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• PHP, We have sessions, and cookies....I love cookies, but they are blowing my mind right now.

  - by Matt

  I am not sure how to go about accessing the variable I need to set on a cookie... I was thinking about using the $_POST global but I dont know how based on my design if it will work. I am using a master page type design seperating index.php from my function includes and database information and individual pages (that will be returned to an include in index.php based on a $_GET) Okay so back to my question. What is the most efficient way to set a cookie on a design that has a main page that everything will branch from. How would I pull the value. Is $_POST a good enough way to go about it? Also...by saying it must be the first thing sent...does that mean I cannot run any serverside scripts before that? I could definately utilize a login query I think but I dont want to write code just to be dissapointed based on my lack of time and knowledge. I did search for answers...I know this most likely feels like a generic question that could be answered in a difference place...but I know I will get an accurate and professional answer here...so I dont want to bet on the half answers I found otherwise. Of course I will sanitize everything and not store any sensitive information (passwords,address,phone,or anything really for that matter besides some kind of session ID and the username) If this is confusing I am sorry but I am on a gov computer...and they lock these tighter than ft knox...so getting my code on here will be a chore until I get back to my room. Thanks, Matt

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• Lua task scheduling

  - by Martin

  I've been writing some scripts for a game, the scripts are written in Lua. One of the requirements the game has is that the Update method in your lua script (which is called every frame) may take no longer than about 2-3 milliseconds to run, if it does the game just hangs. I solved this problem with coroutines, all I have to do is call Multitasking.RunTask(SomeFunction) and then the task runs as a coroutine, I then have to scatter Multitasking.Yield() throughout my code, which checks how long the task has been running for, and if it's over 2 ms it pauses the task and resumes it next frame. This is ok, except that I have to scatter Multitasking.Yield() everywhere throughout my code, and it's a real mess. Ideally, my code would automatically yield when it's been running too long. So, Is it possible to take a Lua function as an argument, and then execute it line by line (maybe interpreting Lua inside Lua, which I know is possible, but I doubt it's possible if all you have is a function pointer)? In this way I could automatically check the runtime and yield if necessary between every single line.

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• Draw Rectangle with XNA

  - by mazzzzz

  Hey guys, I was working on game, and wanted to highlight a spot on the screen when something happens, I created a class to do this for me, and found a bit of code to draw the rectangle static private Texture2D CreateRectangle(int width, int height, Color colori) { Texture2D rectangleTexture = new Texture2D(game.GraphicsDevice, width, height, 1, TextureUsage.None, SurfaceFormat.Color);// create the rectangle texture, ,but it will have no color! lets fix that Color[] color = new Color[width * height];//set the color to the amount of pixels in the textures for (int i = 0; i < color.Length; i++)//loop through all the colors setting them to whatever values we want { color[i] = colori; } rectangleTexture.SetData(color);//set the color data on the texture return rectangleTexture;//return the texture } Problem is that the code above is called every update, (60 times a second), and it was not written with optimization in mind, I have no clue how else to write a code to do this though. It needs to be extremely fast (the code above freezes the game, which has only skeleton code right now).. Any suggestions. Note: Any new code would be great (WireFrame/Fill are both fine). I would like to be able to specify color. Something to point in the right direction would be great, Thanks, Max

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• Designer serialization persistence problem in .NET, Windows Forms

  - by Jules

  ETA: I have a similar, smaller, problem here which, I suspect, is related to this problem. I have a class which has a readonly property that holds a collection of components (* not quite, see below). At design time, it's possible to select from the components on the design surface to add to the collection. (Think imagelist, but instead of selecting one, you can select as many as you want.) As a test, I inherit from button and attach my class to it as a property. The persistence problem occurs when I add a component,to the collection, from the design surface after I have added my button to the form. The best way to demonstrate this is to show you the designer generated code: Private Sub InitializeComponent() Dim Provider1 As WindowsApplication1.Provider = New WindowsApplication1.Provider Me.MyComponent2 = New WindowsApplication1.MyComponent Me.MyComponent1 = New WindowsApplication1.MyComponent Me.MyButton1 = New WindowsApplication1.MyButton Me.MyComponent3 = New WindowsApplication1.MyComponent Me.SuspendLayout() ' 'MyButton1 ' Me.MyButton1.ProviderCollection.Add(Me.MyButton1.InternalProvider) Me.MyButton1.ProviderCollection.Add(Me.MyComponent1.Provider) Me.MyButton1.ProviderCollection.Add(Me.MyComponent2.Provider) Me.MyButton1.ProviderCollection.Add(Provider1) //Wrong should be Me.MyComponent3.Provider ' 'Form1 ' Me.Controls.Add(Me.MyButton1) End Sub Friend WithEvents MyComponent1 As WindowsApplication1.MyComponent Friend WithEvents MyComponent2 As WindowsApplication1.MyComponent Friend WithEvents MyButton1 As WindowsApplication1.MyButton Friend WithEvents MyComponent3 As WindowsApplication1.MyComponent End Class As you can see from the code, the collection is not actually a collection of the components, but a collection of a property, 'Provider', from the components. It looks like the problem is occurring because MyComponent3 is created after MyButton. However, in my opinion, this should not make any difference - by the time the serializer comes to add the provider property of MyComponent3, it's already created. Note: You may wonder, why I'm not using AddRange to persist the collection. The reason for this is that if I do, the behaviour changes and none of the items will persist correctly. The designer will create local fields - like Provider1 - for each item in the collection. However if I add another collection to the class which holds the actual MyComponents and persist this, then, somehow, the AddRange method persists correctly in ProviderCollection! There seems to be some kind of quantum double slit experiment going down in code dom. How can I solve this problem?

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• What vertex shader code should be used for a pixel shader used for simple 2D SpriteBatch drawing in XNA?

  - by Michael

  Preface First of all, why is a vertex shader required for a SilverlightEffect (.slfx file) in Silverlight 5? I'm trying to port a simple 2D XNA game to Silverlight 5 RC, and I would like to use a basic pixel shader. This shader works great in XNA for Windows and Xbox, but I can't get it to compile with Silverlight as a SilverlightEffect. The MS blog for the Silverlight Toolkit says that "there is no difference between .slfx and .fx", but apparently this isn't quite true -- or at least SpriteBatch is working some magic for us in "regular XNA", and it isn't in "Silverlight XNA". If I try to directly copy my pixel shader file into a Silverlight project (and change it to the supported "Effect - Silverlight" importer/processor), when I try to compile I see the following error message: Invalid effect file. Unable to find vertex shader in pass "P0" Indeed, there isn't a vertex shader in my pixel shader file. I haven't needed one with my other 2D XNA apps since I'm just doing basic SpriteBatch drawing. I tried adding a vertex shader to my shader file, using Remi Gillig's comment on this Shawn Hargreaves blog post for guidance, but it doesn't quite work. The shader file successfully compiles, and I see some semblance of my game on screen, but it's tiny, twisted, repeated, and all jumbled up. So clearly something's not quite right. The Real Question So that brings me to my real question: Since a vertex shader is required, is there a basic vertex shader function that works for simple 2D SpriteBatch drawing? And if the vertex shader requires world/view/project matricies as parameters, what values am I supposed to use for a 2D game? Can any shader pros help? Thanks!

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• How to implement properly plugins in C#?

  - by MartyIX

  I'm trying to add plugins to my game and what I'm trying to implement is this: Plugins will be either mine or 3rd party's so I would like a solution where crashing of the plugin would not mean crashing of the main application. Methods of plugins are called very often (for example because of drawing of game objects). What I've found so far: 1) http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/pluginsincsharp.aspx - simple concept that seems like it should work nicely. Since plugins are used in my game for every round I would suffice to add the Restart() method and if a plugin is no longer needed Unload() method + GC should take care of that. 2) http://mef.codeplex.com/Wikipage - Managed Extensibility Framework - my program should work on .NET 3.5 and I don't want to add any other framework separately I want to write my plugin system myself. Therefore this solution is out of question. 3) Microsoft provides: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.addin.aspx but according to a few articles I've read it is very complex. 4) Different AppDomains for plugins. According to Marc Gravell ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/665668/usage-of-appdomain-in-c ) different AppDomains allow isolation. Unloading of plugins would be easy. What would the performance load be? I need to call methods of plugins very often (to draw objects for example). Using Application Domains - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yb506139.aspx A few tutorials on java2s.com Could you please comment on my findings? New approaches are also welcomed! Thanks!

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• How can I find out what is stopping my object from disposing properly?

  - by SLC

  I have a rather large and complex game in C#, and in it are various monsters. The monsters are created in the game by a MonsterCreator, and each monster has various plugins that are loaded from external DLLs. When my monsters die, they call a method in the MonsterCreator, and the MonsterCreator removes them from the game map, removes them from its own internal list of monsters, and then finally calls the Dispose() method on the monster itself. The dispose method calls the dispose method of each plugin, then clears up any of its own code. This seems to work fine, with lots of monsters, but somewhere there is a bug that crops up after a while, where a monster dies, but it has already been removed - it seems the callback telling the MonsterCreator is being called over and over, when the monster should have been removed on the first call. The likely candidate is that some of the plugins for the monster register themselves with an Event that pulses them every X number of seconds so they can perform logic. Stepping through I can see that they are unregistering with the Event when they die, but something is getting through still and I don't know what it is. Do you have any advice for debugging the problem? I can't post code really because it's split across a ton of libraries and plugin dlls, so it's more a case of figuring out the best way to debug it. I threw an exception in code when the monster died callback method is thrown and the monster cannot be found on the map to be removed, so I have the misbehaviing Monster, is there a way I can see what is still linked to it?

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• How do I implement repository pattern and unit of work when dealing with multiple data stores?

  - by Jason

  I have a unique situation where I am building a DDD based system that needs to access both Active Directory and a SQL database as persistence. Initially this wasnt a problem because our design was setup where we had a unit of work that looked like this: public interface IUnitOfWork { void BeginTransaction() void Commit() } and our repositories looked like this: public interface IRepository<T> { T GetByID() void Save(T entity) void Delete(T entity) } In this setup our load and save would handle the mapping between both data stores because we wrote it ourselves. The unit of work would handle transactions and would contain the Linq To SQL data context that the repositories would use for persistence. The active directory part was handled by a domain service implemented in infrastructure and consumed by the repositories in each Save() method. Save() was responsible with interacting with the data context to do all the database operations. Now we are trying to adapt it to entity framework and take advantage of POCO. Ideally we would not need the Save() method because the domain objects are being tracked by the object context and we would just need to add a Save() method on the unit of work to have the object context save the changes, and a way to register new objects with the context. The new proposed design looks more like this: public interface IUnitOfWork { void BeginTransaction() void Save() void Commit() } public interface IRepository<T> { T GetByID() void Add(T entity) void Delete(T entity) } This solves the data access problem with entity framework, but does not solve the problem with our active directory integration. Before, it was in the Save() method on the repository, but now it has no home. The unit of work knows nothing other than the entity framework data context. Where should this logic go? I argue this design only works if you only have one data store using entity framework. Any ideas how to best approach this issue? Where should I put this logic?

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• Creating a content management system for dedicated use

  - by whitstone86

  I've been trying to create a specialised CMS, as none of the current open-source ones fit my needs for this project. I did my research on Google, tried multiple times but haven't got very far with this project. I'm trying to create a CMS for a TV/episode guide which is similar to this: (for some that don't have the :// just copy-and-paste and add it after http in the URL) http library.digiguide.com/lib/programmenextshowing/Police%2C+Camera%2C+Action!-12578 (one such example) - where records expire and delete from the database after expiration. This is the design I'm trying to emulate: http library.digiguide.com/lib/programme/24-84241/Drama/ - the programme http://library.digiguide.com/lib/episode/Under+Surveillance-714873 - a typical episode, could use .htaccess to remove php from name http library.digiguide.com/lib/programmenextshowing/24-84241 - paginated episode display (using script that I found in search here possibly) I don't have access to cron job as it's on Windows/Apache, so that's out the question for this one. I'm not sure how to go about this successfully, anyone got any advice? (Note:Although the linked site runs in ASP.NET, it's the design and feel of it I'm trying to emulate, except in PHP. I've managed to emulate that site's design, but with my own tweaks to it.)

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• Can you help with this assembly language code?

  - by Mugen

  Hi, I've been looking through a piece of code of a pc game that I'm trying to "improve". (ok so maybe I suck at the game but I still want to play it). Could you please look into the following code: fld dword ptr[ebp+00007B1C] fsub dword ptr[esp+64] fst dword ptr[ebp+00007B1C] call 004A2E48 This code is called every second for the level countdown timer. I need to stay on a particular level for a few minutes. If I can modify the above code so that the value pushed into the address [ebp+00007B1C] is 0 then the game level will always time out and it will save me playing those crazy "survival" minigames. I'll explain what I understand from this code. Dont worry, you dont have to go deep into this. In the first line we get the timer value. For example if 97 seconds are remaining then it is here that this value is loaded. In the second line a value (1 second) is subtracted from 97. In the third line 96 is again moved to memory. And finally we have the function call that will do other processing based on the time remaining. Now all I need to do is patch this piece of code somehow so that the value that is pushed is 0 (in the third step). Can you please help me out with this?

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• Using Zend Framework and Doctrine with independend modular structures

  - by stefax

  I've seen a lot of articles about integrating ZF and Doctrine. There is also a proposal for ZF here but they have always two possible structures. Either they put all models into one top level model directory or they put it into a module related model directory. application |-- Bootstrap.php |-- configs |-- controllers |-- models - EITHER HERE |-- modules | -- examplemodule | |-- controllers | |-- models - OR HERE | |-- views |-- views For our projects I see problems for either of the two options: 1. One directory: application/models - in a complex system after a short time there will be hundreds of files, over all when you have the table classes two (e.g. User.php and UserTable.php). 2. Module based model directories: application/modules/examplemodule/models - in many cases we use models in multiple modules at the same time. So the "User" is required e.g. in the modules "game", "administration", ... Is there a way to use some kind of sub directories under the top level directory "models" to get some grouping. It should be completely independent of the module structure. application |-- Bootstrap.php ... |-- models | -- user | |-- User.php | |-- Friend.php | |-- other user related models | -- game | |-- Game.php | |-- Score.php | |-- ... ... Any solution should support autoloading and the class generation from yaml files. Any ideas, links or solutions? Thanks!

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• Pong: How does the paddle know where the ball will hit?

  - by Roflcoptr

  After implementing Pacman and Snake I'm implementing the next very very classic game: Pong. The implementation is really simple, but I just have one little problem remaining. When one of the paddle (I'm not sure if it is called paddle) is controlled by the computer, I have trouble to position it at the correct position. The ball has a current position, a speed (which for now is constant) and a direction angle. So I could calculate the position where it will hit the side of the computer controlled paddle. And so Icould position the paddle right there. But however in the real game, there is a probability that the computer's paddle will miss the ball. How can I implement this probability? If I only use a probability of lets say 0.5 that the computer's paddle will hit the ball, the problem is solved, but I think it isn't that simple. From the original game I think the probability depends on the distance between the current paddle position and the position the ball will hit the border. Does anybody have any hints how exactly this is calculated?

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• Javascript keyup doesn't work as expected, it executes in instances where I have not removed my fing

  - by Binni

  I'm trying to create a simple game in javascript and I'm stuck on how to deal with keys. Small example: function keyUpEvent(event) { alert(event.keyCode); } window.addEventListener("keyup", keyUpEvent, false); I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 and testing it in Firefox 3.5 and Chromium. If I press and release a button instantly I get an alert, which is to be expected, but when I press and hold a button I get a small pause and then a series of alert windows, the expected result is that I only get an alert window when I remove my finger from a button. I reason it has something to do with the fact that when I press and hold a button in a text area for example I get one character, small pause, and then a series of characters: dddddddddddddddd. I believe it's possible to get around this or do it more right or whatever since this game for example: http://bohuco.net/testing/gamequery/pong.html seams not to be affected by this. But I notice if I try out the jquery keyup demo ( api.jquery.com/keyup/ ) I get the same problem. How can I implement basic game key event handling?

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• Embedding Lua functions as member variables in Java

  - by Zarion

  Although the program I'm working on is in Java, answering this from a C perspective is also fine, considering that most of this is either language-agnostic, or happens on the Lua side of things. In the outline I have for the architecture of a game I'm programming, individual types of game objects within a particular class (eg: creatures, items, spells, etc.) are loaded from a data file. Most of their properties are simple data types, but I'd like a few of these members to actually contain simple scripts that define, for example, what an item does when it's used. The scripts will be extremely simple, since all fundamental game actions will be exposed through an API from Java. The Lua is simply responsible for stringing a couple of these basic functions together, and setting arguments. The question is largely about the best way to store a reference to a specific Lua function as a member of a Java class. I understand that if I store the Lua code as a string and call lua_dostring, Lua will compile the code fresh every time it's called. So the function needs to be defined somehow, and a reference to this specific function wrapped in a Java function object. One possibility that I've considered is, during the data loading process, when the loader encounters a script definition in a data file, it extracts this string, decorates the function name using the associated object's unique ID, calls lua_dostring on the string containing a full function definition, and then wraps the generated function name in a Java function object. A function declared in script run with lua_dostring should still be added to the global function table, correct? I'm just wondering if there's a better way of going about this. I admit that my knowledge of Lua at this point is rather superficial and theoretical, so it's possible that I'm overlooking something obvious.

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• Silverlight graphics pixel side position?

  - by Tuukka

  I try to port simple game to silverlight (SameGame). The problem is that my old source code used pixel sizes to allight game marks to board. I draw simple grid using lines and game mark (using rectangle). How i can set rentacle position correctly? Example 20 20 pixels to upper left corner). private void DrawGrid() { LayoutRoot.Children.Clear(); Rectangle r = new Rectangle(); r.Width = 20; r.Height = 20; r.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 255, 0)); r.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 255, 0)); r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, (double)0); r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, (double)0); LayoutRoot.Children.Add(r); Color GridColor = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00); for (int y = 0; y < 11; y++) { Line l = new Line(); l.X1 = 0; l.Y1 = 30 * y - 1; l.X2 = 20 * 30; l.Y2 = 30 * y - 1; l.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(GridColor); l.StrokeThickness = 1; LayoutRoot.Children.Add(l); } for (int x = 0; x < 21; x++) { Line l = new Line(); l.X1 = 30 * x; l.Y1 = 0; l.X2 = 30 * x; l.Y2 = 10 * 30; l.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(GridColor); l.StrokeThickness = 1; LayoutRoot.Children.Add(l); } }

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• Merging sql queries to get different results by date

  - by pedalpete

  I am trying to build a 'recent events' feed and can't seem to get either my query correct, or figure out how to possible merge the results from two queries to sort them by date. One table holds games/, and another table holds the actions of these games/. I am trying to get the recent events to show users 1) the actions taken on games that are publicly visible (published) 2) when a new game is created and published. So, my actions table has actionId, gameid, userid, actiontype, lastupdate My games table has gameid, startDate, createdby, published, lastupdate I currently have a query like this (simplified for easy understanding I hope). SELECT actionId, actions.gameid, userid, actiontype, actions.lastupdate FROM actions JOIN ( SELECT games.gameid, startDate, createdby, published, games.lastupdate FROM games WHERE published=1 AND lastupdate>today-2 ) publishedGames on actions.gameid=games.gameid WHERE actions.type IN (0,4,5,6,7) AND actions.lastupdate>games.lastupdate and published=1 OR games.lastupdate>today-2 AND published=1 This query is looking for actions from published games where the action took place after the game was published. That pretty much takes care of the first thing that needs to be shown. However, I also need to get the results of the SELECT games.gameid, startDate, createdby, published, games.lastupdate FROM games WHERE published=1 AND startDate>today-2 so I can include in the actions list, when a new game has been published. When I run the query as I've got it written, I get all the actionids, and their gameids, but I don't get a row which shows the gameid when it was published. I understand that it may be possible that I need to run two seperate queries, and then somehow merge the results afterword with php, but I'm completely lost on where to start with that as well.

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• Any high-level languages that can use c libraries?

  - by Isaiah

  I know this question could be in vain, but it's just out of curiosity, and I'm still much a newb^^ Anyways I've been loving python for some time while learning it. My problem is obviously speed issues. I'd like to get into indie game creation, and for the short future, 2d and pygame will work. But I'd eventually like to branch into the 3d area, and python is really too slow to make anything 3d and professional. So I'm wondering if there has ever been work to create a high-level language able to import and use c libraries? I've looked at Genie and it seems to be able to use certain libraries, but I'm not sure to what extent. Will I be able to use it for openGL programing, or in a c game engine? I do know some lisp and enjoy it a lot, but there aren't a great many libraries out there for it. Which leads to the problem: I can't stand C syntax, but C has libraries galore that I could need! And game engines like irrlicht. Is there any language that can be used in place of C around C? Thanks so much guys

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• call addsubview again causes slowdown

  - by Tom

  hi guys, i am writing a little music-game for the iphone. I am almost done, this is the only issue which keeps me from rolling it out. any help to solve this is much appreciated. this is what i do: at my appDelegate I add my menu-view-screen to the window. the menu-view-screen acts as a container and controls which view gets presented to the user. means, on the menu-view-screen I got 4 buttons (new game, options, faq, highscore). when the user clicks on a button something as this happens: if (self.gameViewController == nil) { GameViewController *viewController = [[GameViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"GameViewController" bundle:nil]; self.gameViewController = viewController; [viewController release]; } [self.view addSubview:self.gameViewController.view]; [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(handleSwitchViewNotificationFromGameView:) name:@"SwitchView" object:gameViewController]; when the user returns to the menu, this piece of code gets executed: [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self]; [self.gameViewController viewWillDisappear:YES]; [self.gameViewController.view removeFromSuperview]; this works fine for all screens but not for the gamescreen(well this is the only one with heaps of user-interaction) means the responsiveness of the iphone(when playing tones) gets really slow. The performance is fine when I display the gameview for the first time. it starts getting slower as soon as I add it to the menu-views-container-subviews again (addsubview) (basically open up a new game) any ideas what causes(or to get around) this? thanks heaps Best regards Tom

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• generating images with php based on css3 gradient settings?

  - by thrice801

  Hi, Does anyone know if there is a php library, or if there isnt, have any input on how one would go about generating an image via php, from basic HTML element input settings, and CSS 3 gradient parameters. To give an example on why this would be useful, I have found as of a couple days ago, that laying out the wireframe for a webpage using basic Css3 gradient styling speeds up my design and development time by, well, alot. I cant design from photoshop, Ill spend hours tweaking stupid little things that only lead to me tweaking more stupid little things to compensate for stupid little changes. -- So, I had an epiphany to stop using photoshop until the end, and just focus on the main styling of elements, text-shadow, and borders for highlights, and I feel I am able to make super clean, more focused layout by being more restricted to the basics of graphic design with just css. Anyways, so Im planning on after I have the layouts done, to then recreate the graphics in photoshop, so that every browser is able to render the images. This wont take long, but as far as repeating it goes, if I could just do it with PHP, that would be incredible. For instance, take this style for example, which renders a clean looking ipad/pod ish menu/button gradient. [code] background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #808080, #454545 50%, #313131 51%, #333333); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0, #808080), color-stop(.5, #454545), color-stop(.5, #313131), to(#333333));[/code] Basically what Im looking to do is take one or more inputs that control rendering the image as you see there. Take a width and a height input, and then render the image gradient accordingly, so I can save it, upload it and then use it in my designs. So ya, I know PHP has some image generation capabilities but I dont know to what extent, any input on the most effective way to go about doing this or whether it already exists, would be appreciated!

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• Is it possible to do A/B testing by page rather than by individual?

  - by mojones

  Lets say I have a simple ecommerce site that sells 100 different t-shirt designs. I want to do some a/b testing to optimise my sales. Let's say I want to test two different "buy" buttons. Normally, I would use AB testing to randomly assign each visitor to see button A or button B (and try to ensure that that the user experience is consistent by storing that assignment in session, cookies etc). Would it be possible to take a different approach and instead, randomly assign each of my 100 designs to use button A or B, and measure the conversion rate as (number of sales of design n) / (pageviews of design n) This approach would seem to have some advantages; I would not have to worry about keeping the user experience consistent - a given page (e.g. www.example.com/viewdesign?id=6) would always return the same html. If I were to test different prices, it would be far less distressing to the user to see different prices for different designs than different prices for the same design on different computers. I also wonder whether it might be better for SEO - my suspicion is that Google would "prefer" that it always sees the same html when crawling a page. Obviously this approach would only be suitable for a limited number of sites; I was just wondering if anyone has tried it?

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• Best practises for Magento Deployment

  - by Spongeboy

  I am looking setting up a deployment process for a highly customised Magento site, and was wondering how other people do this. I will be setting up dev, UAT and prod environments. All the Magento files will be in source control (SVN). At this stage, I can't see any requirements for changing the DB, so the 3 databases will be manually maintained. Specifically, How do you apply Magento upgrades? (Individually in each env, or on dev then roll out, or just give up on upgrades?) What files/folders do leave alone in each environment (e.g. magento/app/etc/local.xml) Do you restrict developers to editing specific files/folders? Do you restrict theme designers to editing specific files/folders? How do you manage database changes? Theme Designer Files/Folders Designers can restricted to editing the following folders- app/design/frontend/your_interface/your_theme/layout/ app/design/frontend/your_interface/your_theme/template/ app/design/frontend/your_interface/your_theme/locale/ skin/frontend/your_interface/your_theme/ Extension Developer Files/Folders Extension developers can edit the following folders/files- /app/code/local /app/etc/modules/<Namespace>_<Module>.xml Database environment management As the store's base URL is stored in the database, you cannot just copy databases between environments. Options include- Overriding the base url in php. Blog article on setting up dev and staging databases Changing the base url in the database after copying. (Where is this stored?) Doing a MySQLDump or backup, then doing a replace on the URL in the SQL file.

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• mysql subselect alternative

  - by Arnold

  Hi, Lets say I am analyzing how high school sports records affect school attendance. So I have a table in which each row corresponds to a high school basketball game. Each game has an away team id and a home team id (FK to another "team table") and a home score and an away score and a date. I am writing a query that matches attendance with this seasons basketball games. My sample output will be (#_students_missed_class, day_of_game, home_team, away_team, home_team_wins_this_season, away_team_wins_this_season) I now want to add how each team did the previous season to my analysis. Well, I have their previous season stored in the game table but i should be able to accomplish that with a subselect. So in my main select statement I add the subselect: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM game_table WHERE game_table.date BETWEEN 'start of previous season' AND 'end of previous season' AND ( (game_table.home_team = team_table.id AND game_table.home_score > game_table.away_score) OR (game_table.away_team = team_table.id AND game_table.away_score > game_table.home_score)) In this case team-table.id refers to the id of the home_team so I now have all their wins calculated from the previous year. This method of calculation is neither time nor resource intensive. The Explain SQL shows that I have ALL in the Type field and I am not using a Key and the query times out. I'm not sure how I can accomplish a more efficient query with a subselect. It seems proposterously inefficient to have to write 4 of these queries (for home wins, home losses, away wins, away losses). I am sure this could be more lucid. I'll absolutely add color tomorrow if anyone has questions

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• Can I interrupt javascript code and then continue on a keystroke?

  - by Brian Ramsay

  I am porting an old game from C to Javascript. I have run into an issue with display code where I would like to have the main game code call display methods without having to worry about how those status messages are displayed. In the original code, if the message is too long, the program just waits for the player to toggle through the messages with the spacebar and then continues. This doesn't work in javascript, because while I wait for an event, all of the other program code continues. I had thought to use a callback so that further code can execute when the player hits the designated key, but I can't see how that will be viable with a lot of calls to display.update(msg) scattered throughout the code. Can I architect things differently so the event-based, asynchronous model works, or is there some other solution that would allow me to implement a more traditional event loop? Am I making sense? Example: // this is what the original code does, but obviously doesn't work in Javascript display = { update : function(msg) { // if msg is too long // wait for user input // ok, we've got input, continue } }; // this is more javascript-y... display = { update : function(msg, when_finished) { // show part of the message $(document).addEvent('keydown', function(e) { // display the rest of the message when_finished(); }); } }; // but makes for amazingly nasty game code do_something(param, function() { // in case do_something calls display I have to // provide a callback for everything afterwards // this happens next, but what if do_the_next_thing needs to call display? // I have to wait again do_the_next_thing(param, function() { // now I have to do this again, ad infinitum } }

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• Null reference exceptions in .net

  - by Carlo

  Hello, we're having this big problem with our application. It's a rather large application with several modules, and thousands and thousands lines of code. A lot of parts of the application are designed to exist only with a reference to another object, for example a Person object can never exists without a House object, so if you at any point in the app say: bool check = App.Person.House == null; check should always be false (by design), so, to keep using that example, while creating modules, testing, debugging, App.Person.House is never null, but once we shipped the application to our client, they started getting a bunch of NullReferenceException with the objects that by design, should never have a null reference. They tell us the bug, we try to reproduce it here, but 90% of the times we can't, because here it works fine. The app is being developed with C# and WPF, and by design, it only runs on Windows XP SP 3, and the .net framework v3.5, so we KNOW the user has the same operative system, service pack, and .net framework version as we do here, but they still get this weird NullReferenceExceptions that we can't reproduce. So, I'm just wondering if anyone has seen this before and how you fixed it, we have the app running here at least 8 hours a day in 5 different computers, and we never see those exceptions, this only happens to the client for some reason. ANY thought, any clue, any solution that could get us closer to fixing this problem will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• Discussion on SEO best-practices for site development involving php...

  - by Bradley Herman

  Recently in our work, I've started getting some experience with SEO (finally). It's something I've put off for a long time because I've always maintained that SEO is a buzz-word b.s. pseudo-science and more about providing quality, relevant content (assuming proper header tags and the basics are covered). However, sometimes a client doesn't have stellar content yet still demands SEO and high rankings. While it's not how I design sites 100% of the time (as design dictates structure), I typically create a basic template from the design my boss gives me, then I optimize it, and then strip the top and bottom and move those to header.php and footer.php, using the following to bring in the header and footer based on AJAX versus HTML requests: <?php if($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']==''){ include('includes/header.php'); }?> #content here <?php if($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']==''){ include('includes/footer.php'); }?> Then, I use jQuery to intercept page requests and I use AJAX to fill in, for example, a #copy div with the new content. This avoids unnecessarily loading all the header and footer info everytime, but still allows users without Java to access pages without any problems. (also to think about, depending on size of content, do the extra http requests added using this method render it more of a server strain versus a single, larger file?) I don't have a really solid understanding of the meta keywords and their SEO significance, but as I recall reading, the keywords, title, and description on a page should match up to the pages content--ie. each page should have slightly different keywords/description while retaining some common ground. What I'm getting at here is trying to foster a discussion on whether my approach is flawed to begin with, if there are things I can do (within reason) that keep the site structure simple but allow for better SEO practices, or if my SEO understandings are wrong. This isn't a question, per say, but hopefully a constructive discussion here that more than just I can learn from. I appreciate any responses and hope to hear from you. Thanks!

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