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Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles and celebrates

28/09/2012 Leave a Comment

I would ike to inform you that Birmingham-based IT publisher Packt Publishing will publish it`s 1000th book title this month.  Packt books cover highly specific tools and technologies which IT professionals might not expect to see a high quality book on. I have reviewed several Packt Publishing books in the past, which can be found here.

To celebrate this milestone, Packt Publishing is giving everybody a surprise gift – to get involved you just need to have already registered, or sign up for a free Packt account before 30th September 2012. To sign-up for a free account before the 30th of September, 2012, please visit their website: www.PacktPub.com.

Packt published their first book in April 2004. One of the most prolific and fastest growing tech book publishers in the world, they now have books on everything from web development to web graphics, e-learning to e-commerce, IT architecture to games, and app development.

Packt supports many of the Open Source projects covered by its books through a project royalty donation, which has contributed over £300,000 to Open Source projects up to now. As part of the celebration Packt is allocating $30,000 to share between projects and authors in a genuinely unique way, soon to be disclosed on their website.

Dave Maclean, founder of Packt Publishing explains, “At Packt we set out 8 years ago to bring practical, up to date and easy to use technical books to the specialist tools and technologies that had been largely overlooked by IT publishers. Today, I am really proud that with our authors and partners we have been able to make useful books available on over 1000 topics and make our contribution to the development community.”

For more information about Packt, the kind of books they publish visit their website: www.PacktPub.com.

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jQuery for Designers Beginner’s Guide review

02/07/2012 Leave a Comment

You are now reading my review of the recently published book “jQuery for Designers: Beginner’s Guide published” by Packt Publishing.

What`s the book about?

jQuery is a JavaScript library that makes daily routines in JavaScript easier.

jQuery is provided under the MIT and GPL licenses.

At the moment of writing this review, version 1.7.2 is the latest jQuery version available.

About the reviewer

I’m Ramon van Belzen (Ramoonus), a 24 year old web designer from Vlissingen, the Netherlands. I’m surfing the web since 1997 and I`ve been programming HTML since 1998. I currently run over 15 websites, most of them as webmaster and web designer. Nowadays I use web technologies like HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript PHP/MySQL and a bit of jQuery.

I have no serious experience with jQuery and haven`t read books about jQuery in the past. Therefore my jQuery experience is  almost none.

Packt Publishing offered me the chance to review this book, and since I haven`t received books for more than a year I accepted it.

Who is this book written for?

This book is written for web designers with knowledge of HTML and CSS. Basic knowledge of JavaScript and jQuery are useful but not required.

To use this book you will need an actual version of a browser and an IDE. Up-to-date browsers like Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome 10+ and Firefox 4+ should be fine.

Free IDE`s like Aptana and NetBeans shouldn’t give problems either.

What can you expect from the book?

The book promises to tell you:

  • Enhance the user experience of your site by adding useful jQuery features
  • Learn the basics of adding impressive jQuery effects and animations even if you’ve never written a line of JavaScript
  • Easy step-by-step approach shows you everything you need to know to get started improving your website with jQuery

And teaches you:

  • Download and include the jQuery library on your website
  • Build browsable photo galleries and animated slideshows, along with carousels and sliders
  • Create tabbed interfaces in a few lines of code without a plugin
  • Include custom scrollbars that fit the design of your site but are still easy for your site visitors to use
  • Use AJAX to only load up the changing content area rather than the whole page
  • Enhance the navigation on your site by using animations and custom tooltips
  • Enhance web forms to make them easier for your site visitor to use

The preface covers the chapters content and conventions used. And the chapters content.

The first chapter explains the installation and power of jQuery along with the necessary basics of JavaScript and jQuery.

Next chapter teaches a basic implementation of jQuery with CSS selectors and Javascript functions. The example in the book shows how to write code to open a link in an external window. Later on you will learn how to add pictures and tabs.

Chapter three explains how to hide and show elements, along with the use of animations. The result of this chapter is a fancy FAQ page.

Building Custom Scrollbars is the title of chapter four. In this example a third-party jQuery plugin is used. By the end of the chapter you will have a fully styled scrolling block with mouse wheel support and animations.

Tooltips with qTip are described in chapter five. Tooltips can be used to explain abbreviates or add images to text. Following the installation of qTip is the styling of the tooltip, practical implementations for items like a menu and ending the chapter with adding images to a tooltip.

Building an Interactive Navigation Menu is the title of chapter six. This chapter uses Superfish to create a horizontal or vertical drop-down menu. All functions of this jQuery plugin are explained as well as styling and animating the menu.

Chapter 7 teaches jQuery and AJAX to set up an asynchronous website. The first examples include replacing the page`s content with AJAX by using the menu. Next example contains jQuery BBQ. Also custom AJAX loading images are added to the examples.

Creating a Lightbox is chapter eight`s content. This example uses the Colorbox plugin. This chapter also begins with the installation, configuration and styling of the plugin. At the beginning a photoalbum lightbox is created, followed by a Lightbox login system and ending with  a video in a lightbox.

Slideshows and sliders are described in chapter nine. The instructions explains several slider plugins including CrossSlide, Nivo Slider and Galleriffic. The chapter begins with a simple animated slider. Second paragraph explains the usage of Nivo Slider, starting with the installation and ending with the configuration. The same counts for Galleriffic and the chapter ends with CrossSlide.

Chapter ten goes on about sliders, instead of using images in sliders you will learn how to add content. Examples in this chapter use jCarousel to develop your ideal slider.

Creating an interactive DataGrid is chapter ten`s title. As expected – this chapter explains how to create a fully-featured datagrid using jQuery and jQuery UI.

Chapter twelve is the biggest one of the book. Starting the chapter is the use of HTML5 to improve forms. Following this is CSS styling of specific (HTML5) form elements. After this the first bits of jQuery  show up; from setting focus and placeholders to validating. The end of the chapter focusses on using the jQuery plugin Uniform to improve the styling of forms.

My Conclusion

The book`s promises (see paragraph What can you expect from the book? ) are correct. The book covers everything the cover and introduction said it will tell you.

I had no problems reproducing the examples or modifying these for my own projects. The jQuery version and plugins in the book are actual and up-to-date.

Images are sharp and the eBook featured colour images.

After reading this book I learned a lot to put jQuery into practise on every day sites and jobs.

This book is not written for those who want to develop their own jQuery plugins but instead its written for web designers who would like to know how to implement every day features on their site.

For more information about the book or to read a sample chapter, visit the page jQuery for Designers: Beginner’s Guide or leave a comment on my website`s review.

Other jQuery Books by Packt Publishing

Book Details

Language : English

Paperback : 332 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]

Release Date : April 2012

ISBN : 1849516707

ISBN 13 : 9781849516709

Author(s) : Natalie MacLees

Topics and Technologies : All Books, Beginner’s Guides, jQuery, Open Source, Web Development

Filed Under: Reviews

Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator’s Cookbook review

22/06/2011 2 Comments

As the title might suggest, this book is a cookbook about Inkscape version 0.48 written for illustrators. This book is published by Packt Publishing and falls in the categories: open-source, graphics, illustration, SVG and is one of Packt’s cookbook series.

As a fellow Inkscape-newbie and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) enthusiast I will be reviewing this book.

What`s the book about?

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor with features comparable to expensive software like  Adobe Illustrator, Fireworks and ColorDraw. Inkscape uses the W3C Scalable Vector Graphics file format. SVG can also be used on webpages and is fully incorporated into HTML 5 and is therefore a drawing technology of the near-future.

Inkscape can be downloaded from inkscape.org 

Who is this book written for?

This book is written for people without experience with vector graphics design software and can also be used for people new to vector graphics (while moving away from Photoshop) and people who want to learn Inkscape.

This book is also for the intermediate users who want to improve their toolkit and increase their workflow.

To use this book you have to have Inkscape 0.48 installed as well as a text editor with programming functions. An installed version of Python is also recommended but not necessary.

Windows users could also use PortableApps.com version of Inkscape.

[Read more...]

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Joomla! 1.6 First Look review

03/05/2011 Leave a Comment

Joomla! is an open-source award-winning PHP/MySQL based content management system (CMS). Since its available under the GPL license it`s free to download, modify and use it for your website.

Version 1.6 introduces many improvements for front-end users and administrators. New features in Joomla 1.6 include

  • Finer access controls for viewing and editing content with configurable user groups and viewing levels
  • A user-defined category structure, from simple one-level to complex multi-level categories
  • Installation improvements allowing for multiple extension installations in one package, updatable with a single click
  • Expanded language support for easy production of multi-lingual sites
  • Start and end publishing times for modules with more control over where they display,
  • Fresh new templates and semantic markup to please the eye as well as the search engines
  • More creative control through template styles
  • Hundreds of additional features, streamlining workflow and productivity

The book guides you trough changes including  the new interface, articles, menus, access control levels (ACL), templates, extensions and SEO features.

This book is written for users, developers and designers who are familiar with Joomla 1.5 and want to know what’s new in Joomla 1.6.

Packt has asked me if I’m interested in reviewing this book by the famous Dutch Joomla expert Eric Tiggeler.

[Read more...]

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Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator’s Cookbook

28/04/2011 1 Comment

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor with an intuitive user interface that has enough depth to make quality graphic designs with an attractive layout comparable to what you would make using Illustrator or CorelDraw. But choosing the right tool and the best approach to creating the desired effect can be challenging. Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator’s Cookbook makes it super-easy for you to make your own vector-based graphics with the powerful Inkscape editor.

Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator’s Cookbook provides you with the latest recipes to quickly create scalable vector graphics. Recipes in this book teach you about some of the most useful time-saving features in Inkscape accompanied by a list of keyboard shortcuts that you can easily memorize. In addition to covering use of Inkscape tools and their advanced features, examples from the recipes uncover solutions to common graphics problems.

The book starts off with familiarizing you with the tools and techniques in Inkscape that you can use to draw 2D shapes, calligraphic shapes, and 3D boxes easily. It then guides you through the most common color-changing steps performed in Inkscape along with some convenient procedures that can save your time when dealing with colors. It explains drawing using linear and radial gradients, which are irreplaceable, usage of clones to create interesting effects in illustrations, and live-path effects that can help you speed up constructing a shape and make the process more natural. You will learn how to make those tweaks on some of the ready-made filters, and in the final recipe we will create a filter from scratch. This practical book also contains recipes showing how to use Inkscape as a raster editor and how to achieve photo-realistic effects in Inkscape. For each important technique and skill, you’ll see some simple recipes, then some more advanced recipes followed by an explanation of how Inkscape works to produce the desired effects in your illustrations.

By the end of this book you will be confident enough to create your own vector-based graphics with Inkscape.

Get solutions to common graphic problems to achieve photo-realistic effects with Inkscape

What you will learn from this book :

  • Introduce you to the fascinating world of two-dimensional, calligraphic, and three-dimensional objects, using the Inkscape’s powerful tools
  • Assist you in adjusting color using hue, brightness, saturation, and stroke width, until you find the perfect look and feel
  • Guide you in recreating iconic images from cult movies, with the help of gradient colors and complex vector shapes
  • Leverage Inkscape 0.48′s advanced path editing tools and techniques, producing great looking text and beautiful drawings
  • Help you produce professional looking posters, calendars, and wallpapers, packaging them so you can print or share them on the Internet
  • Illustrate the spectacular, and often surprising, effects of the many extensions and image filters found in version 0.48
  • Teach you to develop a standards-compliant and gorgeous looking Web 2.0 site layout, complete with widgets and buttons
  • Help you design and build your very own HTML5 and AJAX powered web games, presentations, and business applications, using JQuery powered SVG animation
  • Aid you in extending Inkscape by writing your own plugins in the Python programming language

 For more information, visit www.packtpub.com/inkscape-048-illustrators-cookbook/book

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