C# 2010 offers powerful new features, and this book is the fastest path to mastering them, and the rest of C#, for both experienced C# programmers moving to C# 2010 and programmers moving to C# from another object-oriented language. Many books introduce C#, but very few also explain how to use it optimally with the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). This book teaches both core C# language concepts and how to wisely employ C# idioms and object-oriented design patterns to exploit the power of C# and the CLR.

This book is both a rapid tutorial and a permanent reference. You'll quickly master C# syntax while learning how the CLR simplifies many programming tasks. You’ll also learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient, reusable, and robust. Why spend months or years discovering the best ways to design and code C# when this book will show you how to do things the right way from the start?

• Comprehensively and concisely explains both C# 2008 and C# 2010 features
• Focuses on the language itself and on how to use C# 2010 proficiently for all .NET application development.
• Concentrates on how C# features work and how to best use them for robust, high-performance code

What you'll learn

• How C# works with and exploits the CLR
• How to use arrays, collections, and iterators
• How to handle events with delegates and anonymous functions
• How to design and use generic types and methods
• How to thread efficiently and robustly
• How C# anonymous types, lamba expressions, and extension methods work and how to use them

Who is this book for?

If you're an experienced C# programmer, you need to understand how C# has changed with C# 2010. If you're an experienced object-oriented programmer moving to C#, you want to ramp up quickly in the language while learning the latest features and techniques. In either case, this book is for you. The first three chapters succinctly present C# fundamentals, for those new to or reviewing C#. The rest of the book covers all the major C# features, in great detail, explaining how they work and how best to use them. Whatever your background or need, you’ll treasure this book for as long as you code in C# 2010.

About the Apress Accelerated Series

You already know your industry, but you need to accelerate your skills in a particular area and reach best practices standards in one step. The Apress Accelerated Series of books will ramp you up quickly to industry standards in the area of your choice, by accelerating you through core information and using the professional’s pace to cover best practices and special extras that only a more experienced programmer in the area could give you.

BlackBerry devices and applications are selling by the millions. As a BlackBerry developer, you need an advanced skill set to successfully exploit the most compelling features of the platform. This book will help you develop that skill set and teach you how to create the most sophisticated BlackBerry programs possible.

With Advanced BlackBerry Development, you’ll learn you how to take advantage of BlackBerry media capabilities, including the camera and video playback. The book also shows you how to send and receive text and multimedia messages, use powerful cryptography libraries, and connect with the user’s personal and business contacts and calendar.

Not only will you be learning how to use these APIs, but you’ll also be building a program that takes full advantage of them: a wireless media-sharing app. Each chapter’s lessons will be applied by enhancing the app from a prototype to a fully polished program. Along the way, yo’ll learn how to differentiate your product from other downloads by fully integrating with the operating system. Your app will run in the browser and within device menus, just like software that comes with the phone.

Once you are comfortable with writing apps, this book will show you how to take them to the next level. You’ll learn how to move from running on one phone to running on all phones, and from one country to all countries. You’ll additionally learn how to support your users with updates. No other resource compares for mastering the techniques needed for expert development on this mobile platform.

What you’ll learn

• How to write sophisticated BlackBerry applications
• All about integrating with the device so your program behaves like a native app
• When to leverage advanced JSRs for cryptography, media capture, messaging, and more
• How to tie into the device contact list, calendar, and tasks
• Understanding the RIM security model and complex security processes
• How to quickly and easily port to many device types
• How to work with multiple devices across multiple countries

Who is this book for?

The ideal reader will approach this book after completing Beginning BlackBerry Development, but intermediate-level programmers may start directly with this book. Readers are expected to have some previous experience with programming for mobile phones, optimally the BlackBerry, but they need not be experts. Readers will include both hobbyists and professional developers; they may be motivated by curiosity, a desire to solve a particular problem, or the enhancement their skill sets and careers.

Microsoft is introducing a large number of changes to the way that the .NET Framework operates. Familiar technologies are being altered, best practices replaced, and developer methodologies adjusted. Many developers find it hard to keep up with the pace of change across .NET's ever-widening array of technologies. You may know what's happening in C#, but how about the Azure cloud? How is that going to affect your work? What are the limitations of the new pLINQ syntax? What you need is a roadmap. A guide to help you see the innovations that matter and to give you a head start on the opportunities available in the new framework.

Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010 is designed to provide you with just that roadmap. It serves as a no-nonsense primer that will help experienced .NET developers understand the impact of the new framework and its associated technologies. With the near simultaneous release of .NET 4.0, Silverlight 3, "Oslo," "Dublin," and Windows Azure, the second half of 2009 is a busy time. This book will keep you updated on the changes and help you to seize new opportunities confidently and quickly.

What you'll learn

• Get an overview and brief history of each new or changing technology that puts it into context
• Familiarize yourself with key concepts and opportunities through highly accessible tutorials
• Understand how to perform common tasks in new technology areas such as pLINQ
• Gain expert performance tips
• See examples of real-world applications of each technology to help you learn how a technology can be put to work

Who is this book for?

The book is aimed at .NET 3.5 developers who will be trying to get to grips with .NET 4.0 and the associated supporting technologies, such as "Oslo," ASP.NET MVC, pLINQ, etc., which will be changing the way they need to think about creating applications from September 2009 onward.

Enough about learning the fundamentals of the intriguing JavaFX platform; it’s now time to start implementing visually stunning and dynamic Java-based rich Internet applications (RIAs) for your desktop or mobile front end. This book will show you what the JavaFX platform can really do for Java desktop and mobile front ends. It presents a number of excellent visual effects and techniques that will make any JavaFX application stand out—whether it’s animation, multimedia, or a game. The techniques shown in this book are invaluable for competing in today’s market, and they’ll help set your RIAs apart from your competitor’s.

• Create visual effects that perform well.
• Add subtle animations to bring any application to life.
• Use the graphical power of the JavaFX platform.

You’ll learn how to:

• Create and customize a particle system.
• Learn tricks for creating compelling transitions.
• Take advantage of animated lighting.
• Create impressive animations with quintic Bézier interpolators.
• Add realistic physics to animations.
• Combine effects to create compelling visual content.

Who is this book for?

This book is for all JavaFX developers and aspiring developers. Anyone with basic programming experience can get started in minutes.

This book will give you a thorough grounding in the principal and supporting tools and technologies that make up the Xcode Developer Tools suite. Apple has provided a comprehensive collection of developer tools, and this is the first book to examine the complete Apple programming environment for both Mac OS X and iPhone.

• Comprehensive coverage of all the Xcode developer tools
• Additional coverage of useful third-party development tools
• Not just a survey of features, but a serious examination of the complete development process for Mac OS X and iPhone applications

What you’ll learn

• The book is holistic, providing a comprehensive sweep across the available development tools.
• The book is structured, taking a logical and progressive journey from the basics to a firm understanding of the purposes, benefits, and limitations of each component of Xcode’s developer tools.
• The tone is friendly and accessible—we wouldn’t have it any other way.
• The book fills a niche—there is no other single book that focuses on this collection of developer tools.
• This book complements other books in the Apress series.

Who is this book for?

All Mac OS X and iPhone developers who want to develop applications more efficiently by taking advantage of all the tools Apple offers in its Xcode suite, as well as many indispensable third-party tools.

Interested in iPhone development? Want to learn more? Whether you’re a self-taught iPhone development genius or have just made your way through the pages of Beginning iPhone 3 Development, we have the perfect book for you.

If you are going to write a professional iPhone app, you’ll want to get your arms around Core Data, and there’s no better place to do so than in the pages of this book. The book continues right where Beginning iPhone 3 Development left off with a series of chapters devoted to Core Data, the standard for persistence that Apple introduced to iPhone with SDK 3. Jeff and Dave carefully step through each of the Core Data concepts and show you techniques and tips specifically for writing larger applications—offering a breadth of coverage you won't find anywhere else.

The Core Data coverage alone is worth the price of admission. But there's so much more. This book covers a variety of networking mechanisms, from GameKit’s relatively simple BlueTooth peer-to-peer model, to the addition of Bonjour discovery and network streams, through the complexity of accessing files via the web. Dave and Jeff will also take you through coverage of concurrent programming and some advanced techniques for debugging your applications.

Whether you are a relative newcomer to iPhone development or an old hand looking to expand your horizons, there’s something for everyone in More iPhone 3 Development.

Note: A few of the apps in this book demonstrate technologies not yet supported by the simulator. To run them on your iPhone or iPod touch, you'll need to join one of Apple's paid iPhone developer programs.

What you’ll learn

• All about Core Data: key concepts and techniques for writing larger application
• How to utilize a variety of networking mechanisms, including peer-to-peer connections over Bluetooth using GameKit
• Details on the addition of Bonjour discovery and network streams
• How to embed maps with Map Kit and use in-application email
• How to access a user's iPod library and integrate music into applications
• Essentials of concurrent programming and advanced debugging techniques
• Tips on working with data from the web

Who this book is for

All iPhone and iPod Touch developers, especially developers already familiar with early iPhone SDKs.

Create your own Arduino-based designs, gain in-depth knowledge of the architecture of Arduino, and learn the user-friendly Arduino language all in the context of practical projects that you can build yourself at home. Get hands-on experience using a variety of projects and recipes for everything from home automation to test equipment.

Arduino has taken off as an incredibly popular building block among ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and DIY home automation developers. Authors Jonathan Oxer and Hugh Blemings provide detailed instructions for building a wide range of both practical and fun Arduino-related projects covering areas such as hobbies, automotive, communications, home automation, and instrumentation.

• Take Arduino beyond "blink" to a wide variety of projects from simple to challenging
• Hands-on recipes for everything from home automation to interfacing with your car engine management system
• Explanations of techniques and references to handy resources for ubiquitous computing projects

Supplementary material includes a circuit schematic reference, introductions to a range of electronic engineering principles and general hints & tips. These combine with the projects themselves to make Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware an invaluable reference for Arduino users of all levels. You'll learn a wide variety of techniques that can be applied to your own projects.

What you'll learn

• Communication with serial devices including RFID readers, temperature sensors, and GPS modules
• Connecting Arduino to Ethernet and WiFi networks
• Adding synthesized speech to Arduino
• Linking Arduino to web services
• Decoding data streams from commercial wireless devices
• How to make DIY prototyping shields for only a couple of dollars

Who is this book for?

This book is for hobbyists and developers interested in physical computing using a low-cost, easy-to-learn platform.

The Palm Pre is the hottest new device on the block. It’s the cell phone—nay, personal digital everything—that all the cool kids want to get their hands on . . . but no one wants to use it more than developers!

The Palm Pre is more than just a way-cool device, though: it is built on Palm’s brand-spanking-new webOS, an operating system that changes the game for developers. Building on standards-based web technologies, webOS allows us to create applications more quickly and easily than any other platform out there using the same technologies we know and love already. It turns out to be quite fun, too!

In this book, you’ll learn all about the Palm Pre and webOS, their capabilities, and how to develop for them. You’ll learn to write applications that function entirely on the Pre itself, and you’ll also learn to write applications that “live in the cloud” (i.e., keep you connected to the digital world around you). You’ll spend most of your time looking at Mojo, the framework API through which your code interfaces with the operating system. All of this will be presented within the context of six fully functional real-world applications that you can use on your own Pre!

Once you’re done, you’ll be ready to write your own webOS applications for the Pre, get them into the app catalog (the online store where Pre applications are made available to Pre owners), and make tons of cash.

• Learn to program the Palm Pre by sticking to JavaScript.
• Write useful apps as well as games.
• Become productive using Mojo and upload new applications within a day.

What you’ll learn

• All about the Palm Pre, its capabilities, webOS architecture, application structure, and development model (including tooling)
• The Mojo framework/API, what it offers, how it’s organized, and more
• How to interact with cloud-based services to provide a connected experience for Pre applications
• How to write on-device applications that store all their data locally (some will then sync to a server-side store when later connected)
• How to write games as well as useful apps

Who is this book for?

This book is for fairly experienced web developers looking to take their skills mobile and get a leg up on Palm Pre, webOS, and Mojo development.

Do you remember landmark games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Asteroids? Well, here’s an exciting opportunity to build and/or port these games to one of the hottest mobile and netbooks platforms today: Google’s Android.

Pro Android Games teaches you how to build cool games like Space Blaster and the classic Asteroids from scratch on the latest Android platform. This book also shows you how to port other classic freeware/shareware games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D from C using the Java Native Interface (JNI) for Android.

This book is all about a unique perspective in Android game development: a well-balanced, powerful combination of pure pure Java and hybrid game development, mixing Java and C. By combining the elegant object-oriented features of Java and the raw power of C, there is no limit to the types of gamesthat you can build for the platform. With actionable real-world source code in hand, this book allows you to dive right into games development on Android. You’ll definitely have fun, and perhaps you’ll even make some money. Enjoy!

What you’ll learn

• How to write/port advanced 3D games for any Android device.
• How to setup a Linux system for hybrid game compilation.
• How to combine Java and C code in an elegant manner by building a simpleJava application on top of a native library.
• How to tackle pure Java gaming with two practical games: Space Blaster andthe arcade classic Asteroids.
• How to mix OpenGL API calls in Java and C for high performance 3D graphicsusing the 3D cubes sample by Google.
• How to bring two of the greatest PC 3D shooters to the Android platform:Wolfenstein 3D and Doom using Java and C.

Who is this book for?

This book is for Google Android developers interested in game application development in Java or porting existing C-based games via JNI into Android and developing/deploying from there. It is targeted to developers who already know such basics of Android development as activity, view, and layout. Additionally, it assumes that you are a seasoned game developer in Java and C, and have a basic knowledge of Linux and Shell Scripting.

As a developer you are likely painfully aware that not all features of an application can be anticipated when the software ships. In order to cope with these eventualities and save yourself time (and perhaps money), it makes sense to write your applications in such a way that end users can be made as independent of the developers as possible. Giving your users the power to make changes to the way the application operates once it has shipped gives them more control over the way the application works, while reducing the frequency with which you need to redistribute application files, creating a win-win situation.

This book explains how to give users the power to create additional data-entry fields, validation logic, and new reports without assistance from the application developer. You will learn how to do this for both desktop (C# and WPF) and web (ASP) applications.

What you'll learn

• How to allow the user to create validation logic at runtime
• How to define and instantiate controls at runtime and the pitfalls of doing so
• How to create data-driven reports using Excel, Crystal Reports, and SQL Server Reporting Services
• How to design a database structure for optimizing data-driven applications
• How to build a user interface that allows users to modify their application visually

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone wanting to distribute an application in which the user needs to be as independent of the developer as possible. By using the techniques described in the book, the user will have the power to make modifications to his own applications, and the developer will reduce the frequency with which he needs to redistribute EXEs.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

“I wrote this book because I love building robots. I want you to love building robots, too. It took me a while to learn about many of the tools and parts in amateur robotics. Perhaps by writing about my experiences, I can give you a head start.”—David Cook

Robot Building for Beginners, Second Edition is an update of David Cook’s best-selling Robot Building for Beginners. This book continues its aim at teenagers and adults who have an avid interest in science and dream of building household explorers. No formal engineering education is assumed.

The robot described and built in this book is battery powered and about the size of a lunchbox. It is autonomous. That is, it isn’t remote controlled.

You’ll begin with some tools of the trade, and then work your way through prototyping, robot bodybuilding, and eventually soldering your own circuit boards. By the book’s end, you will have a solid amateur base of understanding so that you can begin creating your own robots to vacuum your house or maybe even rule the world!

What you’ll learn

• How to build a robot from scratch
• Where to obtain parts and tools to get you started
• How to build the brain—the intelligence—using the motherboard
• How to create the body and become a Dr. Frankenstein
• How to get your robot moving and ruling

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at teenagers and adults who have an avid interest in science and dream of building household explorers. No formal engineering education is assumed.

This book takes a comprehensive look at Magento, a robust and flexible e-commerce platform built on the Zend framework. With over 750,000 downloads, Magento is the fastest growing open source e-commerce solution. This book walks through all of the steps to building a fully functional Magento-based web site. It also includes information on managing products, customers, and orders. This book is directed at web site designers and developers, but will also be extremely useful for business owners who have web sites built on the Magento platform.

• Introduces you to Magento, the fastest-growing open source e-commerce platform
• Demonstrates how to configure and use Magento
• Covers how to customize Magento and develop extensions for the Magento platform

What you’ll learn

• How to install and set up a Magento based e-commerce web site
• How to effectively manage products, customers, and orders
• How to sell products through Magento
• How to design a custom Magento web site
• How to add content to your Magento web site
• How to create your own Magento extensions

Who is this book for?

Current and prospective web site designers and web developers; small business owners who want an online presence

The Azure Services Platform is a brand-new cloud-computing technology from Microsoft. It is composed of four core components—Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services—each with a unique role in the functioning of your cloud service. It is the goal of this book to show you how to use these components, both separately and together, to build flawless cloud services.

At its heart Pro Azure is a down-to-earth, code-centric book. This book aims to show you precisely how the components are employed and to demonstrate the techniques and best practices you need to know to use them to best effect. That said, author Tejaswi Redkar regularly takes time out to provide a thorough overview of the architectural concepts that underpin Windows Azure. Without this understanding, you will find it hard to use the platform to its full potential.

By the time you've read this book, you will be comfortable building high-quality end-to-end Azure services of your own.

What you'll learn

• Know everything you need to about the Azure Services components—from Access Control to SQL Services, from the Service Bus to Workflow Services
• Understand both the architectural thinking behind Azure and the nuts-and-bolts code that binds your service together
• Design, build, and deploy an Azure service with the assistance of a fully worked template for end-to-end application design that mimics a real-world scenario and gives you a rock-solid example of the design and development processes that you need to work through

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for professional developers who want to dig into the internals of Azure and start investigating its features in depth and adopting them into their workflow systems. A taster to the subject is provided by the Apress title Introducing Windows Azure due to be published in October 2009.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

jQuery is one of today’s most popular JavaScript web application development frameworks and libraries. jQuery Recipes can get you started with jQuery quickly and easily, and it will serve as a valuable long-term reference.

• The book begins with small initial problems that developers typically face while working with jQuery, and gradually goes deeper to explore more complex problems.
• The solutions include illustrations and clear, concise explanations of the code. Using this book and jQuery, your web sites will be more dynamic and lively.

What you’ll learn

• How to use the jQuery framework
• The basics of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and how they apply to jQuery and its functions
• Fundamentals like selectors, the DOM, and event handling with running code recipes
• How to make your web sites more dynamic using rich code templates
• How to apply animation effects to your web sites using jQuery code recipes
• How to develop Ajax applications using jQuery
• How to use jQuery utility functions
• How to extend jQuery with plug-ins and their types

Who is this book for?

The book is meant for the beginners who have a little knowledge of HTML and intend to make dynamic websites. The book will be of great use for developers and professionals who wish to make highly interactive websites with a minimum of code.

With several million documented downloads, Joomla! is being deployed worldwide for everything from personal web sites to mission-critical web business applications. Joomla! is the most popular and successful open source and cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and MacOS) content management system in the world, hands down. Written by bestselling Beginning Joomla! author Dan Rahmel, Advanced Joomla! provides you with the technical know-how and bonanza of information that allows you to take your Joomla! sites to the next level.

Advanced Joomla! allows you to study beginning and advanced Joomla! topics back-to-back without requiring any additional outside knowledge. Moreover, it offers you advanced techniques for customizing a Joomla! CMS, including creating templates, administration, and building extensions.

• Integrate advanced Web 2.0 features into you Joomla! site, including social networking, blogging, and Google and Yahoo web services.
• Construct advanced Joomla! templates that use multiple stylesheets; third-party frameworks including MooTools and Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library for interactive display; specialty definitions for mobile users; and more!
• Learn advanced administration, including various site-backup methods, integration of logins with other systems, Joomla! site security, data mining techniques for MySQL information, deployment to a remote server or servers, and adding quality control using automated testing with the free, open source tools such as Apache JMeter and Selenium.

What you'll learn

Advanced Joomla! assists content providers and web developers in all aspects of Joomla! content creation. For graphic artists and web designers, the professional template techniques and site organization information will prove invaluable. For developers who are weary of the often Byzantine documentation and hunger for clear organized information, Advanced Joomla! holds the key to unlocking the treasures of this advanced CMS system.

• How to use the advanced, additional, or extra Joomla! tools, features, and techniques
• Advanced techniques for Joomla! use and configuration
• How to do advanced template constructions, administration, and development

Who is this book for?

This book is for Joomla! or web developers/users who have read Beginning Joomla!

Advanced Joomla! Is for hobbyists, web designers, web developers, small and medium businesses, e-commerce merchants, and nonprofit organizations. The content of the book targets bloggers, corporate content creators, and support specialists.

Anyone with access to a web-hosting site that allows PHP/MySQL content deployment (which includes GoDaddy.com and SiteGround.com) will be able to deploy a Joomla! site with all of the features shown in the book. Like Beginning Joomla!, this book does not require actual PHP programming experience, although PHP code will be presented and explained.

The Android development platform, created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, is a platform in its truest sense, encompassing hundreds of classes beyond the traditional Java classes and open source components that ship with the SDK.

With Beginning Android 2, you’ll learn how to develop applications for Android 2.x mobile devices, using simple examples that are ready to run with your copy of the SDK. Author, Android columnist, writer, developer, and community advocate Mark L. Murphy will show you what you need to know to get started programming Android applications, including how to craft GUIs, use GPS, and access web services.

What you’ll learn

• Discover Android and how to use it to build Java-based mobile applications for Google phones.
• Create user interfaces using both the Android widget framework and the built-in WebKit-powered web browser components.
• Work with menu inflation, fonts, SDK tools, rotation events, TabActivity, MyLocationOverlay, and DDMS.
• Utilize the distinctive capabilities of the Android engine, including maps, Internet access, integrated search, and media playback.
• Use and create Android applications for services, content providers, mapping, and location-based services/events.
• Incorporate Android 1.5 to develop touch screen applications and more.
• Integrate the new Android 2.0, including integrated local and web search, handwriting gesture UI, Google Translate, and text-to-speech features.

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at people new to mobile development, perhaps even to Java development itself.

Google has a new release of version 3 for the Google Maps API. While its JavaScript API still looks similar to previous versions of the Google Maps API, much has changed under the hood with version 3, which has been designed to load fast, especially on today’s mobile browsers and platforms, such as Android-based devices and the iPhone.

Given the debut of the Google Maps API 3, authors Mike Purvis and Victor Sumner felt it was time for an update of their popular Beginning Google Maps Applications. In this important second edition, they’ve created a comprehensive introduction to Google Maps API 3, including the following:

• A focus on guiding you beyond simple tasks to the specifics of common and interesting projects
• Plot points and other geometry, both from an internal source and a public one like www.data.gov
• How to deal with data larger than 100 points (both the technical hurdles and the UI issues)

What you’ll learn

• The fundamentals of the new Google Maps API 3, moving quickly into territory that many readers would have difficulty with when working alone or from Internet tutorials
• How to access Google Maps and GIS data with Ajax/JavaScript
• How to deal with lots of data as you move from toy to real-world applications
• How to develop user interfaces for big data sets
• How to render tiles with data
• How to use various web services with Google Maps effectively
• How to integrate what you learn with a capstone case study
• How to deploy on today’s mobile platforms like Android and the iPhone, as well as desktops and more

Who is this book for?

This book could be enjoyed by a complete beginner, but the intended audience is a person with some exposure to programming, especially in languages like C++, Java, and PHP. An understanding of HTML and basic control flow is assumed, but the aspects of JavaScript relevant to the topics will receive coverage in sidebars.

Beginning Hibernate, Second Edition is ideal if you’re experienced in Java with databases (the traditional, or “connected,” approach), but new to open source, lightweight Hibernate—the de facto object-relational mapping and database-oriented application development framework.

This book packs in brand-new information about the latest release of the Hibernate 3.5 persistence layer and provides a clear introduction to the current standard for object-relational persistence in Java. And since the book keeps its focus on Hibernate without wasting time on nonessential third-party tools, you’ll be able to immediately start building transaction-based engines and applications.

Experienced authors Dave Minter and Jeff Linwood provide more in-depth examples than any other book for Hibernate beginners. The authors also present material in a lively, example-based manner—not a dry, theoretical, hard-to-read fashion.

What you’ll learn

• How to build enterprise Java-based transaction—type applications that access complex data with Hibernate, including Software as a Service (SaaS)
• How to work with Hibernate 3.5
• Where to integrate into the persistence lifecycle, including cloud application implications
• How to map using annotations, Hibernate XML files, and more
• How to search and query with the new version of Hibernate
• When to integrate with Spring, Grails, and more

Who this book is for

This book is for Java developers who want to learn about Hibernate.

Beginning Inkscape is your shortcut to creating vector graphics with this free open source software. This book explains the Inkscape software interface and what each tool allows you to do. Best of all, Beginning Inkscape shows you how to use techniques employed by graphic designers to create a range of images, graphs, diagrams, and illustrations. Color images and screenshots appear at every step to help you see and understand the tools and techniques you are learning. Projects and exercises are throughout the book to help you put it all into practice.

Inkscape trainer and author Donna Benjamin shows you how to get the most out of Inkscape by taking you through the interface one tool at a time. Use this book as both an introductory manual for the software and a crash course to get up to speed in using Inkscape for real-world projects. Beginning Inkscape also showcases projects by artists and designers who use the software to create comics, web sites, icons, charts, and diagrams.

What you'll learn

• Install Inkscape on a Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows machine.
• Understand how Inkscape can be configured and customized.
• Develop fundamental vector drawing techniques.
• Discover how to create patterns, clone objects, and use gradients.
• Manipulate layers, paths, and masks for complete control of the canvas.
• Master using shape, line, and color for creating dramatic graphics.

Who is this book for?

This book is for beginning to intermediate graphics creators. Many people would love to be more creative in making images on their computers but are daunted by the complexity of modern tools. This book is for them. Craftspeople, teachers and students, graphic artists, web developers, and report writers will also find the book useful.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) continues to be one of the leading Java technologies and platforms from Oracle (previously Sun). Beginning Java EE 6 Platform with GlassFish 3, Second Edition is this first tutorial book on the final (RTM) version of the Java EE 6 Platform.

Step by step and easy to follow, this book describes many of the Java EE 6 specifications and reference implementations, and shows them in action using practical examples. This book uses the new version of GlassFish 3 to deploy and administer the code examples.

Written by an expert member of the Java EE 6 specification request and review board in the Java Community Process (JCP), this book contains the best information possible, from an expert’s perspective on enterprise Java technologies.

What you’ll learn

• Get started with the final version of the new Java EE 6 Platform.
• Explore and use the new EJB 3.1 and JPA 2.0 APIs from entities to session beans to message�driven beans, and more.
• Discover the new web tier development APIs including JSPs, JSTL, and Expression Language, and especially the new JSF 2.0 and Facelets.
• Uncover the new web services, RESTful services, and more available in Java EE 6.
• Create dynamic user interfaces for your enterprise and transactional Java applications.

Who this book is for

This book is for advanced Java programmers as well as Java EE 6 beginners. Architects will also find information about how to layer their Java EE applications.

The open source JavaFX platform offers a Java-based approach to rich Internet application (RIA) development—an alternative to Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight. At over 100 million downloads, the new JavaFX 2.x is poised to be a significant player now.

Written by a JavaFX engineer and developer, this book is one of the first on the new JavaFX 2.x platform to give you the following:

• The fundamentals of JavaFX scripting on desktop and mobile platforms
• Examples of RIAs using JavaFX Graphics
• Media and animation using JavaFX

See how JavaFX gives you dynamic Java effects in your RIA application development.

What you’ll learn

• How to use the JavaFX scripting language, beginning with a simple “Hello, World” application
• How to use JavaFX data types, operators, expressions, functions, sequences, bindings, triggers, and more
• How to work with the JavaFX classes, packages, exception handling, inheritance, and more
• How to use JavaFX Graphics
• How to work with JavaFX animation
• How to create a working RIA using JavaFX

Who is this book for?

This book is for Flash, Silverlight, and other RIA developers looking to use and integrate JavaFX in their Java RIA applications, whether it’s for the desktop or mobile environments. This book is also for those new to RIA development.

Source code management should be simple—that is, a well-oiled central mechanism for managing code contributions from one or more developers working on a single software development project. In this book, Joel Spolsky and Bill von Hagen teach you how to use Mercurial to simplify the maintenance of multiple versions of a software project, and include the art of migrating improvements from one version of the software to another.

Source code management systems must be network-aware, secure, and powerful without sacrificing usability. Mercurial is all of these things, which is why it is one of the most popular open source code management systems in use today. OpenSolaris, Symbian, and the Python programming language project all use Mercurial. This book demonstrates how Mercurial supports both local and networked development projects, and how to take advantage of its excellent scaling capabilities. This book shows how to work on Windows and Linux, and leads developers to Mercurial mastery.

• Teaches how to use the Mercurial source code control system in both tutorial and task-oriented chapters
• Delivers the complete spectrum of information necessary to use and customize Mercurial, including information for Mercurial repository maintainers and a complete reference for all the Mercurial commands
• Discusses both command-line and graphical tools for working with Mercurial projects, and also discusses how to migrate existing projects from the likes of Subversion, Git, and Bazaar to Mercurial

What you’ll learn

• Understand the key concepts that differentiate Mercurial from other source code management systems (e.g., Subversion or Git).
• Create, manage, and share development projects via Mercurial repositories.
• Perform common operations such as adding new files and directories to your projects, committing updated versions of those files, and retrieving files that have been updated by other users.
• Perform advanced operations such as creating branches, tagging revisions, merging changesets, and resolving merge conflicts.
• Integrate Mercurial with popular integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse and Visual Studio.
• Customize Mercurial to suit your workflow, software engineering practices, and user preferences.

Who this book is for

This book is designed for beginning-to-intermediate-level software developers who may be new to source code control. Those who are familiar with source code control will find this book a fast and easy-to-understand introduction to Mercurial.

This is a book for those of us who believed that we didn’t need to learn Perl, and now we know it is more ubiquitous than ever. Perl is extremely flexible and powerful, and it isn’t afraid of Web 2.0 or the cloud. Originally touted as the duct tape of the Internet, Perl has since evolved into a multipurpose, multiplatform language present absolutely everywhere: heavy-duty web applications, the cloud, systems administration, natural language processing, and financial engineering. Beginning Perl, Third Edition provides valuable insight into Perl’s role regarding all of these tasks and more.

Commencing with a comprehensive overview of language basics, you’ll learn all about important concepts such as Perl’s data types and control flow constructs. This material sets the stage for a discussion of more complex topics, such as writing custom functions, using regular expressions, and file input and output. Next, the book moves on to the advanced topics of object-oriented programming, modules, web programming, and database administration with Perl’s powerful database interface module, DBI. The examples and code provided offer you all of the information you need to start writing your own powerful scripts to solve the problems listed above, and many more.

Whether you are a complete novice or an experienced programmer, Beginning Perl, Third Edition offers an ideal guide to learning Perl.

What you’ll learn

• How to use the power of Perl
• How to handle Perl data structures
• How to build database applications regardless of the underlying database
• How to parse complex data
• How to write industrial-strength object-oriented Perl
• How to start web programming in Perl

Who is this book for?

This book is for programmers of all shades and persuasions who thought they could do without Perl. Think again.

Beginning Rails 3 is the practical starting point for anyone wanting to learn how to build dynamic web applications using the latest release of the Rails framework for Ruby. You'll learn how all of the components of Rails fit together and how you can leverage them to create sophisticated web applications with less code and more joy.

This book is particularly well suited to those with little or no experience with web application development, or who have some experience but are new to Rails. Beginning Rails 3 assumes basic familiarity with web terms and technologies, but doesn't require you to be an expert. Rather than delving into the arcane details of Rails, the focus is on the aspects of the framework that will become your pick, shovel, and axe. Part history lesson, part introduction to object-oriented programming, and part dissertation on open source software, this title doesn't just explain how to do something in Rails, it explains why.

• Learn to create Rails web applications from scratch
• Includes a gentle introduction to the Ruby programming language
• Completely updated to include the new features of Rails 3

What you'll learn

Rails 3 is a huge new release that includes the combined power of Rails and Merb. Beginning Rails 3 will get you started in learning this new technology and creating dynamic web applications in next to no time.

• Install Rails on a Mac, Windows, or Linux system
• Understand the Model-View-Controller architecture
• Learn the value of databases and how to set up MySQL in Rails
• Get instant feedback on your work by testing in the Rails Console
• Add Ajax and visual effects to create rich user interfaces
• Use and create your own Rails plug-ins

Who is this book for?

Web developers who want to harness the power of Rails 3 to quickly build dynamic Rich Internet Applications. Anyone who hasn't used Rails before will be able to learn the basics from this book.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

Get ready for model-driven application development with Oslo! Beginning Oslo.NET contains the information you need to be successful with designing and implementing workflow modeling.

You will gain a comprehensive understanding of how to apply Oslo in the development of virtually any enterprise .NET application. Most importantly, after reading the book and working through the examples, you will have considerable experience using Oslo, because the book and accompanying source code take you through the steps of actually building solutions using the platform.

Beginning Oslo.NET is the only book that comprehensively covers .NET application development using Oslo. This book explains the critical concepts of Oslo and model-driven development that every .NET developer must know. The book is simple and concise, giving readers an immediate return on their investment. After learning the lessons of this book, business process analysts and .NET developers will be prepared to use Oslo for model-based design, development, and implementation of enterprise .NET applications.

What you’ll learn

• About the Repositor—where the specifics of the model entities and relationships reside
• How to use Quadrant—a visual modeling tool for creating and modifying the model
• How to work with Intellipad—short for Intellisense Workpad, this is a text-based code editor incorporating Microsoft’s implementation of code autocompletion; it is a part of Quadrant
• Developing with the M programming language—specifically designed for developing domain-specific languages
• Model-driven development concepts by building a realistic sample application

Who is this book for?

This book is tailored to analysts and developers, and includess extensive code samples and exercises. Managers and business analysts will be interested in understanding how Oslo and model-driven development can reduce project development time and increase reusability of processes. Database and software architects will be interested in understanding how to design and implement dynamic model-driven solutions. Programmers will want to quickly ramp up on the technology to include Oslo in their .NET development experience.

Windows Workflow Foundation is a ground-breaking addition to the core of the .NET Framework that allows you to orchestrate human and system interactions as a series of workflows that can be easily mapped, analyzed, adjusted, and implemented.

As business problems become more complex, the need for a workflow-based solution has never been more evident. WF provides a simple and consistent way to model and implement complex problems. As a developer, you focus on developing the business logic for individual workflow tasks. The runtime handles the execution of those tasks after they have been composed into a workflow.

Beginning WF demonstrates, in an eminently readable and accessible style, how Microsoft's Workflow Foundation (WF) technology can be used in a wide variety of applications.

• Loaded with lots of simple yet demonstrative sample projects
• Very hands-on with practical "how-to" information
• Indexed by feature so specific questions are easily answered

What you'll learn

Beginning WF will take you step by step through many of the useful applications of workflow technology. Along the way, you will

• Design sequential and state machine workflows
• Communicate between applications using workflow activities
• Implement a custom SQL persistence service
• Build applications that support long-running workflows
• Implement web-based applications that implement workflows
• Host workflows on Microsoft's SharePoint services

Who is this book for?

This book is perfectly suited to anyone using or considering Microsoft's Windows Workflow Foundation. It describes what WF can do for you and how to quickly learn the basic concepts needed to be proficient. If you're actively implementing a workflow project, this book has lots of sample projects that demonstrate the most useful design patterns.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging and content management web templating platforms—it easily allows you and your business to make a statement about yourself and what you do. WordPress is also quite cost-effective, as it’s free for just about anyone to use.

WordPress is colorful and flexible, and includes a variety of themes, templates, and plug-ins for you to explore and use. Beginning WordPress 3 aims to address these for the beginner who wants to start using and developing with WordPress.

• This book is one of the first on the latest WordPress 3.0 engine.
• With this book, you’ll learn about blogging, developing a blog, creating newsletters/papers, and managing/publishing this popular CMS.
• The author, Stephanie Leary, brings you her expertise as a professional trainer and educator who has used WordPress extensively in education and more.

What you’ll learn

• How to get started and import content for use in WordPress
• How to change what appears on a home page, blog post, and more
• How to handle media uploads, audio/video players, and podcasting
• How to create forms, form plug-ins and more
• How to publish, migrate, and move your WordPress sites

Who this book is for

This book is for first-time users, designers, and developers of online content, blogs, and content management systems.

You’ve got travel guides, recommendations, event descriptions, transit schedules, directions, and a full complement of local advice all tucked in your pocket, everywhere you go. Time to use all those great BlackBerry smartphone features and apps to be the savviest, most well-informed traveler since Phileas Fogg.

This book tells you how to use your BlackBerry to plan your trip, stay connected in transit, arrive knowing where you’re going, and get there in a timely, unfrazzled way. Not only that, it will show you how to record your adventures using various methods and enjoy the trip all over again when you’ve gotten back home. BlackBerry on the Road will teach you the best of the apps and techniques so that if you’re equipped with a BlackBerry, you can enjoy every aspect of travel again.

What you’ll learn

• How to plan trips and create itineraries
• How to set up a journal and take photos
• How to make reservations, check the weather, and schedule transportation on the fly
• How to use geo-aware services to pinpoint your location, find local sites, and find the cheapest bargains in your area
• How to get help in an emergency and how to avoid roaming charges when contacting loved ones
• How to sync up your computer once you get home and share you experiences with others

Who this book is for

This book is for travelers who wish to limit the number of devices they carry with them. It is for all BlackBerry smartphone users who want to use a single device in lieu of a camera, journal, MP3 player, and GPS unit. It is also for budget-minded users who want to find cheap local rates and areas of interest, while keeping in touch with friends and family without worrying about roaming charges.

Building WPF and Silverlight Applications takes a novel approach to the business or learning about these two exciting and powerful technologies. We recognize that, if you're interested in these topics, you're probably a professional developer. As such, you need to know more than just the new technology's grammar and syntax. You need to know good design patterns, how to build robust n-tier architectures to support your code, how to deploy and maintain it. In short, all those small but important details that are so often omitted when you work through code samples in a book or on MSDN.

Our book aims to redress this balance. In a series of clearly structured chapters we give you an information packed tutorial in how these technologies work–their similarities and their differences–and explain how they can be integrated with the best architectural design patterns for maximum efficiency and ease of use. Then we go one stage further and work through a series of projects from design, through implementation to deployment showing the thinking and detail required to create fully working WPF and Silverlight applications that will stand up to use and abuse in the real world of professional work.

What you'll learn

• How to structure a WPF/Silverlight application
• To use WF to create complex workflows to drive your apps business processes
• Best Practice for communicating with a SOA backbone
• Work with Silverlight and RIA services, to provide a rich client experience
• Use RESTful WCF to publish RSS feeds
• How to create true n-Tier apps using all of the technologies discussed above

Who is this book for?

Building WPF and Silverlight Applications gives developers learning about WPF and Silverlight 3 a deep grounding in the techniques required for using WPF and Silverlight in the professional environment. The book emphases the design patterns and n-tier architectural planning that is required to enable applications to stand up to real-world use and abuse by end users. This is critical information for the professional developer but it is very often omitted from training manuals and online articles.

The book focuses on two of the most widely used, and widely purchased, technologies with the Microsoft programming environment: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight 3. By dealing with both technologies together the book covers both web and desktop programming and will have a very wide audience appeal.

This book dives deep into the details of how the SharePoint user experience is built. Using tools available to all developers, you’ll dissect and rebuild a SharePoint 2010 site—all the way from the out-of-the-box default to your very own customized user experience.

Few IT books cover the depth required to truly master a subject. This book breaks this pattern, and goes to places where very few SharePoint developers have gone before. It provides a “take no prisoners, brake for no one” approach that gets you to the information you really need to know.

You might ask why you would want to modify all this when you get a perfectly capable interface right out of the box? And why go all the way to the core when all you want to do is fix up some CSS? The answer is that a solid understanding of the SharePoint architecture will enable you to learn the capabilities of SharePoint as a platform. This, in turn, will allow you to create user experiences that will increase the value of the solutions you create, as well as work better within the specific scenarios you encounter in your day-to-day work. And that, of course, leads to SharePoint happiness and joy—and we all want that, don’t we?

After reading this book, you will be left with a deep understanding of how the SharePoint user experience is built. You will also have gained practical and applicable knowledge that your projects and customers will love. And you will have had a good time learning as well. So while we do go deeper into the material than other books, we will not leave our sense of humor behind or be afraid to enjoy getting better at what we do.

What you’ll learn

• Learn the tools you need to create effective and highly tailored user interfaces and experiences in SharePoint 2010.
• Dissect an out-of-the-box site to learn how every user experience element is built.
• Master the core functions of sites, lists, content types, and fields.
• Build a site from scratch using tools available to everyone.
• Speed up your development time by using tools, tricks, and tips.
• See how your new skills can be applied to everyday tasks with simple exercises.

Who is this book for?

This book is for SharePoint developers who want to learn how to work with designers and other developers to create custom and tailored user experiences, including custom forms, content types, lists, fields, pages, and navigation that will better match your project’s requirements.

This book is an industry-leading primer on cloud computing: its background, the purpose it serves, how the cloud can be best utilized, which platforms offer which features, and how to get started. Cloud computing is one of today’s most interesting technologies, but remains a bit mercurial and mysterious. It can mean a lot of different things to different people. By tracing several real-world scenarios—from the requirement gathering through the design, coding, and deployment phases—this book will give you a clear understanding of what it takes to build and deploy a successful, scalable application that leverages cloud computing platforms and tools.

Furthermore, this book emphasizes the critical differences between legacy IT approaches, and explains the methodologies and features available through a cloud-based model. Frameworks and tools such as Amazon EC2, Azure, Google App Engine, Hadoop, CouchDB, Memcache, and JavaSpaces are introduced, illustrating how each technology is best utilized within the context of cloud computing.

In the end, this book clears the air and empowers you—whether you’re an IT decision maker or a career progression–minded developer—with the information and knowledge necessary to fully consider the implications of migrating to, developing, and/or using cloud-driven applications.

What you’ll learn

• How to take the vagueness out of cloud computing
• The core concepts and considerations of cloud computing
• When and when not to go to the cloud
• How to weigh the varying factors that go into ROI-based decisions of going into the cloud
• How to use various cloud computing platforms such as Amazon, Azure, and Google App Engine
• How to use cloud-based techniques and strategies

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for anyone interested in the shift currently occurring in the IT industry, in which IT resources and CPU utilization are becoming standard commodities. This book covers both general theoretical concepts and hands-on, real-world examples—targeting this book to both businesspeople and developers alike.

Arduino is an incredibly flexible and easy-to-use physical-computing platform, and with Cool Arduino Projects, you’ll put it to work building home automation projects, robotics projects, and even (literally) out-of-this-world projects, including a rocket avionics system.

The book will guide you through a variety of projects—some basic, some more advanced, some very practical, and some just plain fun. You’ll learn how to create home automation projects such as a DMX light dimmer, an automatic bathroom fan, a proximity touch switch, and even smart clothing linked to Second Life. You’ll also discover how to make practical projects like a networked general-purpose device, an irrigation controller, a heart rate biomonitor, and both sun-tracking and web-controlled camera mounts. You will even learn how to create a rocket avionics system and your own electronics lab in a box.

You’ll get descriptions of the parts required and where to find them, how to assemble them, possible pitfalls, and complete code with explanations.

What you’ll learn

• How to modify and automate common household items and even link them to virtual environments
• How to create a general-purpose networked device with potentially unlimited applications
• How to create practical projects like an irrigation controller and a heart rate biomonitor
• How to create fun projects like a self-balancing robot and a rocket avionics system
• How to create your own electronics lab in a box
• Tips and tweaks in each chapter that will help you uncover even more potential applications

Who this book is for

This book is for Arduino fans, ubicomp enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and anyone interested in building their own gadgets using the open source Arduino platform.

DBA Survivor is a book to help new DBAs understand more about the world of database administration. More and more people are falling into the DBA profession, and many are looking for a getting-started guide. Blogs are written about how to be an exceptional DBA and what to do in your first 100 days. This book takes a different approach, injecting some humor into helping you understand how to hit the ground running, and most importantly how to survive as a DBA.

And it’s not just survival that matters. Author Thomas LaRock wants much more for you than mere survival. He wants you to have excellence, competence, visibility, confidence, and service. These are the traits and characteristics of DBAs who truly succeed and become respected in their profession. Don’t settle for just muddling through your job each day. Strive to excel. Aim to make a difference, for your clients, and for your colleagues.

• Focuses on the soft skills that distinguish truly exceptional DBAs
• Takes a humorous approach to keep readers engaged
• Written by a SQL Server MVP and board member of PASS

What you’ll learn

• Get off to a solid start on day one.
• Learn the basics of database administration.
• Understand different types of database support.
• Benefit from ongoing DBA training.
• Stay in top physical, mental, and emotional shape.
• Raise your profile in the DBA community.

Who is this book for?

The general audience for this book consists of new database administrators, including people who have been in the role for one to two years, regardless of company size.

Hibernate continues to be the most popular out-of-the-box framework solution for Java Persistence and data/database accessibility techniques and patterns. It is used for e-commerce–based web applications as well as heavy-duty transactional systems for the enterprise.

Gary Mak, the author of the best-selling Spring Recipes, now brings you Hibernate Recipes. This book contains a collection of code recipes and templates for learning and building Hibernate solutions for you and your clients.

This book is your pragmatic day-to-day reference and guide for doing all things involving Hibernate. There are many books focused on learning Hibernate, but this book takes you further and shows how you can apply it practically in your daily work.

What you’ll learn

• The basics of object-relational mapping and how Hibernate is best suited for it
• How to do various mappings, including one-to-one mapping, many-to-one mapping, collection mapping, component mapping, and inheritance mapping
• How to use Hibernate Query Language (HQL)
• How to perform batch processing and use native SQL, criteria queries, caching objects, and more
• How to enable Hibernate in web applications with e-commerce
• How to use Hibernate for heavy-duty enterprise transaction–based systems

Who is this book for?

This book is for experienced Java developers looking to use Hibernate, but is also appropriate for Java developers new to Hibernate.

For readers of Robot Building for Beginner (Apress, 2002 and 2009), welcome to the next level. Intermediate Robot Building, Second Edition offers you the kind of real-world knowledge that only renowned author David Cook can offer.

In this book, you’ll learn the value of a robot heartbeat and the purpose of the wavy lines in photocells. You’ll find out what electronic part you should sand. You’ll discover how a well-placed switch can help a robot avoid obstacles better than a pair of feelers. And you’ll avoid mistakes that can cause a capacitor to explode.

Want a robot that can explore rooms, follow lines, or battle opponents in mini-sumo? This book presents step-by-step instructions and circuit and part descriptions so that you can build the robot featured in the book or apply the modules to your own robot designs.

Finally, you’ll find the complete schematics for Roundabout, a room explorer that requires no programming and uses only off-the-shelf electronics. With Roundabout, you’ll use many of the same techniques used by professional robotics engineers, and you’ll experience many of the same challenges and joys they feel when a robot “comes to life.”

What you’ll learn

• How to build a robot from scratch
• Digital electronics and moderate machining
• How to use and integrate modern modules useful to all robots: power supplies, motor couplers, motor drivers (including H-bridges), opponent and obstacle detectors, and floor sensors.
• How to embrace and extend the base robot design
• How to use Roundabout, which operates with off-the-shelf brains, so that no programming is required
• How the additions of a microcontroller, configuration switches, and even a music module all come together as a final two-tier automaton showing a versatile Robot who is seemingly the master of its domain.

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at intermediate builders: adults, college students, and advanced high school students. It requires background experience in electronics, at least to the extent covered by Robot Building for Beginners.

Because the hobby involves soldering, electricity, and light machining, the writing is targeted toward individuals with those capabilities.

The book has been referenced in a number of high school and college courses.

AppleScript is omniscient, easy to understand, and built into every Mac, and this book will show you how to unleash its full power so that you can take control of your Mac! It is a high–level, natural–language, pervasive architecture custom built to control everything your Mac can do. As the language of automation for Mac OS X, AppleScript has complete access to the Finder’s graphical user interface and controls interapplication communication with all AppleScript–able applications.

Learn AppleScript: The Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X is up to date for all that’s new in Apple’s latest release of the operating system, Snow Leopard. It starts off with a concise introduction to the world of AppleScript so that you can get your bearings, and then moves directly to how to use AppleScript. Along the way, you’ll learn how to handle variables, loops, and commands.

We know that you’ll be eager to get through the basics quickly so that you can start to get your feet wet with some higher–level concepts, such as debugging, AppleScripting, with databases, manipulating PDFs with SMILE, and automating media workflow. You could stop there, and you’d be a pretty good AppleScripter. But for serious AppleScripters, the “wild world” of AppleScript awaits. We’ll teach you more advanced techniques, such as some best practices, manipulating the file system, and automating Unix/Linux applications.

It’s all here, soup–to–nuts, with an emphasis on practical information that will help you solve any automation problem from the most mundane repetitive tasks to highly integrated workflows of complex systems. AppleScript was intended to be a Mac–like and friendly tool for Everyman, and this book provides a Mac–like and friendly approach to learning and mastering AppleScript for every man, women, and perhaps even child.

• Friendly enough for beginners, and detailed enough for advanced AppleScripters
• Complete coverage of the AppleScript language and supporting AppleScript Studio tools
• Fully updated for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
• Lets you take control of your Mac and learn how to automate tasks

What you’ll learn

• See how to script in general and how to be an AppleScripter specifically.
• Solve automation problems and find out which processes and applications are AppleScript–able.
• Use AppleEvents, the building blocks of AppleScript–ability.
• Build complex interapplication workflows as executable AppleScripts.
• Debug, troubleshoot, and optimize your scripts.
• Become a proficient, professional, or guru–level AppleScripter.

Who is this book for?

The audience for this book will be high–level power users who want to automate tasks on their Macs and make life easier for themselves, seasoned Mac scripters looking for an edge, beginning Mac scripters looking for the right start, and developers from other platforms and languages who want to start scripting on the Mac.

BlackBerry smartphones are not just for business. As it turns out, the BlackBerry is for gaming, too. Carol Hamer and Andrew Davison, expert software game developers, show you how to leverage the BlackBerry Java™ Development Environment (based on Java ME) to design and create fun and sophisticated game applications, from role playing to a Jedi knight battle. In this book, Carol and Andrew give you the professional techniques for using music, action, graphics for building gorgeous user interfaces, scalable vector graphics, basic game actions, peer to peer games, role playing games, and more. Along the journey, you can take what you have learned to create very cool games, such as Battlin Light Saber, a toy sports car simulation, and Catch Me If You Can.

What you’ll learn

• What is so special about the BlackBerry for game development
• How to build animated menus with your game’s theme
• How to take your graphics to the next level with SVG and the Plazmic Media Engine
• How to optimize your games with BlackBerry-specific APIs and tools
• How to build games for two players or the whole world with Bluetooth, SMS, and the Internet
• How to create a Star Wars–based light saber battle game
• How to simulate a toy sports care
• How the BlackBerry’s security model helps you sell your game

Who is this book for?

This book is for game enthusiasts and software engineers who know at least a bit of Java and want to program games for the BlackBerry. No prior knowledge of Micro Edition programming is required.

The Cocoa frameworks are some of the most powerful frameworks for creating native desktop applications available on any platform today, and Apple gives them away, along with the Xcode development environment, for free! However, for a first-time Mac developer, just firing up Xcode and starting to browse the documentation can be a daunting task. The Objective-C class reference documentation alone would fill thousands of printed pages, not to mention all the other tutorials and guides included with Xcode. Where do you start? Which classes are you going to need to use? How do you use Xcode and the rest of the tools?

This book answers these questions and more, helping you find your way through the jungle of classes, tools, and new concepts so that you can get started on the next great Mac OS X application today. Jack Nutting is your guide through this forest; He's lived here for years, and he'll show you which boulder to push, which vine to chop, and which stream to float across in order to make it through. You will learn not only how to use the components of this rich framework, but also which of them fit together, and why.

Jack Nutting’s approach, combining pragmatic problem-solving with a deep respect for the underlying design philosophies contained within Cocoa, stems from years of experience using these frameworks. He’ll show you which parts of your application require you to jump in and code a solution, and which parts are best served by letting Cocoa take you where it wants you to go. The path over what looks like a mountain of components and APIs has never been more thoroughly prepared for your travels. With Jack’s guidance, the steep learning curve becomes a pleasurable adventure. There is still much work for the uninitiated, but by the time you’re done, you will be well on your way to becoming a Cocoa Master.

• Begin to really get to grips with the full Cocoa toolset—practical, hands–on learning
• Become familiar with the core concepts at the heart of every Cocoa application
• See which parts of the iPhone SDK overlap with the Mac OS X development tools so you can explore both Mac and iPhone development
• Packed full of goodness and enthusiasm for the Cocoa frameworks from a developer perspective

What you’ll learn

• How to actually make your own Cocoa applications—this is much more than just a quick introduction to Cocoa!
• Which classes, of the dozens included in Cocoa, are truly central to Cocoa development
• How to best use MVC architecture concepts in a Cocoa application
• How the various pieces of the Cocoa frameworks fit with each other and into the MVC architecture
• Which parts of Cocoa truly enable “visual programming”, letting you reap the benefits of proven, reusable code libraries that Apple gives you for free
• How to recognize recurring design patterns used throughout Cocoa, and put them to proper use in your own code
• How to approach Cocoa from different programming environments
• How to use the facilities provided in Snow Leopard to create software that distributes itself automatically among all available CPUs, improving the user experience for your users.

Who is this book for?

Anyone with basic understanding of object-oriented programming who wants to try out Mac OS X application programming, as well as iPhone developers who want to extend their knowledge of Cocoa Touch to include the Mac-specific technologies included with Cocoa.

If you don’t already have one or want one…Apple’s iPod touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant (PDA), and Wi-Fi mobile platform. The iPod touch adds the multitouch graphical user interface to the iPod line. It’s the first iPod with wireless access to the iTunes Store, and it also has access to Apple’s App Store, allowing you to purchase content and download it directly.

Fast and fun to read, Learn iPod touch and iTunes gives you the tips and techniques to make the most out of your Apple iPod touch. This book covers the latest iPhone OS 3.0 and the various hardware upgrades available.

The author, Erica Sadun, is an expert at hacking devices to discover undocumented tricks, and this book reveals everything about the functionality of the iPod touch. But first, Sadun will give you the best, most efficient, and fun-to-read introduction to the basics of using the iPod touch that you can find.

What you’ll learn

• How to handle iPod touch fundamentals
• How to e-mail using iCal
• How to surf the Web with the iPod touch using Safari
• How to expand the main menu using third-party software
• How to use iTunes, play fun games, read iBooks, and more
• How to connect to the TV and rip DVDs
• How to hack Snow Leopard to run apps on the iPod touch
• How to get contract-free VoIP
• How to save on accessories and determine what you really need
• How to use/integrate with the new iPhone OS 3.0.

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who has an iPod touch and wants to get more out of it, including the wonderful resources waiting for them at iTunes.

Mac OS X Design Award-Winning Projects profiles developers who have received the prestigious Apple Design Award for Mac OS X app excellence. You’ll learn all about what makes these apps truly standout, including explanations of great user interface design and implementation, as well as the code under the hood that makes these the most responsive, intuitive, useful, and just plain fun Mac OS X apps.

What you’ll learn

• How the best Mac OS X apps are built
• How detail-oriented, semi-obsessive designers create great-looking interfaces that go beyond mere user-friendliness
• How caffeine-addicted, sugar-fortified programmers optimize every line of Objective-C and squash the most deeply hidden bugs
• How inspiration strikes at unlikely times and places
• How to plan for success by learning from the most successful Mac OS X app developers

Who is this book for?

All Mac OS X developers seeking enlightenment from the recognized masters.

This book provides a fresh take on Microsoft’s premier collaboration solution. A critical resource if you’re developing on the SharePoint platform, this book features a complete focus on the new features and capabilities of SharePoint 2010. Through a thorough treatment of sites, web parts, data management, portal solutions, and business intelligence capabilities, you’ll appreciate author Sahil Malik’s concise yet highly readable text.

With this book, you’ll gain intermediate-level guidance for designing and deploying exciting business solutions based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

What you’ll learn

• Write effective SharePoint 2010 solutions that can be used on the Web, through Microsoft Office, and on mobile devices.
• Find out best practices for managing data stored in a SharePoint site and the most effective ways to get value out of it.
• Discover how to write effective web parts and pages and integrate those solutions across other Microsoft technologies.
• Put on your designer hat and create a custom look and feel for your SharePoint site or portal.
• Learn how to use existing data to create business intelligence solutions based on SharePoint sites.

Who this book is for

This book is for the typical SharePoint 2010 project team member who is technical in nature. It is aimed more toward developers, IT pros, and technical architects than designers or non-technical team members.

Everyone is developing iPhone applications, and it’s clear why. The iPhone is the coolest mobile device available, and the App Store makes it simple to get an application out into the unstoppable iPhone app market. With hundreds of thousands of app developers entering the game, it’s crucial to learn from those who have actually succeeded. This book shows you how some of the most innovative and creative iPhone application developers have developed cool, best-selling apps.

Not only does every successful application have a story, but behind every great app is excellent code. In this book, you’ll see the code and learn how to use it to make your own cool applications. You’ll learn everything from how Joost works to the Unity game engine, from the mathematics of visual processing to the latest Flash and iPhone projects. This book shares the secrets of the coolest iPhone apps being built today by the best iPhone developers�invaluable knowledge for anyone who wants to create the app that everyone is talking about.

What you’ll learn

• Game development with Unity and iPhone OpenGL
• Unit testing and iPhone-specific testing tools
• How to approach and solve complex app development roadblocks
• The best code fully explained and presented with screenshots

Who this book is for

iPhone application developers of all experience levels and development platforms

Web sites, collaboration, document management, paperless offices—we want it all in business today, but how do we achieve all of these goals? More importantly, if you work for one of the millions of small-to-medium-sized businesses, how do you find the time to build the expertise necessary to reach these goals? Even the most powerful tool will not allow you to succeed unless you can get the majority of your staff to use it efficiently and effectively. You need a guide that demonstrates a platform that small-to-medium-sized businesses can use to reach these goals.

Office and SharePoint 2010 User’s Guide demystifies the path that every Microsoft Office user can follow to benefit from the synergism of tools they are already familiar with. Together with SharePoint 2010, users can achieve goals like web sites with a consistent single view, improved collaboration within their organization, and better document management, and may even get one step closer to the paperless office we’ve been promised for years. This book has topics for Office users of all skill levels, from those just starting to use Office tools to experienced power users. It examines each major Office tool and shows how it contributes to the support and use of SharePoint in today’s increasingly electronic-based office environment.

What you’ll learn

• How to access, customize, share, and extend SharePoint document libraries in conjunction with Word, Excel, and other Office products
• Different ways of working through Office while interacting with SharePoint, like synchronizing your calendar and contacts, exporting databases, and modifying them with SharePoint’s list view
• The best ways of managing content across teams and your entire organization
• What it really means to leverage all of SharePoint’s capabilities by tying them directly into the Office applications you use every day

Who is this book for?

This book is the perfect reference for anyone who works at a company or organization that is using or planning to use either Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010. This is the book for anyone who wants to make a difference by developing content and collaboration, and who wants to benefit from the synergism that working with several Microsoft products can provide.

This book takes you beyond the PHP basics to the enterprise development practices used by professional programmers. Updated for PHP 5.3 with new sections on closures, namespaces, and continuous integration, this edition will teach you about object features such as abstract classes, reflection, interfaces, and error handling. You’ll also discover object tools to help you learn more about your classes, objects, and methods.

Then you’ll move into design patterns and the principles that make patterns powerful. You’ll learn both classic design patterns and enterprise and database patterns with easy-to-follow examples.

Finally, you’ll discover how to put it all into practice to help turn great code into successful projects. You’ll learn how to manage multiple developers with Subversion, and how to build and install using Phing and PEAR. You�ll also learn strategies for automated testing and building, including continuous integration.

Taken together, these three elements—object fundamentals, design principles, and best practices—will help you develop elegant and rock-solid systems.

What you’ll learn

• Learn to work with object fundamentals: writing classes and methods, instantiating objects, and creating powerful class hierarchies using inheritance.
• Master advanced object-oriented features, including static methods and properties.
• Learn how to manage error conditions with exceptions, and create abstract classes and interfaces.
• Understand and use design principles to deploy objects and classes effectively in your projects.
• Learn about design patterns, their purpose and structure, and the underlying principles that govern them.
• Discover a set of powerful patterns that you can deploy in your own projects.
• Learn about the tools and practices that can guarantee a successful project including unit testing; version control; build, installation, and package management; and continuous integration.

Who this book is for

This book is suitable for anyone with at least a basic knowledge of PHP who wants to use its object-oriented features in their projects.

Those who already know their interfaces from their abstracts may well still find it hard to use these features in their projects. These users will benefit from the book’s emphasis on design. They will learn how to choose and combine the participants of a system, how to read design patterns, and how to use them in their code.

Even if you’ve never programmed before, you are only a short step away from automating those small tasks that you repeat all the time: this book will show you how to get started programming using Perl, which is available for almost any system you can think of (it may well be installed on your computer already). But Perl is not just for the small stuff, it’s also behind some huge web sites such as BBC iPlayer. With this book, you’ll be starting a journey that could lead anywhere! This book:

• Makes no assumptions about previous programming experience
• Covers both the absolute basics and the practical considerations of programming
• Introduces less tangible aspects of programming that play a huge role in programming today, such as making the most of the community around the language.

What you’ll learn

• Write, test, and debug good Perl code to solve your own problems.
• Know the basics of programming, including variables, data structures, code modules, and code reuse.
• Understand the complete process of programming.
• Be familiar with the tools you need when building software with Perl
.
• Harness the community and other resources to jump start your programming projects.

Who is this book for?

This is a book for beginning programmers, people who have used a computer before but may not understand what happens inside one. The target audiences are new programmers and programmers who have worked with other languages, but want to learn Perl.

Today’s Web 2.0 is demanding more with less. CodeIgniter, an up–and–coming PHP–based Web application development framework that leaves a little footprint, rises to the challenge. Some say it’s the Merb, or micro Rails–like framework, of the PHP world.

CodeIgniter may be the most agile, lightweight of the PHP web frameworks, offerings exceptional performance in the applications you create with it. It requires zero configuration, has no templating language, does not require you to use command line, and has no restrictive coding rules nor large–scale monolithic libraries like PEAR. If you want something light and alternative to CakePHP, symfony, and Zend, this is it.

Practical CodeIgniter 2 Projects: Building Real–World Apps with CodeIgniter is a book written to help you advance your knowledge of CodeIgniter development and promote good, productive, and rapid coding techniques and project planning in the following ways:

• Gives you a direct route into application development
• Shows useful web application project examples that you can use as templates for your real–world Web 2.0 application development endeavors
• Provides a paced learning strategy that enhances your skills

What you’ll learn

This book guides you through the creation of four different web applications, teaching about general skills such as web authentication and more advanced techniques like Ajax. It aims to provide a grounding for you to be able to put into place your own projects and serves as a helpful resource for you to see examples put into place quickly.

You will learn the following:

• Immediately use CodeIgniter to create four pragmatic, real–world, web–driven PHP applications that have exceptional performance.
• Create a fully functional blogging application.
• Create a bulletin board system.
• Create a content management system (CMS).
• Build a simple e–commerce shopping cart application.
• Use third–party PHP web framework libraries to their full extent, as well as create your own CodeIgniter–based libraries to provide functions.
• Use and incorporate Ajax and web services, and find out why they are important in today’s Web 2.0 environment.

Who is this book for?

Web developers with good grounding in PHP looking for a “head–first” method into CodeIgniter.

About the Apress Practical Series

The Practical series from Apress is your best choice for getting the job done, period. From professional to expert, this series lets you apply project–motivated templates (or frameworks) step by step in a very direct, practical, and efficient manner toward current real–world projects that may be sitting on your desk. So whatever your career goal, Apress can be your trusted guide to take you where you want to go on your IT career empowerment path.

Flex is Adobe’s open source web application framework that lets you create web applications with flair and, well, Flash. Flex is designed to play nicely with PHP, and it allows you more fine-grained control over your web and even desktop applications. Flex applications also compile to Flash files, so they’ll run in any browser with a Flash plug-in.

So, if you’re a PHP developer wondering how to incorporate data-driven Flex applications into your PHP sites, this book is for you. Author Gordon Forsythe presents seven in-depth practical projects that teach you to use Flash Builder (formerly Flex Builder) to integrate Flex into your PHP-driven web sites.

You’ll pick up some ActionScript basics and learn how Flex works with PHP and the Zend Framework. You’ll also walk through practical examples of incorporating Flex applications, including database integration, charts, forms, paging, and filtering. You’ll even learn how to turn your web application into a desktop application.

What you’ll learn

• ActionScript basics and how the Flex SDK fits with PHP and Zend
• How to install and develop with Flash Builder 4, along with Flash Builder’s new features
• How to put Flex to work creating login screens, charts, and forms for your PHP-based site
• How to use Flex for database integration with PHP
• The versatility of the DataGrid component with both basic and advanced examples
• How do create a data dashboard with Flex on the front end and PHP on the back end

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate to experienced PHP developers who want to learn how to incorporate Flex applications into their web sites.

jQuery’s popularity in the Ruby on Rails community has been growing in recent months. jQuery, with its unobtrusive nature, has got developers thinking in ways that they haven’t done before. jQuery is doing for the implementation of JavaScript what CSS did for the old school table layouts. Ruby on Rails, with its convention over configuration and full stack, makes it extremely simple (and secure) to get a professional web application up and running.

Practical Rails with jQuery Projects by Andrew Chalkley aims to bring these two technologies together, the unobtrusive jQuery and the DRY RESTful Rails, in order to make better, faster, lighter Rails applications with jQuery.

Using 13 real–world sample application projects, this book empowers today’s Rails Web 2.0 developer with the latest and best that jQuery has to offer in terms of JavaScript and more. Projects include a Flickr gallery, RSS feed mashups, iTunes music download charting, your own iGoogle–like custom home page, and more.

What you’ll learn

• Maximize Rails by using jQuery.
• Use jQuery’s powerful Ajax applications.
• Manipulate user events to create rich desktop–like applications.
• Create super–light and agile professional Web 2.0 applications.
• Use JavaScript unobtrusively to still allow your application to be accessible by all.
• Use components of jQuery UI to make simple advanced projects.

Who is this book for?

The book is aimed at those who are interested in web development or those who are currently in the industry who want to increase their knowledge by learning through a project–by–project approach. It primarily targets members of the loyal Rails community due to their increasing interest in jQuery, and secondly members of the jQuery community who want to expand their knowledge on the server side of things. jQuery can be used to its full potential with Rails.

About the Apress Practical Series

The Practical series from Apress is your best choice for getting the job done, period. From professional to expert, this series lets you apply project–motivated templates (or frameworks) step by step in a very direct, practical, and efficient manner toward current real–world projects that may be sitting on your desk. So whatever your career goal, Apress can be your trusted guide to take you where you want to go on your IT career empowerment path.

To be a successful ASP.NET 4.0 developer, you need to know how to apply the vast array of new functionality available in the latest release of the .NET 4.0 Framework and Visual Studio 2010.

This book will immerse you in a variety of advanced topics, including architecting different application data tiers, memory caching paradigms, data mining, and search engine optimization. Working through step-by-step exercises using P/LINQ, DLR, MEF, MVC, IronPython, Axum, and Ajax, you will learn a variety of approaches to building each of the key application tiers common to all web solutions.

Using a proven technique of illustrating advanced concepts with functional solutions, all topics in the book are modeled on a fully operational content management system (CMS), built from the ground up. This ensures that you’ll be introduced to real-world examples that demonstrate the full functionality of the .NET 4.0 Framework for ASP.NET, and that you’ll be able to apply your new skills to any web development situation.

ASP.NET 4.0 is the latest version of Microsoft's revolutionary ASP.NET technology. It is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 4.0 in C# 2010 raises the bar for high-quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft's dynamic web solution.

This new edition is updated with everything you need to come to grips with the latest version of ASP.NET, including coverage of ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and Silverlight 3.

Seasoned .NET professionals Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta explain how you can get the most from these groundbreaking new technologies. They cover ASP.NET 4.0 as a whole, illustrating both the brand-new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP. This book will give you the knowledge you need to code real ASP.NET 4.0 applications in the best possible style.

What you'll learn

• Understand why ASP.NET 4.0 is so special, what its fundamental principles are, the basics of Visual Studio, and how ASP.NET controls are created and how they fit into ASP.NET pages, ultimately creating full applications.
• Become familiar with ASP.NET MVC, a new feature is one of the biggest additions to ASP.NET 4.0, and understand how to use it and integrate it within your existing ASP.NET applications.
• Discover the intricacies of ADO.NET and how to perform data binding to many sources, from databases to file streams to XML.
• Learn the various forms of security available and how to best apply them. Once considered the Achilles' heel of all Windows web applications, security has vastly improved and is now a cornerstone of ASP.NET 4.0.
• Examine in detail advanced user interface techniques, including user controls, customer server controls, client-side JavaScript, GDI+, and Silverlight 3.
• Understand how to work with web services, an important skill in an increasingly connected world.
• Use ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, with an emphasis on contemporary web development techniques.
• Perform development using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft's premier web hosting platform.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard-won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

ASP.NET 4.0 is the latest version of Microsoft's revolutionary ASP.NET technology. It is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 4.0 in VB 2010 raises the bar for high-quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft's dynamic web solution.

This new edition is updated with everything you need to come to grips with the latest version of ASP.NET, including coverage of ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and Silverlight 3.

Seasoned .NET professionals Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta explain how you can get the most from these groundbreaking new technologies. They cover ASP.NET 4.0 as a whole, illustrating both the brand-new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP. This book will give you the knowledge you need to code real ASP.NET 4.0 applications in the best possible style.

What you'll learn

• Understand why ASP.NET 4.0 is so special, what its fundamental principles are, the basics of Visual Studio, and how ASP.NET controls are created and how they fit into ASP.NET pages, ultimately creating full applications.
• Become familiar with ASP.NET MVC, a new feature is one of the biggest additions to ASP.NET 4.0, and understand how to use it and integrate it within your existing ASP.NET applications.
• Discover the intricacies of ADO.NET and how to perform data binding to many sources, from databases to file streams to XML.
• Learn the various forms of security available and how to best apply them. Once considered the Achilles' heel of all Windows web applications, security has vastly improved and is now a cornerstone of ASP.NET 4.0.
• Examine in detail advanced user interface techniques, including user controls, customer server controls, client-side JavaScript, GDI+, and Silverlight 3.
• Understand how to work with web services, an important skill in an increasingly connected world.
• Use ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, with an emphasis on contemporary web development techniques.
• Perform development using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft's premier web hosting platform.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

Author Steven Sanderson has seen the ASP.NET MVC Framework mature from the start, so his experience, combined with comprehensive coverage of all the new features, including those in the official MVC development toolkit, offers the clearest understanding of how this exciting new framework can improve your coding efficiency. With this book, you’ll gain invaluable up-to-date knowledge of security, deployment, and interoperability challenges.

The ASP.NET MVC V2 Framework is the latest evolution of Microsoft’s ASP.NET web platform. It introduces a radically new high-productivity programming model that promotes cleaner code architecture, test-driven development, and powerful extensibility, combined with all the benefits of ASP.NET 3.5.

In this book, the core model-view-controller (MVC) architectural concepts are not simply explained or discussed in isolation, but are demonstrated in action. You’ll work through an extended tutorial to create a working e-commerce web application that combines ASP.NET MVC with the latest C# language features and unit-testing best practices. By gaining this invaluable, practical experience, you’ll discover MVC’s strengths and weaknesses for yourself—and put your best-learned theory into practice.

What you’ll learn

• Gain a solid architectural background to ASP.NET MVC V2, including MVC and REST concepts.
• Explore the entire ASP.NET MVC Framework and take a detailed look at the official MVC development toolkit.
• See how it works with test-driven development in action.
• Capitalize on your existing knowledge quickly and easily through translation and comparison of features in classic ASP.NET to those in ASP.NET MVC.
• Learn about the latest security and deployment issues, including IIS 7.0.

Who this book is for

This book is for web developers with a basic knowledge of ASP.NET and C# who want (or need) to start using the new ASP.NET MVC V2 Framework.

Cloud computing is being talked about as the next major trend that is going to change the way businesses use technology to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace, much like the Internet did in the 1990s. Java Enterprise Edition (EE) appears to be the programming platform of choice for most organizations that require scalability and enterprise application features. Java has had tremendous success in the engineering community with a substantial ecosystem of various open source frameworks and utilities

Cloud computing + Java + open source = The next generation of "Internet-scale" applications

Pro Amazon EC2 and WS with Java walks you through a comprehensive and practical approach to working with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud in EC2 and associated web services using Java EE implementations, frameworks, and tools like JBoss, Hibernate, Spring, GridGrain, and more to create the next generation of "Internet-scale" applications.

The Freedom OSS author team has had long-term, close partnerships with Amazon Web Services and JBoss. These relationships give the authors a unique insight into their inner workings and various implementation strategies. And these insights provide a "view from the trenches" that comes from having done over 100 Amazon AWS and over 300 Java EE projects in the last two years.

What you'll learn

• Migrate your existing JEE application to EC2/EBS/S3
• Get your Java web application up and running in minutes in the cloud
• Avoid common Amazon Web Services pitfalls
• Secure your application running on JBoss or Tomcat on Amazon EC2
• Create Amazon Machine Images (AMI) containing Java components
• Deploy your Spring-based app on EC2
• Uncover Internet-scale messaging alternatives on the cloud
• Find out when to best use elastic block storage vs. S3
• Determine how and when to utilize everything AWS has to offer
• Explore design strategies on how to stay "cloud agnostic"
• Handle large usage spikes in your Java EE application through "bursting" and "autoscale" strategies
• Create High Performance Computing (HPC) Java applications to crunch large data sets
• Find out how to create highly reliable applications using Java and AWS

Who is this book for?

Java developers and architects with good working knowledge of Java EE and basic concepts of cloud computing. This book can also apply to project managers, system admins, and tech-savvy small business owners who wish to create cloud-based business services.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard-won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

The age of Web 2.0 smart mobile phones and handsets is here. First there was the BlackBerry, then there was the iPhone, and now … there’s Google, with its Android Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) and platform, and its hardware partners in the Open Handset Alliance. Android works with the currently available HTC G1 and G2 phones, and is soon to be used with many other Google phones set to debut later in 2009. Android also works on other mobile phones and devices, including netbooks.

Pro Android 2 shows you how to build real-world and fun mobile applications using Google’s Android SDK. This book covers everything from the fundamentals of building applications for embedded devices to advanced concepts such as custom 3D components.

• Discover the design and architecture of the Android SDK, and how to build mobile applications using the Android SDK.
• Explore and use the Android APIs, including those for media and Wi-Fi.
• Learn about Android 2.0’s integrated local and web search, handwriting gesture UI, Google Translate, and text-to-speech features.

With Android and this book, you’ll be able to build mobile applications ranging from games to Google apps, including add-ons to Google Docs. You’ll be able to extend and run the new Google Chrome APIs on the G1, the G2, and other next-generation Google phones and Android-enabled devices.

What you’ll learn

• How to use Android to build Java-based mobile applications for Google phones with a touch screen or keyboard (thanks to Cupcake’s inclusion as of Android 1.5)
• How to design and architect using Google’s Android SDK
• How to use the Android SDK to write mobile applications for embedded devices
• How to create 3D graphics with OpenGL and custom components
• How to build multimedia and game apps using Android’s Media APIs and OpenGL
• How to use Android’s location-based services, networking (Wi-Fi APIs), and security
• How to create and allow for more integrated local and web searches
• How to build handwriting gesture UIs
• How to incorporate Google Translate into your Android applications

Who is this book for?

This book is for professional software engineers/programmers looking to move their ideas and applications into the mobile space with Android. It assumes that readers have a passable understanding of Java, including being able to write classes and handle basic inheritance structures. This book also targets hobbyist

Silverlight 3 has the potential to revolutionize the way we build business applications. With its flexibility, web deployment, cross-platform capabilities, rich .NET language support on the client, rich user interface control set, small runtime, and more, it comes close to the perfect platform in which to build business applications. It’s a very powerful technology, and despite its youth, it’s moving forward at a rapid pace and is gaining widespread adoption.

This book will guide you through the process of designing and developing enterprise-strength business applications in Silverlight 3 and C#. You will learn how to take advantage of the power of Silverlight to develop rich and robust business applications, from getting started to deployment, and everything in between.

In particular, this book will serve developers who want to learn how to design business applications, and introduce the patterns to use, the issues that you’ll face, and how to resolve them. Chris Anderson, who has been building line-of-business applications for years, demonstrates his experience through a candid presentation of how to tackle real-life issues, rather than just avoid them. Benefit from his hard-won expertise through business application design patterns that he shares throughout the book.

With this book in hand, you will

• Create a fully functional business application in Silverlight
• Discover how to satisfy all of the general requirements that most business applications need
• Develop a business application framework

What you’ll learn

• How to structure your project to ensure a robust and maintainable application
• How to create user interfaces with XAML and bind controls to data
• How to communicate securely between the server and the client
• How to view and maintain data within a Silverlight user interface
• How to design unique user experiences and use advanced styling techniques
• How to implement standard business application paradigms in Silverlight

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers experienced in other .NET technologies, such as WinForms or ASP.NET, looking to translate their existing skills to developing business applications with Silverlight. Patterns and methodologies associated with building robust applications will be introduced and are not prerequisite knowledge.

The first edition of this book was released at the 2001 Tech-Ed conference in Atlanta, Georgia. At that time, the .NET platform was still a beta product, and in many ways, so was this book. This is not to say that the early editions of this text did not have merit–after all, the book was a 2002 Jolt Award finalist and it won the 2003 Referenceware Excellence Award. However, over the years that author Andrew Troelsen spent working with the common language runtime (CLR), he gained a much deeper understanding of the .NET platform and the subtleties of the C# programming language, and he feels that this fifth edition of the book is as close to a "final release" as he's come yet.

This new edition has been comprehensively revised and rewritten to make it accurately reflect the C# 4.0 language specification for the .NET 4.0 platform. You'll find new chapters covering the important concepts of dynamic lookups, named and optional arguments, Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), improved COM interop, and variance for generics.

If you're checking out this book for the first time, do understand that it's targeted at experienced software professionals and/or graduate students of computer science (so don't expect three chapters on iteration or decision constructs!). The mission of this text is to provide you with a rock-solid foundation in the C# programming language and the core aspects of the .NET platform (assemblies, remoting, Windows Forms, Web Forms, ADO.NET, XML web services, etc.). Once you digest the information presented in these 25 chapters, you'll be in a perfect position to apply this knowledge to your specific programming assignments, and you'll be well equipped to explore the .NET universe on your own terms.

What you'll learn

• Be the first to understand the .NET 4.0 platform and Visual C# 2010.
• Discover the ins and outs of the leading .NET technology.
• Learn from an award-winning author who has been teaching the .NET world since version 1.0.
• Find complete coverage of the WPF, WCF, and WF foundations that support the core .NET platform.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone with some software development experience who is interested in the new .NET Framework 4.0 and the C# language. Whether you are moving to .NET for the first time or are already writing applications on .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.5, this book will provide you with a comprehensive grounding in the new technology and serve as a complete reference throughout your coding career.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

This book is geared toward professionals that need to deploy and customize Drupal. This book delves deep into the internals of the Drupal 7 system and teaches you everything you need to know to deploy a highly customized and optimized Drupal installation. Every web developer looking to deploy web sites quickly to their clients while still being able to harness the power of an excellent content management system needs this book.

What you’ll learn

• What Drupal is and why you should use it
• How to install a basic Drupal web site from scratch
• How to create content in your new Drupal web site
• How to manage users on your new Drupal web site
• How to change the look and feel of your new Drupal web site through themes
• How to install and configure modules

Who this book is for

This book is for existing Drupal module developers wanting to learn about Drupal 7 and people already knowledgeable in PHP who are interested in developing for Drupal. Simply put, if you are working with Drupal, then you need this book.

This book is an in-depth guide to writing applications that embrace and extend the new features and capabilities of Windows Internet Explorer 8 and 9. With solid instruction, hands-on examples, and expert insight direct from the source into extending the browser, you’ll learn how to create and maintain powerful applications for Microsoft’s next-generation Internet platform. Join author Matthew Crowley as you discover how to take advantage of new features like accelerators, Web Slices, and search providers, and create intense web experiences for the browser that ships by default with the popular Windows 7 operating system.

If you’re interested in creating and shipping high-quality, feature-rich applications for the Web, Pro Internet Explorer 8 and 9 Development is the only resource you need.

What you’ll learn

• Understand the architecture and design of Internet Explorer.
• Build browser-based extensions such as ActiveX controls, toolbars, explorer bars, browser helper objects, and pluggable protocols.
• Extend existing web services with accelerators, Web Slices, and search providers.
• Enhance applications using Internet Explorer APIs, COM objects, and controls.
• Design extensions that integrate with Windows security features.
• Debug applications designed for Internet Explorer.
• Address compatibility and upgrade scenarios for applications.
• Utilize powerful tools for enhancing extension development.
• Master best practices in constructing world-class applications.

Who this book is for

Intermediate to advanced developers will get the most from this book. This book assumes that the reader is familiar with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Later sections require the reader have some understanding of C++ and/or C#.

This book, while geared toward code-minded individuals, is also meant for a larger segment of the web community. Potential readers include

• Project managers seeking a new idea for development and deployment
• Product planners looking to create new features based-on Internet Explorer’s development framework
• Hobbyists interested in web browsers and Internet programming

The highly anticipated open source JavaFX™ 2.x platform release offers a new “Java way” of developing rich Internet applications (RIAs), similar to Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight 3. JavaFX 2.x lets developers play with the open source scripting, and provides desktop and mobile APIs to create dynamic, seamless visual user interfaces that can go beyond the capabilities of Flash.

Learn from best-selling JavaFX author Jim Weaver and expert JavaFX developers Weiqi Gao, Stephen Chin, and Dean Iverson to use the JavaFX platform to create RIAs that can run across diverse devices. Covering the JavaFX Script language, JavaFX Mobile, and development tools, this book provides code examples that cover virtually every language and API feature.

This book contains

• Tutorials that teach JavaFX technology to an application developer or graphics designer who has had no exposure to it. These tutorials are exhaustive and cover virtually every facet of JavaFX Script.
• Reference materials on JavaFX that augment what is available from the JavaFX Language Reference and API documentation.
• Information on how to use JavaFX technology on mobile platforms as well as the desktop.

What you’ll learn

• Get started with JavaFX Script, including downloading the SDK and available tools.
• Express user interfaces with declarative scripting.
• Define classes, functions, and attributes.
• Use JavaFX and associated tools so that an application developer or graphic designer can effectively collaborate on an application.
• Uncover the JavaFX language and APIs to whatever degree you choose. The tutorials, reference materials, and pointers to resources are exhaustive.
• Have fun learning about the JavaFX platform because of the engaging and friendly style in which the material is presented.

Summary of Contents

1. Getting a jump start in JavaFX
2. Taking a closer look at the JavaFX Script language
3. Creating a user interface in JavaFX
4. Using functions, classes, and other advanced features
5. Creating custom UI components in JavaFX
6. Using the media classes
7. Dynamically laying out nodes in the user interface
8. Extending JavaFX with third-party libraries
9. Building a professional JavaFX application
10. Developing JavaFX Mobile applications

Who is this book for?

General audience: Application developers, graphic designers, and IT decision makers. Not only does this book contain technical information for developers and designers, it builds a compelling case for choosing JavaFX for web applications and RIAs.

LINQ is the part of the .NET Framework that provides a generic approach to querying data from different data sources. It has quickly become the next must-have skill for .NET developers. Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2010 is all about code. Literally, this book starts with code and ends with code. Most books show the simplest examples of how to use a method, but they so rarely show how to use the more complex prototypes. This book is different. Demonstrating the overwhelming majority of LINQ operators and prototypes, it is a veritable treasury of LINQ examples.

Rather than obscure the relevant LINQ principles in code examples by focusing on a demonstration application you have no interest in writing, this book cuts right to the chase of each LINQ operator, method, or class. However, where complexity is necessary to truly demonstrate an issue, the examples are right there in the thick of it. For example, code samples demonstrating how to handle concurrency conflicts actually create concurrency conflicts so you can step through the code and see them unfold.

Face it, most technical books, while informative, are dull. LINQ need not be dull. Written with a sense of humor, this book will attempt to entertain you on your journey through the wonderland of LINQ and C# 2010.

What you’ll learn

• How to leverage all the new LINQ relevant C# 2008 language features including extension methods, lambda expressions, anonymous data types, and partial methods.
• How to use LINQ to Objects to query in-memory data collections such as arrays, ArrayLists, and Lists to retrieve the data you want.
• Why some queries are deferred, how a deferred query can bite you, and how you can make deferred queries work for you.
• How to use LINQ to XML to revolutionize your creation, manipulation, and searching of XML data.
• How to query DataSets with LINQ to DataSet so you can coexist with legacy code and use LINQ to query databases other than SQL Server.

How to query Databases with LINQ to SQL, write your own entity classes, and understand how to handle concurrency conflicts.

Who is this book for?

This book is written for the proficient C# developer, but you do not need to be up on all the latest C# features to understand the material. When you finish this book, you will have a much greater understanding of the latest C# features.

Pro Objective-C for Mac and iPhone is the first Objective-C book ever written that takes Mac developers, with some level of previous experience, beyond the basics. Author Michael Ash explains complex, often mysterious-seeming techniques, and illuminates difficult concepts with real-world examples, so you can create the most advanced applications using Objective-C.

In this title, the more advanced and up-to-date continuation of Apressâ??s best-selling Learn Objective-C for Mac book, author Michael Ash includes practical coverage of advanced Objective-C topics that are merely touched on in other books; youâ??ll find thorough treatments of all the advanced topics in Pro Objective-C for Mac and iPhone.

• The only beyond-the-basics book on Objective-C
• Concentrates on best-practices, like techniques for building modular code
• Teaches you to leverage the full dynamism of Objective-C
• Shows you how to take your code beyond stand-alone Mac apps to include applications that communicate across diverse networks and an array of different platforms

What youâ??ll learn

• Master loosely coupled code and code blocks.
• Understand introspection and know when to use subclassing and bridging.
• Use advanced string parsing and text handling.
• Execute subprocesses with Shell tools.
• Explore more advanced topics like garbage collection, weak pointers, and building multithreaded code.
• Discover everything you need to know to build large enterprise-class applications and integrate them into existing systems and processes.

Who is this book for?

For anyone with a basic knowledge of Objective-C who wants to program more complex, larger, and downright advanced applications for Mac OS X and the iPhone platform.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

This book contains tips, tricks, and techniques to make new and existing PHP applications much faster and less resource-hungry. Author James McLean looks at all major sections of the PHP application stack—from server hardware to database and web server performance. PHP program application performance is the center of this book, and James McLean shows you how to improve performance by best practices, proper design, and best-of-breed tools.

McLean starts out by establishing performance testing and benchmarking methodology using common open source and browser-based testing tools. He then discusses best practices for PHP development, and also explains refactoring existing code, both with performance in mind. In addition to best coding practices, this book will teach you how to use and tweak Opcode caches such as APC, XCache, and eAccelerator.

McLean then highlights how to support the efficient running of PHP applications, tweaks and settings by taking advantage of the GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems to improve hosting performance and reliability. Additional tips on web server improvements and database administration help round out the picture. Finally, McLean presents some hardware example configurations tuned for high performance.

What you’ll learn

• How to improve the performance of existing PHP applications
• How to maximize the performance of existing operating systems and databases
• How to refactor existing PHP code for better performance
• How to identify and rectify bottlenecks in PHP code
• How to take advantage of variable caching to increase performance
• Strategies for selecting server hardware for best performance

Who this book is for

This books will appeal to established PHP developers who wish to write new, complex applications or want to rearchitect existing ones. Developers of other languages such as Ruby, Python, and VB.NET will also have an interest in the techniques for tuning the performance of web servers, databases, and operating systems.

This book is for intermediate programmers interested in building Ajax web applications using jQuery and PHP. Along with teaching some advanced PHP techniques, it will teach you how to take your dynamic applications to the next level by adding a JavaScript layer with jQuery.

• Learn to utilize built-in PHP functions to build calendar tools and photo galleries.
• Learn how jQuery can be used for Ajax, animation, client-side validation, and more.
• Learn jQuery UI and how to create drag-and-drop features easily.

What you’ll learn

• Use PHP to build a calendar application that allows users to post events with accompanying photos.
• Use jQuery to allow the calendar app to be viewed and edited without requiring page refreshes using built-in Ajax functions.
• Build an image management class using object-oriented PHP that will allow image uploads, and then resize the images and generate thumbnails automatically.
• Learn jQuery plug-in development patterns and create an image “lightbox” to accompany the image gallery class.
• Learn the basics of jQuery effects, including fading elements, generating HTML markup on the fly, and creating modal windows.
• Dive into the jQuery UI tools and create image gallery management tools that will allow users to drag and drop photos to reorder the gallery.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for programmers who want to bridge the gap between front- and back-end programming. It does not cover HTML or CSS except where absolutely necessary, and it focuses on taking intermediate PHP developers to the next level while getting comfortable with Ajax and the power of jQuery.

Many successful project managers are beginning to utilize Microsoft SharePoint to drive their projects and operational initiatives. SharePoint Server provides teams with a centralized location for project information and facilitates collaboration between project team members. The intention of this book is to provide a working case study that you can follow to create a complete PMIS (project management information system) with SharePoint Server’s out-of-the-box functionality.

• Utilize SharePoint’s out-of-the-box features to create a complete PMIS.
• Learn by using a hand-on approach that leads the reader step-by-step through the process of creating a working system.
• Leverage SharePoint’s powerful features to provide workspaces, detailed reports, and data to project stakeholders, sponsors, and team members.

What You’ll learn

• Understand and identify the difference between the available versions of SharePoint Server. These include Windows SharePoint Server, and SharePoint Server Standard and Enterprise Editions; also understand the newly introduced features in SharePoint 2010. Learn which version will best meet your organization’s needs and budget.
• Explore many of the concepts and best practices relating to SharePoint’s hierarchy and security infrastructure. Learn how to create a site structure that supports your initiatives while understanding the concepts of security groups and permission levels as they might relate to your project.
• Utilize SharePoint lists and libraries to manage and organize project information. Learn not only how to use the templates that are included with SharePoint, but also how to create lists and libraries to suit your specific needs.
• Reduce the amount of project-related paperwork by leveraging the power of InfoPath and SharePoint Server for data collection. Learn how to create digital forms for common tasks, such as team member status and expense reports.
• Automate project tasks by using SharePoint’s workflow system. Learn to use SharePoint’s built-in workflows, as well as how to create custom workflows with Microsoft’s SharePoint Designer.
• Report on your project’s progress by utilizing SharePoint’s powerful business intelligence features. Learn how to use Microsoft Excel and SharePoint’s key performance indicators to create digital dashboards that keep project stakeholders and sponsors informed.
• Use SharePoint’s collaborative features such as wikis, blogs, and meeting workspaces to allow team members to collaborate and interact efficiently. Understand how to identify when each tool might be appropriate for your individual needs.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for project managers and IT professionals that would like to leverage Microsoft’s SharePoint technologies to help manage projects within their organization.

You’ve learned the basics of Python, but how do you take your skills to the next stage? Even if you know enough to be productive, there are a number of features that can take you to the next level in Python. Pro Python explores concepts and features normally left to experimentation, allowing you to be even more productive and creative.

In addition to pure code concerns, Pro Python will develop your programming techniques and approaches, which will help make you a better Python programmer. Not only will this book help your code, it will also help you understand and interact with the many established Python communities, or even start your own.

• Take your Python knowledge and coding skills to the next level.
• Write clean, innovative code that will be respected among your peers.
• Make your code do more with introspection and metaprogramming.
• Design complete frameworks and libraries (two are included in the book!).

What you’ll learn

• Write strong Python code that will be respected in the Python community.
• Understand the reasons behind big design decisions in Python.
• Write programs that can reconfigure themselves in Python.
• Disguise your code as different types of objects in Python.
• Inspect just about any object in Python.
• Prepare your code for international audiences.
• Ensure code quality with rigorous testing.

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate to advanced Python programmers who are looking to understand how and why Python works the way it does and how they can take their code to the next level.

Pro SQL Data Services is your single source of information to get started developing applications against the database of Microsoftâ??s new cloud-based Azure Services Platform. SQL Data Services rests upon the solid foundation of SQL Server 2008, exposing most of the SQL Server functionality and features that you already know how to use. But having your database in the cloud does require some new ways of thinking about your data and how it is managed.

In Pro SQL Data Services, author David Robinson covers everything you need to move your database to the cloud. Youâ??ll learn about the Azure Services Platform, its advantages, and when it is best used. Youâ??ll read about the mechanics of subscribing to the platform, of provisioning your first server, and of connecting your applications to your database. Perhaps most important, David walks you through important design considerations when working in the cloud. Where will your application code live? Do you choose a code near or code far model? What about performance problems and troubleshooting? David covers all these topics and more, putting you in the best possible position to take full advantage of the power and flexibility inherent in SQL Data Servicesâ?? cloud-based architecture.

• Covers all you need to deploy your SQL Server database to the cloud
• Helps you make important design and scalability decisions
• Contains comprehensive, authoritative content, as it was written by a Microsoft senior program manager on the SQL Data Services team

What you'll learn

• Deploy and manage SQL Data Services databases in the cloud within Microsoftâ??s Azure Services Platform.
• React quickly and nimbly to changes in user demand and your business.
• Access your data using industry-standard tools and protocols.
• Promote scalability through techniques such as sharding and partitioning.
• Troubleshoot and solve performance problems.

Who is this book for?

Pro SQL Data Services is written for developers and database administrators using the Azure Services Platform who need a reliable and scalable database service. The book shows how to deploy databases into the cloud and how to take advantage of the almost instantaneous scalability provided by Microsoft SQL Data Services.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

Every business has a reams of business data locked away in databases, business systems, and spreadsheets. While you may be able to build some reports by pulling a few of these repositories together, actually performing any kind of analysis on the data that runs your business can range from problematic to impossible. Pro SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services will show you how to pull that data together and present it for reporting and analysis in a way that makes the data accessible to business users, instead of needing to rely on the IT department every time someone needs a different report.

• Accessible–With a single author's voice, this book conducts a guided tour through the technology that makes it easy to dive into.
• Solution–oriented–While technically deep, the goal is to focus on practical application of the technologies instead of acting as a technical manual.
• ComprehensiveThis book covers every aspect of Analysis Services and ancillary technologies to enable you to make the most of SQL Server.

What you'll learn

• Understand the importance of OLAP and Analysis Services technologies.
• Build cubes and dimensions that let you get business value out of large volumes of data.
• Learn the fundamentals of MDX–the query language for advanced analysis.
• Apply ancillary aspects of SSAS: KPIs, perspectives, and calculated members.
• Apply basic data mining concepts–identify answers to questions you weren't even aware you should ask.
• Learn the various ways to consume Analysis Services data (Reporting Services, Excel, and ProClarity).

Who is this book for?

Pro SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services is aimed at developers who want to take advantage of SQL Server's built-in business intelligence functionality to mine their data and produce reports that can drive business forward in right and profitable directions. The book is secondarily aimed at database administrators charged with supporting Analysis Services solutions.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

Previously, SQL developers have been able to almost entirely ignore the SQLCLR and treat it as a peripheral technology—almost an extension to the main product. With the advent of LINQ and the Entity Framework, this is no longer the case, and the SQLCLR is moving to the center stage. It’s a powerful product but, for many, it is an entirely new way of working with data. Pro SQL Server 2008 Entity Framework will help readers understand the implications of the Entity Framework and how it can be used to change their development practices and make their databases more powerful and flexible. Since many readers will be encountering this subject for the first time, the book will create an inclusive environment in which the concepts of .NET development are approached from the perspective of the Relational T–SQL developer to foster a sense of shared–ownership in keeping with Microsoft’s latest best practices.

• Comprehensive coverage of the new greater and more challenging integration with .NET 3.5
• Written from a real–world perspective and examines the features offered by LINQ and the Entity Framework that will help solve problems experienced by professional developers
• Contains insight, interpretation, analysis, and evangelism instead of just plain fact

What you’ll learn

• Examine the SQLCLR architecture.
• Learn the fundamentals of LINQ.
• Use LINQ with SQL and datasets.
• Extend LINQ.
• Gain a holistic view of the features of LINQ and the Entity Framework and how they segue with other features of the .NET Framework and native features of the operating system.
• Write practical applications of LINQ and the Entity Framework.

Who is this book for?

.NET and SQL developers who use Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as their back–end database. Database administrators who create, manage, and secure those databases.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

Pro SQL Server 2008 Integration Services is the complete reference on Microsoft SQL Server 2008's built-in tool set for extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) projects. Completely updated to cover the very latest features, this book shows how to develop and deploy Integration Services solutions that will scale to load anything from a dozen rows to a billion, or many billions!

• Completely revised and updated for SQL Server 2008
• Soup-to-nuts–covers everything you need to be productive with Integration Services
• Illustrates best–practice methods yielding solid results for even the most demanding of users

Integration Services is the right tool to use for moving data between operational and reporting database environments. Integration Services also lets you move data from nonrelational systems into SQL Server, and vice versa. Integration Services is reliable, it is automated, it will save you time. Pro SQL Server 2008 Integration Services by Dandy Weyn is your guide to making the most of one of Microsoft's most versatile tools.

What you'll learn

• Design and automate data flows to and from databases and data warehouses
• Implement data transformations in SSIS without writing custom code
• Take full advantage of the latest enhancements in SSIS 2008
• Create custom components to support your most complex ETL needs
• Optimize your ETL flows and solve SSIS performance problems
• Write .NET code that runs inside SQL Server 2008
• Integrate SQL Developer into your general development tool set

Who is this book for?

Pro SQL Server 2008 Integration Services is written for developers and database administrators involved in data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) projects. The book helps readers take full advantage of Integration Services to automate the movement and manipulation of data between different databases and nondatabase sources.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

This book takes a practical problem-solution approach to common business challenges. You’ll not only encounter interesting code samples, but also see how to combine these examples with the Microsoft collaboration platform’s services. The book’s solutions focus on using Visual Studio 2008 and its built-in Office development tools to construct the user interface layer. And solutions can interact with SharePoint as a service provider, taking advantage of SharePoint’s many collaboration features like document repositories, collaboration sites, and search functions.

This book is unique because it starts with challenges that end users deal with every day when using the Microsoft collaboration platform to support business processes. The solutions are presented as hypothetical business challenges of a fictional company. By presenting the examples in this context, author Ed Hild makes it easier to relate to the challenges and solution value. The goal of these examples is to build applications that apply the benefits of the Office desktop interface to the richness of SharePoint collaboration features. This book will help you develop real-world solutions to complex business problems and challenges.

What you’ll learn

• Delve into an end-to-end walkthrough in each chapter of a practical business challenge.
• See code samples, UI design, and platform integration all in the context of real-world problems.
• Discover custom code and implementation advice for popular Office and SharePoint features like custom web parts, Office add-ins, SharePoint features, workflow, the Business Data Catalog, Outlook form regions, the Office Open XML file format, and more.

Who is this book for?

This book is of great value to intermediate and advanced developers working on enterprise applications based on the Microsoft Office or SharePoint systems, or working on integration projects with third-party vendors.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a revolutionary part of the .NET 4 Framework that allows you to orchestrate human and system interactions as a series of workflows that can be easily mapped, analyzed, adjusted, and implemented. As business problems become more complex, the need for a workflow-based solution has never been more evident. WF provides a simple and consistent way to model and implement complex problems. As a developer, you focus on developing the business logic for individual workflow tasks. The runtime handles the execution of those tasks after they have been composed into a workflow.

Pro WF: Windows Workflow in .NET 4.0 provides you with the skills you need to incorporate WF in your applications, using a lively tutorial style with each example illustrated in C#. This book gets you up to speed with WF 4.0 quickly and comprehensively. Learn about WF 4.0’s new designer, it’s updated programming paradigm, and the completely new set of activities that can enable and extend your workflows. This book also includes detailed coverage of how to customize your workflows and access them in a variety of ways and situations so you can maximize the advantages of this technology.

What you’ll learn

• WF 4.0 basics
• New activities and changes to existing activities in WF 4.0
• Customizing your workflows
• Accessing your workflows in a variety of ways in a variety of situations
• Using WF with Web Services and ASP.NET
• Integrating WCF and WF

Who is this book for?

This book is for intermediate to advanced .NET developers who need to learn how to use the latest version of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF 4.0). This book is not a primer on .NET or the C# language. To get the most out of the examples presented in this book, it is necessary to have a good working knowledge of .NET 2.0 or higher. All of the examples are presented in C#.

Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides the foundation for building applications and high-quality user experiences for the Windows operating system. It blends the application user interface, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer's operating system.

Its functionality extends to the support for Tablet PCs and other forms of input device, and it provides a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and UI automation infrastructure, data-driven UIs and visualization, and integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell.

This book shows you how WPF really works. It provides you with the no-nonsense, practical advice that you need in order to build high-quality WPF applications quickly and easily. After giving you a firm foundation, it goes on to explore the more advance aspects of WPF and how they relate to the others elements of the .NET 4.0 platform and associated technologies such as Silverlight.

What you'll learn

• WPF basics: XAML, layout, control essentials, and data flow
• WPF applications: Navigation, commands, localization, and deployment
• Advanced controls: Custom controls, menus, toolbars, and trees
• WPF documents: Text layout, printing, and document packaging
• Graphics and multimedia: Drawing shapes, sound and video, animation, geometric transformations, and imaging

Who is this book for?

This book is designed for developers encountering WPF for the first time in their professional lives. A working knowledge of C# and the basic architecture of .NET is helpful to follow the examples easily, but all concepts will be explained from the ground up.

Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides the foundation for building applications and high-quality user experiences for the Windows operating system. It blends the application user interface, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer’s operating system.

Its functionality extends to the support for Tablet PCs and other forms of input device, and provides a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and UI automation infrastructure, data-driven UI and visualization, and integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell.

This book shows you how WPF really works. It provides you with the no-nonsense, practical advice that you need in order to build high-quality WPF applications quickly and easily. Having built a firm foundation, it goes on to explore more advanced aspects of WPF and how they relate to the others elements of the .NET 4.0 platform and associated technologies such as Silverlight.

What you’ll learn

• WPF basics: XAML, layout, control essentials, and data flow
• WPF applications: Navigation, commands, localization, and deployment
• Advanced controls: Custom controls, menus, toolbars, and trees
• WPF documents: Text layout, printing, and document packaging
• Graphics and multimedia: Drawing shapes, sound and video, animation, geometric transformations, and imaging

Who is this book for?

This book is designed for developers encountering WPF for the first time in their professional lives. A working knowledge of Visual Basic (VB) and the basic architecture of .NET is helpful to follow the examples easily, but all concepts will be explained from the ground up.

Mobile touch-based applications offer an intuitive, natural way of interacting with software; Windows 7 Multitouch and Microsoft Surface bring the multitouch user experience to the desktop. Author David Reeves provides in-the-trenches development know-how of multitouch application development and invaluable insight into adding multitouch support for good usability.

But the experience doesn't stop on the desktop. Building on the knowledge you'll gain in developing Windows 7 Multitouch applications, you will also design and develop applications for Microsoft Surface–an exciting table-based platform. Going beyond multitouch, the Surface platform offers unique ways to interact with objects and encourage collaboration.

Pro Windows 7 Multitouch and Microsoft Surface Development covers both design and development of multitouch applications on two Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 and Microsoft Surface. You'll be guided through the application development process from initial concepts to final deployment, gaining the experience and skills necessary to implement your own solutions in the real world.

What you'll learn

Pro Windows 7 Multitouch and Microsoft Surface Development will show you

• How to develop rich, immersive multitouch applications for Windows 7 and Microsoft Surface using Windows Presentation Foundation 4.0
• In-depth explanations and samples covering WPF controls
• How to extend WPF controls to add custom functionality and how to create your own user controls
• In-depth explanations and samples regarding the WPF event model and routed events
• Design guidelines and best practices for meaningful multitouch experiences

Who is this book for?

This book is written for developers and designers who are interested in learning how to create multitouch applications on Microsoft Windows 7 and Surface platforms using Windows Presentation Foundation.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

SharePoint is gaining recognition as a full-fledged application server with many features and enhancements that specifically allow non-developers to create sophisticated intranet sites. However, with the 2010 release, Microsoft’s SharePoint increasingly becomes a compelling development platform. The strong application programming interface (API), its highly extensible nature, and its foundation on the underlying .NET Framework all generate “the perfect storm” to make it one of the most powerful web development platforms available.

However, with power comes complexity. The wide range of usage scenarios make it difficult for developers to grasp the full ability of this next-generation platform. This book takes an in-depth, all-encompassing approach to programming concepts, the extensibility interfaces, and how to embrace SharePoint as a toolkit full of features available to web developers.

• Take an in-depth look into the internals of SharePoint.
• Create sophisticated applications using SharePoint controls and databases.
• Understand the API and use in conjunction with ASP.NET to extend SharePoint.

SharePoint is more than a portal and more than an intranet. Harness its capabilities and put it to work for you.

What you’ll learn

• The hierarchy of SharePoint’s API
• How to create rich, extensible, and broad SharePoint applications
• How to use SharePoint’s internals
• How to approach SharePoint as an open toolkit rather than a closed, intranet-only model
• How to take advantage of SharePoint’s extensibility and customize its behavior

Who is this book for?

This book is for ASP.NET developers who want to create applications using SharePoint as a platform. It’s also for users of SharePoint Designer that want to professionalize their development work.

Take a corporate training workshop with Andrew Troelsen, using the effective teaching and presentation techniques he imparts in Silverlight 3 Lab. Troelsen's tested methods provide a deep treatment of the subject in an accessible manner, using focused chapters that will challenge and elevate experienced .NET developers to a high level of competence in Silverlight 3.

Each chapter begins with a focused "traditional treatment" in which the scope of the chapter and the topics that will be covered are discussed and the course of the training lab laid out. Then, once the stage has been set, the bulk of the chapter takes the form of a hands-on lab that walks you deeply through the topic in a highly experiential manner, with new techniques and ideas encountered and explained as you progress. For this reason, the book is targeted at experienced .NET developers who already possess a good knowledge of C# and an outline understanding of what Silverlight is. Starting at this level allows you to dive deeply into the subject from the very beginning.

What you'll learn

• The syntax and semantics of Silverlight 3 and what it takes to write good code
• How to create media-rich web content (graphics, animations, audio-video integration)
• How to use the Silverlight 3 data-binding model and CLR/base class library support (including WCF, isolated storage, and threading)
• How to utilize the ASP.NET Silverlight web controls to augment your existing sites
• Best practices for Visual Studio, Microsoft Expression Blend, and other Silverlight programming tools

Who is this book for?

This book is for competent .NET developers who are adopting Silverlight. It is assumed you are comfortable with C# and the fundamentals of .NET architecture. If in doubt, a primer such as Accelerated C# will bring you up to speed with the necessary skills before you tackle these training labs.

Linux users can now control their homes remotely! Are you a Linux user who has ever wanted to turn on the lights in your house, or open and close the curtains, while away on holiday? Want to be able to play the same music in every room, controlled from your laptop or mobile phone? Do you want to do these things without an expensive off-the-shelf kit?

In Beginning Linux Home Automation, Steven Goodwin will show you how a house can control and be controlled by its occupants, all using open source software. From appliances to kettles to curtains, control your home remotely!

What you’ll learn

• Control appliances like kettles and curtains both locally and remotely.
• Find and harness data sources to provide context-aware living.
• Hack/change existing hardware/software to better fit your needs.
• Integrate various technologies into a function greater than the whole.
• Set up a home network, for both network and audio/video traffic.

Who is this book for?

This book is for amateur and professional Linux users who want to control their homes and their gadgets!

What the heck is Facebook? Twitter? Blogging? This book answers these questions and explains how to use a variety of social networking sites to keep in touch, stay in business, and have fun.

This book covers the main social networking “spaces,” and introduces some of the ways people are enjoying them within a family or business context. It includes information on posting pictures, using add-ons, and working with Facebook and LinkedIn groups. It also covers the phenomenon of Twitter, including how it has grown and the road ahead.

This book also covers how you can use the various networks together, such as sending a Twitter message that updates your Facebook status, or exporting your LinkedIn contact list and using it to invite people to Facebook. It also includes discussion of how to use social networks for both personal and business use, and how to keep them separate.

• How to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites for family, friends, and business
• How to make your sites talk to each other
• How to make the most of social networking and stay out of trouble

What you’ll learn

• Learn why people have been flocking to these social media sites.
• Discover how these sites can help you communicate with friends and family.
• Put that digital camera to use with Facebook and Flickr photo albums and Twitpics.
• Learn how you can use these sites to promote your business.
• Learn how to keep your business and personal life separate online.
• Learn how you can do all this while staying safe online.

Who is this book for?

Social Networking Spaces is for anyone wondering how social networking works, and how to use it to stay in touch, make friends and business contacts, and build an online presence.

Persistence is an important set of techniques and technologies for accessing and transacting data, and ensuring that data is mobile regardless of specific applications and contexts. In Java development, persistence is a key factor in enterprise, e-commerce, and other transaction-oriented applications.

Today, the Spring Framework is the leading out-of-the-box solution for enterprise Java developers; in it, you can find a number of Java Persistence solutions.

This book gets you rolling with fundamental Spring Framework 3 concepts and integrating persistence functionality into enterprise Java applications using Hibernate, the Java™ Persistence API (JPA) 2, and the Grails Object Relational Mapping tool, GORM.

• Covers core Hibernate fundamentals, demonstrating how the framework can be best utilized within a Spring application context
• Covers how to use and integrate JPA 2, found in the new Java EE 6 platform
• Covers how to integrate and use the new Grails persistence engine, GORM

What you’ll learn

• How to use Spring Persistence, including using persistence tools in Spring as well as choosing the best Java Persistence frameworks/tools outside of Spring
• How to work with Spring Framework features such as Inversion of Control (IoC), aspect-oriented programming (AOP), and more
• How to work with Spring JDBC, use declarative transactions with Spring, and reap the benefits of a lightweight persistence strategy
• How to work with Hibernate and integrate it into your Spring-based enterprise Java applications for transactions, data processing, and more
• How to integrate with legacy databases, as well as use best practices for developing web services and handling Hibernate proxies and lazy collections
• How to the integrate the Spring/Hibernate persistence tier with RIA technologies like Ajax and Flash
• How to integrate JPA for architecting a well-layered persistence tier in your enterprise Java application
• How to move a persistence tier into JPA
• How to use and integrate the Grails persistence framework, GORM, and how to leverage it within a standard Java Spring MVC application

Who is this book for?

This book is ideal for developers interested in learning more about persistence framework options on the Java platform, as well as fundamental Spring concepts. Because the book covers several persistence frameworks, it is suitable for anyone interested in learning more about Spring or any of the frameworks covered. Lastly, this book covers advanced topics related to persistence architecture and design patterns, and is ideal for beginning developers looking to learn more in these areas.

The release of the Spring Framework 3.0 has added many improvements and new features. Spring Web Recipes focuses on the latest available web application and web services tools and techniques that Spring has to offer, including Spring MVC, Web Flow, REST, web services, cloud computing, dynamic web scripting, and more.

What you’ll learn

• The most relevant aspects of the web technologies in the Spring Framework and its fundamentals to let you perform basic and complex web application development
• How to rapidly code complete real-world examples
• How to reuse live code examples for your own Spring-related projects
• How to build web applications using Spring Web Flow, Spring MVC, Spring Portals, the Grails framework, and more
• How to conduct web services using Spring WS and REST
• How to do dynamic web scripting using Spring and languages like Groovy
• How to create cloud development applications using Spring

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone who has some basic knowledge of Java and would like to step into Java web development rapidly. Readers will be able to use the Spring Framework to develop Java-based and even Groovy-based web applications.

iPhone and iPod touch app development is serious business, which is why there are so many blogs, tweets, and online discussions about it, and why there is so much general interest in the measures of iTunes App Store success. And the success stories keep coming from all corners of the rapidly expanding iPhone developer universe.

The Business of iPhone App Development is a developer’s guide to achieving and managing success right from the start of the design and development process. This book includes the information to help you, the developer, plan every aspect of your app with an eye toward business success—from design, to implementation, to the importance of early and continued market analysis, and on past launch into support and updates. And let’s not forget the business of the iTunes App Store itself! This is the book you wish you had read before you launched your first app!

• This book provides complete business-oriented workflow for the freelance, independent, and small-to-medium-sized development shop—no prior business knowledge is required.
• No other business book is aimed at the unique and exciting world of iPhone and iPod touch app development.
• The book was written by experienced developers with business backgrounds—they speak Geek and understand success.

What you’ll learn

• Solid business strategies to apply throughout the entire app development process and product life cycle
• How to manage the iTunes App Store submission process
• How to successfully promote/market your app on a shoestring budget
• How to do a competitive analysis and use it to your advantage
• How to use the StoreKit API to extend product life cycle and increase sales
• How to avoid legal hassles and what all the small print really means

Who is this book for?

This book is for any iPhone or iPod touch developer expecting to find success in Apple’s iTunes App Store.

This book is the first definitive reference for the Clojure language, providing both an introduction to functional programming in general and a more specific introduction to Clojure’s features. This book demonstrates the use of the language through examples, including features such as STM and immutability, which may be new to programmers coming from other languages.

• Overview of functional programming and description of what sets Clojure apart from other languages
• Detailed explanation of Clojure’s special features
• Examples of real-world tasks that are well-suited to Clojure’s capabilities, starting with simple tasks and moving on to more complex applications

What you’ll learn

• What Clojure is—more than just another Lisp
• How to set up a Clojure environment
• The structure and syntax of a Clojure program
• Java interoperability
• How to use Clojure for real-world tasks
• Common idioms of Clojure code

Who is this book for?

There are two audiences for this book: any technical person desiring to know what Clojure is and why they might want to use it, and any programmer desiring to learn and use the language. The goals of these two audiences mesh nicely, given that Clojure has several new, cutting-edge features that programmers are unlikely to have encountered before.

Mastering the development of .NET 4.0 applications in C# is less about knowing the Visual C# 2010 language and more about knowing how to use the functionality of the .NET Framework class library most effectively. Visual C# 2010 Recipes explores the breadth of the .NET Framework class library and provides specific solutions to common and interesting programming problems. Each recipe is presented in a succinct problem/solution format and is accompanied by a working code sample to help you understand the concept and quickly apply it.

When you are facing a Visual C# 2010 problem, this book likely contains a recipe that provides you with the solution–or at least points you in the right direction. Even if you are simply looking to broaden your knowledge of the .NET Framework class library, then Visual C# 2010 Recipes is the perfect resource to assist you.

This is a fully up-to-date reference for .NET 4.0 programmers. All code samples come as stand-alone Visual Studio 2010 solutions for your convenience.

What you'll learn

• Clear, concise answers to myriad problems that occur during day-to-day C# 2010 development
• How to write code according to Microsoft's best practice guidelines
• Answers to questions covering everything from workflow to XML processing

Who is this book for?

While there are few developers who do not stand to learn something from this book's concise, solution-oriented format, it is primarily aimed at emerging software professionals taking their first steps into the IT marketplace. These newly qualified and relatively inexperienced developers will gain the most from the book's comprehensive content and fast-access design, which is aimed at helping them cope with the problems and pitfalls that regularly occur when learning a new technology.

About the Apress Recipes Series

Apress Recipes series books are carefully selected compendiums of solutions and techniques to help you solve the difficulties that regularly beset developers when they are learning a new language or technology. The recipes are short, and each provides a step–by–step explanation and working code example that allows you to successfully solve your problems and progress with your project.

WPF Projects shows you how to build complete, working applications from the ground up as if they were real commercial applications. Each project is begun with a clear breakdown of what you’ll achieve, and then good design and architecture patterns are put in place to help you create the best possible result. On top of this, the book will have you writing clear, well-structured, WPF, SQL, and C# code to build a fully working application with an emphasis on reusability, expansion, and maintenance.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a relatively new and very powerful .NET-based framework for building highly sophisticated desktop applications. It is hugely powerful and capable of creating stunning 2D or 3D user interfaces with ease.

The WPF learning curve is a steep one, and it is for this reason that I have created this book. Traditionally, when teaching a new technology, authors will separate the syntax and grammar from the underlying architecture to keep their explanations clean and uncluttered. This works well up to a point, but there comes a time in everyone’s studies when they need to see the full depth of the application—n-tier architecture, C# code, and SQL Server database layers all working together. This book responds to all these needs.

Because you’ll want to use WPF in different ways to achieve different results, this book contains a wide range of projects covering many different tasks that are architected differently, from building a simple calculator, to a system backup application, to more complex CAD, mapping, and auction site interfaces.

What you’ll learn

• How to create complete, fully working WPF applications from scratch, showing you how to turn textbook theory into real-world practice
• How to use the key elements of WPF in context—from selecting design patterns to creating the user interface and building custom controls for your project
• The significance of proper unit testing in real-world application design
• How to use the WPF framework to create reusable, extensible code that you use in your future projects

WPF offers amazing new opportunities to .NET programmers in terms of the user interfaces they can deliver to their customers. But this significant technological advance comes with a steep learning curve, requiring programmers to learn new classes, new syntax, and an entirely new approach to UI development.

In WPF Recipes in C# 2010, you'll find a simple and straightforward approach to solving the problems you face every day. Each solution contains a complete working example that demonstrates how to make the best use of WPF. You can use the example as a template to solve your own problem or as a base on which to build a solution tailored to your specific needs.

Packed with well-structured and documented solutions to a broad range of common WPF problems, WPF Recipes in C# 2010 will be a valuable addition to any C# programmer's reference library. Examples included provide you with a rich source of information as you begin to learn and will be an invaluable quick-reference guide once you're a proficient WPF programmer.

The emphasis on solving the day-to-day WPF problems that all programmers face frees you from needing to trawl through weighty programming tomes or sift through API documentation, allowing you to focus on the more interesting and innovative aspects of your project.

What you'll learn

• Get hands-on experience applying WPF to real-world business applications.
• Find quick answers to common problems.
• Develop a new mind-set to UI development and a new approach to implementation from the authors' experience in graphic design.
• Peruse clear and concise code samples that demonstrate solutions to specific problems.

Who is this book for?

This book will benefit intermediate-to-advanced professional C# programmers who want clearly documented and working code samples that demonstrate solutions to common problems encountered when programming WPF. The authors believe WPF technology is new and complex enough, and their experience is deep enough, that the recipes in this book will provide value to all but the most experienced WPF programmers.

About the Apress Recipes Series

Apress Recipes series books are carefully selected compendiums of solutions and techniques to help you solve the difficulties that regularly beset developers when they are learning a new language or technology. The recipes are short, and each provides a step–by–step explanation and working code example that allows you to successfully solve your problems and progress with your project.

This book will provide you with a comprehensive guide to developing games for both the Windows Mobile platform and the Windows Phone using the industry standard programming languages C# and VB.NET.

You will be walked through every aspect of developing for the Windows Mobile platform—from setting up your development environment for the first time to creating advanced 3D graphics. Finally, you’ll learn how you can make your applications available to others through both conventional channels and the Windows Store web site.

Using extensive code samples throughout, you’ll gather all the information needed to create your own games and distribute them successfully for others to enjoy.

What you’ll learn

• How to obtain and configure a development environment for Windows Mobile
• How to build a working extensible game engine to reduce development time and increase reusability and distribution
• Tips and techniques for getting games working on older devices, smartphones (with no touchscreens), and new devices—all in a single code base
• An introduction to using OpenGL ES
• Guides to distributing your finished games, including information about freeware listings and tips on creating and selling shareware games

Who this book is for

The book is aimed at those with an existing background in programming and knowledge of one of the two main .NET programming languages (C# and VB.NET), but who do not necessarily have any knowledge of programming for Windows Mobile or programming games in general. The book will guide the reader through the steps required to become proficient in both of these areas of development.

Workflow is the glue that binds information worker processes, users, and artifacts. Without workflow, information workers are just islands of data and potential. Workflow in Microsoft Office 2010 details how to implement workflow in SharePoint 2010 and the client Microsoft Office 2010 suite to help information workers share data, enforce processes and business rules, and work more efficiently together or solo.

This book covers everything you need to know—from what workflow is all about to creating new activities; from InfoPath forms to ASP.NET forms; from the Rules Engine to the object model. There’s even a section on integrating legacy Office clients with SharePoint 2010 workflows.

Want solid knowledge of how to implement workflow in the new world of Office and SharePoint? Pick up Workflow in Microsoft Office 2010 today.

What you’ll learn

• Discover the new workflow actions supported in SharePoint 2010, including reading and writing to external lists, document set and record management, user profile lookups, and more.
• Understand how to design effective, reusable, declarative workflows.
• Use SharePoint Designer 2010 to edit workflows.
• Create workflows via importing and exporting functionality with Visio.
• Understand how to customize a task process, including instructions involved with when a task is assigning, while it is pending, and more.
• Create custom declarative activities in Visual Studio that you can then use in SharePoint Designer.Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to implement workflows within SharePoint and Office 2010. It is an intermediate-level book that assumes a working familiarity with SharePoint and elementary coding skills.

When coming to the iPhone and Mac OS X from Windows, you need to learn a new set of coding techniques and tools. Taken blindly, this can come as a shock—a shock that this book will help you avoid. It does this by teaching you to use your existing Windows programming knowledge to ease you into programming for Apple technologies.

The first part of the book will introduce you to coding for the iPhone and Mac OS X, discuss the similarities and differences between C#, C++, C, and Objective-C, and ease the transition from Visual Studio to Xcode.

Once you�re comfortably installed in the Apple environment and have found your way around the basic APIs, we’ll cut to the chase and build a working iPhone application from scratch to give you a frame of reference for the remainder of the book.

From here, we’ll walk through the key aspects of iPhone coding and discuss how they relate to what you already know. We’ll deal with touch sensitivity, graphics, multimedia, and deployment—everything you need to build a great application and put it up on the App Store.

Finally, because you’re a Windows developer, you probably already have prewritten code that you’d like to reuse. We’ll examine the different ways that you can bring that code across to the Apple platforms, and the strengths and weaknesses of each technique.By the time you�ve read this book, you�ll have learned everything you need to use your existing knowledge to build professional-quality iPhone and Mac OS X applications.

What you’ll learn

• Learn everything you need to know to begin using your existing Windows programming skills to create iPhone and Mac OS X applications.
• Understand the similarities and differences between C#, C++, C, and Objective-C.
• Build a complete working iPhone application and deploy it to the App Store.
• Investigate Apple’s APIs for graphics, touch, multimedia, and more.

Who this book is for

This book is for any Windows C, C++, or C#/.NET developer who wants to learn iPhone and OS X programming quickly, as well as how to port existing Windows code to iPhone and Mac OS X. This book provides critical information to all Windows developers needing to learn iPhone/OS X development. It provides a complete overview of Apple development technologies from a Windows programmer�s perspective, and gives thorough examples of how to write iPhone/OS X apps using native Apple tools and technologies.

You’ve got travel guides, recommendations, event descriptions, transit schedules, directions, and a full complement of local advice all tucked in your pocket, everywhere you go. Time to use all those great iPhone and iPod touch features and apps to be the savviest, most well-informed traveler since Phileas Fogg.

Let New York Times GadgetWise blogger Roy Furchgott (who also happens to be a Washington Post travel writer) be your guide to the ultimate in iPhone mobility. Furchgott tells you how to use your iPhone or iPod touch to plan your trip, stay connected in transit, arrive knowing where you’re going, and get there in a timely, unfrazzled way. Not only that, he’ll tell you how to record your adventures using various methods and enjoy the trip all over again when you’ve gotten back home.

There are endless travel pitfalls and travel apps. In this book, Furchgott will teach you to use the right apps for the job and offer plenty of expert advice so that you can enjoy your travels as a genuine iPhone-traveling pro!

What you’ll learn

• How to keep your travel information in one safe place
• How to set up a journal before leaving home
• What to do when travel plans go awry
• How to figure out where you are and then get to where you want to go
• How to stay in touch from anywhere at any time
• How to spend money and where to spend it
• How to use a variety of apps for business travel
• How to use a variety of apps for family travel
• How to do as the natives do
• How to get home in good health
• How to avoid huge data roaming charges
• How to handle different adaptors, cords, and accessories

Who this book is for

This book is for iPhone and iPod touch owners who want to make the most of the power, flexibility, and fun of these devices while away from home. It’s also travelers who want to travel light and have everything they need in one place. It’s the savvy guide to traveling efficiency, and it includes everything except a change of underwear (though it can help you find new underwear).