Joomla! Template Design: Create your own professional-quality templates with this fast, friendly guide

A complete guide for web designers to all aspects of designing unique website templates for the free Joomla! PHP Content Management System





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PHP Programming Solutions 1st Edition (With Source Code)

PHP Programming Solutions is a full-fledged developer guide with two primary goals: to deliver solutions to commonly encountered problems, and to educate developers about the wide array of built-in functions and ready-made PHP widgets available to them. Task-based categorization makes it easy to locate solutions, and each section comes with working code, a detailed explanation, and applicable usage tips and guidelines. The solutions described use both PHP’s native functions and off-the-shelf PEAR classes.

PHP Programming Solutions includes coverage of a wide variety of categories, including string and number manipulation, input validation and security, authentication, caching, XML parsing, database abstraction, and more.

The solutions are intended to :
(1) simplify and shorten the application development cycle;
(2) reduce test time;
(3) improve quality;
and (4) provide you, the developer, with the tools you need to quickly solve real PHP problems with minimal time and fuss.

Simplify and shorten the PHP application development cycle using the in-depth information contained in this hands-on guide. PHP Programming Solutions clearly lays out more than 250 programming challenges alongside practical solutions, functioning code, detailed explanations, and usage tips.

Inside, you’ll learn to manipulate strings and arrays, work with HTML and Web pages, accept and validate user input, parse XML code, and resolve programming problems using PEAR and PECL widgets and extensions. Plus, you’ll get detailed coverage of PHP security issues, SQL database interaction, debugging techniques, and error processing.

* Work with numbers, strings, dates, times, files, and directories
* Build complex data structures using PHP’s array manipulation API
* Use functions and classes to build modular, reusable code 
* Create, update, and cache HTML documents and Web content
* Obtain and process user input submitted via online forms
* Protect, log, and debug PHP script actions
* Authenticate and track users with sessions and cookies
* Traverse, validate, and transform XML documents
* Store and retrieve data from MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle databases
* Interface with different server types, network protocols, and file formats
* Perform efficient exception handling and error processing

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Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites

After learning the language of design, how does one effectively use standards-based technologies to create visually strong Web sites? The full-color Professional Web Standards Design and Development gives developers a peek into the process of the best designers in the world through the work of high profile, real-world Web sites that made them famous. The book focuses on deconstructing these top-tier large-scale sites with particular attention given to deconstructing CSS.


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Flash MX Games: ActionScript for Artists

The examples and explanations are clear and thorough… Nik does a good job of keeping the pace upbeat and making the reader feel involved… for those people who are interested in how to make games and how to improve their coding, it is a worthwhile investment.”
Adam Tracksler, CreativeCow.net
“Superbly written throughout, this is the Flash MX book that all aspiring game designers have been waiting for… the author effortlessly explains the intricate detail of the ActionScript language.”
Computer Arts magazine, 5/5


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Mobile Design and Development: Practical Concepts and Techniques for Creating Mobile Sites and Web Apps

Mobile devices outnumber desktop and laptop computers three to one worldwide, yet little information is available for designing and developing mobile applications. Mobile Design and Development fills that void with practical guidelines, standards, techniques, and best practices for building mobile products from start to finish. With this book, you’ll learn basic design and development principles for all mobile devices and platforms. You’ll also explore the more advanced capabilities of the mobile web, including markup, advanced styling techniques, and mobile Ajax.

If you’re a web designer, web developer, information architect, product manager, usability professional, content publisher, or an entrepreneur new to the mobile web, Mobile Design and Development provides you with the knowledge you need to work with this rapidly developing technology. Mobile Design and Development will help you:

• Understand how the mobile ecosystem works, how it differs from other mediums, and how to design products for the mobile context
• Learn the pros and cons of building native applications sold through operators or app stores versus mobile websites or web apps
• Work with flows, prototypes, usability practices, and screen-size-independent visual designs
• Use and test cross-platform mobile web standards for older devices, as well as devices that may be available in the future
• Learn how to justify a mobile product by building it on a budget

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Flex & Bison

If you need to parse or process text data in Linux or Unix, this useful book explains how to use flex and bison to solve your problems quickly. flex & bison is the long-awaited sequel to the classic O’Reilly book, lex & yacc. In the nearly two decades since the original book was published, the flex and bison utilities have proven to be more reliable and more powerful than the original Unix tools.

flex & bison covers the same core functionality vital to Linux and Unix program development, along with several important new topics. You’ll find revised tutorials for novices and references for advanced users, as well as an explanation of each utility’s basic usage and simple, standalone applications you can create with them. With flex & bison, you’ll discover the wide range of uses these flexible tools offer.

• Address syntax crunching that regular expressions tools can’t handle
• Build compilers and interpreters, and handle a wide range of text processing functions
• Interpret code, configuration files, or any other structured format
• Learn key programming techniques, including abstract syntax trees and symbol tables
• Implement a full SQL grammar-with complete sample code
• Use new features such as pure (reentrant) lexers and parsers, powerful GLR parsers, and interfaces to C++

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CSS: The Missing Manual

Cascading Style Sheets can turn humdrum websites into highly-functional, professional-looking destinations, but many designers merely treat CSS as window-dressing to spruce up their site’s appearance. You can tap into the real power of this tool with CSS: The Missing Manual. This second edition combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you how to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. Witty and entertaining, this second edition gives you up-to-the-minute pro techniques. You’ll learn how to:
• Create HTML that’s simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS
• Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders
• Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars — complete with rollover effects
• Create effective photo galleries and special effects, including drop shadows
• Get up to speed on CSS 3 properties that work in the latest browser versions
• Build complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs
• Style web pages for printing
With CSS: The Missing Manual, Second Edition, you’ll find all-new online tutorial pages, expanded CSS 3 coverage, and broad support for Firebox, Safari, and other major web browsers, including Internet Explorer 8. Learn how to use CSS effectively to build new websites, or refurbish old sites that are due for an upgrade.

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The Fundamentals of Illustration

Creating great illustration work requires specialist skills and knowledge, and in addition to practical applications, this book teaches a comprehension of basic communication theory and creative strategies. It guides in understanding design, print and production processes as well as software application. By recognizing illustration as a freelance profession Fundamentals of Illustration explains best working practices appropriate to all industry sectors, including how to market and promote work effectively.


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Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS

No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it’s not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn’t really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control–key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.

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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.


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Pro Scalable .NET 2.0 Application Designs (Expert’s Voice in .Net)

Pro Scalable .NET 2.0 Application Design explains how to plan and implement .NET 2.0 applications. It addresses platform, hosting, and database requirements, as well as architectural design techniques that can be used to create the application itself. For example, the book illustrates a comparison between two models, the “traditional” and the “new” SOA, to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each. This book also makes use of the newest version of Web Services Enhancements (WSE 3.0), ensuring you have access to the latest Microsoft standards and advice.


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Professional Linux Programming

n this follow-up to the best-selling Beginning Linux Programming, you will learn from the authors’ real-world knowledge and experience of developing software for Linux; you’ll be taken through the development of a sample ‘DVD Store’ application, with ‘theme’ chapters addressing different aspects of its implementation. Meanwhile, individual ‘take-a-break’ chapters cover important topics that go beyond the bounds of the central theme. All focus on the practical aspects of programming, showing how crucial it is to choose the right tools for the job, use them as they should be used, and get things right first time.

What does this book cover?
# Data storage in Linux - including coverage of PostgreSQL, MySQL and XML
# Implementation of Linux GUIs - covering both KDE and GNOME
# Web-based interfaces - using the PHP module for Apache
# Python - including extending and embedding the language
# Using RPC and CORBA to construct distributed object-based applications
# Versioning (with CVS), documentation, internationalization and project distribution
# Distributed hardware solutions such as diskless Linux and Beowulf clustering

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RF Front-End: World Class Designs

It all starts with a design…this next book in the World Class Designs Series takes the best of our RF Front End design material and creates a singular guide and catalyst for future projects!





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Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium Classroom in a Book

This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe Creative Suite 4 is ideal for users who want to learn the key features of Adobe’s stellar collection of professional design tools. Readers are first given a brief program overview of the Design Suite that highlights common features and includes a section on cross-media workflows. Then readers will get up to speed with each software application using step-by-step, project-based lessons, with the lessons in each chapter building upon the reader’s growing knowledge of the programs. Projects include designing a logo and creating basic assets, creating a brochure, prototyping a basic Website, creating interactive Flash and PDF documents, communicating through mobile devices, and submitting work for collaborative reviews. Review questions at the end of each chapter wrap up each lesson to help reinforce the skills learned in each chapter.

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The Principles of Successful Freelancing

Thinking about becoming your own boss and embarking on the wonderful and rewarding journey of freelancing? The Principles of Successful Freelancing is for you. In this easy-to follow guide you’ll learn what’s important in transforming your skills into a booming freelance business.

This book leads you through the entire process, from getting started, through to winning and keeping loyal clients. Running a successful freelance business is easy, and with the information in this book, you’ll confidently turn your freelancing dream into a profitable reality.

* Learn how to make a smooth transition into freelancing
* Understand how to effectively manage your money
* Ensure you spend your time on the right activities
* Discover why a work/life balance is important
* Learn how your network can support you and your business
* Overcome your fear of selling
* And much more …

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Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read

Having your own blog isn’t just for the nerdy anymore. Today, it seems everyone—from multinational corporations to a neighbor up the street—has a blog. They all have one, in part, because the folks at WordPress make it easy to get one. but to actually build a good blog—to create a blog people want to read—takes thought, planning, and some effort. From picking a theme and using tags to choosing widgets and building a community, creating your blog really starts after you set it up. In this book by blogger extraordinaire Scott McNulty, you learn how to:

# Install and get your WordPress blog running.
# Set up your site to ensure it can easily grow with you and your readers.
# Be the master of user accounts.
# Manage your site with the WordPress Dashboard and extend its capabilities with plug-ins.
# Make the most of images.
# Work with pages, templates, and links and—of course—publish your posts.
# Deal with comments—if you even want readers commenting at all.
# Find a theme—or build one yourself.
# Maintain your site and fix common problems.

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Adobe InDesign CS4 Styles: How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts

Tap into the far-reaching potential of InDesign styles—from simple drop cap formatting to cross-media export to XHTML. Styles have the power to transform how design and production professionals approach and accomplish any project. Adopting a style-centric workflow can reduce tasks that would normally take days to mere hours, and tasks that would take hours to minutes or even seconds. Less time spent on repetitive tasks means more time for creating your best work.

This book explores every InDesign style to reveal its full potential. Throughout each chapter, you’ll pick up many tips and best practices gleaned from real-world experience. Two bonus chapters, “Stroke Styles” and “Project Planning with Styles in Mind” are available for download.

For “figure it out as I go” designers, embracing styles still allow you to work intuitively on the page. And this guide helps break preconceptions and bad habits transferred from less powerful page layout applications that keep new InDesign users from working in far more satisfying and productive ways.

Where InDesign is concerned, styles truly do equal substance.

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JavaScript in 10 Simple Steps or Less

If you are looking to add exciting interactivity to Web pages and need a quick and easy understanding of the technology in order to do so, then this book is for you-whether you’re new to JavaScript or you need a refresher on every-thing from validating user input forms to creating menu trees. Open the book and you’ll discover clear, easy-to-follow instructions for more than 250 key JavaScript tasks, each presented in ten quick steps-or less. Easy-to-navigate pages, lots of screen shots, and to-the-point directions guide you through every common (and not so common) JavaScript challenge-and help you get more done in less time.

* Each solution is ten steps-or less-to help you get the job done fast
* Self-contained two-page spreads deliver the answers you need-without flipping pages
* A no-fluff approach focuses on helping you achieve results
* A resource packed with useful and fun ways to get the most out of JavaScript
* Make it simple and get productive fast!- download ready-to-use source code for each task from the book’s companion Web site

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Database and XML Technologies

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International XML Database Symposium, XSym 2007, held in Vienna, Austria, in September 2007 in conjunction with the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, VLDB 2007.




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Developing Facebook Platform Applications with Rails

Developing Facebook Platform Applications with Rails leads you through the steps necessary to build your first application. You’ll get hands-on experience with Facebook technologies such as FBML and FQL, and master messaging and news feeds.

You’ll do more than just study the Facebook API-you’ll get practical tips from an experienced Facebook developer. We’ll cover advanced techniques such as AJAX and asynchronous messaging, and you’ll see how to slash development time with facebooker, the leading Ruby library for Facebook Platform development.

Together, we’ll build Karate Poke, a real Facebook Platform application, from configuration to deployment. You’ll get deep into Facebook requests right off the bat. From there, you’ll build the core of Karate Poke and then get a detailed look at the Facebook canvas and social features. We’ll finish by looking at advanced features and tips for handling millions of users.

Developing for the Facebook Platform can seem like a different world at first. Developing Facebook Platform Applications with Rails is your tour guide.

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Programming Cocoa with Ruby: Create Compelling Mac Apps Using RubyCocoa

This is a book for the Ruby programmer who’s never written a Mac app before. Through this hands-on tutorial, you’ll learn all about the Cocoa framework for programming on Mac OS X. Join the author’s journey as this experienced Ruby programmer delves into the Cocoa framework right from the beginning, answering the same questions and solving the same problems that you’ll face. Together you’ll build a single application that threads throughout the book, and it’s not a toy. You’ll cover topics that may not be the flashiest parts of Cocoa, but they’re ones you’ll need to know to create robust, feature-rich applications for yourself. And you’ll learn more than just Cocoa and RubyCocoa, you’ll get first-hand effective agile development practices. You’ll see test-first development of user-interface code, little domain-specific languages that take advantage of Ruby features, and other Rubyish tricks.

At the end of the book, you’ll be ready to write a real Mac OS X application that can be distributed to real users.

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The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

Success in today’s IT environment requires you to view your career as a business endeavor. In this book, you’ll learn how to become an entrepreneur, driving your career in the direction of your choosing. You’ll learn how to build your software development career step by step, following the same path that you would follow if you were building, marketing, and selling a product. After all, your skills themselves are a product.

The choices you make about which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge itself–don’t let those choices be accidental. We’ll walk through all aspects of the decision-making process, so you can ensure that you’re investing your time and energy in the right areas.

You’ll develop a structured plan for keeping your mind engaged and your skills fresh. You’ll learn how to assess your skills in terms of where they fit on the value chain, driving you away from commodity skills and toward those that are in high demand. Through a mix of high-level, thought-provoking essays and tactical “Act on It” sections, you will come away with concrete plans you can put into action immediately. You’ll also get a chance to read the perspectives of several highly successful members of our industry from a variety of career paths.

As with any product or service, if nobody knows what you’re selling, nobody will buy. We’ll walk through the often-neglected world of marketing, and you’ll create a plan to market yourself both inside your company and to the industry in general.

Above all, you’ll see how you can set the direction of your career, leading to a more fulfilling and remarkable professional life.

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Visual QuickStart Guide, 3rd Edition

SQL is a standard interactive and programming language for querying and modifying data and managing databases. This task-based tutorial and reference guide takes the mystery out learning and applying SQL. After going over the relational database model and SQL syntax in the first few chapters, veteran author Chris Fehily immediately launches into the tasks that will get readers comfortable with SQL. In addition to covering all the SQL basics, this thoroughly updated reference contains a wealth of in-depth SQL knowledge and serves as an excellent reference for more experienced users.


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Bulletproofing Web Applications

“Bulletproofing” is a road map for how to integrate error prevention and detection into the development process to ensure that Web applications are robust, scalable, efficient and reliable. It explores defensive programming techniques and explains the benefits of, and how to, implement coding standards for various programming languages including HTML, CSS, Java, and JavaScript. The authors also show how to perform unit testing on each component as they are developed along with ways to set up a staging area for deployment and a deployment infrastructure. “Bulletproofing” details ways to avoid errors as databases, SQL, XML, Web services, SOAP, EJB components, JSP and other technologies are implemented into Web applications.

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Mark Pilgrim, “Dive Into Python + source code”

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Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronutical Knowledge, vol2 »

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18 Aug 09 Mark Pilgrim, “Dive Into Python + source code”

Mark Pilgrim, “Dive Into Python + source code”
Publisher: Apress | 2004 | ISBN: 1590593561 | PDF | 327 pages | 1 MB

Dive Into Python is a hands-on guide to the Python language. Each chapter starts with a real complete code sample, proceeds to pick it apart and explain the pieces, and then puts it all back together again in a summary at the end.
Python is a new and innovative scripting language. It is set to replace Perl as the programming language of choice for shell scripters, and for serious application developers wanting a feature rich yet simple language to deploy their products in.

This book is not for newbies, for wimps, or for dummies. It assumes a lot about you:

- You know at least one real object-oriented language, such as Java, C#, or Delphi.

- You know at least one other scripting language, such as Perl, Visual Basic, or Javascript.

If youre just getting started programming, that doesnt mean you cant learn Python. Python is an easy language to learn, but you should probably learn it somewhere else. That said, Dive Into Python will be a guide for people who can jump into languages fast and get going.

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30 Minutes to Succeed in Business Writing

Part of a series of pocket guides aimed at enabling the reader to learn a new skill in just 30 minutes, this text provides useul tips to improve business writing from common grammatical errors to letter layout.





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Ext JS in Action (MEAP)

JavaScript has come a long way from its former reputation as a “toy language.” The many frameworks, libraries and object oriented development techniques now in use are breathing new life into the language. Ext JS, a cross-browser JavaScript library for building Rich Internet Applications (RIA), has emerged from this mix as a one of the clear leaders. Ext JS combines an extensive library of super-high-quality widgets, an intuitive, extensible component model, and an easy-to-use API to create a full, rock-solid platform for JavaScript-based web apps. Ext JS has been adopted by such household names as Adobe, Aetna, Amazon.com, Best Buy Hallmark, Panasonic, Pixar Animation Studios, Siemens, Sony, and Visa.

Ext JS in Action teaches the reader about Ext from the ground up. By following the common design patterns demonstrated in the Ext source and in many commercial applications, the book teaches you to achieve the same results you see in world-class commercial JavaScript applications. This book will guide you through the Ext component model and layouts. You’ll learn how core components, such as the Container class, serve as building blocks for building complex user interfaces. The book fully covers Ext utility classes, AJAX, Observable (the Ext events model), DOM helpers and Function Helpers and illustrates how use of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a powerful and lightweight data format, can allow your application to efficiently communicate over the network to the web server. Finally, you’ll build on this foundation to customize or extend Ext widgets.

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Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja (MEAP)

JavaScript developers commonly rely on collections of reusable JavaScript code–written by themselves or by someone else at their company. Alternatively, they rely on code from a third party. But in all these cases they need to know how to either construct a cross-browser library from scratch or be adept at using and maintaining their library of choice.

In Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja, JavaScript expert John Resig reveals the inside know-how of the elite JavaScript programmers. Written to be accessible to JavaScript developers with intermediate-level skills, this book will give you the knowledge you need to create a cross-browser JavaScript library from the ground up.

This book takes you on a journey towards mastering modern JavaScript development in three phases: design, construction, and maintenance. You first are given a base of strong, advanced JavaScript knowledge, enabling you to make decisions about the overall design of a library and how to tackle its eventual construction. The book then teaches you how to construct your library. It examines all the numerous tasks JavaScript libraries have to tackle and provides practical solutions and development strategies for their creation. It then guides you through the various maintenance techniques you will need to keep your code running well into the future.

With Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja you will have all the knowledge and skills available to build your own JavaScript library, or to understand how to use any modern JavaScript library available.

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.NET Domain-Driven Design with C#: Problem - Design - Solution

This first technical title of its kind, this is a revolutionary book for the object oriented developer. It takes the reader through the intense process of building a real-world application using Domain-Driven Design principles implemented in C# 3.0 (.NET Framework 3.5). The reader is introduced to a business domain of a real-world Construction Administration application for an architecture firm. The application is ma critical, legacy MS Access application that has outgrown MS Access and is ready to become a full-fledged enterprise application. In each chapter, the relevant part of the domain is modeled out via diagrams and code. The application is built using C#, Windows Presentation Foundation, and other Microsoft technologies and best practices. The main focus of the book is on designing and implementing the domain model and all of the supporting patterns and framework that are built in support of the domain model. The emphasis is on these theories in action through the working application, not on the tools used. The main goal is to show how to take a set of requirements and user scenarios and apply Domain-Driven Design principles to the requirements in order to create a domain model that satisfies both the user requirements and the system requirements. Various patterns are introduced along the way in order to aid with certain activities such as adapting the domain model to the user interface, synchronizing data between the client and the server, validation, mapping, etc. Although this particular application is a WPF application, most of the design patterns introduced and applied in the book can be used on other types of applications, such as web applications, web services, etc.

With the Problem-Design-Solution promise and approach, the chapters are broken down into their own modules where the intent is to take the reader through the process from beginning to end while building a complete project with each chapter module. Each chapter establishes the problem, what the reader wants to do, and why it is important, and then what factors and restrictions need to be taken into account. Next the chapter covers how the programmer will solve the problem with an adequate solution that will provide only the best results. Finally, the developer produces code and other materials to better realize the design and solution to the problem. This part of the chapter is where the reader gets hands-on practice at creating code that builds applications.

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Barry Eisler's Collections

Download - The Last Assassin
Download - Requiem for an Assassin
Download - Rain Storm
Download - Rain Fall
Download - Killing Rain
Download - Hard Rain

Hard Rain, Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler's half-breed freelance assassin John Rain returns to Tokyo for a second outing in Hard Rain, the sequel to Eisler's stunning 2002 debut, Rain Fall. Once again Rain is working with, or at least parallel to, Tatsu, a wily veteran of Japan's FBI equivalent, who aims to cleanse the Japanese government of its systemic corruption. To further this goal, he's persuaded the ever-cautious Rain to take out Murakami, a brutal gangster and hitman who specializes in making his killings look like suicide, a specialty Rain thought was his alone. Liquidating the dangerous and elusive Murakami proves to be a difficult task, however, one that leads to personal loss for Rain, and sets the plot on course for a climax that hits with the power of a well-delivered roundhouse kick.

Eisler builds on Rain's self-enforced isolation and loneliness as he expertly shows the reader Tokyo as channeled by Chandler, transforming the burgeoning metropolis into a noir catacomb of dimly lit hostess bars, scheming bureaucrats, shadowy intelligence agents, and outlaw martial arts dojos where thugged-up yakuza train for illicit death matches.

While the plot becomes complicated toward the novel's conclusion, Rain is a refreshing and complex character whom readers will want to see return for another installment. If you've a yen for a thriller that mixes suspense, intrigue, and action with a Japanese flavor and a hardboiled American attitude, Eisler's Hard Rain is an excellent choice.

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Killing Rain, Barry Eisler

At the start of Eisler's taut and compelling fourth thriller to feature John Rain (after 2004's Rain Storm), the freelance assassin's latest employer, Israeli intelligence, has sent him and his longtime associate, Dox, to Manila to kill weapons dealer Manheim Levi. Just as Rain is about to make his move, however, Levi's young son suddenly appears on the scene; Levi's bodyguards wind up shot while Levi and his son escape. The dead bodyguards turn out to be ex-CIA; and Jim Hilger, the renegade Company man with whom they were also working, is upset enough to ask his own specialists to exact revenge. Trying to find a way to complete his mission, Rain contacts Delilah, a fellow intelligence agent with whom he's been involved. But her Mossad colleagues, who have lost their trust in Rain's reliability, are setting up their own plan to take care of him. The plot has enough twists and turns to satisfy, and Eisler is an adept hand at pacing and suspense. The dialogue generally rings true, though the switching back and forth between first- and third-person narrative can be distracting. Various exotic Asian locales add to the appeal.

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Rain Storm, Barry Eisler

Eisler adds a fine new entry to his standout series starring freelance assassin John Rain, who tracks quarry across the Asian capitals of the Pacific Rim. In the third installment (following last year's Hard Rain), Rain is lured out of self-imposed exile in Brazil, where he had hoped to find shelter from the killing business, when his old employer, the CIA, dangles $200,000 his way for the elimination of an Arab arms supplier known only as Belghazi. Rain takes the job, promising himself it will be his last, and travels to Macao, a Portuguese peninsula and islands off the coast of China, to begin tracking Belghazi. But Rain, a meticulous hit man equipped with all the latest gadgetry, hardly hits town before he discovers that not only is another assassin stalking Belghazi but somebody is stalking Rain himself. Rain, who specializes in fatal neck-snapping wrestling holds, makes quick work of all the intruders, but Belghazi, aided by a beautiful woman named Delilah (who knows a lot about killing too), eludes him. The action shifts back and forth between Macao, Hong Kong and Tokyo, each setting rendered in intimately warm detail, before catapulting to a chilling finale in which Rain narrowly escapes bleeding to death on a shipping dock. Along the way, the usually detached hero shows a new dimension—the possible seeds of a fascinating friendship with a fellow hit man, a life-of-the-party type named Dox. The two complement each other like black and white. Yet what truly sets Eisler's series apart is its near total absence of formula and stereotype. Rain is a wholly original, cliché-free character operating in a world created only for him, serving as both his folly and his foil.

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Rain Fall, Barry Eisler

John Rain, a Japanese American konketsu, or half-breed, learned his lethal trade as a member of the U.S. Special Forces. Although tortured by memories of atrocities he committed in Vietnam, he has become a paid assassin, a solitary man who lives in the shadows and trusts no one, even those who pay extraordinary sums for his ability to make murder look like natural death. But the aftermath of an otherwise routine hit on a government bureaucrat brings Rain to the attention of two men he knows from the old days in Vietnam: a friend who's now a Tokyo cop and an enemy who betrayed Rain long ago and is now the CIA's station chief in Japan. Like the gangster who hired Rain to kill Yasuhiro Kawamura, they want something the dead man had--a computer disk containing proof of high-level corruption, information that could destroy Japan's ruling political coalition. The search for the disk leads them to a woman Rain has come to love, a talented young jazz musician who also happens to be Kawamura's daughter. In this taut, brilliantly paced debut thriller, set in a vividly rendered Tokyo, the author manages an unlikely feat; he earns the reader's sympathy and concern for his protagonist, an amoral assassin who is one of most compelling characters in recent crime fiction.

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Requiem For An Assassin, Barry Eisler

For master assassin John Rain, getting out of 'the life' was never going to be easy. But with a new identity in Paris, and the help of his lover, Mossad agent Delilah, he was hoping to leave the killing business behind. Then he receives a message from rogue CIA operative Jim Hilger: We have your friend Dox. Do as we tell you, or the sniper dies. The choice ought to be easy: do the job - a series of three hits - and save his friend and partner.But how does Rain know Hilger won't just kill Dox once the assignment is complete? How does he know that each of the hits isn't also a setup for Rain himself? Most of all, how can he control the killing rage that Hilger's lethal game of extortion reignites inside him? From the deceptively tranquil beaches of Bali, to the boulevards of Paris, the urban chaos of New York, and finally to the old killing fields of Vietnam. Rain must grapple not only with his brutal enemies, but also with the latent killer inside himself! a battle that not even Rain can hope to survive intact.

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The Last Assassin, Barry Eisler

When John Rain learns that his former lover, Midori, has been raising their child in New York, he senses a chance for reconciliation, perhaps even redemption. But Midori is being watched by Rain's enemies, and his sudden appearance put mother and child in terrible danger. To save them, Rain is forced to use the same deadly talents he had been hoping to leave behind. With the help of Tatsu, his friendly nemesis in the Japanese FBI, and Dox, the ex-marine sniper whose laid-back style masks a killer as deadly as Rain himself, Rain races against time to bring his enemies into the open and eliminate them forever. But to finish the job, he'll need one more ally: Israeli intelligence agent Delilah, a woman who represents an altogether different kind of threat.

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Entrepreneurship: The Engine of Growth

Entrepreneurship–”creativity plus ambition”–is credited for technological invention and the rise of corporate empires and directly linked to economic development around the world. This multi-volume set of original essays showcases emerging theory and practice in entrepreneurship to illuminate its many facets. From technology commercialization to new venture spinoffs, entrepreneurial personality characteristics to government policies in support of small business, these volumes cover the full spectrum of issues relating to entrepreneurship, including business models, entrepreneurial “mindset,” market research, capitalization, intellectual property, risk and uncertainty, and organizational culture. Volume 1, “People,” focuses on the intersection between individuals and entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on the cognitive, economic, social, and institutional factors that influence people’s behavior with respect to entrepreneurship. Volume 2, “Process,” explores such topics as idea generation, market entry, financing, team building, and growth strategies, following the lifecycle of a new venture. Volume 3, “Place,” considers the context in which entrepreneurship is practiced, including corporate venturing, family enterprise, franchising, and public policies designed to promote entrepreneurship and economic development. Featuring contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, and with a global perspective throughout, this unique set illuminates the dynamic role that entrepreneurship plays in promoting knowledge and economic opportunity, exploring new models, trends, and practices in entrepreneurship that will be of interest to a wide array of academics, professionals, and newcomers to the field.

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Intervention

New York Times–bestselling author Robin Cook returns with another ripped-from-the-headlines medical thriller, where DNA science, biotechnology, and religion collide.It’s been more than thirty years since New York City medical examiner Jack Stapleton’s college graduation and almost as long since he’d been in touch with former classmates Shawn Doherty and Kevin Murray. Once a highly regarded ophthalmologist, Jack’s career took a dramatic turn after a tragic accident that destroyed his family. But that, too, is very much in the past: Jack has remarried—to longtime colleague and fellow medical examiner Laurie Montgomery—and is the father of a young child. But his renegade, activist personality can’t rest, and after performing a postmortem on a young college student who had recently been treated by a chiropractor, Jack decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes some people step outside the medical establishment to seek care from practitioners of Eastern philosophies and even faith healers?

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When Pancakes Go Bad: Optical Delusions with Adobe Photoshop

If you’ve ever found yourself looking at funny images and thinking “Hey, how’d they do that?”, this is the book that will give you the answer! Learn how to have fun with photos— swapping pictures of historical inventions with modern-day appliances or combining images of animals to produce unrealistic characters. “When Pancakes Go Bad” is infused with humor and behind-the-scenes tutorials that impart useful, easy-to-understand tips in a lighthearted manner. Organized into chapters by the general theme of the images, this book is packed with fun and interesting photos that will keep you entertained until the end.

Perfect for anyone with an interest in learning Adobe Photoshop and have fun with it at the same time.

Written by the founder of Worth1000.com, a highly popular Photoshop gallery and content Web site with over 100,000 registered members.

Highly entertaining and educational, this book is filled with funny images as well as useful tutorials.

Companion Web site contains many images that readers can download and work with.

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FXRuby: Create Lean and Mean GUIs with Ruby

FXRuby is a highly object-oriented toolkit for building lean, mean, cross-platform graphical user interfaces in Ruby. Since its initial release in 2001, FXRuby has become one of the most popular GUI choices for Ruby developers. This book is your best resource for rapidly learning how to develop powerful, sophisticated GUIs in your favorite programming language.

If you’re a newcomer to GUI programming, this book will introduce you to the basics of FXRuby programming by leading you through building a GUI application with FXRuby from start to finish. If you’re an experienced software developer who just needs to get up to speed on FXRuby and what it can do for you, this book will help you put FXRuby to work in your Ruby-based applications. Along the way, you’ll learn how to leverage FXRuby’s vast collection of user interface elements to build visually rich user interfaces. You’ll see how FXRuby uses the concept of sending messages between objects to implement event-driven applications, and how you can most effectively use layout managers to construct flexible user interfaces.

Go beyond the basics with proven, practical knowledge and techniques for developing real-world GUI programs in Ruby.

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Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites

Core PHP Programming, Second Edition is the first complete, practical guide to PHP 4 for experienced Web developers. Fully updated to reflect PHP 4.0’s breakthrough features and performance, it covers every technique you need to build robust, fast Web applications. Leading PHP developer Leon Atkinson starts with a high-level overview of PHP: how it evolved, and how it appears to the developer. Next, Atkinson reviews the key building blocks of PHP scripts, including variables, operators, and expressions; conditional branches and loops. Review every PHP function, including I/O, data, and math functions; time, date, configuration, database, graphics, and network functions. Core PHP Programming, Second Edition also contains detailed coverage of effective program design and debugging. For all Web developers and system administrators.

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David Baldacci's Collections

Download - Absolute Power
Download - First Family
Download - Last Man Standing
Download - Saving Faith
Download - Simple Genius
Download - Split Second
Download - Stone Cold
Download - The Camel Club
Download - The Whole Truth

Saving Faith, David Baldacci

David Baldacci's high-impact novel tells of an embattled group of men and women fighting the forces of lethal corruption that operate at the heart of the Secret State. Danny Buchanan is a top Washington lobbyist who once earned a vast fortune serving the interests of giant corporations. Appalled by the desperate poverty he witnessed on his global travels, he decided to use his political genius to help the world's poor. With the loyal aid of his assistant, the attractive and committed Faith Lockhart, Danny works tirelessly and in secret to redress the balance of power. But Robert Thornhill has rather different ideas of public service. A ruthless top-ranking veteran of covert CIA activity, he discovers the secret of Danny's political influence and is determined to destroy him...

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Simple Genius, David Baldacci

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are both haunted by their last case. Realizing that Michelle is teetering on the brink of self-destruction from long-buried demons, Sean arranges therapy for his reluctant partner. But instead of focusing on her recovery, Michelle unearths disturbing secrets in the hospital..

Sean accepts a much-needed job. A physicist, Monk Turing, has died in mysterious circumstances near Babbage Town - a secretive establishment populated by an eccentric group of scientists and cryptographers, funded by an anonymous but powerful group. Meanwhile the dead man's young daughter, piano-playing prodigy Viggie, has secrets of her own. But what is the significance of the phrase 'codes and blood'?

Directly across the York River from Babbage Town lies the sinister CIA training ground, Camp Peary, where Monk Turing's body was found. With both the FBI and CIA breathing down Sean's neck, can he discover the truth? And will he be in time to save Michelle from herself?

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Split Second, David Baldacci

When every law enforcement agency in the land is crawling with corruption where do you turn for justice? What is law anyway when determined by fidelity, envy and revenge? 'He was the only one in the room who could see it. His attention stayed there for one beat, two beats, three beats, far too long. Yet who could blame him for not being able to pull his gaze away from that?' When something distracts Secret Agent, Sean King, for a split second, it costs him his career and presidential candidate, Clyde Ritter, his life. What stole his attention? Why was Ritter shot? Where were the other detail leaders?Eight years later, Michelle Maxwell, is on the fast track through the ranks of the Secret Service when her career receives a lethal blow: presidential candidate, John Bruno is abducted from a funeral home while under her protection. The similarity between the two cases drives Michelle to re-open investigations into the Ritter fiasco and join forces with attractive ex-agent, King. The pair are determined to get to the bottom of what happened in those critical moments. Meanwhile, high-ranking members of the legal system and key witnesses from both cases are going missing. King is losing friends, colleagues and clients fast and his ex-lover. Joan Dillinger - a hard-biting, widely respected agent - is playing curious games. She wants Sean back and resents his growing relationship with Michelle - but - she also owes him for something...Baldacci never misses a beat. He has created a labyrinthine plot that winds its way through the dark passages of America's legal underworld.

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Stone Cold, David Baldacci

Oliver Stone and the Camel Club are back for their most dangerous adventure yet. Casino king and vicious thug Jerry Bagger is hunting Annabelle Conroy, who conned him out of millions. Stone and his colleagues must marshal all their resources to protect her. Yet their skills may not be enough when a deadly new opponent rips off the veneer of Stone's own mysterious past: Bagger's menace pales next to Harry Finn's lethality. As bodies and institutions topple, the story rockets toward a shattering finale that will leave the survivors of this explosive tale changed forever ...

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The Camel Club, David Baldacci

The man known as Oliver Stone has no official past. He spends most days camped opposite the White House, hoping to expose corruption wherever he finds it. But the stakes are raised when he and his friends, a group of conspiracy theorist misfits known as The Camel Club, accidentally witness the murder of an intelligence analyst. Especially when the authorities are seemingly happy to write it off as a suicide. For Secret Service agent Alex Ford, monitoring the 'investigation', the suicide verdict doesn't ring true. As punishment for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, he is reassigned to bodyguard duties. His abilities are tested to the limit when he is sent to protect the President during a visit to his hometown, where a terrorist cell has spent months plotting an event that will shake the world. Meanwhile, America's powerful intelligence chief Carter Gray is unnerved when he glimpses the face of an old acquaintance in Arlington Cemetery - but it is the face of a man supposedly long dead ...And as "The Camel Club" is poised to expose a conspiracy that reaches into the heart of Washington's highly secretive corridors of power, Alex Ford finds out that his worst nightmare is about to happen .

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The Whole Truth David Baldacci

'I need a war ...' Nicolas Creel, a super-rich arms dealer, decides that the best way to boost his business is to start a new cold war - and he won't let anything or anyone get in his way. As international tensions rise and the superpowers line up against each other, the lives of three very different people will never be the same again. As intelligence agent Shaw, academic Anna Fischer and ambitious journalist Katie James are all drawn into Creel's games, can anything stop the world from spiralling out of control? This terrifying global thriller delivers all the twists and turns, emotional drama, unforgettable characters and can't-put-it-down pacing that Baldacci fans expect - and still goes beyond anything he's written before.

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Absolute Power, David Baldacci

"Accomplished and amazing - one of the hottest reads around" - "Daily Mail." Set in Washington D.C., this fascinating thriller of unparalleled suspense dares to explore an unthinkable abuse of power and criminal conspiracy: a vicious murder involving the US President and a cover-up orchestrared by his zealously loyal Chief of Staff and the Secret Service. But, unknown to the President and his lackeys, one unlikely witness saw everything. Trapped behind a two-way mirror in a country house in Maryland, Luther Whitney, a professional burglar, witnesses an event that destroys his faith in justice. By the time he escapes, pursued by two Secret Service agents, a young woman has been sexually assaulted, then shot dead. And a breathtaking cover-up has been set in motion. "Baldacci's prose is fluent and amazing ...this book is sure to make a killing"- "The Times." "A high-octane legal thriller. An almost Shakespearian study in the nature of evil - horror in its purest form" - "Spectator".

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First Family, David Baldacci

Camp David, USA. A birthday party turns into a nightmare when a child is snatched during the celebrations. The First Lady enlists the services of Sean King and Michelle Maxwell to bring the child home safely. But she and King share a past. Years ago he saved her then senator husband from an assassin's bullet. And this may not be all that passed between them...With Michelle still haunted by her own demons and forces from all sides aligning against them, soon the pair find themselves pushed to the limit. For who is it that they can really trust?

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