Archive for January, 2010

A review of Adobe Flex Builder

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Adobe’s FlexBuilder is the Software Development Environment for Flex, Adobes Rich Internet Application platform. FlexBuilder is built on Eclipse, so any computer you run on it should have > 1 GB of ram and a processor > 2 ghz.

FlexBuilder is a very satisfying environment to work in. It is much more natural (as a programmer) to use than the actionscript editors in Adobe Flash. Because you are working in a fairly heavyweight Eclipse environment, those used to working in Microsoft Visual Studio may find FlexBuilder a bit slow. FlexBuilder does have a set of very capable debugging tools however, and these tools alone make the near-$250 price tag worth it. The addition of the powerful Designer mode (much like the Design view in Visual Studio) also adds a lot of value. Because of these features I strongly recommend Adobe FlexBuilder for development, and consider it a worthwhile addition to any Rich Internet Application programmers toolkit.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Feature packed, Eclipse environment is very configurable, Natural environment for experienced programmers.
Cons: Eclipse is a resource hog, so check to make sure your computer meets the minimum specs before buying.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Code, Software Engineering, community site building | No Comments »

Google Analytics is made of win

Friday, January 29th, 2010

This week, for the first time, I got on the Google Analytics bandwagon. I never thought charts and graphs could be so damn fun. Look at this:

Google Analytics site overlay

Google Analytics site overlay function

That is what Google calls the “Site Overlay” (it’s under the Content menu, if you’re looking for it, Googlers/Bingers). I was FLOORED when I saw it for the first time. The numbered percents everywhat represent the percentage of visitors that clicked the link – but I’m sure you didn’t need to be told that, since the data is clear as day.  WAY TO GO GOOGLE for taking data visualization to the next level.  Mad props.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Communities, Design, Google, community site building | No Comments »

A Detailed Introduction to SOAP

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol and is used for communication between applications through the Internet. SOAP is a platform and language independent. It also allows applications to communicate between each other though both applications are on different operating systems. SOAP messages are typically written using XML.

Here is an example of SOAP syntax:
(more…)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Code, SOAP, Software Engineering | No Comments »

A comparison between MFC and Win32 in C

Monday, January 25th, 2010

First let us start with the “Windows SDK” (Software Development Kit) which is designed to create Windows applications. It consists of large set of functions, messages, structures, macros and resources. It is a set of tools designed to help C programmers create Windows applications.

Windows SDK consists of the large set of books describing functions, messages, structures, macros and resources. There are also tools including a dialog editor and an image editor, on-line help files and a set of windows libraries and header files.

It has large collection of API (Application Programming Interface) functions written in C. The API is a set of functions that are part of Windows Operating System. Programs can be created by calling the functions present in the API. One doesn’t have to bother about the internal working of the functions – just knowing the function prototype (name, arguments) and return value one can invoke the API functions. A good understanding of the Windows API will help you to become a good Windows programmer . Windows itself uses the API to perform its GUI magic.

(more…)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Code, Software Engineering | 5 Comments »

Threads in Java

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Java supports multithreaded programming. Threads means part of the program which runs concurrently and which defines separate part of execution. Threads are present in many states.It can be running or it can be made ready to run as soon as it gets CPU time. A running thread can be suspended temporarily and also can be resumed. Thread can also be blocked, it can also be terminated in which execution is stopped. When thread is terminated it cannot be resumed.

(more…)

Posted in Java | No Comments »

Data Types in C#

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

C# is a language in which every variable and object should have a declared type.In this article we are going to discuss about datatypes in C#. Many dataypes in C# are from C and C++.

There are different ways of defining data types in C# let us see each of them in brief:-
(more…)

Posted in C#, Code | No Comments »

Newly upgraded WordPress

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Have an old WordPress install? I was recently amazed at how easy it is to upgrade to the latest and greatest. The WordPress Codex has an article on how to do it here.

Tags:
Posted in WordPress, community site building | No Comments »