Rails 2.1 brings a new level of stability and power to this acclaimed web development framework, but keeping track of its numerous moving parts is still a chore. Rails Pocket Reference offers you a painless alternative to hunting for resources online, with brief yet thorough explanations of the most frequently used methods and structures supported by Rails 2.1, along with key concepts you need to work through the framework's most tangled corners.Organized to help you quick...

Early user interface (UI) practitioners were trained in cognitive psychology, from which UI design rules were based. But as the field evolves, designers enter the field from many disciplines. Practitioners today have enough experience in UI design that they have been exposed to design rules, but it is essential that they understand the psychology behind the rules in order to effectively apply them. In Designing with the Mind in Mind, Jeff Johnson, author of the best selling GUI Bloopers, p...

Information architecture (IA) is far more challenging—and necessary—than ever. With the glut of information available today, anything your organization wants to share should be easy to find, navigate, and understand. But the experience you provide has to be familiar and coherent across multiple interaction channels, from the Web to smartphones, smartwatches, and beyond.To guide you through this broad ecosystem, this popular guide—now in its fourth edition—provides essential concept...

Learn how to solve the real problems you face with CSS. This cookbook offers hundreds of practical examples for using CSS to format your web pages, and includes code samples you can use right away. You'll find exactly what you need, from the basics to complex hacks and workarounds.Each recipe explains how to customize a solution to meet your needs, and each chapter features a sample design that showcases the topics discussed. You'll learn about the behavior of the latest b...

Discover how easy it is to design killer interfaces and responsive websites with the Bootstrap framework. This practical book gets you started building pages with Bootstrap’s HTML/CSS-based tools and design templates right away. You’ll also learn how to extend your app with interactive features, using its suite of jQuery plugins—often without writing a single line of code.Developed by Twitter and available free from GitHub, Bootstrap supports responsive design by dynamically adjust...

If you want to get ahead in this new era of interaction design, this is the reference you need. Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch have made gestural interfaces popular, but until now there's been no complete source of information about the technology.Designing Gestural Interfaces provides you with essential information about kinesiology, sensors, ergonomics, physical computing, touchscreen technology, and new interface patterns -- all you need to know to aug...

Ruby on Rails is the super-productive new way to develop full-featured web applications. With Ruby on Rails, powerful web applications that once took weeks or months to develop can now be produced in a matter of days. If it sounds too good to be true, it isn't.If you're like a lot of web developers, you've probably considered kicking the tires on Rails - the framework of choice for the new generation of Web 2.0 developers. Ruby on Rails: Up and Running takes you out for a ...

Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL offers backgrounds in information studies, computer science, and sociology. This book is divided into three parts: analyzing social media, NodeXL tutorial, and social-media network analysis case studies. Part I provides background in the history and concepts of social media and social networks. Also included here is social network analysis, which flows from measuring, to mapping, and modeling collections of connections. The next part focuses on t...

Mobile devices outnumber desktop and laptop computers three to one worldwide, yet little information is available for designing and developing mobile applications. Mobile Design and Development fills that void with practical guidelines, standards, techniques, and best practices for building mobile products from start to finish. With this book, you'll learn basic design and development principles for all mobile devices and platforms. You'll also explore the more advanced capabiliti...

Designing a good interface isn't easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology -- web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices -- may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well.UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and...

Smart web developers will tell you that the sooner you detect your code mistakes, the quicker you can fix them, and the less the project will cost in the long run. Well, the most efficient way to detect your mistakes in PHP is with PHPUnit, an open source framework that automates unit testing by running a battery of tests as you go. The benefits of PHPUnit are significant:a reduction in the effort required to frequently test codefewer overall defectsadded ...

Build exciting, scalable web applications quickly and confidently using Google App Engine and this book, even if you have little or no experience in programming or web development.App Engine is perhaps the most appealing web technology to appear in the last year, providing an easy-to-use application framework with basic web tools. While Google's own tutorial assumes significant experience, Using Google App Engine will help anyone get started with this platform. By the end ...