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Posts tagged with "tutorial"

Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview in a lazy way

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Hi there! I'm a lazy guy. I'm too lazy to burn a DVD and, well, I don't have a DVD drive actually. I'm too lazy to make a bootable USB Flash. And again - I don't have 10 GB Flash (: And I'm very lazy to partition my HDD. But I want to use Windows 8 anyway. Oh, and I forgot to mention, that I hate virtualization. Sounds impossible? Not really.

If you want to install W8DP problem free, read on!

Read more...

Proper singleton in JavaScript

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I've seen a lot of articles about singletons in JS all over the web, but most of them suck, because people writing them do not know JS well enough. Even Wikipedia's examples are no good. Let's make a list of singleton "features".

  1. It is usable like any other object.
  2. Singleton is always the same no matter where it is called from.
  3. User can not create another instance of singleton.
  4. It can store some private data and have some private methods.

The simplest way to create singleton in JavaScript is to use JSON:

var Singleton = {
    data: 'Hello, world!',
    print: function() {
        alert(Singleton.data)
    }
}

Looks good and easy, right? Every object created by JSON automatically becomes singleton in JavaScript, because it does not have any constructor and can not be instantiated anywhere except for JSON statement. But this solution has one problem... Click "Read more" — a lot of text is coming your way smile
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Ruby + Windows = ?

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Well, if you are developing Ruby apps on Windows and still use binaries from official Ruby web-site then you, probably, know that some native extensions are hard to get working. The main reason for that is that official Ruby builds are made with... Visual Studio 6! And when you need to make native extension you must use VS to build them. But Microsoft removed C++ tools a long time ago, so if you are not C++ developer, then you are screwed ):

What to do? I suggest using RubyInstaller, it comes with Ruby built with mingw32 and so called Development Kit is available as download too. After installing both if them (please, read docs a bit) you will finally have smooth Ruby experience on Windows. And it is much faster then VC6 builds! Enjoy (:

Web page blur with CSS and a bit of JavaScript

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Actually, you can't really blur web page in any browser except for IE6/7 - there is NO way to blur web page with CSS/JavaScript and even Canvas tag will NOT help. Too bad...

But I've found a workaround which will do the job just fine for some cases. My method adds CSS3 text-shadow property to blurred elements with the same color as text color is. Then text color "blurred" a bit to the background color. The last thing left is to find all IMG tags, replace them with Canvas, draw and blur these images inside canvas. I did not do the last step because there are plenty of code for that in Google.

Oh, and the result! Here it is (: Visit the page with Opera/Chrome/FF/Safari, click on the text, enjoy the sources!

Links: Introduction to Android development

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IBM developerWorks has an introductionary article on Android development which I do recommend to everyone interested in development for Android mobile platform. Article gives overall platform introduction, brief history, then focuses on application architecture, SDK and tools and finishes with simple example application with source code available for download. I hope more Android development articles will come soon to IBM developerWorks.

Links: CSS sprites - everything you need to know

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If you are a web-developer then you definitely should know about CSS sprites. This thingie is quite old and highly used by experienced web-developers. I used this trick for the first time somewhere back in 2003-2004 when developing JavaScript game prototype for my own pleasure. No one knew the term those days, but some people already used CSS sprites in some projects, because they, like me, had a PC gaming background. And then many web-devs realized that CSS sprites do really increase application performance, so they started to write frameworks and helpful libraries to support "new" technology.

Oh, nostalgy...

Anyway, if you are not yet familiar with the topic, then do not hesitate to visit Smashing Magazine and read everything you need to know about CSS sprites!

Tutorial: Build Your Own Linux Distro

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PCPlus has a short and simple tutorial on building your own Linux distribution with the customizations you want. As far as I understood it is based upon latest Fedora using built-in tools. Simple, yet powerful - just what you need, yeah?

Links: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

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A while ago I have written Ruby programming quickstart which includes a link to a great free book on Ruby. Now I have found another great Ruby book - Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. I don't know how, but I missed it and reading it only now. I'm not a Ruby noob anymore, but this book is simply outstanding and is a must-read! It is fun, includes comic strips and, well, teaches Ruby by the way (: It is absolute joy to read this one even if you are not a programmer. C'mon! Read it yourself and give it to your kids! You definitely won't regret!

Links: IBM developerWorks

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Let me introduce you IBM developerWorks a one of the best online resources for every kind of developer out there. It has a very big article database, containing tutorials, technology introductions for beginners and information for advanced developers. You can find there articles on how to setup Eclipse IDE for your special needs, how to work with sockets in Ruby, where to start hacking Linux kernel and much much more covering such topics such as web development, java, multicore programming, XML just to name a few. A very good resource indeed - I have found a lot of useful information there!

Ruby programming quickstart

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Ruby is

A dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.



Ruby is really cool and writting in it is a pleasure! But where to start from if you are totally new to Ruby? What to download and which IDE to use? I would recommend NetBeans. First of all it is written in Java so it is a crossplatform solution: Windows, UNIX, MacOS X are all handled. And this IDE has a lot of useful features like Ruby on Rails support, Ruby debugger and Ruby Gems installation manager. But the best feature for newcomers is bundled JRuby - a Ruby implementation in Java. So one package contains everything to get you started in no time!

You can read more about features and functionality on NetBeans Ruby page and then download it (about 60 megs).

So, everything is downloaded, what's next? I suggest reading Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide. First edition of this book is freely available online, but remember - first edition comes from year 2000 and some things are changed, so some examples will not work or will show you some kind of warning. Anyway this is the best guide to Ruby I have read, so I suggest you to buy this one (newer edition of course). Also there are tonns of documentation online available.

I hope you will enjoy programming Ruby as much as I do!
February 2012
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