All posts tagged ‘wiki’

File Under: Databases, Programming
Feb
15
2010

Build a Website With Flash and MySQL – Lesson 2

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In Build a Website With Flash and MySQL – Lesson 1, we successfully created a MySQL database, filled it with blog entries, and learned how to query it. Now we’re going to move on to the fun stuff:creating a Flash container to display our blog entries as we pull them out of the database. I’m going to help you build something along the lines of what you’ll encounter at my own Flash blog site, Luxagraf.

Fire up Flash and create a new document. The first thing we need is a nice big text field to display our entries. You could create a text field in ActionScript if you like, using the createTextField() method. I don’t know about you, but my stomach for code is still full from yesterday, so I’ve just drawn a text field using the cursor tool and given it an instance name of entries_txt. In the Properties Inspector, set the text to be dynamic, multi-line, and HTML formatted. For safety’s sake, select the character option and click “embed all characters.” Flash has some issues with dynamic textfields that don’t have embedded characters, especially if you put your text under a mask. Continue Reading “Build a Website With Flash and MySQL – Lesson 2″ »

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File Under: Ajax
Feb
15
2010

Build an Ajax Dropdown Menu

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If you hang out with designers and developers at all, then you’ve probably heard the term “Ajax” by now. It’s the official buzzword of Web 2.0. But it’s also an extremely useful web development technique.

In the course of this tutorial, we’re going to look at what Ajax can do. Then we’ll use a JavaScript class to simplify your first steps toward the ultimate in speedy user interactivity.

First, what is Ajax? It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. In simple speak, Ajax allows us to use JavaScript to grab an XML file (or any other text) without reloading the whole web page.

Ajax has been used for a lot of things, but it is most impressive when many small updates are needed in a short period. Think streaming stock quotes or draggable maps.

Continue Reading “Build an Ajax Dropdown Menu” »
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File Under: Blog Publishing
Feb
15
2010

Get Started With Movable Type

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You recently decided hosted blogging is for the birds. You want more control over your blog’s setup. In fact, you want total control over every last detail of your layout, functionality and design. So what do you do? Where do you turn?

One popular option is the Movable Type publishing system from Six Apart (other popular options include Drupal, Joomla!, and WordPress). Movable Type contains pretty much everything you need to get your own site up and running, plus the flexibility to get really obsessive over the details. Also, with a little creativity and some community-created plugins, you can power much more than just a reverse-chronological list of blog posts.

This tutorial won’t go into the Movable Type installation process in-depth since there are many resources online already. What we’ll cover is the process of dressing up a vanilla Movable Type installation by customizing the look and feel of your new site. We’ll also get you started with some custom features by installing some plugins.

Continue Reading “Get Started With Movable Type” »
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File Under: Programming
Feb
15
2010

Using Git Version Control

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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” »
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File Under: HTML5
Feb
15
2010

Building Web Pages With HTML 5

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Depending on who you ask, HTML 5 is either the next important step toward creating a more semantic web or a disaster that’s going to trap the web in yet another set of incomplete tags and markup soup.

The problem with both sides of the argument is that very few sites are using HTML 5 in the wild, so the theoretical solutions to its perceived problems remain largely untested.

That said, it isn’t hard to see both the benefits and potential hang-ups with the next generation of web markup tools.


Continue Reading “Building Web Pages With HTML 5″ »
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