breaking up America: Advertisers and the New Media World.Lokman Tsui is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. His research interests center on new media and global communication.Cover image: This graph from Lada Adamic's chapter depicts the link structure of political blogs in the United States. The shapes reflect the blogs, and the colors of the shapes reflect political orientation---red for conservative blogs, blue for liberal ones. The size of each blog reflects the number of blogs that link to it.digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS


Zoe Mickley Gillenwater - 2008
    It includes detailed exercises of building a layout from scratch - including slicing the comp and using provided exercise files.

ASP.NET 3.5 Ajax Unleashed


Robert Hill Foster - 2008
    ASP.NET AJAX UNLEASHED empowers ASP.NET developers to easily provide this type of experience with minimal code. As Microsoft.com puts it: "This new Web development technology extends ASP.NET, offering the interactive user interface benefits of AJAX with a programming model that is more familiar to ASP.NET developers, making it very easy to add AJAX to your applications quickly and with minimal effort." Author Rob Foster has built Ajax-enabled web apps for a number of major corporations, and uses the experience he has gained there to explain concisely, clearly, and completely what ASP.NET developes need to learn in order to start taking advantage of the rich opportunities made possible by ASP.NET Ajax.

The Art of Rails


Edward Benson - 2008
    Written by an experienced web application developer, this book explains how to take good Rails code and turn it into beautiful Rails code: simple, effective, reusable, evolvable code. He discusses the very latest in design patterns, programming abstractions, and development methodologies that have emerged for the modern web. With each design technique, you?ll discover how to make your own additions to Rails and craft a development environment tailored to your specific needs.

Rails for PHP Developers


Derek DeVries - 2008
    Ruby on Rails is another key tool to add to your web development toolbox. Rails is a high-level web development framework that emphasizes high productivity and clean code. However, the Ruby language and Rails framework take a different approach from the way many PHP developers write applications.Ruby lies at the foundation of Rails, and we'll teach you the Ruby language from the beginning by building on your existing foundation of PHP. We'll explore Ruby through parallel code examples that illustrate the differences between the languages, and help you understand the Ruby idioms and how they differ from popular PHP code and style.You'll then learn the Rails framework by iteratively building a complete application, starting from the home page through to a finished product. Along the way, you'll build your skills as a Rails developer by learning the Rails fundamentals such as MVC structure, domain modeling, and testing.In addition to serving as a guide to learning both Ruby and Rails from a PHP developer's perspective, this book includes two extensive reference chapters. They map the most common PHP tasks to their equivalents in the Ruby and Rails world, giving you at-a-glance information that you'll refer to often.

Programming Microsoft Visual C#: The Language


Jake Stram - 2008
    Programming expert Donis Marshall deftly helps you build your proficiency with language features such as classes, structs, and other fundamentals, and helps you advance your expertise with more-advanced topics such as debugging, threading, and memory management. Combining an incisive reference with code samples and best practices, this developer reference focuses on details of the C# language you need to build innovative solutions.