This book is a tutorial with step-by-step instructions, packed with practical code examples, images, advice, and ideas. If you are a PHP developer who is working with Joomla!, this book is for you. It is also aimed at web designers who want to add JavaScript elements, using jQuery, to their Joomla! sites, themes, modules, and other extensions. A basic knowledge of web development and Joomal! is required. Some knowledge of JavaScript would certainly be a bonus. No knowledge of jQuery is required.

Each recipe comprises step-by-step instructions followed by the analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. The book is designed so that you can read it chapter by chapter, or you can look at the list of recipes and refer to them in no particular order. There are plenty of useful screenshots to make learning easier for you. This book is for WordPress developers who want to create powerful themes for their blogs and web sites to impress and influence visitors. This book expects working knowledge of the WordPress platform. Knowledge of HTML and CSS would also be useful.

This book is a practical real-world tutorial covering everything you need to know about Amazon SimpleDB. You will come across examples in three languages: Java, PHP, and Python. This book is aimed at transforming you from a beginner to an advanced developer. If you are a developer wanting to build scalable web-based database applications using SimpleDB, then this book is for you. You do not need to know anything about SimpleDB to read and learn from this book, and no basic knowledge is strictly necessary. This guide will help you to start from scratch and build advanced applications.

Gain practical knowledge of mathematical and physics concepts in order to design and develop an awesome game world using Unreal Engine 4 About This Book Use the Physics Asset Tool within Unreal Engine 4 to develop game physics objects for your game world Explore the Collision mechanics within Unreal Engine 4 to create advanced, real-world physics A step-by-step guide to implementing the Physics concepts involved in Unreal Engine 4 to create a working Vehicle Blueprint Who This Book Is For This book is intended for beginner to intermediate users of Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 who want to learn more about how to implement physics within their game-world. No matter what your knowledge base of Unreal Engine 4 is, this book contains valuable information on blueprint *ing, collision generation, materials, and the Physical Asset Tool (PhAT) for all users to create better games. What You Will Learn Get to know basic to intermediate topics in mathematics and physics Create assets using the Physics Asset Tool (PhAT) in Unreal Engine 4 Develop Collision Hulls, which are necessary to take advantage of Unreal Engine 4’s physics and collision events Use constraints to create advanced physics-based assets for your game-world Working knowledge of physics bodies, physics damping, and friction within Unreal Engine 4 Develop physical materials to recreate real-world friction for substances such as glass and ice Create a working vehicle blueprint from scratch using assets provided by Unreal Engine 4 Gain knowledge about implementing advanced physics in Unreal Engine 4 using C++ programming In Detail Unreal Engine 4 is one of the leading game development tools used by both AAA and independent developers alike to create breathe-taking games. One of the key features of this tool is the use of Physics to create a believable game-world for players to explore. This book gives readers practical insight into the mathematical and physics principles necessary to properly implement physics within Unreal Engine 4. Discover how to manipulate physics within Unreal Engine 4 by learning basic real-world mathematical and physics concepts that assist in the implementation of physics-based objects in your game world. Then, you'll be introduced to PhAT (Physics Asset Tool) within Unreal Engine 4 to learn more about developing game physics objects for your game world. Next, dive into Unreal Engine 4’s collision generation, physical materials, blueprints, constraints, and more to get hands-on experience with the tools provided by Epic to create real-world physics in Unreal Engine 4. Lastly, you will create a working Vehicle Blueprint that uses all the concepts covered in this book, as well as covering advanced physics-based topics. Style and approach An easy-to-follow reference text filled with working examples of physics within Unreal Engine 4. Each topic is broken down to easily explain how to implement physics and physical objects in your game-world using the tools provided by Epic Games Unreal Engine 4.

A pragmatic guide for developing your own games with Python About This Book Strengthen your fundamentals of game programming with Python language Seven hands-on games to create 2D and 3D games rapidly from scratch Illustrative guide to explore the different GUI libraries for building your games Who This Book Is For If you have ever wanted to create casual games in Python and you would like to explore various GUI technologies that this language offers, this is the book for you. This title is intended for beginners to Python with little or no knowledge of game development, and it covers step by step how to build seven different games, from the well-known Space Invaders to a classical 3D platformer. What You Will Learn Take advantage of Python’s clean syntax to build games quickly Discover distinct frameworks for developing graphical applications Implement non-player characters (NPCs) with autonomous and seemingly intelligent behaviors Design and code some popular games like Pong and tower defense Compose maps and levels for your sprite-based games in an easy manner Modularize and apply object-oriented principles during the design of your games Exploit libraries like Chimpunk2D, cocos2d, and Tkinter Create natural user interfaces (NUIs), using a camera and computer vision algorithms to interpret the player’s real-world actions In Detail With a growing interest in learning to program, game development is an appealing topic for getting started with coding. From geometry to basic Artificial Intelligence algorithms, there are plenty of concepts that can be applied in almost every game. Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. It provides constructs intended to enable clear programs on both a small and large scale. It is the third most popular language whose grammatical syntax is not predominantly based on C. Python is also very easy to code and is also highly flexible, which is exactly what is required for game development. The user-friendliness of this language allows beginners to code games without too much effort or training. Python also works with very little code and in most cases uses the “use cases” approach, reserving lengthy explicit coding for outliers and exceptions, making game development an achievable feat. Python Game Programming by Example enables readers to develop cool and popular games in Python without having in-depth programming knowledge of Python. The book includes seven hands-on projects developed with several well-known Python packages, as well as a comprehensive explanation about the theory and design of each game. It will teach readers about the techniques of game design and coding of some popular games like Pong and tower defense. Thereafter, it will allow readers to add levels of complexities to make the games more fun and realistic using 3D. At the end of the book, you will have added several GUI libraries like Chimpunk2D, cocos2d, and Tkinter in your tool belt, as well as a handful of recipes and algorithms for developing games with Python. Style and approach This book is an example-based guide that will teach you to build games using Python. This book follows a step-by-step approach as it is aimed at beginners who would like to get started with basic game development. By the end of this book you will be competent game developers with good knowledge of programming in Python.

A fast-paced guide to develop, test, and deliver real-time communication in your .Net applications using SignalR About This Book Build and test real-time apps in .Net using the new features of SignalR Explore the fundamentals and the new methods and functions in the latest version of SignalR along with developing a complete application from scratch A progressive, hands-on guide to gain an understanding of the SignalR framework Who This Book Is For If you are a .Net developer with good understanding of the .Net platform then this is an ideal book for you to learn how to build real-time apps using the SignalR framework. What You Will Learn Explore the basic knowledge and understanding of SignalR Get to know how to connect client to the server Connecting a client with a server and setting a hub Creating group connections together Understand how to have state in the client to have specific operations Securing SignalR connections How to scale SignalR across multiple servers Building a client for WPF Building a client using Xamarin targeting Windows, iPhone and Android Get to grips with monitoring the traffic in SignalR using Fiddler for Windows and Charles for OSX Setting up code to host SignalR using OWIN In Detail With technology trends, demands on software have changed with more and more skilled users. Over the past few years, with services such as Facebook, Twitter and push notifications on smartphones, users are now getting used to being up to date with everything that happens all the time. With SignalR, the applications stay connected and will generate notifications when something happens either from the system or by other users thus giving new opportunities to enter into this new, exciting world of real-time application development. This is a step-by-step guide that follows a practical approach helping you as a developer getting to get started with SignalR by learning its fundamentals. It will help you through building real-time applications using the new methods and functions in the SignalR framework. Starting from getting persistent connections with the server, you will learn the basics of connecting a client to the server and how the messaging works. This will be followed by setting up a hub on the server and consuming it from a JavaScript client. Next you will be taught how you can group connections together to send messages. We will then go on to know how you can have state in the client to handle specific operations like connecting or disconnecting. Then, moving on you will learn how to secure your SignalR connections using OWIN and scaling SignalR across multiple servers. Next you will learn building a client for WPF and building a client using Xamarin that targets Windows Phone, iPhone and Android. Lastly, you will learn how to monitor the traffic in SignalR using Fiddler, Charles and hosting SignalR using OWIN. Style and approach This is an example- oriented and comprehensive guide to learning the fundamentals of SignalR to build real-time applications. It will help you build real-time applications on the .Net platform in a step-by-step manner along with giving teaching techniques to deal with possible performance bottlenecks and other key topics.

If you are a jMonkey developer or a Java developer who is interested to delve further into the game making process to expand your skillset and create more technical games, then this book is perfect for you.

This book is intended for .NET developers with any level of experience and who are interested in building native applications without the hassle of becoming Objective-C or Java experts. Although it will be beneficial to have some development experience, particularly in .NET, Learning Xamarin help even a novice developer get past the headaches of setting up and customizing their new development environment so they can move on to producing high-quality native applications quickly.

This book is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step beginner's guide covering the full process of creating a game. It is packed with examples and illustrations, with comprehensive coverage of each topic. If you want to learn how to make games using the Cocos2D framework, this book is for you. If you would like to build a good foundation for a career in game development as an independent game developer or at a game studio, or if you just want to make games as a hobby, then you'll love this book. You should have some basic programming experience with Objective-C and Xcode. To run the code in this book, you will also need an Intel-based Macintosh running OS X Mountain Lion (or later).

Measure, optimize, and improve the performance of your Python code with this easy-to-follow guide About This Book Master the do's and don'ts of Python performance programming Learn how to use exiting new tools that will help you improve your *s A step-by-step, conceptual guide to teach you how to optimize and fine-tune your critical pieces of code Who This Book Is For If you're a Python developer looking to improve the speed of your *s or simply wanting to take your skills to the next level, then this book is perfect for you. What You Will Learn Master code optimization step-by-step and learn how to use different tools Understand what a profiler is and how to read its output Interpret visual output from profiling tools and improve the performance of your * Use Cython to create fast applications using Python and C Take advantage of PyPy to improve performance of Python code Optimize number-crunching code with NumPy, Numba, Parakeet, and Pandas In Detail Simply knowing how to code is not enough; on mission-critical pieces of code, every bit of memory and every CPU cycle counts, and knowing how to squish every bit of processing power out of your code is a crucial and sought-after skill. Nowadays, Python is used for many scientific projects, and sometimes the calculations done in those projects require some serious fine-tuning. Profilers are tools designed to help you measure the performance of your code and help you during the optimization process, so knowing how to use them and read their output is very handy. This book starts from the basics and progressively moves on to more advanced topics. You’ll learn everything from profiling all the way up to writing a real-life application and applying a full set of tools designed to improve it in different ways. In the middle, you’ll stop to learn about the major profilers used in Python and about some graphic tools to help you make sense of their output. You’ll then move from generic optimization techniques onto Python-specific ones, going over the main constructs of the language that will help you improve your speed without much of a change. Finally, the book covers some number-crunching-specific libraries and how to use them properly to get the best speed out of them. After reading this book, you will know how to take any Python code, profile it, find out where the bottlenecks are, and apply different techniques to remove them. Style and approach This easy-to-follow, practical guide will help you enhance your optimization skills by improving real-world code.

Design and build fantastic projects and devices using the Arduino platform About This Book Explore the different sensors that can be used to improve the functionality of the Arduino projects Program networking modules in conjunction with Arduino to make smarter and more communicable devices A practical guide that shows you how to utilize Arduino to create practical, useful projects Who This Book Is For This book is an ideal choice for hobbyists or professionals who want to create quick and easy projects with Arduino. As a prerequisite, readers must have a working Arduino system and some programming background, ideally in C/C++. Basic knowledge of Arduino is helpful but not required to follow along with this book. What You Will Learn Understand and utilize the capabilities of the Arduino Integrate sensors to gather environmental data and display this information in meaningful ways Add modules such as Bluetooth and Wi-fithat allow the Arduino to communicate and send data between devices Create simple servers to allow communication to occur Build automated projects including robots while learning complex algorithms to mimic biological locomotion Implement error handling to make programs easier to debug and look more professional Integrate powerful programming tools and software such as Python and Processing to broaden the scope of what the Arduino can achieve Practice and learn basic programming etiquette In Detail Arduino an opensource physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. The opensource Arduino software (IDE) makes it easy to write code and upload it to the board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing and other opensource software. With the growing interest in home-made, weekend projects among students and hobbyists alike, Arduino offers an innovative and feasible platform to create projects that promote creativity and technological tinkering. Arduino by Example is a project-oriented guide to help you fully utilize the power of one of the world's most powerful open source platforms, Arduino. This book demonstrates three projects ranging from a home automation project involving your lighting system to a simple robotic project to a touch sensor project. You will first learn the basic concepts such as how to get started with the Arduino, and as you start building the project, you will develop the practical skills needed to successfully build Arduino powered projects that have real-life implications. The complexity of the book slowly increases as you complete a project and move on to the next. By the end of this book, you will be able to create basic projects and utilize the elements used in the examples to construct your own devices. Style and approach This book follows a project-oriented approach, with multiple images and plenty of code to help you build your projects easily. The book uses a tutorial-based methodology where the concepts are first explained and then implemented to help you develop the projects.

This book will guide you through the steps necessary to add image, video, and audio elements into your Drupal sites. For each topic, you start with simple techniques and move on to more advanced techniques. By the time you've completed this book, you should have a firm ground from which to tackle most multimedia needs, and enough of an understanding to creatively solve more complex problems. This book will provide information for administrators and professional site developers who are required to embed multimedia into a Drupal site. The reader needs basic knowledge of Drupal operation, but no experience of how Drupal handles multimedia items is expected.

The initial part guides the reader through the features of DWR and how it works to make the developer ready for practical implementation. The later part contains plenty of code (with explanations) and graphical interface-driven step-by-step examples, which the reader can try out while surfing through the book to learn by doing. This book is written for competent Java developers and assumes that you are a professional rather than hobbyist. You should be familiar with the concepts of programming, Web 2.0, and AJAX.

With this book in hand, you will be able to set up and manage a Community Server solution. You will learn how to create blogs, forums, photo galleries, and file galleries, and use tools such as the built-in RSS reader and RSS roller in a step-by-step manner. This book will provide your with a clear and concise overview of Community Server and will impart the knowledge necessary to enable you to run and manage a Community Server solution. This book is aimed at the Community Server administrator with a base level of technical competence and confidence, but no prior sysadmin or developer experience or knowledge. No knowledge of ASP.NET programming is required for using this book. What is essential is your own passion for your target community and your desire to provide the best platform possible to that audience.

The author draws on his experience to offer the reader valuable advice on the best practices. Providing only necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting case studies and plenty of illustrative examples. This book is aimed at Linux Network administrators with some understanding of Linux security threats and issues, or any one interested in securing their systems behind a firewall. Basic knowledge of Linux is presumed but other than that this book shows you how to do the rest, from configuring your system to dealing with security breaches.

You can use this book to help you set up and administer a DotNetNuke portal, even if you have a limited knowledge of ASP.NET. You will learn how to setup and administer an example site, stepping through all the tasks to ease your learning. If you are a developer, this book will help you extend the DotNetNuke portal by first helping you understand how the core framework works and then show you how to create custom modules and skins. A rudimentary knowledge of VB.NET programming is assumed, but the emphasis is not on becoming a better VB.NET programmer but on taming DotNetNuke. This book has been written for both the beginner wanting to set up a website and also ASP.NET developers with a grasp of VB.NET who want a deeper understanding of how to work with DotNetNuke. To work with the DotNetNuke code, you will need access to Visual Web Developer Express or Visual Studio .NET 2005. No prior knowledge of DotNetNuke is assumed.

This book is a tutorial guide for new users that aims to help you understand the basics of and become accomplished with the use of R for quantitative finance.If you are looking to use R to solve problems in quantitative finance, then this book is for you. A basic knowledge of financial theory is assumed, but familiarity with R is not required. With a focus on using R to solve a wide range of issues, this book provides useful content for both the R beginner and more experience users.

Get up and running with machine learning with F# in a fun and functional wayAbout This BookDesign algorithms in F# to tackle complex computing problemsBe a proficient F# data scientist using this simple-to-follow guideSolve real-world, data-related problems with robust statistical models, built for a range of datasetsWho This Book Is ForIf you are a C# or an F# developer who now wants to explore the area of machine learning, then this book is for you. Familiarity with theoretical concepts and notation of mathematics and statistics would be an added advantage.What You Will LearnUse F# to find patterns through raw dataBuild a set of classification systems using Accord.NET, Weka, and F#Run machine learning jobs on the Cloud with MBracePerform mathematical operations on matrices and vectors using Math.NETUse a recommender system for your own problem domainIdentify tourist spots across the globe using inputs from the user with decision tree algorithmsIn DetailThe F# functional programming language enables developers to write simple code to solve complex problems. With F#, developers create consistent and predictable programs that are easier to test and reuse, simpler to parallelize, and are less prone to bugs.If you want to learn how to use F# to build machine learning systems, then this is the book you want.Starting with an introduction to the several categories on machine learning, you will quickly learn to implement time-tested, supervised learning algorithms. You will gradually move on to solving problems on predicting housing pricing using Regression Analysis. You will then learn to use Accord.NET to implement SVM techniques and clustering. You will also learn to build a recommender system for your e-commerce site from scratch. Finally, you will dive into advanced topics such as implementing neural network algorithms while performing sentiment analysis on your data.Style and approachThis book is a fast-paced tutorial guide that uses hands-on examples to explain real-world applications of machine learning. Using practical examples, the book will explore several machine learning techniques and also describe how you can use F# to build machine learning systems.

Learn the best practices on writing efficient jQuery applications to maximize performance in large-scale deploymentsAbout This BookLearn about the observer pattern and the deferred observer pattern, two of the most popular design patterns that handle custom eventsAdvance your jQuery skills by learning about patterns such as divide and conquer, facade, and builder and factory to handle complex resultsThis step-by-step guide to applying micro-patterns and optimizing jQuery applications will help you get the best performance in a production environmentWho This Book Is ForThis book is for existing jQuery Developers or new developers who want to get an understanding of the “correct way” to build jQuery applications, using best practices and industry standard patterns.What You Will LearnRespond to user actionsAchieve greater flexibility and code decouplingHave a central point for emitting and receiving application level eventsStructure the application into small independent modulesAbstract complex APIsIsolate the procedure of generating complex parts of the applicationEfficiently orchestrate asynchronous procedures using jQuery Deferred and PromisesUtilize the most widely-used client-side templating libraries for more complex use casesIn DetailjQuery is a feature-rich JavaScript library that makes HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, animation, and Ajax much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a variety of browsers. With a combination of versatility and extensibility, jQuery has changed the way that millions of people write JavaScript.jQuery solves the problems of DOM manipulation, event detection, AJAX calls, element selection and document queries, element attribute and data management, as well as object management utilities. This book addresses these problems and shows you how to make the best of jQuery through the various design patterns available.The book starts off with a refresher to jQuery and will then take you through the different design patterns such as facade, observer, publisher/subscriber, and so on. We will also go into client-side templating techniques and libraries, as well as some plugin development patterns. Finally, we will look into some best practices that you can use to make the best of jQuery.Style and approachThe example-oriented guide covers the best and most widely used patterns to help you improve your development with jQuery.

Orchestrate the designing, development, testing, and deployment of web applications with Symfony About This Book Create a robust and reliable Symfony development pipeline using Amazon's cloud platform Cut development and maintenance costs by defining crystal clear features and possible scenarios for each feature before implementation Follow detailed examples provided in each chapter to create a task management application Who This Book Is For If you are a PHP developer with some experience in Symfony and are looking to master the framework and use it to its full potential, then this book is for you. Though experience with PHP, object-oriented techniques, and Symfony basics is assumed, this book will give you a crash course on the basics and then proceed to more advanced topics. What You Will Learn Install and configure Symfony and required third-party bundles to develop a task management application Set up a continuous integration server to orchestrate automatic builds every time you add a new feature to your project Reduce maintenance costs dramatically using Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) Create a slick user interface using the Bootstrap framework Design robust business logic using Doctrine Build a comprehensive dashboard and secure your project using the Sonata project Improve performance using Redis, Memcache, and Varnish Create customized Symfony commands and add them to your console In Detail In this book, you will learn some lesser known aspects of development with Symfony, and you will see how to use Symfony as a framework to create reliable and effective applications. You might have developed some impressive PHP libraries in other projects, but what is the point when your library is tied to one particular projectWith Symfony, you can turn your code into a service and reuse it in other projects. This book starts with Symfony concepts such as bundles, routing, twig, doctrine, and more, taking you through the request/response life cycle. You will then proceed to set up development, test, and deployment environments in AWS. Then you will create reliable projects using Behat and Mink, and design business logic, cover authentication, and authorization steps in a security checking process. You will be walked through concepts such as DependencyInjection, service containers, and services, and go through steps to create customized commands for Symfony's console. Finally, the book covers performance optimization and the use of Varnish and Memcached in our project, and you are treated with the creation of database agnostic bundles and best practices. Style and approach A step-by-step guide to mastering Symfony while developing a task management application. Each chapter comes with detailed examples.

A foundational yet practical approach to UX that delivers more creative, collaborative, holistic, and mature design solutions, regardless of your background or experience About This Book Improve your UX design awareness and skills Gain greater confidence to know when you have delivered a “good” UX design Learn by example using a book designed by a UX mind for a UX mind Who This Book Is For This book is written for the beginner as well as the experienced UX practitioner, regardless of team size, company size, or job title. It is also intended for anyone with an interest in UX, engages with UX, is involved in any way in interactive problem solving and design, or simply wants to learn more about what we do, how we do it, and why those in the UX field are so passionate about wanting to do it better. What You Will Learn Awaken your UX mind and dispel the myths of non-UX thinkers Create the six optimal conditions for your best ideas to appear Identify and incorporate the ten design principles found in all good UX design Develop a broader understanding of Information Architecture (IA) to better engage, guide, and inform Develop a fundamental understanding of patterns and the properties that create them Raise your level of UX maturity with a strategy that transforms your approach to problem solving and helps others understand the true value of your work Utilize important tools of the UX trade that never go out of style Increase your knowledge of UX, incorporate valuable ideas and insights into your work, and look at design from a very unique perspective In Detail Written in an easy-to-read style, this book provides real-world examples, a historical perspective, and a holistic approach to design that will ground you in the fundamental essentials of interactive design, allow you to make more informed design decisions, and increase your understanding of UX in order to reach the highest levels of UX maturity. As you will see, UX is more than just delighting customers and users. It is also about thinking like a UX practitioner, making time for creativity, recognizing good design when you see it, understanding Information Architecture as more than just organizing and labeling websites, using design patterns to influence user behavior and decision making, approaching UX from a business perspective, transforming your client’s and company’s fundamental understanding of UX and its true value, and so much more. This book is an invaluable resource of knowledge, perspective, and inspiration for those seeking to become better UX designers, increase their confidence, become more mature design leaders, and deliver solutions that provide measurable value to stakeholders, customers, and users regardless of project type, size, and delivery method. Style and approach An in-depth, easy to read, and entertaining journey into and through the world of UX using real-world examples, thoughtful illustrations, and engaging quotes to inspire and explain fully the how and why of UX in a practical and impactful way and used immediately in your own work.