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15 Fantastic Finds on the Google Code Repository

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:26:56 +0000

Google Code Repository is a section of Google that, just like SourceForge, allows developers to upload their code for others to use under license. The repository was launched in 2006 and after searching through its archives, I found a number of interesting scripts and other goodies that would be an asset in any website owner/website builder's arsenal. ...

Detecting User Inactivity in C#

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:23:31 +0000

There are several reasons why you may wish to detect when the user is idle. Some background processes are so intensive that they make all other user interaction unacceptably poor. Some software changes state when the user is inactive. For example, Windows Live Messenger can be set to set the user's status as "Away" automatically and indicate this to other systems. In these situations, and many others, the behaviour is dependant upon the length of time since the user pressed a key or moved their mouse. In order to determine the period of inactivity, two times are required. The first is the system's up time and the second is the up time when the last user input occurred. If the second value is subtracted from the first, the duration of inactivity is known. Obtaining the first value is described in the article, "Getting the System Up Time". The time of the last user input can be obtained using a call to the Windows API using Platform Invocation Services (P/Invoke). ...

Exciting JavaScript Part I

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:22:55 +0000

I was asked to talk about advanced JavaScript techniques at the last monthly meeting of ClubAJAX - monthly get-together of Dallas-area JavaScript programmers. Instead I ended up talking about leveraging cool JavaScript features to implement well-known programming techniques and paradigms: OOP, AOP, FP, and so on. Unfortunately I couldn't finish in time, so I did a tour of some language features, and talked about OOP and AOP. The rest (I plan to do FP, code generation, and DSL) will be covered later. So I split my slides into two parts and today I publish the first part. In a month or so, when I deliver the second part, I'll publish the rest. ...

30 The Best jQuery plugins inspired from Twitter and Facebook

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:15:45 +0000

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery plugins are an integral part of modern web design. jQuery plugins gives web designers a wide range of activities and opportunities to develop a wide range of variation effects to your websites. The plugins below will allow you to insert in to your website very interesting effects of Social media giants: Twitter and Facebook. If you want to create Facebook like Twitter fan page or Facebook post on Wall effect, these plugins are for you. ...

Memory leak patterns in JavaScript

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:10:05 +0000

JavaScript is a garbage collected language, meaning that memory is allocated to objects upon their creation and reclaimed by the browser when there are no more references to them. While there is nothing wrong with JavaScript's garbage collection mechanism, it is at odds with the way some browsers handle the allocation and recovery of memory for DOM objects. Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are two browsers that use reference counting to handle memory for DOM objects. In a reference counting system, each object referenced maintains a count of how many objects are referencing it. If the count becomes zero, the object is destroyed and the memory is returned to the heap. Although this solution is generally very efficient, it has a blind spot when it comes to circular (or cyclic) references. What's wrong with circular references? A circular reference is formed when two objects reference each other, giving each object a reference count of 1. In a purely garbage collected system, a circular reference is not a problem: If neither of the objects involved is referenced by any other object, then both are garbage collected. In a reference counting system, however, neither of the objects can be destroyed, because the reference count never reaches zero. In a hybrid system, where both garbage collection and reference counting are being used, leaks occur because the system fails to identify a circular reference. In this case, neither the DOM object nor the JavaScript object is destroyed. Listing 1 shows a circular reference between a JavaScript object and a DOM object. ...

Color Theory for Designer, Part 3: Creating Your Own Color Palettes

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:05:06 +0000

In the previous two parts of this series on color theory, we talked mostly about the meanings behind colors and color terminology. While this information is important, I'm sure a lot of people were wondering when we were going to get into the nitty-gritty of actually creating some color schemes. Well, that's where Part 3 comes in. Here we'll be talking about methods for creating your own color schemes, from scratch. We'll cover the traditional color scheme patterns (monochrome, analogous, complementary, etc.) as well as how to create custom schemes that aren't based strictly on any one pattern. By the end of this article, you'll have the tools and skills to start creating beautiful color palettes for your own design projects. The best way to improve your skills is to practice, so why not set yourself a goal of creating a new color scheme every day. ...

Applying Mathematics To Web Design

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:04:36 +0000

"Mathematics is beautiful." This may sound absurd to people who wince at numbers and equations. But some of the most beautiful things in nature and our universe exhibit mathematical properties, from the smallest seashell to the biggest whirlpool galaxies. In fact, one of the greatest ancient philosophers, Aristotle, said: "The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful." Because of its beautiful nature, mathematics has been a part of art and architectural design for ages. But it has not been exploited much for website design. This is probably because many of us regard mathematics as being antithetical to creativity. On the contrary, mathematics can be a tool to produce creative designs. That said, you don't have to rely on math for every design. The point is that you should regard it as your friend, not a foe. For illustrative purposes, we created a couple of web designs that present mathematical principles discussed in this article. We are also giving away a couple of PSDs that you can use right away in your next design. Layouts featured in this post were created specifically for the purpose of this article. During the design process we made sure that all of the designs shown in this article are essentially mathematical in nature; that is, they exhibit order, symmetry and limitation. We also have followed the Web design algorithm in this process - the designs have distinct themes, styles and elements. To keep things simple and clear, we tried to stick to minimalist designs and also preferred single-page layouts. Obviously, examples in this article are supposed to serve as a simple foundation for your designs and not as the finished designs. ...

Stunning Photos That Are Not Manipulated

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:03:56 +0000

There are hundreds of posts available on the internet about photoshop and photo manipulation. You probably have also seen many photos or images that have been manipulated and inspire others. Today, we are posting another post that probably will make you look twice. In this post we are listing few 10 Stunning Photos That Are Actually Not Manipulated. These are not manipulated in terms of that all the objects and their actions are real but might be edited for colors adjustments etc. I appreciate to all those talented photographers who taken these excellent photos with their efforts, imaginations and creativity to give us a chance to see these photographic wonders from their creative eyes. This list is not long in numbers but I promise you that when you start browsing them in details it will surely refresh you and force you to know more about these photographers. These are the wonder creations of photographers who use their creativity with a different angle and approach to get the result that makes a difference. ...

15 Free Mac OS X Apps That Can Make Your Lives Easier

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:03:20 +0000

This is the post where we are listing out few great free apps for Mac Operating System, this is an exclusive post for our those readers who are the Mac users. But our other readers will also enjoy this post. Don't forget to bookmark this post for your future reference as it has few most useful and free application that will be helpful for you when you are on your Mac system. This is absolutely a great list of 15 Free Mac OS X Apps That Can Make Your Lives Easier. ...

24 Best Practices for AJAX Implementations

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:02:43 +0000

Implementing AJAX technology can be a hit or miss thing. Do it well and you'll have users raving over the slickness it provides to the general user experience while if you mess it up, you'll be at the receiving end of their wrath. Here are 24 tips to guide you with implementing AJAX technology within your web application. ...

This Car Runs on Code

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:31:02 +0000

The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems. These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, "it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code," says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car. ...

jQuery MultiSelect Plugin

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:29:38 +0000

I've been working on a multiple select plugin on and off for the past couple months and finally have it stable enough for a first release. When I started this project my intentions were only to re-factor Cory LaViska's MultiSelect implementation, but it quickly turned into a complete re-write with a focus on speed and ThemeRoller support. This plugin turns an ordinary HTML select control into an elegant drop down list of checkboxes. ...

An introduction to iptables

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:26:16 +0000

iptables is a linux application that allows you to configure the built-in linux firewall. There are abstraction layers built on top of it, including nice GUIs, but I recently had some very basic rules I wanted to implement, and figured I'd learn how to do it directly in iptables. It turned out to be easy to configure, and I thought I'd give a very basic introduction. First though, I relied on the ubuntu documentation to get up and running (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IptablesHowTo). I'll pretty much just regurgitate what's in there - I've said it before, stop believing that linux documentation is written only for people who already know linux. Also, depending on your setup, most of these commands might require elevation (sudo). ...

Practical Entity Framework for C#: Entity Framework for ASP.NET

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:25:40 +0000

ADO Entity Framework can be used in ASP.NET as well. There are only minor things to keep in mind. The EntityDataSource makes using an Entity Model in ASP.NET much easier. In this video, Todd Miranda demonstrates how to use Entity Framework in ASP.NET. ...

Solar Dynamics Observatory: The Variable Sun Mission

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:16:42 +0000

For some years now, an unorthodox idea has been gaining favor among astronomers. It contradicts old teachings and unsettles thoughtful observers, especially climatologists. "The sun," explains Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC, "is a variable star." But it looks so constant... That's only a limitation of the human eye. Modern telescopes and spacecraft have penetrated the sun's blinding glare and found a maelstrom of unpredictable turmoil. Solar flares explode with the power of a billion atomic bombs. Clouds of magnetized gas (CMEs) big enough to swallow planets break away from the stellar surface. Holes in the sun's atmosphere spew million mile-per-hour gusts of solar wind. And those are the things that can happen in just one day. Over longer periods of decades to centuries, solar activity waxes and wanes with a complex rhythm that researchers are still sorting out. The most famous "beat" is the 11-year sunspot cycle, described in many texts as a regular, clockwork process. In fact, it seems to have a mind of its own. ...

Six Powerful Free Disk Defragmentation Tool

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:15:49 +0000

oday, we are listing Six Powerful Free Disk Defragmentation Tool. These would be very helpful for you to remedy system sluggishness and crashes caused by disk fragmentation. If you are designer, developer, office worker, manager, supervisor, student, home user, etc but we hope that these are worth checking for all of you. Most of them are not very well known but they are really amazing in respect to their features. Just take a look at them and share your thoughts here. ...

Free Computer Part Icon Set

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:19:42 +0000

Today, we are releasing our very first Computer Part Icons, a free icon set designed by Iconshock for exclusive readers of Smashing Apps. Iconshock - stock icons is a professional stock icons for web and software application. If you like, you can contact them for developing of a custom icon design project too. There are 5 icons included in this free icon set having a size of 512�512px in PNG format. ...

Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:17:08 +0000

CodeIgniter is becoming well known for its power as a PHP based web application framework, but it's not often that we see examples of it being used for anything else. Today we'll learn how we can use CodeIgniter to create a RESTful API for your existing web applications, and demonstrate how to interact with your own API or other RESTful web-services, such as Facebook and Twitter. ...

75 Fresh Business Cards for Design Inspiration

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:20:31 +0000

For marketing point of view to any kind of business, its very important to have a good looking business card. Business card reflects the seriousness of you involved in your own business. Therefore we have collected some nicely designed Business cards for design inspiration. ...

7 Amazing jQuery 3D

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:19:33 +0000

This article will talk about 3D jquery. As web developers and web designers are always looking for new resources, tips, tricks. Ever wondered if you could create amazing 3D effects by writing less code to do more? I have put together this wonderful collection of 3D jQuery with examples that will demonstrate the power of jQuery in producing exceptional 3D effects. with jquery 3D web designers and web developers can more explor ability to create websites .. creativity only be disallowed. What your comment ? ...

Sweet AJAX Tabs With jQuery 1.4 & CSS3

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:19:04 +0000

Organizing the content of a page in a both intuitive and eye-catching manner, is a must in modern web design. One principle that has been around for some time is dividing text into tabs. This allows you to squeeze much more content in a seemingly limited space and provide a structured way of accessing it. Today we are making an AJAX-powered tab page with CSS3 and the newly released version 1.4 of jQuery, so be sure to download the zip archive from the button above and continue with step one. ...

10 jQuery Plugins for Easier Google Map Installation

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:18:07 +0000

At first glance the Google Map API may seem scary, I mean, were do you possibly start? You probably only want to display a simple map that displays directions to your clients address, you don't really want an all singing and dancing interactive map with more options than necessary. There has to be a simpler way. Of course there is, and as with almost all web site interactivity, jQuery does offer some simple and easy to use plugins. The plugins below offer not only an easier method to install a map, they also offer the option to add extra functionality, should you choose to need them. They also all come with a varied degree of docs, some are extensive and some non-existent, so choose your plugin wisely. I have also listed a couple of beginner jQuery and Google Map tutorials at the the bottom of the post. If you are taking your first steps within Google Maps, I suggest you start there. ...

30 commercial games released for FREE

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:17:38 +0000

We like free stuff. That's why we posted links to download and play 365 free games so you could have a decent game to play for every day of the year, free of charge. Unfortunately, GamesRadar has yet to wrestle the most formidable type of free games into submission so that they can be preserved in their proper list form for eternity. We're talking about the free games that were good enough to sell, important enough to review, and memorable enough to warrant a second play through years later. Luckily, we've somehow managed to sort through over a hundred previously-for-sale titles that you can now play for free, and synthesized our list down to just the essential games you'd still want to play. Most of them look dated, for sure, but whether you're looking for some decent side-scrolling action, nostalgic hits from the golden age of adventure, classic titles of interest, or even MMORPGs, you're bound to find something in the following pages. ...

How to Test your JavaScript Code with QUnit

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:15:23 +0000

QUnit, developed by the jQuery team, is a great framework for unit testing your JavaScript. In this tutorial, I'll introduce what QUnit specifically is, and why you should care about rigorously testing your code. ...

Facebook Hopes to Revolutionize PHP with HipHop

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:31:12 +0000

Little did we know that, for the last six months, Facebook has made use of a custom compiler for PHP that they refer to as "Hip Hop." Essentially, it takes your PHP source code, and converts it into C++, and is then compiled with G++. As a result, they've managed to reduce their CPU usage by 50%. This project has apparently been in development for the last two years, but has only today been released to the community. "HipHop for PHP isn't technically a compiler itself. Rather it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it. HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features - such as eval() - in exchange for improved performance. HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP's runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations." ...

HipHop for PHP: Move Fast

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:30:00 +0000

One of the key values at Facebook is to move fast. For the past six years, we have been able to accomplish a lot thanks to rapid pace of development that PHP offers. As a programming language, PHP is simple. Simple to learn, simple to write, simple to read, and simple to debug. We are able to get new engineers ramped up at Facebook a lot faster with PHP than with other languages, which allows us to innovate faster. Today I'm excited to share the project a small team of amazing people and I have been working on for the past two years; HipHop for PHP. With HipHop we've reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page. Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead. This project has had a tremendous impact on Facebook. We feel the Web at large can benefit from HipHop, so we are releasing it as open source this evening in hope that it brings a new focus toward scaling large complex websites with PHP. While HipHop has shown us incredible results, it's certainly not complete and you should be comfortable with beta software before trying it out. ...

Firefox Themes - 60 Most Popular Themes You Must See

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:28:56 +0000

Firefox is a free, open source and most reliable web browser till now. Few months back, I wrote an article about Best Firefox Addons for Web Designers and Developers. Today I will share with you some cool Firefox Themes. The list has been prepared according to the popularity of these themes. The screen shot and a little description has been included for each theme. I personally liked 'Classic Remix of Windows 7' theme and definitely recommend it. ...

Hubble Sees Suspected Asteroid Collision

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:24:54 +0000

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has observed a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before. The object, called P/2010 A2, was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey on Jan. 6. At first, astronomers thought it might be a so-called "main belt comet"--a rare case of a comet orbiting in the asteroid belt. Follow-up images taken by Hubble on Jan. 25 and 29, however, revealed a complex X-pattern of filamentary structures near the nucleus: "This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets," says principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies." ...

10 ways to make Internet Explorer act like a modern browser

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:17:08 +0000

Like many other web developers, I definitely hate Internet Explorer, especially the version 6. At a time where new and powerful techniques as such as HTML5 and CSS3 are emerging, it's not surprising that IE can't handle them correctly. Luckily, a few tricks can make your life easier. ...

How to create drag & drop interaction with jQuery

pc@pedrocorreia.net (pedrocorreia.net) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:52:42 +0000

One of the more interesting actions in visual interfaces is the ability to drag an object and drop it on a selected target. Pretty much like what we do in real life at the supermarket. Grab a beer - drag to cart - drop it in the cart. But there are attributes in the product that it would be interesting to unveil in an application. For example, when you grab a beer you can feel if it's cold or not, and when you get to the checkout you pay the price of the bottle, which is a hidden attribute of the bottle. Today we will learn how to create drag & drop using jQuery and adding hidden attributes to the draggable items. This is what we will be creating: when you start dragging the box, a block will display additional info about that object. It could be text as well as an image, but in order to make things easy I just added some text. Next, when you drop the item on the target area, a message will be displayed along with other hidden information contained in the object. ...