For the first time, Nia Vardalos, writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, tells her hilarious and heartfelt bumpy-road-to-parenting story that eventually leads to her meeting an almost-three-year old girl who she knows instantly is her daughter.Vardalos chronicles it all with her signature wit and candor but also weaves in delicious behind-the-scenes Hollywood stories on the making of her films from working with Tom Hanks to meeting Oprah to having dinner with the Queen of England.In Instant Mom, Vardalos writes how moments after she finds out she has been nominated for an Academy Award, she is alone and en route to a fertility clinic, trying yet again for a chance at motherhood, wondering how long she can continue. When she finally adopts her daughter via American Foster Care, Vardalos reveals what really came next how, with only fourteen hours' notice, she and her husband transitioned their preschool aged daughter into their home. The Appendix includes information on how to adopt from all over the world. Vardalos will donate proceeds from the book sales to charities.In her memoir, Instant Mom, Vardalos reveals how she broke into the movie industry, became a working screenwriter and actress . . . and finally became a mom. Instantly.

#131 The Case of the Two-Cent CandyYears ago, I wrote about a retail store in the Palo Alto environs a good one, which had a box of two-cent candies at the checkout. I subsequently remember that "little" parting gesture of the two-cent candy as a symbol of all that is Excellent at that store. Dozens of people who have attended seminars of mine from retailers to bankers to plumbing-supply-house owners have come up to remind me, sometimes 15 or 20 years later, of "the two-cent candy story," and to tell me how it had a sizable impact on how they did business, metaphorically and in fact.Well, the Two-Cent Candy Phenomenon has struck again with oomph and in the most unlikely of places.For years Singapore's "brand" has more or less been Southeast Asia's "place that works." Its legendary operational efficiency in all it does has attracted businesses of all sorts to set up shop there. But as "the rest" in the geographic neighborhood closed the efficiency gap, and China continued to rise-race-soar, Singapore decided a couple of years ago to "rebrand" itself as not only a place that works but also as an exciting, "with it" city. (I was a participant in an early rebranding conference that also featured the likes of the late Anita Roddick, Deepak Chopra, and Infosys founder and superman N. R. Narayana Murthy.)Singapore's fabled operating efficiency starts, as indeed it should, at ports of entry the airport being a prime example. From immigration to baggage claim to transportation downtown, the services are unmatched anywhere in the world for speed and efficiency.Saga . . . Immigration services in Thailand, three days before a trip to Singapore, were a pain. ("Memorable.") And entering Russia some months ago was hardly a walk in the park, either. To be sure, and especially after 9/11, entry to the United States has not been a process you'd mistake for arriving at Disneyland, nor marked by an attitude that shouted "Welcome, honored guest."Singapore immigration services, on the other hand:The entry form was a marvel of simplicity. The lines were short, very short, with more than adequate staffing.The process was simple and unobtrusive.And:The immigration officer could have easily gotten work at Starbucks; she was all smiles and courtesy.And:Yes!Yes!And . . . yes!There was a little candy jar at each Immigration portal!The "candy jar message" in a dozen ways:"Welcome to Singapore, Tom!! We are absolutely beside ourselves with delight that you have decided to come here!"Wow!Wow!Wow!Ask yourself . . . now:What is my (personal, department, project, restaurant, law firm) "Two-Cent Candy"?Does every part of the process of working with us/me include two-cent candies?Do we, as a group, "think two-cent candies"?Operationalizing: Make "two-centing it" part and parcel of "the way we do business around here." Don't go light on the so-called substance but do remember that . . . perception is reality . . . and perception is shaped by two-cent candies as much as by that so-called hard substance.Start: Have your staff collect "two-cent candy stories" for the next two weeks in their routine "life" transactions. Share those stories. Translate into "our world." And implement.Repeat regularly.Forever.(Recession or no recession you can afford two cents.)(In fact, it is a particularly Brilliant Idea for a recession you doubtless don't maximize Two-Cent Opportunities. And what opportunities they are.)

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's seventy-three private notebooks, including illustrations and two unpublished Poirot stories When Agatha Christie died in 1976, at age eighty-five, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide, in more than one hundred countries, she had achieved the impossible more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.So prolific was Agatha Christie's output sixty-six crime novels, twenty plays, six romance novels under a pseudonym and more than one hundred and fifty short stories it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this trueOr did she resort over those fifty-five years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimesFollowing the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.How did the infamous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd really come aboutWhich very famous Poirot novel started life as an adventure for Miss MarpleWhich books were designed to have completely differ-ent endings, and what were theyWhat were the plot ideas that she considered but rejected?Full of details she was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable new book includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced directly from the notebooks and her letters, plus, for the first time, two newly discovered complete Hercule Poirot short stories never before published.

Here is the bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.

Transform Your Workplace!Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they're being treated the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.At the book's center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO's new management-by-the-numbers system, she's charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it's engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.

Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear.Would anything be lost?Everything would be lost.aper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business cards, fireworks and flypaper, photographs and playing cards, tickets and tea bags. We are paper people.But the age of paper is coming to an end. E-books regularly outsell physical books. E-tickets replace the paper variety. Archives are digitized. The world we know was made from paper, and yet everywhere we look, paper is beginning to disappear. As we enter a world beyond paper, Ian Sansom explores the paradoxes of the greatest of man-made materials and shows how some kinds of paper, and the ghosts and shadows of paper, will always be with us.Paper: An Elegy is a history of paper in all its forms and functions. Both a cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of paper, this book is a timely meditation on the very paper it is printed on.

Thirty-nine of America's most successful business leaders share the most important decisions of their careers and the life and career lessons they hold for us all. When former CEO Harlan Steinbaum decided to buy back his retail drug chain with his partners, his life changed dramatically. The personal impact that this one business decision this "tough call" had on Steinbaum made him wonder if others had experienced similar kinds of defining moments in their own careers. To find out, he reached out to some of the most successful people in the country leaders from companies such as Verizon, Chrysler, ESPN, Ogilvy & Mather, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, WellPoint, and Panera Bread Company to pinpoint the career-defining decisions that were integral to their success. The result is Tough Calls from the Corner Office, a treasure trove of rich business wisdom, stories of tough decisions and hard-won victories, and lessons from a lifetime of achievement in the world of business.Tough Calls from the Corner Office offers inspiring stories, lessons, principles, strategies, ideas, and solutions drawn from every stage in a successful career, from early key choices to the final leave-taking from the world of work. Given unprecedented access to such visionaries as Union Square Hospitality Group's Danny Meyer, ESPN's Bill Rasmussen, Build-A-Bear's Maxine Clark, and Let's Make a Deal's Monty Hall, Steinbaum shares their experiences, told in their own words, so that others may learn from them. In a time when many people are at professional crossroads, Tough Calls from the Corner Office offers inspiration and the confidence to believe that tough decisions can be the first step to extraordinary success.

Follow one woman's bumpy, cellulite-riddled ride through size-0 Hollywood and learn how she went from body-dysmorphic to sassy-asstastic in only twenty-five short years of dieting, thousands of dollars in "procedures,". . . and one pair of industrial-strength Spanx.From the best girlfriend you didn't know you had comes this "I Can't Believe She Said That" guide to life in the real world. Actress and comic Lisa Ann Walter dishes about parenthood and the dangers of girl-on-girl snarking, explains why skinny actresses act crazy, and gives riotous advice on everything from the dating mistakes we all make to ten things you should subtract when you weigh yourself (self-tanner and dental work, for starters . . .).So what do you get when you drop a longtime self-loather into the glitz and glamour of HollywoodThis hysterical, and brutally honest, look at the impossible standard of perfection for which so many of us strive. Walter boldly shares her lifelong struggle with low self-esteem which, in her case, includes plenty of painful auditions, failed relationships, and awkward celebrity encounters, plus lots of impossible diets, questionable injectables, and dubious cosmetic procedures. Along the way, the "celebrity adjacent" Walter also tells her sometimes warm, often cringeworthy, and always funny Hollywood stories (including the reason she'd kill for Richard Gere). She also shares her sage advice by offering features such as ways to improve your self-esteem that won't cost you a dime:Four words:Push-up. Bra. Construction. Site. You don't even have to look good to get a response. Just wear sunglasses, square your shoulders, and toss your hair. Then count the whistles.Start frequenting your local gay bar. Both gays and lesbians are much more effusive about how fabulous you are! And you'll get free drinks! Always be seen with decrepit old men you'll look young and beautiful in comparison. Think how well this works for those Girls Next Door.

Massive fire-breathing dragons can be terrifying or kind, evil or accomplices of the hero, but they're never supporting characters, and all expert fantasy artists know how to depict them. Now, for the first time ever, a master dragon drawer reveals his secrets for doing this, taking you along for the ride as he meets these breathtaking creatures face-to-face.Inside you'll find: Easy to follow step-by-step instructions for creating realistic drawings of dragons. Dozens of different types of dragons, along with their unique anatomical and personality traits. An exploration of the digital and hand-drawing steps a dragon drawer must know.

They say kids don't come with a set of instructions the AstroTwins beg to differ!Are you a Cancer mom trying to understand your Sagittarius daughterAre you a Virgo mother with a Pisces son who seems to be your polar oppositeWondering why your little Taurus was such an easy baby, but your Aquarius was anything butEven if you've only ever read your horoscope in the back of a magazine for fun or never given astrology a second thought, you'll be amazed at the insights you'll get from Momstrology, a guide to parenting by the stars.From choosing a preschool, to picking hobbies and activities, to understanding what it means when your toddler gets clingy, or your big kid wants to quit soccer, or your tween talks back, Momstrology is a unique guide through all of the phases of your child's life. Offering charts for every astrological sign to decipher your child's good days and bad days, likes and dislikes, and how your child deals with authority, limits, separation, and siblings, the AstroTwins offer real-world advice, from a cosmic perspective, that is always supportive and never overwhelming. With a section devoted to understanding your strengths and challenges as a mom based on your sign and another section that matches you with your children to see how you all mesh together, Momstrology is a parenting guide like no other.Let Momstrology be your go-to guide in the trenches of parenthood...through tears and triumphs and meltdowns and milestones, for every age and stage.

Intended as a comprehensive resource for designers, creative professionals, marketers, and retailers, The Big Book of Packaging contains 384 pages of the most innovative packaging designs from around the world. With over 500 featured designs and profiles of twelve of the world's leading designers, the book is a must-have resource for anyone interested in the future of packaging and design. In light of the recent lift in environmental consciousness, this volume of the Big Book Series will devote one third of its content to the increasingly important subject of green packaging-showing designers and retailers how to package their products creatively, responsibly, and at low cost, factors that will be reflected in the books own packaging/binding as well.The Big Book of Packaging will appeal to designers, students, marketers, retailers, and aesthetes alike, providing a thorough look at what goes into building an effective package and how to think "outside the box."

A collection of eighty all new poems, Acolytes is distinctly Nikki Giovanni, but different. Not softened, but more inspired by love, celebration, memories and even nostalgia. She aims her intimate and sparing words at family and friends, the deaths of heroes and friends, favorite meals and candy, nature, libraries, and theatre. But in between, the deep and edgy conscience that has defined her for decades shines through when she writes about Rosa Parks, hurricane Katrina, and Emmett Till's disappearance, leaving no doubt that Nikki has not traded one approach for another, but simply made room for both.

Arch and unrepentant, Will Leitch, founding editor of Deadspin.com, is the mouthpiece for all the frustrated fans who just want their games back from big money, bloated egos, and blathering sportscasters. Always a fan first and a sportswriter second, Leitch considers the perfection of fantasy leagues and the meaninglessness of the steroids debate as he exposes Olympic fetishes, parses Shaq's rap attack on Kobe, shares a brew with John Rocker and his surprising girlfriend, and reveals what ESPN and the beer companies really think about you. If you or a fan you love is suffering from a sense of listless dissatisfaction brought on by the leagues and networks, God Save the Fan is your new manifesto.

There's nothing better than a book you can't put down or better yet, a book you'll never forget. This book puts the power of transformational reading into your hands. Jack Canfield, cocreator of the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and self-actualization pioneer Gay Hendricks have invited notable people to share personal stories of books that changed their lives. What book shaped their outlook and habitsHelped them navigate rough seasSpurred them to satisfaction and successThe contributors include Dave Barry, Stephen Covey, Malachy McCourt, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Mark Victor Hansen, John Gray, Christiane Northrup, Bernie Siegel, Craig Newmark, Michael E. Gerber, Lou Holtz, and Pat Williams, to name just a few. Their richly varied stories are poignant, energizing, and entertaining.Author and actor Malachy McCourt tells how a tattered biography of Gandhi, stumbled on in his youth, offered a shining example of true humility and planted the seeds that would help support his sobriety decades later. Bestselling author and physician Bernie Siegel, M.D., tells how William Saroyan's The Human Comedy helped him realize that, in order to successfully treat his patients with life-threatening illnesses, "I had to help them live not just prevent them from dying."Actress Catherine Oxenberg reveals how, at a life crossroads and struggling with bulimia, a book taught her the transforming difference one person could make in the life of another and why that person for her was Richard Burton.Rafe Esquith, the award-winning teacher whose inner-city students have performed Shakespeare all over the world, recounts his deep self-doubt in the midst of his success and how reading To Kill a Mockingbird strengthened him to continue teaching.Beloved librarian and bestselling author Nancy Pearl writes how, at age ten, Robert Heinlein's science fiction book Space Cadet impressed on her the meaning of personal integrity and gave her a vision of world peace she'd never imagined possible. Two years later, she marched in her first civil rights demonstration and learned that there's always a way to make "a small contribution to intergalactic harmony."If you're looking for insight and illumination or simply for that next great book to read You've Got to Read This Book! has treasures in store for you.

With her skill in selling real estate, her expertise in marketing, and her drive to succeed, Kendra Todd has mapped out an exciting and lucrative future for herself one that included taking the right kind of risks, profiting from them, and sharing her knowledge with others. Todd understands that the one thing that keeps people from making the big, bold moves that can improve their lives is a fear of risk, even more than lack of capital. The willingness to try new and different things, and the ability to keep your head on straight while your heart is pounding, is something that Todd knows well. Without risk, she doesn't have a business. Todd will address how men and women view risk from opposite sides of the galaxy, how anyone can become an entrepreneur, how you can set yourself up for success and what the ten steps are for turning risk into opportunity. With quizzes to test what kind of risk taker you are, and examples of successful risks that paid off, Todd is poised to become the hot voice of investment to her generation.

Learn about cryptography and cryptocurrencies, so you can build highly secure, decentralized applications and conduct trusted in-app transactions. About This Book ? Get to grips with the underlying technical principles and implementations of blockchain ? Build powerful applications using Ethereum to secure transactions and create smart contracts ? Explore cryptography, mine cryptocurrencies, and solve scalability issues with this comprehensive guide Who This Book Is For This book will appeal to those who wish to build fast, highly secure, transactional applications. It targets people who are familiar with the concept of blockchain and are comfortable with a programming language. What You Will Learn ? Master the theoretical and technical foundations of the blockchain technology ? Understand the concept of decentralization, its impact, and its relationship with blockchain technology ? Master how cryptography is used to secure data - with practical examples ? Grasp the inner workings of blockchain and the mechanisms behind bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies ? Understand the theoretical foundations of smart contracts ? Learn how Ethereum blockchain works and how to develop decentralized applications using Solidity and relevant development frameworks ? Identify and examine applications of the blockchain technology - beyond currencies ? Investigate alternative blockchain solutions including Hyperledger, Corda, and many more ? Explore research topics and the future scope of blockchain technology In Detail A blockchain is a distributed ledger that is replicated across multiple nodes and enables immutable, transparent and cryptographically secure record-keeping of transactions. The blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, and it has applications in finance, government, media and almost all other industries. Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition has been thoroughly updated and revised to provide a detailed description of this leading technology and its implementation in the real world. This book begins with the technical foundations of blockchain technology, teaching you the fundamentals of distributed systems, cryptography and how it keeps data secure. You will learn about the mechanisms behind cryptocurrencies and how to develop applications using Ethereum, a decentralized virtual machine. You will also explore different other blockchain solutions and get an introduction to business blockchain frameworks under Hyperledger, a collaborative effort for the advancement of blockchain technologies hosted by the Linux Foundation. You will also be shown how to implement blockchain solutions beyond currencies, Internet of Things with blockchain, blockchain scalability, and the future scope of this fascinating and powerful technology. Style and approach This comprehensive guide allows you to build smart blockchain applications and explore the power of this database. The book will let you quickly brush up on the basics of the blockchain database, followed by advanced implementations of blockchain in currency, smart contracts, decentralization, and so on.

A comprehensive guide to design, build and execute effective Big Data strategies using Hadoop About This Book ? Get an in-depth view of the Apache Hadoop ecosystem and an overview of the architectural patterns pertaining to the popular Big Data platform ? Conquer different data processing and analytics challenges using a multitude of tools such as Apache Spark, Elasticsearch, Tableau and more ? A comprehensive, step-by-step guide that will teach you everything you need to know, to be an expert Hadoop Architect Who This Book Is For This book is for Big Data professionals who want to fast-track their career in the Hadoop industry and become an expert Big Data architect. Project managers and mainframe professionals looking forward to build a career in Big Data Hadoop will also find this book to be useful. Some understanding of Hadoop is required to get the best out of this book. What You Will Learn ? Build an efficient enterprise Big Data strategy centered around Apache Hadoop ? Gain a thorough understanding of using Hadoop with various Big Data frameworks such as Apache Spark, Elasticsearch and more ? Set up and deploy your Big Data environment on premises or on the cloud with Apache Ambari ? Design effective streaming data pipelines and build your own enterprise search solutions ? Utilize the historical data to build your analytics solutions and visualize them using popular tools such as Apache Superset ? Plan, set up and administer your Hadoop cluster efficiently In Detail The complex structure of data these days requires sophisticated solutions for data transformation, to make the information more accessible to the users.This book empowers you to build such solutions with relative ease with the help of Apache Hadoop, along with a host of other Big Data tools. This book will give you a complete understanding of the data lifecycle management with Hadoop, followed by modeling of structured and unstructured data in Hadoop. It will also show you how to design real-time streaming pipelines by leveraging tools such as Apache Spark, and build efficient enterprise search solutions using Elasticsearch. You will learn to build enterprise-grade analytics solutions on Hadoop, and how to visualize your data using tools such as Apache Superset. This book also covers techniques for deploying your Big Data solutions on the cloud Apache Ambari, as well as expert techniques for managing and administering your Hadoop cluster. By the end of this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to build expert Big Data systems. Style and approach Comprehensive guide with a perfect blend of theory, examples and implementation of real-world use-cases

This fast-paced guide will quickly enhance your skills to develop a highly scalable Cloud environment About This Book ? Efficiently build a highly scalable and reliable cloud environment for your applications with AWS ? Leverage the various AWS components and services to build a secure, reliable, and robust environment to host your applications on ? This quick-start guide will quickly enhance your skills to develop highly scalable services Who This Book Is For This book is for IT professionals and system administrators looking to design, deploy, and manage your applications and services on the AWS cloud platform. It’s also ideal for developers looking to build highly scalable cloud-based services. A basic understanding of AWS would be beneficial. What You Will Learn ? Find out about IAM to access AWS services securely ? Explore EC2 (virtual server) and scale up/down your application based on heavy traffic ? Learn about unlimited data storage service S3 and host a static website within minutes ? Get to grips with Relational Databases and NoSQL databases under the AWS ecosystem ? Understand the caching mechanism ? Get to know about notifications service and monitor AWS services ? Secure and troubleshoot your AWS architecture In Detail AWS is at the forefront of Cloud Computing today. Businesses are adopting AWS Cloud because of its reliability, versatility, and flexible design. The main focus of this book is teaching you how to build and manage highly reliable and scalable applications and services on AWS. It will provide you with all the necessary skills to design, deploy, and manage your applications and services on the AWS cloud platform. We’ll start by exploring Amazon S3, EC2, and so on to get you well-versed with core Amazon services. Moving on, we’ll teach you how to design and deploy highly scalable and optimized workloads. You’ll also discover easy-to-follow, hands-on steps, tips, and recommendations throughout the book and get to know essential security and troubleshooting concepts. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to create a highly secure, fault tolerant, and scalable environment for your applications to run on. Style and approach This book is all about fast and intensive learning. That means we don’t waste time helping you get started. The new features provided by AWS resources are being covered with highly-effective examples to develop new things, demonstrating different ways to create and use the AWS resources efficiently.

Discover solutions to all your Tkinter and Python GUI development problems About This Book ? Integrate efficient Python GUI programming techniques with Tkinter ? Efficiently implement advanced MVC architectures in your Python GUI apps ? Solve all your problems related to Tkinter and Python GUI development Who This Book Is For This book is for Python developers who are familiar with the basics of the language syntax, data structures, and OOP. You do not need previous experience with Tkinter or other GUI development libraries. What You Will Learn ? Add widgets and handle user events ? Lay out widgets within windows using frames and the different geometry managers ? Configure widgets so that they have a customized appearance and behavior ? Improve the navigation of your apps with menus and dialogs ? Apply object-oriented programming techniques in Tkinter applications ? Use threads to achieve responsiveness and update the GUI ? Explore the capabilities of the canvas widget and the types of items that can be added to it ? Extend Tkinter applications with the TTK (themed Tkinter) module In Detail As one of the more versatile programming languages, Python is well-known for its batteries-included philosophy, which includes a rich set of modules in its standard library; Tkinter is the library included for building desktop applications. Due to this, Tkinter is a common choice for rapid GUI development, and more complex applications can benefit from the full capabilities of this library. This book covers all of your Tkinter and Python GUI development problems and solutions. Tkinter GUI Application Development Cookbook starts with an overview of Tkinter classes and at the same time provides recipes for basic topics, such as layout patterns and event handling. Next, we cover how to develop common GUI patterns, such as entering and saving data, navigating through menus and dialogs, and performing long-running actions in the background. You will then make your apps leverage network resources effectively, perform 2D and 3D animation-related tasks, create 3D objects, and perform advanced graphical operations. Finally, this book covers using the canvas and themed widgets. By the end of the book, you will have an in-depth knowledge of Tkinter classes, and will know how to use them to build efficient and rich GUI applications. Style and approach A practical recipe-based guide that will help you find solutions to all your Tkinter and Python GUI development-related problems.

Build full-stack shopping list applications from scratch for web and mobile platforms using Xcode, Vapor, and Swift About This Book ? Build, package, and deploy an end-to-end app solution for mobile and web with Swift 4 ? Increase developer productivity by creating reusable client and server components ? Develop backend services for your apps and websites using Vapor framework Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who are looking to build full-stack web and native mobile applications using Swift. An understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript would be beneficial when building server-rendered pages with Vapor. What You Will Learn ? Get accustomed to server-side programming as well as the Vapor framework ? Learn how to build a RESTful API ? Make network requests from your app and handle error states when a network request fails ? Deploy your app to Heroku using the CLI command ? Write a test for the Vapor backend ? Create a tvOS version of your shopping list app and explore code-sharing with an iOS platform ? Add registration and authentication so that users can have their own shopping lists In Detail Making Swift an open-source language enabled it to share code between a native app and a server. Building a scalable and secure server backend opens up new possibilities, such as building an entire application written in one language—Swift. This book gives you a detailed walk-through of tasks such as developing a native shopping list app with Swift and creating a full-stack backend using Vapor (which serves as an API server for the mobile app). You'll also discover how to build a web server to support dynamic web pages in browsers, thereby creating a rich application experience. You’ll begin by planning and then building a native iOS app using Swift. Then, you'll get to grips with building web pages and creating web views of your native app using Vapor. To put things into perspective, you'll learn how to build an entire full-stack web application and an API server for your native mobile app, followed by learning how to deploy the app to the cloud, and add registration and authentication to it. Once you get acquainted with creating applications, you'll build a tvOS version of the shopping list app and explore how easy is it to create an app for a different platform with maximum code shareability. Towards the end, you’ll also learn how to create an entire app for different platforms in Swift, thus enhancing your productivity. Style and approach A step-by-step tutorial-based approach that teaches you full-stack Swift through the development of a single application on several platforms.

Become a better web programmer by writing efficient and modular code using ES6 and ES8 About This Book ? Learn to write asynchronous code and improve the readability of your web applications ? Explore advanced concepts such as closures, Proxy, generators, Promise, async functions, and Atomics ? Use different design patterns to create structures to solve common organizational and processing issues Who This Book Is For If you’re a web developer with a basic understanding of JavaScript and wish to learn the latest features of ECMAScript for developing efficient web applications, this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Organize JavaScript programs across multiple files, using ES modules ? Create and work with promises using the Promise object and methods ? Compose async functions to propagate and handle errors ? Solve organizational and processing issues with structures using design patterns ? Use classes to encapsulate and share behavior ? Orchestrate parallel programs using WebWorkers, SharedMemory, and Atomics ? Use and extend Map, Set, and Symbol to work with user-defined classes and simulate data types ? Explore new array methods to avoid looping with arrays and other collections In Detail ECMAScript Cookbook follows a modular approach with independent recipes covering different feature sets and specifications of ECMAScript to help you become an efficient programmer. This book starts off with organizing your JavaScript applications as well as delivering those applications to modem and legacy systems. You will get acquainted with features of ECMAScript 8 such as async, SharedArrayBuffers, and Atomic operations that enhance asynchronous and parallel operations. In addition to this, this book will introduce you to SharedArrayBuffers, which allow web workers to share data directly, and Atomic operations, which help coordinate behavior across the threads. You will also work with OOP and Collections, followed by new functions and methods on the built-in Object and Array types that make common operations more manageable and less error-prone. You will then see how to easily build more sophisticated and expressive program structures with classes and inheritance. In the end, we will cover Sets, Maps, and Symbols, which are the new types introduced in ECMAScript 6 to add new behaviors and allow you to create simple and powerful modules. By the end of the book, you will be able to produce more efficient, expressive, and simpler programs using the new features of ECMAScript. Style and approach This book will follow a modular approach covering independent recipes on different features of ECMAScript throughout the book.