The arrival of the iPhone changed everything. Or, at the very least, it changed the
direction of software development for mobile platforms, which is a pretty big thing. It
has spawned an entire generation of copycat devices and brought an entire multibilliondollar
industry to its knees. Despite this, it still fits...
Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases....
Ostensibly, you buy a computer or gadget to get something done. The something might be as
simple as listening to MP3s you’ve ripped from your CD collection or as challenging as creating
a full-length feature film. Apple is happy to sell you products to meet your needs. The trouble is
your needs aren’t...
Netscape Navigator 4.0! Internet Explorer 4.0! HTML 3.2! JavaScript! Style sheets! Layers! HTML is changing so fast it's almost impossible to keep up with developments. How do you know what's real, and how do you use it? This book brings it all together for you. HTML: The Definitive Guide is the most comprehensive book...
Java takes you to new places. From its humble release to the public as the
(wimpy) version 1.02, Java seduced programmers with its friendly syntax, object-oriented
features, memory management, and best of all—the promise of portability. We'll take a quick
dip and write some code, compile it, and run it. We're talking...
Let me begin by making an observation that the authors are too humble to make for
themselves: This book will change your life. But more on that in a moment. First I’m
going to do something prototypically YouTubian: I’m going to talk about myself.
Many people ask me how a developer who was working on the back-end for websites
got involved in accessibility. After all, it wasn’t technically a part of my job description.
It wasn’t going to make our sites faster (though I later found out it could have that side
affect). I didn’t have a...
Many readers may be awaiting the third edition of IPv6 Essentials. The event on February 3, 2011, when the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) finally announced the depletion of the global IPv4 address pool changed the world. People seemed to wake up and realize it was high time to start planning for IPv6. But where to start? ...
In early 1994, Tim Berners-Lee put out an open call for a virtual reality specification for
the Web; Mark Pesce and I answered. Only being able to afford one plane ticket, we sent
Mark to Geneva to present our Labyrinth prototype at the first-ever World Wide Web
Developers’ Conference. With typical bombast,...
In January 1999 I was preparing to teach an introductory programming class in Java. I had taught it three times and I was getting frustrated. The failure rate in the class was too high and, even for students who succeeded, the overall level of achievement was too low.
One of the problems I saw was the books. They were too...
Although some familiarity with revision control systems will be good background
material, a reader who is not familiar with any other system will still be able to learn
enough about basic Git operations to be productive in a short while. More advanced
readers should be able to gain insight into some of Git’s...
