Version control is a sine qua non of serious software development, but casual developers and even non-programmers can use it to improve their lives. In its simplest form, a version control tool maintains an archive of the history of a project — not just its current state, but every milestone along the way. So if you realize that the progress you’ve made in the last three weeks is all wrong, you can effortlessly go back to what you had then; or just glance at it and harvest the good parts.
Continue Reading “Using Git Version Control” »All posts tagged ‘tutorial’
Building Web pages with HTML is like painting a portrait with a paint roller. Only truly determined and tenacious souls can achieve the exact result they want. It’s just not the right tool for precision and flexibility.
Anyone who’s used HTML for more than a week knows it isn’t a very effective tool for making Web pages. That’s why we sometimes resort to making large GIFs when we want just the right font or layout. That’s why we’re forced to use convoluted table tags and invisible spacer GIFs to push things around on a page.
It’s ridiculous, really. Our code gets too complicated, our GIFs too numerous, and our final pages too bandwidth-heavy. It’s not exactly optimal Web page construction.
But in late 1996, stylesheets quietly entered the scene. Officially called cascading stylesheets (CSS), it was an elegant cousin to HTML that promised:
- more precise control than ever before over layout, fonts, colors, backgrounds, and other typographical effects;
- a way to update the appearance and formatting of an unlimited number of pages by changing just one document;
- compatibility across browsers and platforms; and
- less code, smaller pages, and faster downloads.
Despite lukewarm support from many of our favorite Web browsers, CSS is starting to make good on these promises. It’s transforming the way we make Web pages and is the cornerstone of Dynamic HTML.
We’ll spend the next five lessons taking a tour through the land of stylesheets. You’ll learn the basics of how to create and use cascading stylesheets within your Web pages as well as what’s possible with fonts, typography, colors, backgrounds, and positioning.
Continue Reading “Mulders Stylesheets Tutorial – Lesson 1″ »JavaScript slide shows are great for a lot of reasons. You can use them to spice up photo albums, add a little pizzazz to your home page, or even show a story, stop-motion-animation style. And one of the beauties of JavaScript is its reusability:Once you create your script, building a new slide show is just a matter of copying the code and pointing it at a new image folder.
To get an idea of the magic I’m talking about here, take a look at the slide show I made of the pics from my friend Azure’s going away party. While Azure’s parting was sweet, sweet sorrow, my loss is your gain:The script I used to create this slide show is easy to learn and modify. Just you wait and see!
Yes, in the lessons that follow, I’ll show you how to build your very own slide show, then how to tweak it to your liking. (A hearty thanks goes out to Robert Bui – several parts of the JavaScript code I’m about to share are “inspired” by his script, which can be found at JavaScript.internet.com.)
Continue Reading “Make a Javascript Slideshow” »Now that everybody* has a home broadband connection, the need for IP addresses is a growing concern. With the rollout of IPv6 still pending, IP addresses are a limited resource. ISPs are understandably reluctant to hand a static IP address to every US$50/month subscriber. Some ISPs do, and some allow you to pay extra for one. For the most part, though, they’re a bit of a pain to get.
* not everybody
This is not a problem for the majority of home broadband users. Their needs — efficient web browsing, quick downloading of large files, “always-on” service, productive hours spent on WoW or AIM — are met admirably by the service provided. Giving them a static IP address, if they even noticed, would just result in increased security headaches as their insecure Windows machines suddenly had fixed addresses, making them easier to break into.
Continue Reading “Set Up Dynamic DNS” »This is part 4 of Webmonkey’s introductory Django tutorial. If you’re arriving here to learn about getting started with Django, start back at the beginning with Lesson 1.
When we left off last time, we had defined some URLs for our blog and constructed a custom view to handle displaying posts by tag. If you point your browser to our development URL at this point, (http://127.0.0.1:8000/blog/) you’ll still see a Django error page complaining that the template blog/list.html does not exist. Don’t panic, it’s true — we haven’t created it yet.
It’s time to tackle the last aspect of Django, the template syntax.
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