Thursday, January 1, 2009

Creative Photoshop or Ajax

Creative Photoshop: Digital Illustration and Art Techniques, Covering Photoshop CS3

Author: Derek Lea

"Derek's edge is that he won't stand still. He has a knack for finding new corners of the program to exploit and innovative ways of doing so. He's pushed the boundaries not only for his own art but also for thousands of up and coming artists who also want to create onscreen the visions they have in their minds. If you've bought this book, you're about to discover what I mean."
-Garrick Webster, Editor, Computer Arts

Welcome to the world of art and imagination! Derek Lea, one of the world's top 100 digital artists, shows you how to use Photoshop in unorthodox ways to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. His work is a unique combination of original photography, traditional illustration, and digital art.

If you are a digital artist, illustrator, cartoonist, graphic artist or designer who is familiar with Photoshop, but want to push the program to the limit, this book is for you! Learn how to get professional results from the paint features in Photoshop. Create sharp illustrations by combining vectors and pixels. Explore less-than-obvious composition methods, and discover the hidden potential in unlikely artistic resources and materials. Play around with texture using spray paint effects and scanned elements, or age faces and objects. Use stencil tags and comic book coloring techniques. Learn how to bring 3D art to life! Maximize your creativity AND efficiency with invaluable information on working between Photoshop and Illustrator.

This book/CD package provides clear, step-by-step tutorials that make it easy to emulate Lea's techniques in your own work. With all the images from the book to play with, you'll be creating stunning artwork in no time! Besure to visit the book's website at creativephotoshopthebook.com/ for more information, and join the reader forum to share your ideas with digital artists from around the world.

* Learn from an award winning digital illustrator how to think outside the box and create stunning art with Photoshop
* Be inspired by a wide range of artistic styles and real world techniques that you can adapt to your own work, including graffiti spray art, comic coloring, and antique effects
* Practice new skills with FREE tutorial files on the CD



See also: Nepal Cookbook or Simply Sarasota

Ajax: The Definitive Guide

Author: Anthony T Holdener

Is Ajax a new technology, or the same old stuff web developers have been using for years' Both, actually. This book demonstrates not only how tried-and-true web standards make Ajax possible, but how these older technologies allow you to give sites a decidedly modern Web 2.0 feel. Ajax: The Definitive Guide explains how to use standards like JavaScript, XML, CSS, and XHTML, along with the XMLHttpRequest object, to build browser-based web applications that function like desktop programs. You get a complete background on what goes into today's web sites and applications, and learn to leverage these tools along with Ajax for advanced browser searching, web services, mashups, and more. You discover how to turn a web browser and web site into a true application, and why developing with Ajax is faster, easier and cheaper. The book also explains: How to connect server-side backend components to user interfaces in the browser Loading and manipulating XML documents, and how to replace XML with JSON Manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) Designing Ajax interfaces for usability, functionality, visualization, and accessibility Site navigation layout, including issues with Ajax and the browser's back button Adding life to tables & lists, navigation boxes and windows Animation creation, interactive forms, and data validation Search, web services and mash-ups Applying Ajax to business communications, and creating Internet games without plug-ins The advantages of modular coding, ways to optimize Ajax applications, and more This book also provides references to XML and XSLT, popular JavaScript Frameworks, Libraries, and Toolkits, and various Web Service APIs. By offering web developers amuchbroader set of tools and options, Ajax gives developers a new way to create content on the Web, while throwing off the constraints of the past. Ajax: The Definitive Guide describes the contents of this unique toolbox in exhaustive detail, and explains how to get the most out of it.



Table of Contents:

Preface

Part I Ajax Fundamentals

1 Reinventing the Web 3

Web Page Components 3

Modern Web Standards 9

Browsers 17

Standards Compliance 19

Welcome to Web 2.0 20

2 From Web Sites to Web Applications 22

The Transition 22

Basic Web and Ajax Design Patterns 28

Application Environments 31

The Developer 33

What Ajax Is Not 34

3 Servers, Databases, and the Web 35

The Web Server 36

Server-Side Scripting 39

Databases 44

Getting Data Into and Out of Relational Databases 48

Interfacing the Interface 54

Frameworks and Languages 57

What Good Are Frameworks? 63

4 Foundations: Scripting XML and JSON 68

XML 68

JSON 86

Choosing a Data Exchange Format 92

A Quick Introduction to Client Frameworks 94

Simplifying Development 97

5 Manipulating the DOM 103

Understanding the DOM 103

We've Already Met 105

Manipulating DOM Elements, Attributes, and Objects 106

Change That Style 117

Events in the DOM 129

DOM Stuff for Tables 135

Is innerHTML Evil? 138

6 Designing Ajax Interfaces 141

Usability 141

Functionality 153

Visualization 158

Accessibility 167

The Ajax Interface 171

Part II Ajax Foundations

7 Laying Out Site Navigation 175

Menus 175

Tabs 212

Navigation Aids 221

Problems with Ajax Navigation 243

General Layout 246

8 Fun with Tables and Lists 247

Layout Without Tables 247

Accessible Tables 252

Sorting Tables 264

Tables with Style 280

Table Pagination 283

Lists 2.0 291

Lists for All Seasons 292

9 Page Layout with Frames That Aren't 316

Using Frames 316

XHTML and Frames 321

The Magic of Ajax and a DIV 323

Page Layout 329

10 Navigation Boxes and Windows 335

The Alert Box335

Integrating the Window 335

Navigation Windows 347

Tool Tips 355

The Necessary Pop Up 360

11 Customizing the Client 363

Browser Customizations 363

Stylesheet Switching 368

Switching Different Customizations 381

Easy Font-Size Switching 386

Creating Color Themes 392

Throwing Ajax into the Mix 397

Changing Site Language with Ajax 400

Repositioning Objects and Keeping Those Positions 403

Storing It All in the Database 407

12 Errors: To Be (in Style) or Not to Be 408

Error Handling on the Web 408

Should I React to That Error? 413

Handling an Error with Care 417

Integrating the User Error 420

13 This Ain't Your Father's Animation 434

Animation on the Web 434

What Is Wrong with GIF? 437

Building Animation with the PNG Format 439

Ajax Animations 453

14 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Form 482

XHTML Forms 482

Using JavaScript 490

Fancier Forms 498

The Basics of Ajax and Forms 519

Accepting Ajax-Delivered Data 524

Server Responses 531

15 Data Validation: Client, Server, or Both 534

Data Validation Is Important 534

Validation with JavaScript 536

CSS Notification of Errors 552

Validation on the Server 555

Ajax Client/Server Validation 558

Part III Ajax in Applications

16 Search: The New Frontier 565

Types of Site Searches 565

Dynamic Searching with Ajax 577

Googling a Site 581

17 Introducing Web Services 594

What Is a Web Service? 594

Web Service Architectures 594

Ajax and Web Services 606

Web Feeds 613

Web Service APIs 618

18 Web Services: The APIs 619

Publicly Available Web Services 619

Ajax and the API 657

The Next Step with Services 658

19 Mashups 659

Mashups in Web 2.0 Applications 659

What Are Mashups? 659

Mashups As Applications 661

Data Sources 665

Application Portlets 668

Building a Mashup 668

Mashups and Business 671

20 For Your Business Communication Needs 672

Businesses and Ajax 672

Real-Time Communication 674

File Sharing 691

Whiteboards 703

Combining Applications 720

21 Internet Games Without Plug-ins 721

Gaming on the Web 721

Internet Requirements 732

Animating a Character 735

Basic Collisions 753

User Input 764

The Basics of Event Handling 767

Putting It All Together 776

Part IV Wrapping Up

22 Modular Coding 789

What Is Modular Coding? 789

The Client Side 791

The Server Side 804

23 Optimizing Ajax Applications 807

Site Optimization Factors 807

HTTP 809

Packets 815

Client-Side Optimizations 818

Server-Side Optimizations 830

Ajax Optimization 838

Part V References

A The XML and XSLT You Need to Know 843

B JavaScript Framework, Toolkit, and Library References 863

C Web Service API Catalog 892

D Ajax Risk References 916

Index 925

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