Beginning HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript

An indispensable introductory guide to creating web pages using the most up-to-date standards

This beginner guide shows you how to use XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create compelling Web sites. While learning these technologies, you will discover coding practices such as writing code that works on multiple browsers including mobile devices, how to use AJAX frameworks to add interactivity to your pages, and how to ensure your pages meet accessible requirements.

Packed with real-world examples, the book not only teaches you how to write Web sites using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, but it also teaches you design principles that help you create attractive web sites and practical advice on how to make web pages more usable. In addition, special checklists and appendices review key topics and provide helpful references that re-enforce the basics you've learned.

• Serves as an ideal beginners guide to writing web pages using XHTML
• Explains how to use CSS to make pages more appealing and add interactivity to pages using JavaScript and AJAX frameworks
• Share advice on design principles and how to make pages more attractive and offers practical help with usability and accessibility
• Features checklists and appendices that review key topics

This introductory guide is essential reading for getting started with using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript to create exciting and compelling Web sites.

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Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery

Create real-time, highly interactive apps quickly with the powerful XMPP protocol

XMPP is a robust protocol used for a wide range of applications, including instant messaging, multi-user chat, voice and video conferencing, collaborative spaces, real-time gaming, data synchronization, and search. This book teaches you how to harness the power of XMPP in your own apps and presents you with all the tools you need to build the next generation of apps using XMPP or add new features to your current apps. Featuring the JavaScript language throughout and making use of the jQuery library, the book contains several XMPP apps of increasing complexity that serve as ideal learning tools.

• Learn about XMPP's instant messaging features, such as rosters, presence and subscriptions, and private chats

• Covers XMPP stanzas, stanza errors, and client protocol syntax and semantics

• Discusses service discovery, data forms, and publish-subscribe

• Addresses XMPP programming-related topics such as application design, event handling, and combining existing protocols

• Details the best ways to deploy XMPP-based applications

• Explains how to use Strophe's plugin system and how to create your own plugins

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Silverlight 3 Programmer's Reference

This valuable reference—in full color—explains the major new release of Silverlight 3 which is dramatically improved over previous versions and makes the development of powerful Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) achievable for everyone. Packed with examples and written by a highly-seasoned team of developers and designers, this book guides you through the languages, tools, and techniques that are used to build applications on the Silverlight 3 platform (Build 40522). Each chapter provides a mini-tutorial on the respective topic, and the examples serve to both educate and inspire you. The information in this book is structured to help prepare you for the real-world challenges you may face when building applications on the Silverlight platform. By the end of the book, you’ll have gained a thorough understanding of how Silverlight applications are architected, developed, and designed.

This book covers:

· XAML basics

· Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008, Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight Runtime and SDK

Transforming text with render transforms

· Using graphics, visuals and adding media for a richer user experience

· Building application, making it come alive and responding to user activity

· Setting up a control project and using a custom control in an application

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Plone 3 for Education

Break the webmaster bottleneck by empowering instructors and staff

• Enable instructors and staff to represent courses using Plone's built-in content types--news items, collections, and events--without writing a single line of code
• Embed sound and video into your course materials, news feeds, or anywhere on your Plone site
• Written by Erik Rose--member of the Plone 4 and 5 Framework Teams
• Expert guidance on using the best plug-ins so that you can get the best out of your site right from the beginning

In Detail

Plone enables your faculty and staff to manage their own web sites, but some assembly is still required. How do you represent courses online? What about assignment schedules, lecture podcasts, and collaborative spaces? That's where this book comes in--it takes the burden of routine updates off your web team by harnessing the world's most advanced free content management system.

This is the school web team's missing manual. Through step-by-step examples covering 11 common educational use cases, you'll learn how to take the box of parts provided by Plone, combine them with best-of-breed third-party plug-ins, and turn out a dynamic web environment that will be a joy to use for faculty, enhance staff productivity, and engage the student body.

Plone is powerful but complex. Its ease of use for end users belies a wealth of under-the-hood features and third-party add-ons that are time-consuming for back-end web teams to sort through. The book guides you on proven paths through the forest of potential that you encounter during design and deployment, starting you with reasonable choices for each of 11 common education-domain use cases. Each one enumerates the value it brings to your site and guides you step-by-step through an implementation suitable for the vast majority of cases, meaning you can spend your time addressing the unique needs of your institution--not reinventing the wheel.

What you will learn from this book

• Build common e-learning tasks in Plone: assignment schedules, course materials, online turn-in forms, and class interaction using podcasts and forums
• Build school-wide and department-wise directories collecting contact info, biographies, and more
• Take care of necessities, like customizing the look of your site, setting up a production server, and running incremental backups
• Integrate audio and video with Plone: weaving it into pages, populating portlets, and podcasting it to the world
• Harness Plone4Artists Calendar product to improve the display of event listings
• Find tips on information architecture and usability, learning from the successes and mistakes of several sites

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Beginning Silverlight 3

Silverlight design tools have important differences compared to those used to create Ajax and JavaScript functionality. Robert Lair takes you on a tour of all the tools, including Microsoft Expression Design, which plays an important part in creating Silverlight assets; Microsoft Expression Blend, which is used to build user interaction for Silverlight elements; and Microsoft Visual Studio, which manages the interaction between designers and developers, providing the coding environment for "nuts and bolts" wiring.

Once you've mastered the basics, you'll move on to gaining a more in-depth knowledge of some of the groundbreaking new features of the Silverlight technology.

The growing popularity of Web 2.0 applications is increasing user expectations for high-quality web site design, presentation, and functionality. It is into this climate that Microsoft is releasing Silverlight 3, the third iteration of its cross-browser web presentation technology and the second to ride on top of the .NET platform. Beginning Sliverlight 3 brings you to the cutting-edge of Web 2.0 application design and includes plenty of practical guidance to get you started straightaway.

What you'll learn

• Discover the tools needed for Silverlight 3 development, the roles each plays, and how they interact to produce a seamless result.
• Understand the fundamental concepts and techniques that lie at the heart of every successful Silverlight application and how to apply them to your own projects.
• Explore the new features and coding practices Silverlight gives to you as a developer that sets it apart from other web-development tools.

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Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach is yourpractical companion to developing rich, interactive web applicationswith Microsoft's latest technology. This book tackles common problemsand scenarios that on-the-job developers face every day by revealingcode and detailed solutions. You’ll quickly be able to integratereal-world, functioning code into your applications—and save hours ofcoding time.

The recipes included in Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approachhave been carefully selected and tested with the professional developerin mind. You'll find problems stated clearly and succinctly, artfulsolutions explored, and ample discussion of the code and context soyou're immediately clear how the solution will support your project.

Enjoy practical coverage of Silverlight development in many projects and contexts, including:

• Designing complete, rich, interactive user experiences
• Manipulating content and the runtime environment through the Silverlight Plug-in Runtime API
• Consuming,transforming, and displaying content in your Silverlight webapplication through XML, LINQ-based data access, and isolated storage
• Building custom controls for your Silverlight project
• Integrating rich media, including audio and video, to create a very dynamic user interface and experience
• Usingnew Silverlight features, including .NET Framework integration, the useof dynamic languages like Python and Ruby in Silverlight development,and digital rights management support

Find instant solutions, comprehensive Silverlight coverage, and time-saving expert advice, all in Silverlight Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach.

What you'll learn

• Work with fundamental aspects of the Silverlight and XAML programming model
• Design Silverlight user experiences
• Use and change the Silverlight runtime environment
• Manipulate and take advantage of browser DOM integration
• Discover solutions to custom networking and communication scenarios, including messaging and web service integration
• Work with structured data and storage, including using LINQ to access data
• Develop custom controls
• Integrate rich media into your Silverlight application

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Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server

Enhance your search with faceted navigation, result highlighting, fuzzy queries, ranked scoring, and more

• Deploy, embed, and integrate Solr with a host of programming languages
• Implement faceting in e-commerce and other sites to summarize and navigate the results of a text search
• Enhance your search by highlighting search results, offering spell-corrections, auto-suggest, finding "similar" records, boosting records and fields for scoring, phonetic matching
• Informative and practical approach to development with fully working examples of integrating a variety of technologies

In Detail If you are a developer building a high-traffic web site, you need to have a terrific search engine. Sites like Netflix.com and Zappos.com employ Solr, an open source enterprise search server, which uses and extends the Lucene search library. This is the first book in the market on Solr and it will show you how to optimize your web site for high volume web traffic with full-text search capabilities along with loads of customization options. So, let your users gain a terrific search experience.

This book is a comprehensive reference guide for every feature Solr has to offer. It serves the reader right from initiation to development to deployment. It also comes with complete running examples to demonstrate its use and show how to integrate it with other languages and frameworks.

This book first gives you a quick overview of Solr, and then gradually takes you from basic to advanced features that enhance your search. It starts off by discussing Solr and helping you understand how it fits into your architecture--where all databases and document/web crawlers fall short, and Solr shines. The main part of the book is a thorough exploration of nearly every feature that Solr offers. To keep this interesting and realistic, we use a large open source set of metadata about artists, releases, and tracks courtesy of the MusicBrainz.org project. Using this data as a testing ground for Solr, you will learn how to import this data in various ways from CSV to XML to database access. You will then learn how to search this data in a myriad of ways, including Solr's rich query syntax, "boosting" match scores based on record data and other means, about searching across multiple fields with different boosts, getting facets on the results, auto-complete user queries, spell-correcting searches, highlighting queried text in search results, and so on.

After this thorough tour, we'll demonstrate working examples of integrating a variety of technologies with Solr such as Java, JavaScript, Drupal, Ruby, XSLT, PHP, and Python.

Finally, we'll cover various deployment considerations to include indexing strategies and performance-oriented configuration that will enable you to scale Solr to meet the needs of a high-volume site.

What you will learn from this book?

• Blend structured data with real search features
• Import CSV formatted data, XML, common document formats, and from databases
• Deploy Solr and provide reference to Solr's query syntax from the basics to range queries
• Enhance search results with spell-checking, auto-completing queries, highlighting search results, and more.
• Secure Solr
• Integrate a host of technologies with Solr from the server side to client-side JavaScript, to frameworks like Drupal
• Scale Solr using replication, distributed searches, and tuning

Approach

The book takes a step-by-step tutorial approach with fully working examples in Java. It will show you how to implement a Solr-based search engine on your intranet or web site.

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Pro Silverlight 3 in VB

Silverlight is a lightweight browser plug-in that frees your code from the traditional confines of the browser. It's a rules-changing, groundbreaking technology that allows you to run rich client applications right inside the browser. Even more impressively, it's able to host true .NET applications in non-Microsoft browsers (like Firefox) and on non-Microsoft platforms (like Mac OS X). Silverlight is still new and evolving fast, and you need a reliable guidebook to make sense of it.

Pro Silverlight 3 in VB, Second Edition is the perfect reference to ensure you are informed and up to date: you'll learn about the features that put Silverlight in direct competition with Adobe Flash, such as rich support for 2D drawing, animations, and media playback, and best of all, you'll experience the plumbing of .NET and the design model of WPF through Silverlight—all of the same .NET technology that developers use to design next-generation Windows applications. Author Matthew MacDonald provides an expertly crafted tutorial written from professional developer to professional developer. You'll learn to create rich media applications using Silverlight in the environment you’re most productive in—no matter what the target platform.

What you'll learn

• Develop rich media applications using Silverlight and Visual Basic across browsers and platforms
• Create a project, set up a layout, and use controls
• Handle 2D drawing, animation, and media playback through Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Integrate web services support
• Use Silverlight in conjunction with ASP.NET and its interactions with HTML

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jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery

Modern web application user interface design requires rapid development and proven results. jQuery UI, a trusted suite of official plug-ins for the jQuery JavaScript library, gives you a solid platform on which to build rich and engaging interfaces with maximum compatibility and stability, and minimum time and effort.

jQuery UI has a series of ready-made, great-looking user interface widgets and a comprehensive set of core interaction helpers designed to be implemented in a consistent and developer-friendly way. With all this, the amount of code that you need to write personally to take a project from conception to completion is drastically reduced.

Specially revised for version 1.7 of jQuery UI, this book has been written to maximize your experience with the library by breaking down each component and walking you through examples that progressively build upon your knowledge, taking you from beginner to advanced usage in a series of easy-to-follow steps.

In this book, you'll learn how each component can be initialized in a basic default implementation and then see how easy it is to customize its appearance and configure its behavior to tailor it to the requirements of your application. You'll look at the configuration options and the methods exposed by each component's API to see how these can be used to bring out the best of the library.

Events play a key role in any modern web application if it is to meet the expected minimum requirements of interactivity and responsiveness, and each chapter will show you the custom events fired by the component covered and how these events can be intercepted and acted upon.

What you will learn from this book?

• How the brand-new CSS framework styles each of the library components
• Organizing different sections of related content as tabs and accordions to save space on your page while maximizing its content
• Displaying messages, images, and interactive content like forms using the dialog widget
• Using sliders for volume and color control of your applications by dynamically scrolling left and right, displaying different ranges
• Allowing your site visitors to select dates from the calendar using the date picker widget
• Adding an attractive and effective deterministic progress bar to give visitors essential feedback on how much longer a process has left to complete
• Providing a drag-and-drop mechanism to let users directly rearrange elements around the page
• Making a range of elements of a group selectable and taking collective actions on them
• Creating a page with content boxes that can be sorted into various positions to suit the visitor's personal preference
• Adding flair to your actions with animation effects

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RESTful Java Web Services

If you are already familiar with REST theory but are new to RESTful Java web services, and want to use the Java technology stack together with Java RESTful frameworks to create robust web services, this is the book for you.

This book is a guide to developing RESTful web services using Java and the most popular RESTful frameworks available today. It covers the theory of REST; practical coding examples for RESTful clients; a practical outline of the RESTful design process-yes, it's different from traditional web application development; and a complete implementation of a non-trivial web service using the following frameworks: Jersey's JAX-RS, Restlet's Lightweight REST, JBoss's JAX-RS RESTEasy, and Struts 2 with the REST plug-in.

We begin with an introduction to REST theory, for example, what it means for a web service to be RESTful, what it means for a web service to exchange representations of resources, and what it means to only use the conventional HTTP request method types-GET, POST, PUT, DELETE-for client/server communication. Before moving into the design and implementation process of a non-trivial web service, we look at a set of sample Java applications that connect to existing REST services that are freely available (Google, Yahoo, Twitter). We then outline a practical design process for RESTful web services and then cover the four most widely used frameworks available to date: JAX-RS implementations such as Jersey and RESTEasy, the Restlet framework, and Struts 2 with the REST plug-in. We cover each framework in detail to allow you to compare the strengths and weaknesses of each framework and to begin developing your own web services after the first reading; what's more, the whole source is included for you to modify and deploy in your own web services. Finally, we discuss the most common performance issues faced by RESTful web services and cover practical solutions to security-related issues such as authentication and data transfer.

What you will learn from this book?

• REST architecture basics
• What it means for a web service to be RESTful
• How to connect to and consume RESTful web services such as Yahoo or Google
• A RESTful web service design heuristic
• How to deploy web services to Java web containers such as Tomcat and JBoss
• How to implement an entire web service using the most popular open source frameworks currently available, including JAX-RS implementations Jersey and RESTEasy, Restlet, and Struts 2 with the REST plug-in
• How to create standalone Java web services using the Restlet framework
• How you can secure RESTful web services

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The Rhetorical Nature of XML: Constructing Knowledge in Networked Environments

The Rhetorical Nature of XML is the first volume to combine rhetoric, XML, and knowledge management in a substantive manner. It serves as a primer on XML and XML-related technologies, illustrating how the naming of XML elements can be understood as a rhetorical act, and detailing the essentials of knowledge management practices that illustrate the need for intelligently conceived databases in organizations. Authors J.D. Applen and Rudy McDaniel explain how technical knowledge and rhetorical knowledge are symbiotic assets in the modern information economy, emphasizing that skilled professionals and apprentice learners must not only adapt to and become adept with new technological environments, but they must also remain aware of the dynamic social and technological contexts through which they communicate. Applen and McDaniel use this subject as a catalyst to encourage interdisciplinary connections and projects between experts in fields such as technical communication, digital media, library science, computer science, and information technology.

The authors demonstrate techniques for working with XML in interdisciplinary projects with attention to single sourcing and content management. Interviews with practitioners working with XML for research and in industry are also included, to illustrate how XML is currently being used in a variety of disciplines, such as technical communication and digital media. Combining applied theory and XML technology to solve real-world problems in technical communication and digital media, this work provides an entry point for students and practitioners who do not have an extensive background in markup languages, enabling them to begin developing user-centric projects using XML.

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Microsoft Expression Web 3 In Depth

Beyond the Basics…Beneath the Surface…In Depth

Microsoft Expression Web 3

Advice and techniques that you need to get the job done.

Looking for ways to streamline your work so that you can focus on maximizing your time? In Depth provides specific, tested, and proven solutions to the problems you run into every day—things other books ignore or oversimplify. This is the one book that you can rely on to answer all the questions you have now and will have in the future.

In Depth offers:
• Comprehensive coverage, with detailed solutions
• Breakthrough techniques and shortcuts that are unavailable elsewhere
• Practical, real-world examples with nothing glossed over or left out
• Troubleshooting help for tough problems you can’t fix on your own
• Outstanding authors recognized worldwide for their expertise and teaching style
• Quick information via sidebars, tips, reminders, notes, and warnings

In Depth is the only tool you need to get more done in less time!

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Stripes: ...and Java web development is fun again

As a Java developer, you want to leverage your knowledge and the wealth of Java libraries and tools. But when it comes to web development, many frameworks seem over-engineered and too complex. They have a steep learning curve, and it's just too difficult to get them to do exactly what you need because of their "closed-box" design.

Stripes brings simplicity back to Java web development. You'll be up and running in minutes, and can go a long way with just a few simple concepts. You'll spend your time developing your application, not maintaining gobs of configuration. Because Stripes is very transparent, you will understand exactly what is going on from request to response.

The popularity of Stripes keeps increasing because of its clean design and extensibility. With this complete tutorial and reference, you can master Stripes and take advantage of its productivity in web application development. You'll tailor the framework to your requirements, not the other way around!

This book is packed with explanations and examples so that you learn practical problem-solving techniques. You'll be able to "wrap your head around the framework" and fully understand how Stripes works. When a client requests a feature, you'll answer "yes" with confidence because you're using a framework that lets you get the results that you need without getting in your way. Because of its open design, Stripes lets you easily integrate your favorite tools: tag libraries, AJAX frameworks, ORM solutions, dependency injectors, and more.

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The ActionScript 3.0 Migration Guide: Making the Move from ActionScript 2.0

When Flash Player 9 released in June 2006, it introduced the new scripting language, ActionScript 3, which has already taken hold in the Adobe Flex application development community. ActionScript 3 provides not only a significant enhancement in performance, but also a more robust programming model that lends itself to complex Rich Internet Application development. For web designers and developers who need to make the move to ActionScript 3 from the previous version, ActionScript 2, the learning curve has proven to be significant. In this essential and timely guide, ActionScript expert Kris Hadlock speaks squarely to the many thousands of ActionScript 2 users who need to make the leap right away. The ActionScript Migration Guide covers all of the major changes in ActionScript from version 2 to 3. The book explains the most important and fundamental changes in ActionScript drawing comparisons between the two languages both visually and contextually. With a comprehensive index and robust table of contents designers and developers will easily be able to locate the old an/or new codes with side-by-side comparisons of how to program both and the explanation of the concepts behind them.

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Flash and PHP Bible

The demand for rich Internet applications (RIAs) such as complete storefronts and interactive surveys is skyrocketing, as is the pressure to create these dynamic apps overnight and at low cost. This in-depth Bible provides the step-by-step instructions you need to quickly create RIAs in Flash using cost-effective, open-source PHP programming tools. You'll learn how PHP works, when you should use it in Flash, and above all, vital security techniques for keeping your interactive sites secure.

From the Back Cover
Quickly develop dynamic Flash applications with PHP

The demand for rich Internet applications (RIAs) such as complete storefronts and interactive surveys is skyrocketing, as is the pressure to create these dynamic apps overnight and at low cost. This in-depth Bible provides the step-by-step instructions you need to quickly create RIAs in Flash using cost-effective, open-source PHP programming tools. You'll learn how PHP works, when you should use it in Flash, and above all, vital security techniques for keeping your interactive sites secure.

* Install, configure, and explore the basics of PHP

* Connect Flash to PHP and PHP to MySQL

* Create contact forms and search capabilities

* Clean, store, and check your interactive data

* Apply advanced security techniques

* Develop an RSS reader or banner tracking with PHP

* Extend Flash and PHP with third-party libraries

* Learn best practices for backing up and updating your server

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Microsoft Expression Blend Unleashed

Microsoft Expression Blend Unleashed is about learning a new tool for designers, but also learning a new mindset for developers. Expression Blend enables the delivery of rich interactive applications, for the web as well as the desktop, allowing you to take graphical assets and blend them with functional .NET code through the power of XAML and the WPF platform. Microsoft Expression Blend Unleashed also features a C# Primer, introducing designers to the .NET Framework. .NET allows the reader to extend the functionality of many of the WPF elements used in Expression Blend. The most important concept for the reader to grasp is that Blend and Visual Studio together are about facilitating the kind of user experience everyone wants from the applications they use. This book will give you the skill set whether you are a designer or developer; from there, you just need to use a little imagination.

Detailed information on how to…

* Design and develop WPF applications
* Use Blend’s animation workflows
* Design and implement WPF template types
* Create and manage Resource Dictionaries
* Master WPF Style templates
* Handle control events
* Understand advanced control properties in XAML/Blend/C#
* Create customized controls through inheritance
* Understand the fundamentals of XAML-based design and development
* Implement effective XML, CLR Data binding, and XAML template binding
* Extend XAML functionality with C# code
* Implement video and audio in your applications
* Use Blend as part of your designer/developer workflow

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Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets

Remember when an optimized website was one that merely didn't take all day to appear? Times have changed. Today, website optimization can spell the difference between enterprise success and failure, and it takes a lot more know-how to achieve success.

This book is a comprehensive guide to the tips, techniques, secrets, standards, and methods of website optimization. From increasing site traffic to maximizing leads, from revving up responsiveness to increasing navigability, from prospect retention to closing more sales, the world of 21st century website optimization is explored, exemplified and explained.

Website Optimization combines the disciplines of online marketing and site performance tuning to attain the competitive advantage necessary on today's Web. You'll learn how to improve your online marketing with effective paid and natural search engine visibility strategies, strengthened lead creation and conversion to sales methods, and gold-standard ad copywriting guidelines. Plus, your increased site speed, reduced download footprint, improved reliability, and improved navigability will work synergistically with those marketing methods to optimize your site's total effectiveness.

In this book for business and IT managers, author Andrew King, president of Website Optimization, LLC, has assembled experts in several key specialties to teach you:

Search engine optimization -- addressing best (and worst) practices to improve search engine visibility, including step-by-step keyword optimization guidelines, category and tag cloud creation, and guerilla PR techniques to boost inbound links and improve rankings Pay-per-click optimization -- including ad copywriting guidelines, setting profit-driven goals, calculating and optimizing bids, landing page optimization, and campaign management tips Optimizing conversion rates -- increasing leads with site landing page guidelines, such as benefit-oriented copy, credibility-based design, value hierarchies, and tips on creating unique selling propositions and slogans Web performance tuning -- optimizing ways to use (X)HTML, CSS, and Ajax to increase speed, reduce your download footprint, and increase reliability Advanced tuning -- including client-side techniques such as on-demand content, progressive enhancement, and inline images to save HTTP requests. Plus server-side tips include improving parallelism, using cache control, browser sniffing, HTTP compression, and URL rewriting to remap links and preserve traffic Web metrics -- illustrating the best metrics and tools to gather details about visitors and measure web conversion and success rates, and covering both search marketing metrics and web performance measures including Pathloss and waterfall graphs.

Website Optimization not only provides you with a strategy for success, it also offers specific techniques for you and your staff to follow. A profitable website needs to be well designed, current, highly responsive, and optimally persuasive if you're to attract prospects, convert them to buyers, and get them to come back for more. This book describes precisely what you need to accomplish to achieve all of those goals.

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Scripted GUI Testing with Ruby

Scripted GUI Testing with Ruby is a practical, quick-moving tutorial based on real life, and real-world GUI applications.

Right out of the gate you'll start working with code to drive a desktop GUI. You'll discover the kinds of gotchas and edge cases that don't exist in simple, toy programs. As you add more tests, you'll learn how to organize your test code and write lucid examples. The result is a series of "smoke tests" team will run on Continuous Integration servers.

Next, we'll explore a variety of different testing tips and tricks. You'll employ a series of increasingly random and punishing test monkeys to try to crash programs. Table-driven techniques will show you how to check dozens of different input combinations. See how to use longer acceptance tests (in the form of stories) to represent the way a typical customer would use your program.

The book uses examples from Windows, OS X, and cross-platform Java desktop programs as well as Web applications. You'll develop test scripts in Ruby; you don't need to be a Ruby expert, but basic comfort with the language will be helpful.

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MySQL (4th Edition)

The unexpected pleasure of reading books about databases is that they are often written by authors with highly organized minds. Paul DuBois and his editors at New Riders have assembled MySQL with a clarity and lucidity that inspires confidence in the subject matter: a (nearly) freely redistributable SQL-interpreting database client/server primarily geared for Unix systems but maintained for Windows platforms as well. What isn't "free" about MySQL (the application) is its server's commercial use; all clients and noncommercial server use are free. DuBois's tome isn't free either, but its list price is modest in light of its value and the value of its namesake.

The volume is superbly organized into 12 chapters and 10 appendices and contains a concise table of contents and a comprehensive 50-page index. It is peppered with references to the online HTML documentation that comes with the source and binary distributions (which are available and easy to install in stable rpm and tar releases.)

The first third of MySQL is an excellent instruction tool for database newbies; the second third is a detailed reference for MySQL developers; and the last third consists of clearly annotated appendices, including C, Perl (but not Python), and PHP interfaces.

Perhaps as an indication of the collective will of the developers of MySQL, DuBois does not separate Windows 95/98/NT design or development specifics from its main discussions. Platform-independent design is a goal, not a reality, and users will have to rely on newsgroups and mailing lists for details. Moreover, security issues are addressed in a mere 18 pages, a large part of which is devoted to standard Unix file and network-access permissions. Next to nothing is mentioned about defense against common hacking strategies, the use of secure shell interfaces, or access encryption.

Although it is nearly 800 pages in length, DuBois's book is thankfully not encyclopedic. It is a valuable précis of the MySQL database, and its easy-to-skim look and feel will make it an excellent browse for database experts who want to know what is and is not possible within MySQL, the application. --Peter Leopold --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Ruby Phrasebook

Essential Code and Commands

Ruby Phrasebook gives you the code you need to quickly and effectively work with Ruby, one of the fastest-growing languages in the world thanks to popular new Ruby technologies like Ruby on Rails.

Concise and Accessible

Easy to carry and easy to use–lets you ditch all those bulky books for one portable pocket guide

Flexible and Functional

Packed with more than 100 customizable code snippets–so you can readily code functional Ruby in just about any situation

Jason Clinton uses Ruby daily in system administration and development for Advanced Clustering Technologies, a Linux Beowulf cluster integrator. He has been working in the computer industry for more than a decade and is actively involved in the Kansas City Ruby Users Group (KCRUG), serving as administrator of the group’s web site and mailing list.

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