July 13, 2011 in Learn
Create Vector Masks using the HTML5 Canvas
The HTML5 canvas can be used to create a lot of cool things, like games, video effects, graphs and more. It can also be used to produce some slightly less complex effects, like manipulating images on the page. In this…
July 7, 2011 in Learn
It's Time To HTTParty!
When you’re developing with Ruby, it’s pretty inevitable that at some point you come across an HTTP API that doesn’t have a gem available. While writing Hopefully Sunny I ran into just that situation with World Weather Online’s weather API….
June 14, 2011 in Learn
Build Dynamic Pages with Knockout.js
Building dynamic web pages using JavaScript can be a complex task. Fortunately, frameworks like jQuery, MooTools, and others make it much easier to interact with the browser. However DOM frameworks only solve part of the problem.
When building an application that has a lot of data that can be updated, and any piece of information could be represented in several places on the page, it becomes a pain to try to make sure the interface accurately represents the data at any point in time.
May 31, 2011 in Learn
What Makes A Great Programmer?
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the year 2000, Dr. Pargas was standing at the front of our data structures class talking about some data structure-y topic while an SSH session was projected on the wall in…
May 23, 2011 in Learn
Run Linux in your browser
I came across this on Hacker News and it blew my mind. Fabrice Bellard just created a PC emulator that boots Linux, written in JavaScript. It even works on my iPad. From the technical notes … The PC emulator is…
February 14, 2011 in Learn
Encrypting Cookies in the Browser
Cookies are a convenient, often necessary way to maintain state and data in web applications. Since this is well known, cookies are a target and potential vulnerability you have to be aware of when developing for the web. There are…
September 1, 2009 in Learn
How to Create Bulletproof Sessions
In the first part of this series we went over how a cookie works and what can be done to secure them. In this section we’re going to go over ways to add additional security to the session beyond the…
June 24, 2009 in Learn
Should you go Beyond Relational Databases?
Relational databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and various commercial products, have served us well for many years. Lately, however, there has been a lot of discussion on whether the relational model is reaching the end of its life-span, and what…
April 10, 2009 in Learn
How to build mobile widgets
If you’re a web developer or designer, there’s a really exciting development happening right now called ‘mobile widgets’. Carsonified is working with Betavine to spread the word about mobile widgets, so we recently spent four days building one in order…
March 5, 2008 in Learn
Coding for the mobile web
Introduction Good evening — in this article I will aim to demystify the world of mobile web development, or in other words, developing web sites so that they will provide an acceptable user experience on mobile devices. I’ll run through…
September 11, 2007 in Learn
How to Price your Web App
Pricing is always somewhat of a black art, and a subject about which there is precious little written with regard to web applications. It’s something I’ve always been fascinated by. The question of how to price our web application, Litmus,…
August 6, 2007 in Learn
Copywriting for eCommerce
A site’s copy is one of its most important elements — especially in the world of eCommerce. And in eCommerce one of the worst mistakes a copywriter can make when writing is to concentrate only on product descriptions. While product…