Template engines (TEs) can be very useful in web development scenarios where you need to generate and format text automatically according to specific processing rules. These engines can also help you build your applications based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, making them more robust and maintainable than applications based on spaghetti code. Most programming languages provide built-in or third-party TEs. Java, for example, has Velocity and FreeMarker, among others. For PHP, Smarty is the most used TE.

Go to developer.com to read the rest of the article: Combine JavaScript and a Template Engine for Flexible Web Apps.

In a previous DevX article, I wrote about the JavaScript framework Prototype, which aims to ease the development of dynamic web applications. That article ended with just a few words about Script.aculo.us, which is a fantastic UI library based on Prototype. This article gives Script.aculo.us its due by examining the web controls it provides: autocompleters, sliders, and in-place editors.

Script.aculo.us is a pretty big library, so no single article can cover it completely. However, the knowledge you will gain will enable you to leverage the power of Script.aculo.us web controls to improve the end-user experience.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Script.aculo.us Controls: Do Your Web Users a Favor.

Since AJAX first appeared, developer interest in JavaScript has increased exponentially—and toolsets for building functionality in JavaScript have burgeoned as well. One of the latest tools for JavaScript-related development is Google Gadgets. Many web sites already provide gadgets built with the Google tools, and you can, too. This article shows you how to develop a Google Gadget that fetches DevX RSS feeds and displays them to the user.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Will Your Next Web Application Be a Google Gadget?.

The Prototype home page claims that “Prototype is a JavaScript framework that aims to ease the development of dynamic Web applications.” By using many object-oriented paradigms such as class-driven development and inheritance to enable JavaScript application development, Prototype completely accomplishes its aim. In fact, this framework contains a lot of useful functionalities, which you cannot help but apply to every application you develop once you’ve started using them.

Prototype’s main claim to fame is its rich AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) library, which simplifies the now popular Web development technique for making non-blocking calls to the server through JavaScript. (It topped the recent Ajaxian.com 2006 Survey as the most popular AJAX framework.) Of course, everything you can do with Prototype you also can do using plain JavaScript—upon which Prototype is built. But why would you want to complicate your life? For example, which would you rather type to accomplish the same task: document.getElementById(“myElement”) or $(“myElement”)? If you answered $(“myElement”), then read the remainder of this article for an in-depth discussion of some useful Prototype functions—$ is just one.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: The Productivity Perks Behind Prototype’s Popularity.

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation and is a lightweight data-interchange format. Because it is text-based it is easy for humans to read and write, and it has a regular syntax that’s easy to parse programmatically. JSON is basically a subset of JavaScript and, as you’ll see, is even easier to parse than XML.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Speed Up Your AJAX-based Apps with JSON.

Write once, run anywhere. This Java motto seems to hold true even for mobile devices. Indeed, since it was born J2ME has had an ever-increasing impact on mobile development. Some may argue that J2ME is not as portable as other Java technologies, but even so, the result obtained on different mobile devices is, in most cases, still acceptable.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Build Brilliant Client/Server Apps with J2ME, PHP, and MySQL.

The .NET framework provides a nice way to insert XML documentation tags inside C# source code. These tags can then be extracted to an XML file, and using NDoc, transformed into fully-functional MSDN-style documentation.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Producing Professional MSDN-style Documentation with .NET and NDoc.

The Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) is targeted at cell phones, smart cards, pagers, and other consumer devices. J2ME technology consists of a virtual machine and a set of APIs suitable for tailored runtime environments for these devices. PHP, on the other hand, is a widely used server-based language to build Web applications. But these two radically different technologies work very well together. In this article you’ll see how they can interact via HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). Of course, this is not intended to be a thorough explanation of how HTTP works—you only need to know that HTTP is a request/response protocol. That simply means that the client application performs a request and the server application returns a response.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Obtaining Wireless News with J2ME and PHP.

Steganography, literally “hidden writing,” is nowadays most often associated with embedding data in some form of electronic media. Data is hidden by adding or altering insignificant bits of information of a file. For example, an algorithm designed to embed a text message might slightly alter information describing the RGB composition of a pixel for an image file.

Go to DevX to read the rest of the article: Keeping Secrets Secret: Steganography with .NET.

The C programming language is the book he wrote along with Brian Kernighan. In my humble opinion, it is one of the best book ever written about computer programming.

Without further ado, I just want to say goodbye to one of the people I respect most when it comes to computer science. I have to thank Mr. Ritchie if I can read declarations such as (The C programming Language, chapter 5):

char (*(*x())[])()

x is a function returning a pointer to an array of pointers to functions returning char.
I think he would have said goodbye this way:

printf("goodbye, worldn");

R.I.P. Dennis Ritchie.