CSS Guide & JavaFX Examples

CSS: The Definitive Guide — Eric A. Meyer & Estelle Weyl, O’Reilly 2017 (4th ed.), ISBN 978-1-449-39319-9 The long expected update to a classic last revised in 2006, this massive tome is certainly definitive in size and detail. More than a thousand pages cover every esoteric wrinkle of CSS anyone might possibly want to know … Continue reading “CSS Guide & JavaFX Examples”

CSS: The Missing Manual

CSS: The Missing Manual — David Sawyer McFarland, O’Reilly 2015 (4th ed.), ISBN 978-1-491-91805-0 McFarland’s eminently practical book explains the structure and features of CSS from the perspective of a raw beginner. This does lead to some amusing baby steps, such as the introductory section on “mouse clicks,” but don’t let that deter you. McFarland … Continue reading “CSS: The Missing Manual”

Programming Languages in 2014

With some delay, here’s my annual roundup of programming language rankings. One sad change from previous years (2012 edition, 2013 edition) is the absence of Andrew Binstock’s usual column, “Rise and Fall of Languages.” That had been published by Dr. Dobb’s Journal which has shut down last year. (Binstock is now EIC of Oracle’s Java … Continue reading “Programming Languages in 2014”

Compact Horrors of JavaScript

JavaScript is notorious for the nasty surprises it springs on the unwary programmer, especially since it looks like many perfectly sensible languages (and is deceptively named after one). Two compact books present its mind-melting horrors in concentrated form, so as to quickly bring the unfortunate JavaScript neophyte up to speed. Douglas Crockford’s 2008 classic long … Continue reading “Compact Horrors of JavaScript”

Overviews for HTML5 & Java SE 8

Two new entries in the Developer Books review archive. MacDonald’s HTML5 intro is well-suited for people who already know HTML 4, and Horstmann’s Java SE 8 overview should remain useful even after Core Java has been updated. I recommend both books. HTML5: The Missing Manual — Matthew MacDonald, O’Reilly 2013 (2nd ed.) This is not … Continue reading “Overviews for HTML5 & Java SE 8”

Struct Performance 2014

Once again and probably for the last time, I’ve updated my .NET Struct Performance article with results for the latest batch of compilers and runtimes. Microsoft’s and Mono’s current CLRs are unchanged as expected, and so is the excellent MinGW gcc. Visual C++ 2013 gave a nasty shock with massive optimizer failures for user-defined types … Continue reading “Struct Performance 2014”

Click Tracking with Google Analytics

I had enabled Google Analytics last September but, until recently, kept WordPress Statistics running as well. One reason was its terribly addictive up-to-the-minute stats view, but more importantly WP tracks outbound clicks and GA doesn’t. Until you write some code, that is. Google Analytics can record hyperlink clicks (and all kinds of other stuff) using … Continue reading “Click Tracking with Google Analytics”

Programming Languages in 2013

Andrew Binstock’s annual Rise And Fall of Languages analyzes Google Trends, the TIOBE index, and Ohloh’s coverage of 600,000 open-source projects to discover… that there wasn’t much to discover. Java and C++ continue their slow long-term decline, but as Daniel Lemire notes that decline is so slow that any year-over-year movement might as well be … Continue reading “Programming Languages in 2013”

WebView, the other JavaFX UI

Aside from its native UI facilities, JavaFX provides a WebView that’s a fully-featured embedded HTML5 browser. The underlying WebEngine is a modified Webkit engine which comes as part of the freely available JavaFX source code. For JavaFX 2.2.4 (part of Java SE 7), Oracle offered a separate download. This code was based on Webkit 535.21, … Continue reading “WebView, the other JavaFX UI”

Resizable HTML Scroll Boxes

CSS offers two ways to shrink wide elements so that they fit a narrower browser window: The white-space property whose default value of normal breaks long text lines at spaces, as in a word processor. The overflow property (also available as overflow-x and overflow-y) that can be set to auto or scroll to put wide … Continue reading “Resizable HTML Scroll Boxes”