Static typing is great because it keeps you out of trouble. Dynamic typing is great because it gets out of your way and lets you get your work done faster. The debate between strongly and dynamically typed languages rages on, but understanding the issue starts with weak typing and languages such as C.
C treats everything like a number. A character like a or 7 or % is the number of the... Read More
The trouble with a color’s name is that it never really is perceived as the exact same color to two different individuals — especially if they have a stake in a website’s emotional impact. Name a color, and you’re most likely to give a misleading impression. Even something like “blue” is uncertain. To be more precise, it could be "sky blue", "ocean blue", "jeans blue" or even "arc welder... Read More
When writing a web application from scratch, it’s easy to feel like we can get by simply by relying on a DOM manipulation library (like jQuery) and a handful of utility plugins. The problem with this is that it doesn’t take long to get lost in a nested pile of jQuery callbacks and DOM elements without any real structure in place for our applications.
In short, we’re stuck with spaghetti... Read More
Many people think of PHP, Ruby on Rails or Python and Django when choosing a language to create a new website or when choosing a language to learn to get that exciting new job. .NET, however, seems to occupy a space somewhat apart from this playground of cool kids. It's always the last to be picked for team sports; it was shouting “Wassup!” at parties well after 2000; and it has been just... Read More
I’m pretty confident that I won’t surprise anyone here by saying that CSS sprites have been around for quite a while now, rearing their somewhat controversial heads in the Web development sphere as early as 2003.
Still, the CSS sprite hasn’t truly found its way into the everyday toolkit of the common Web developer. While the theory behind CSS sprites is easy enough and its advantages... Read More
Multisite is a powerful new feature that arrived with the release of WordPress 3.0. It allows website managers to host multiple independent websites with a single installation of WordPress. Although each “website” in a network is independent, there are many ways to share settings, code and content throughout the entire network.
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been developing... Read More
If you’re into WordPress development, you can’t ignore hooks for long before you have to delve into them head on. Modifying WordPress core files is a big no-no, so whenever you want to change existing functionality or create new functionality, you will have to turn to hooks.
In this article, I would like to dispel some of the confusion around hooks, because not only are they the way to... Read More
WordPress plugins are PHP scripts that alter your website. The changes could be anything from the simplest tweak in the header to a more drastic makeover (such as changing how log-ins work, triggering emails to be sent, and much more).
Whereas themes modify the look of your website, plugins change how it functions. With plugins, you can create custom post types, add new tables to your... Read More
While many functions you already use in WordPress communicate with the database there is an easy and safe way to do this directly using the $wpdb class. Built on the great ezsql class by Justin Vincent, $wpdbwill allow you to address queries to any table in your database, and it will also help you handle the return data. Since this is built in WP functionality, there is no need to open a... Read More
