Setting Up a Development Environment

This article will take you through all the recipes that you require to build your very own development environment. This will be done in a step-by-step manner, via the suggested best practice of using a Windows Server 2008 R2 server as the base operating system running on a virtual machine.

In this article by Ed Musters, author of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Development Cookbook, we will cover the following concepts:

• Selecting your virtual environment
• Installing and configuring Windows Server 2008 R2
• Installing and configuring SQL Server 2008 R2
• Installing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
• Installing Microsoft Office 2010 Professional

Ext JS 4: Working with Tree and Form Components

In this article by Loiane Groner, author of Ext JS 4 First Look we will cover some new features and enhancements in the following Components.

• Tree panel
• Form panel

These Components enable faster performance and more developer flexibility.

(For more resources on JavaScript, see here.)

Gadgets in JIRA

In this article by Jobin Kuruvilla author of JIRA Development Cookbook, we will cover:

• Writing JIRA 4 gadgets
• Invoking REST services from gadgets
• Configuring user preferences in gadgets
• Accessing gadgets outside of JIRA

Sencha Touch: Catering Form Related Needs

This article covers every aspect of a form, including the different form fields offered by Sencha Touch, configuring each one of them for the user in a form, and configuring ways by which a typical form validation can be done. Fields such as Search, E-mail, DatePicker, Select, Slider, Checkbox, TextArea, FieldSet, and so on are covered in this article along with their detailed usage.

In this article by Ajit Kumar, author of Sencha Touch Cookbook, we will cover:

• Getting your form ready with FormPanel
• Working with search
• Putting custom validation in the e-mail field
• Working with dates using DatePicker
• Making a field hidden
• Working with the select field
• Changing the value using Slider
• Spinning the number wheel using Spinner
• Toggling between your two choices
• Checkbox and checkbox group
• Text and TextArea
• Grouping fields with FieldSet
• Validating your form

Developing Flood Control using XNA Game Development

While playable, Flood Control in its current form is rather rough. When the player clicks on game pieces, they simply flop to their new orientation. Completed rows vanish without a trace, being filled in so rapidly that it is hard to tell if they actually disappeared at all. The game never ends! Once you have started, you can play forever, not worrying about the underwater research lab actually filling up with water.

In this article,by Kurt Jaegars,author of XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide – Visual Basic Edition we will address these issues by:

• Animating the rotation of pieces, when manipulated by the player
• Gradually fading out pieces of completed scoring chains
• Animating the falling of pieces into place on the board
• Implementing the flooding of the dome and adding increasing difficulty levels
• Adding a SpriteFont to the game, and displaying the current level and score in their appropriate positions on the screen

All of these enhancements will give the player a better game experience, as well as give us the opportunity to learn more about how the SpriteBatch class can be used for animation and text display.

Adobe Flash 11 Stage3D: Setting Up Our Tools

Adobe's Stage3D (previously codenamed Molehill) is a set of 3D APIs that has brought 3D to the Flash platform. Being a completely new technology, there were almost no resources to get you acquainted with this revolutionary platform, until now.

In this article by Christer Kaitila, author of Adobe Flash 11 Stage3D (Molehill) Game Programming, we will:

• Obtain Flash 11 for your browser
• Get all the tools ready to compile Stage3D games
• Initialize 3D graphics in Flash
• Send mesh and texture data to the video card
• Animate a simple 3D scene

Setting up an online shopping cart with Drupal and Ubercart

In this article by Trevor James,author of Drupal 7 Business solutions we install and configure the Ubercart module for Drupal 7 in order to set up an online store and e-commerce system for our client who owns a bakery called Artisan Bakers Collective. Our client wants to offer their baked goods and other products online so their customers can order and pay for their bread and other baked goods ahead of time and then pick them up in the store. Follow along as we set up a basic Ubercart driven e-commerce system in Drupal 7.