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• How to number nested ordered lists.

  - by Wes

  Is there any way through CSS to style nested ordered lists to display sub numbers? The idea is similar to using heading levels. However what I'd really like to see is the following. Note each of these subsections has text not just a title. This isn't a real example just some organisational stuff. Now I know I can use <h1>-<h6> but nested lists would be much clearer and allow for different indentation styling. Also it would be symentically correct. Note I don't think that <h1>-<h6> are correct in many ways as the name doesn't apply to the whole section. 1 Introduction. 1.1 Scope Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah 1.2 Purpose Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah 2 Cars Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah 2.1 engines sub Blah Blah Blah sub Blah Blah Blah 2.2 Wheels ... ... 2.10.21 hub caps sub-sub Blah Blah Blah sub-sub Blah Blah Blah 2.10.21.1 hub cap paint sub-sub-sub Blah Blah Blah sub-sub-sub Blah Blah Blah 3 Planes 3.1 Commercial Airlines. ... ... 212 Glossary

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• Yahoo search: different results shown in two identical searches

  - by Marco Demaio

  Hello,simple question: searching on http://www.yahoo.it for villa matrimonio bologna I noticed Yahoo shows different results. You need to retry few times to get this done maybe exiting the browser and openeing it again, or maybe searching once and then clearing browser cookies and then search again (it's even easier to test if you use two different browsers at the same time to search for the same phrase). Anyway in order to reproduce this easily I write down here the query shown in the address bar after the search, so you can just click on these to see the results shown by entering these query: http://it.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AirvLYKvBMPP_6MpAmONN14brK5_?vc=&p=villa+matrimonio+bologna&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-709 http://it.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AirvLYKvBMPP_6MpAmONN14brK5_?vc=&p=villa+matrimonio+bologna&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp Note the last parameter fr is different, but it's Yahoo that set it (not me), I don't even know what it means. You can see in the search box that the searched phrase is IDENTICAL in both cases. So why Yahoo is giving out different results on same search phrase? I used the same browser and performed the test in few minutes by simply trying more than once. You may also notice that the number of results returned (written on the left side of the page) is different, for the 1st search it returns 274K results, for the 2nd one 5.38M results. Actually you might think that this is just an error on Yahoo, but it's almost 1 year that while looking once in a while at some websites to see how they are ranking on Yahoo and also Google, I noticed that two searches on the same phrase show up different results even on the same day after few minutes/hours. I couldn't reproduce this behaviour also on Google so I can not say for sure, but since it seems to me it happened sometimes I was wondering if anyone of you noticed it too. Do you know if this is the normal behaviour of search engines? Because if it's normal (and it's just me that noticed it only now) I wonder how do you understand how well a site is ranking on a search engine, you could even see one of your customer's website ranking differently compared to what your customer sees on his PC.

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• WordPress is now nicely supported on SQL Server (and SQL Azure for that matter)

  - by Eric Nelson

  WordPress is enormously popular for blogs and full websites thanks to an awesome eco system which has built up around it, the simplicity (relatively) of getting it up and running plus the flexibility to “bend it” in all sorts of directions. When I say bend, check out the following which are all WordPress sites My “back up blog” http://iupdateable.wordpress.com/  My groups “odd site” :) http://ubelly.com My favourite “cheap games” site http://www.frugalgaming.co.uk/  WordPress users typically run their sites on Linux and MySQL, although PHP (the language in which WordPress is written) can be happily run on Windows. Both fine technologies in their own right, but for me (and probably a fair few others) I would love to use WordPress but with the technologies I know best (aka Windows, IIS and SQL Server). However, that has proven to be actually rather tricky in practice to get working – until now. Earlier last month OmniTI released a patch for WordPress which provides SQL Server and SQL Azure support.  In parallel with that some fine folks inside Microsoft have also created http://wordpress.visitmix.com which contains information about running WordPress on the Microsoft platform with a particular focus on SQL Server and SQL Azure.  Top stuff! To run WordPress with SQL Server: Download and Install the WordPress on SQL Server Distro/Patch And then you will quite likely need to migrate: Check out how to Migrate to Windows and SQL Server by Zach Owens who is moving his blog to Windows and SQL Server Enjoy Related Links Running PHP on IIS on Windows http://php.iis.net/  If PHP is not your thing, then the following Blog engines are .NET based BlogEngine http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/ DasBlog http://www.dasblog.info/ Subtext http://subtextproject.com/ (which happens to power http://geekswithblogs.net where my main blog is http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable)

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• HTTPS To http redirect issue. How to overcome?

  - by Akshay

  Have already seen suggests on how to rewrite https to http. currently using this technique : RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http ://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Problem : I am currently on hostgator VPS and have found Google indexing my HTTPS pages. Weird for me as never bought an SSL. My site is a blog only. When spoke to Google forums, ( https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/2Hz46t44nwk/7voZWudFtAQJ ), they say I should redirect https to http. Now when I have redirected this using the above method, I am still getting SSL warning in browsers. And found that Google is still indexing my new pages with https. I feel as I do not have an SSL, adding a redirect in https doesn't work. So if Google indexes my https page, then I should go and buy SSL, and tell there to redirect https to http. Why would I do that? Please help me, reduced the traffic by nearly 30% because of this. Have even told search engines to go to this file (disallows everything) if they are on https. Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt

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• 2D/Isometric map algorithm

  - by Icarus Cocksson

  First of all, I don't have much experience on game development but I do have experience on development. I do know how to make a map, but I don't know if my solution is a normal or a hacky solution. I don't want to waste my time coding things, and realise they're utterly crap and lose my motivation. Let's imagine the following map. (2D - top view - A square) X: 0 to 500 Y: 0 to 500 My character currently stands at X:250,Y:400, somewhere near center of 100px above bottom and I can control him with my keyboard buttons. LEFT button does X--, UP button does Y-- etc. This one is kid's play. I'm asking this because I know there are some engines that automate this task. For example, games like Diablo 3 uses an engine. You can pretty much drag drop a rock to map, and it is automatically being placed here - making player unable to pass through/detect the collision. But what the engine exactly does in the background? Generates a map like mine, places a rock at the center, and checks it like: unmovableObjects = array('50,50'); //we placed a rock at 50,50 location if(Map.hasUnmovableObject(CurrentPlayerX, CurrentPlayerY)) { //unable to move } else { //able to move } My question is: Is this how 2D/Isometric maps are being generated or there is a different and more complex logic behind them?

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• Architecture Standards &ndash; BPMN vs. BPEL for Business Process Management

  - by pat.shepherd

  I get asked often which business process standard an organization should use; BPMN or BPEL?  As I explain to folks, they both have strengths.  Here is a great article that helps understand the benefits of both and where to use them.  The good news is that, with Oracle SOA Suite and BPM suite, you have the option and flexibility to use both in the same SCA model and runtime container.  Good stuff. Here is the great article that Mark Nelson wrote: The right tool for the right job BPEL and BPMN are both ‘languages’ or ‘notations’ for describing and executing business processes. Both are open standards. Most business process engines will support one or the other of these languages. Oracle however has chosen to support both and treat them as equals. This means that you have the freedom to choose which language to use on a process by process basis. And you can freely mix and match, even within a single composite. (A composite is the deployment unit in an SCA environment.) So why support both? Well it turns out that BPEL is really well suited to modeling some kinds of processes and BPMN is really well suited to modeling other kinds of processes. Of course there is a pretty significant overlap where either will do a great job What BPM adds to SOA Suite | RedStack

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• Which toolkit to use for 3D MMO game development?

  - by Ahmet Yildirim

  Lately i've been thinking about which path to follow for developing an 3D Online game. I have googled a lot but i couldnt find a good article that covers both game development and online server & client development in same context. This question has been in mind for about 2 weeks now. So.. yesterday i started developing a game from scratch by using Irrlicht.Net Wrapper to use Socket library of .NET which im already familiar. But i found out .Net wrapper of Irrlicht is not totally finished yet and still have lacks from the original. So i lost all my motives :/. So i thought why not to ask the experts before i run into another dead end... What Game Engine and Networking Library is best way to go for 3D MMO Development? Here is some of my early conclusions: Please let me know the ones im wrong. C++: Best Performance for 3D Graphics. Most Game Engines has native C++ Libraries. Lacks a Solid Socket Library .NETC++ Lacks Intellisense Support. C#: Intellisense Support NET Socket Library Lacks 3D Graphics Performance Lacks a native solid 3D Game Engine

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• Animating DOM elements vs refreshing a single Canvas

  - by mgibsonbr

  A few years ago, when the HTML Canvas element was still kinda fresh, I wrote a small game in a rather "unusual" way: each game element had its own canvas, and frequently animated elements even had multiple canvases, one for each animation sprite. This way, the translation would be done by manipulating the DOM position of the canvases, while the sprite animation would consist of altering the visibility of the already drawn canvases. (z-indexes, of course, were the tricky part) It worked like a charm: even in IE6 with excanvas it showed a decent performance, and everything was rather consistent between browsers, including some smartphones. Now I'm thinking in writing a larger game engine in the same fashion, so I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to do so in the current context (with all the advances in browsers and so on). I know I'm trading memory for time, so this needs to be customizable (even at runtime) for each machine the game will be running. But I believe using separate canvases would also help to avoid the game "freezing" on CPU spikes, since the translation would still happen even if the redraws lag for a while. Besides, the browsers' rendering engines are already optimized in may ways, so I'm guessing this scheme would also reduce the load on the CPU (in contrast to doing everything in JavaScript - specially the less optimized ones). It looks good in my head, but I'd like to hear the opinion of more experienced people before proceeding further. Is there any known drawback of doing this? I'm particulartly unexperienced in dealing with the GPU, so I wonder whether this "trick" would nullify any benefit of using a single, big canvas. Or maybe on modern devices it's overkill (though I'm skeptic about the claims that canvas+js - especially WebGL - will ever be a good alternative to native code). Any thoughts?

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• How will my Electronic Engineering degree be received in the Canadian Game Development market? [closed]

  - by Harikawashi

  I have a Electronic Engineering with Computer Science Degree from a reputable South African university. The EE with CS degree is basically Electronic Engineering, with some of the high voltage subjects thrown out and replaced with computer science subjects - mostly quite theoretical, but not in too much depth. I went on to earn a Masters Degree in Digital Signal Processing, focussing on Speech Recognition in Educational Applications. I have always loved programming - I taught myself QBASIC when I was in primary school, I learned Java at school, did some low level C at University, and taught myself C# and Python while doing my post graduate degree. C# is currently my strong suit, I think I am pretty capable with it. I have two years work experience in Namibia - working as a consulting electrical engineer (no software content whatsoever) and also developing C# desktop applications for the company I work for. I would like to move to Canada next year and work in the Game Development Industry as programmer or software engineer. My interests in particular are towards the more mathematical applications, like game and physics engines, or statistical disciplines like artificial intelligence. However, these are passions - not areas in which I have any work experience. So the question: How well will my BEngEE&CS and MScEng be received in the game industry? Seeing as it's not a pure software degree and I have no official software development work experience?

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• Which software to keep track of my project?

  - by Exa

  I'm about to start the first real phase of my game development which will consist of the acquisition of information, resources and the definition of where I want to go and what I will need for that. I just want to make sure that I'm prepared as best as possible before I actually start development. I don't like the thought of using Microsoft Word or Excel for my project management... I already worked with MS Project but I don't think it fits my needs. I need a software where I can easily maintain project steps, milestones, important issues, information about technologies and engines I use, as well as simple notes and thoughts I just want to write down. I usually prefer a whiteboard for stuff like that but unfortunately it's not a persistent way of storing. ;) Also writing it down the old-school way is something I can think of, but only for quick notes... Which software do you use for that? Are there commonly used programs? Is there any free software at all?

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• Sorting a Grid of Data in ASP.NET MVC

  Last week's article, Displaying a Grid of Data in ASP.NET MVC, showed, step-by-step, how to display a grid of data in an ASP.NET MVC application. Last week's article started with creating a new ASP.NET MVC application in Visual Studio, then added the Northwind database to the project and showed how to use Microsoft's Linq-to-SQL tool to access data from the database. The article then looked at creating a Controller and View for displaying a list of product information (the Model). This article builds on the demo application created in Displaying a Grid of Data in ASP.NET MVC, enhancing the grid to include bi-directional sorting. If you come from an ASP.NET WebForms background, you know that the GridView control makes implementing sorting as easy as ticking a checkbox. Unfortunately, implementing sorting in ASP.NET MVC involves a bit more work than simply checking a checkbox, but the quantity of work isn't significantly greater and with ASP.NET MVC we have more control over the grid and sorting interface's layout and markup, as well as the mechanism through which sorting is implemented. With the GridView control, sorting is handled through form postbacks with the sorting parameters - what column to sort by and whether to sort in ascending or descending order - being submitted as hidden form fields. In this article we'll use querystring parameters to indicate the sorting parameters, which means a particular sort order can be indexed by search engines, bookmarked, emailed to a colleague, and so on - things that are not possible with the GridView's built-in sorting capabilities. Like with its predecessor, this article offers step-by-step instructions and includes a complete, working demo available for download at the end of the article. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• How do you set up the directory structure for a multilingual site without duplicating content?

  - by Ricardo

  I want to make a website in two languages. I've looked around and settled on the directory option of separating both languages. How do I make it work? Let's say I have the following three files for the landing homepage, the English page and the Spanish page: http://www.domain.com/index.html http://www.domain.com/en/index.html http://www.domain.com/es/index.html Let's also say that /index.html will be in English, with a link to /es/index.html. In turn, /es/index.html will have a link to the English version. Would this be back to /index.html or to /en/index.html. How do I get both English versions (the one at the root and the one in the directory) to actually be the same file in the same directory? I'm new to this, so I'm not using any scripts yet. To me, the obvious solution is to duplicate both English versions and have the one at the root point to files under the /en/ directory, but I'm not a fan of duplication and I've learned that search engines really frown upon that. Anyone point me in the right direction?

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• Collision detection in 3D space

  - by dreta

  I've got to write, what can be summed up as, a compelte 3D game from scratch this semester. Up untill now i have only programmed 2D games in my spare time, the transition doesn't seem tough, the game's simple. The only issue i have is collision detection. The only thing i could find was AABB, bounding spheres or recommendations of various physics engines. I have to program a submarine that's going to be moving freely inside of a cave system, AFAIK i can't use physics libraries, so none of the above solves my problem. Up untill now i was using SAT for my collision detection. Are there any similar, great algorithms, but crafted for 3D collision? I'm not talking about octrees, or other optimalizations, i'm talking about direct collision detection of one set of 3D polygons with annother set of 3D polygons. I thought about using SAT twice, project the mesh from the top and the side, but then it seems so hard to even divide 3D space into convex shapes. Also that seems like far too much computation even with octrees. How do proffessionals do it? Could somebody shed some light.

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• What's a good Game development platform for a platformer game with these characteristics?

  - by Joe

  Yes, I know, the best way to make an indie game is to learn to code. I've got some scripting experience, but I want to do worldbuilding with already-existing tools (and communities surrounding those tools), and I've been really impressed with games like An Untitled Story that were made with pre-packaged toolsets at their core, like Game Maker. :) So I'm planning to make my game using either Game Maker or something like it. The basic parameters of my planned game: -2D platformer. -Physics/speed akin to Sonic the Hedgehog. -Large, non-linear world, flowing as seamlessly as possible -- think Super Metroid, but without the forced screen transitions. The first two points have me leaning toward Game Maker -- Plenty of 2D platformers have been made with it, and there are serviceable, openly available Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style physics engines for it that could be adapted to my needs with minimal muss and fuss. But the third makes me antsy -- from what limited information I hear, Game Maker has problems with large levels/boards/screens/whateveryoucallthem, thus necessitating transitions between screens. I want to avoid that if at all possible -- it would, I believe, fundamentally alter the flow of the game. I understand that generally speaking, the more you have loaded into memory the more things are going to chug (especially for a one-size-fits-all game development platform that isn't a model of efficient coding), but I'm hoping there are systems that can un-load objects that are sufficiently far offscreen and thus better produce seamlessness. Any thoughts, people? :) The sooner I can get a basic pre-fab physics engine and world-building program up and running, the sooner I can start prototyping areas and generally tooling around. Should I be looking at Game Maker, or elsewhere? (My current plan is to more-or-less build the game prototype-style, then worry about art and sound at the very end once the damn thing is playable.)

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• Restful Java based web services in json + html5 and javascript no templates (jsp/jsf/freemarker) aka fat/thick client

  - by Ismail Marmoush

  I have this idea of building a website which service JSON data through restful services framework. And will not use any template engines like jsp/jsf/freemarker. Just pure html5 and Javascript libs. What do you think of the pros and cons of such design ? Just for elaboration and brain storming a friend of mine argued with the following concerns: sounds like gwt this way you won't have any control over you service api for example say you wanna charge the user per request how will you handle it? how will you control your design and themes? what about the 1st request the browser make? not easy with this all of the user's requests will come with "Accept" header "application/json" how will you separate browser from abuser? this way all of your public apis will be used by third party apps abusively and you won't be able to lock it since you won't be able to block the normal user browser We won't use compiled html anyway but may be something like freemarker and in that case you won't expose any of your json resources to the unauthorized user but you will expose all the html since any browser can access them all the well known 1st class services do this can you send me links to what you've read? keep in mind the DOM based XSS it will be a nightmare ofc, if what you say is applicable.

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• Prevent oversteering catastrophe in racing games

  - by jdm

  When playing GTA III on Android I noticed something that has been annoying me in almost every racing game I've played (maybe except Mario Kart): Driving straight ahead is easy, but curves are really hard. When I switch lanes or pass somebody, the car starts swiveling back and forth, and any attempt to correct it makes it only worse. The only thing I can do is to hit the brakes. I think this is some kind of oversteering. What makes it so irritating is that it never happens to me in real life (thank god :-)), so 90% of the games with vehicles inside feel unreal to me (despite probably having really good physics engines). I've talked to a couple of people about this, and it seems either you 'get' racing games, or you don't. With a lot of practice, I did manage to get semi-good at some games (e.g. from the Need for Speed series), by driving very cautiously, braking a lot (and usually getting a cramp in my fingers). What can you do as a game developer to prevent the oversteering resonance catastrophe, and make driving feel right? (For a casual racing game, that doesn't strive for 100% realistic physics) I also wonder what games like Super Mario Kart exactly do differently so that they don't have so much oversteering? I guess one problem is that if you play with a keyboard or a touchscreen (but not wheels and pedals), you only have digital input: gas pressed or not, steering left/right or not, and it's much harder to steer appropriately for a given speed. The other thing is that you probably don't have a good sense of speed, and drive much faster than you would (safely) in reality. From the top of my head, one solution might be to vary the steering response with speed.

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• 3D Vector "End Point" Calculation for procedural Vector Graphics

  - by FrostFlame64

  Alright, So I need some help with some Vector Math. I've developing some game Engines that have Procedural Fractal Generation for Some Graphics, such as using Lindenmayer Systems for generating Trees and Plants. L-Systems, are drawn by using Turtle Graphics, which is a form of Vector graphics. I first created a system to draw in 2D Graphics, which works perfectly fine. But now I want to make a 3D equivalent, and I’ve run into an issue. For my 2D Version, I created a Method for quickly determining the “End Point” of a Vector-like movement. Given a starting point (X, Y), a direction (between 0 and 360 degrees), and a distance, the end point is calculated by these formulas: newX = startX + distance * Sin((PI * direction) / 180) newY = startY + distance * Cos((PI * direction) / 180) Now I need something Similarly Equivalent for performing this Calculation in 3D, But I haven’t been able to Google anything that could show me how to do this. I'm flexible enough to get whatever required information is needed for this method calculation, in any reasonable form (Vector3, Quaternion, ect). To summarize: Given a starting point/vector position in 3D space (X, Y, Z), a Direction in 3D space (Vector3, Quaternion, ect), and a Distance, I need to find the “End Point” in 3D Space. Thank you for your time and help.

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• Developing games using virtualization on macOS (or Linux) [on hold]

  - by zpinner

  From what I've seen, most of the gamedev tools and engines (that could generate cross platform games) are not supported on Mac. Havok/Project Anarchy, UDK, GameMaker, e.g. . Basically, the only options I found are: Unity3d and monogame + xamarin. Unity is nice and I've been playing with it for some time, but the free version is quite limited when we're talking about shaders, that made me consider that as an indie developer, I might want more freedom to experiment new things, without paying the expensive unity license. I didn't try monogame + xamarin yet, and altough XNA is a very nice game framework, I'd like to have more freedom to experiment and finish a game first before paying for the IDE, which is not possible with the current Xamarin business model. That leaves me with the thought that I must go back to windows, which I'd preferably do it partially, if it's possible. Using BootCamp is something that I'd like to avoid, since it's a pain to reboot when changing OS and that would probably force me to become a 100% windows user. Is there anyone actually developing a game using virtualization solutions like parallels or vmwareFusion? How was your experience?

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• Can I remove the systems from a component entity system?

  - by nathan

  After reading a lot about entity/component based engines. I feel like there is no real definition for this kind of engine. Reading this thread: Implementing features in an Entity System and the linked article made me think a lot. I did not feel that comfortable using System concept so I'll write something else, inspired by this pattern. I'd like to know if you think it's a good way to organize game code and what improvements can be made. Regarding a more strict implementation of entity/component based engine, is my solution viable? Do I risk getting stuck at any point due to the lack of flexibility of this implementation (or anything else)? My engine, as for entity/component patterns has entities and components, no systems since the game logic is handled by components. Also, I think the main difference is the fact that my engine will use inherence and OOP concepts in general, I mean, I don't try to minimize them. Entity: an entity is an abstract class. It holds his position, width and height, scale and a list of linked components. The current implementation can be found here (java). Every frame, the entity will be updated (i.e all the components linked to this entity will be updated), and rendered, if a render component is specified. Component: like for entity, a component is an abstract class that must be extended to create new components. The behavior of an entity is created through his components collection. The component implementation can be found here. Components are updated when the owning entity is updated or for only one specific component (render component), rendered. Here is an example of a logic component (i.e not a renderable component, a component that's updated each frame) in charge of listening for keyboard events and a render component in charge of display a plain sprite (i.e not animated).

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• jQuery 2.0 drops support for legacy IE (IE6, IE7, IE8)

  - by Renso

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/31/jquery-2.0-drops-support-for-legacy-ie-ie6-ie7-ie8.aspxjQuery upgrades may not be as reverse compatible as you may think. Starting from version 2 of jQuery, IE6, IE7 and yes also IE8 will no longer be supported. These are now considered legacy browsers. You will need to stop any upgrades to jQuery until your SLA states that IE8 is no longer supported and remain in jQuery 1.9.Some of the reasons for not supporting IE8 and before:- Remove all the code clutter in the jQuery library with code that has to deal with IE browser compatibility issues between IE6, 7 and 8 and the newer IE versions, the latter being more compliant.- IE6 and 7 may have fallen to below 2% generally, that does not mean that that is true for your client base. In the oil and gas industry some clients are years behind and you may have 50% or more of clients remain on IE8 or older for the foreseeable future.- The difference between browser engines has become almost negligible, as it should be. So one of the greatest goals of jQuery to abstract that out for developers is no longer needed, for most part anyway. - CSS3 features like animations basically replace the need for jQuery’s 2.0 animations and effects.If the need is still there to support IE8 or before, but you also want to upgrade, then use conditional comments:<!--[if lt IE 9]>    <script src="jQuery-1.9.0.js"></script><![endif]--><!--[if gte IE 9]><!-->    <script src="jQuery-2.0.0.js"><</script><!--<![endif]-->

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• First Experience with Web Services

  When I first started programming with Microsoft .Net (1.0 Framework) I had a strong desire to learn how search engines indexed web sites. At that time I was a working as a search engine spammer creating web pages to generate traffic for specific themes for various clients. One way I attempted to better understand .Net was to build a web spider that analyzed web pages on demand. An example of the spider is hosted at AddLinkz.com. After my spider was built I had no real idea what I could/should do with it until I found the MSN Search API. I used this web service to compare its results with my spider. Additionally, I used the API to feed my .Net web spider new URLs from the API based on specific search terms. MSN’s search API was very easy to use, I just had to request information by calling a web URL with parameters via a Get request and the results were returned in XML. At that time all requests were limited to XML responses and a maximum of 1,000 results per query.   Since then the entire API has gone through several reconstructions, rebranding and new search services.  Microsoft’s new Bing API replaced the older MSN search API and added several new search capabilities. These new features allow search data to be returned for web searches, image searches, new searches, and related search terms to name a few. Bing API Version 2.0 SourceTypes Web Searches for web content Sushi Image Searches for images on the web Sushi News Searches news stories Sushi InstantAnswer Searches Encarta online what is sushi, convert 5 feet to meters, x*5=7, and 2 plus 2 Spell Searches Encarta dictionary for spelling suggestions Phonebook Searches phonebook entries sushi in Los Angeles RelatedSearch Returns the query strings most similar to yours Ad Returns advertisements to incorporate with results I currently plan to start using the web search feature from the new Bing 2.0 API in an open source project related to exception management. Currently, it is still in the conception phase.

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• Rendering a big game universe - bitmaps or vector graphics?

  - by user1641923

  I am new to an Android development, though I have much experience with Java, C++, PHP programming and a bit experience with vector graphics too (basic 3d Studio Max, Flash, etc). I am starting to work on an Android game. It is going to be a 2D space shooter/RPG, and I am not going to use any game engines and any 3D party libs. I really want to create a very large game universe, or even pseudo-infinite (without visible borders, as if it were a 2D projection of a sphere). It should include 10-12 clusters of 7-8 planets/other space objects and random amount of single asteroids/comets, which player can interact with and also not interactive background. I am looking for a least complicated aproach to create such a universe. My current ideas are: Simply create bitmaps with space scenery background so that they can be tiled seamlessly repeated and construct my 2D universe of this tiles, then place interactive objects (planets, other spaceships) on it. Using vector graphics. I would have a solid color background, some random background objects and gradients here and there. My problems here: Lack of knowledge of how well vector graphics is integrated in Android. Performance? Memory usage? Does Android manage big bitmaps well? Do all of the bitmaps have to be in memory during all game process? I am interested in technical details regarding each of the ideas and a suggestion, which I should go with.

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• How to procedurally (create) grow an artistic (2D) tree in real-time (L-System?).

  - by lalan

  Recently I programmed an L-system module, It got me interested further. I am a Plants vs Zombies junkie as well, really liked the concept of Tree of Wisdom. Would love to create similar procedural art just for fun and learn more. Question: How should I approach the process of creating an artistic tree (2d perhaps with fixed camera/perspective) dynamically? Ideally I would like to start with a plant (only a stem with a leaf) and grow it dynamically using some influence (input/user action) over its structure. These influences may result in different type of branching, curves in branches, its spread, location of fruits, color of flowers, etc. Want it to be really full of life/spirit. :) Plants vs Zombies: Tree of wisdom It would be great to dynamically grow a similar tree, but with lot more variation and animations happening. My Background: Student / Programmer, have used few game engines (Ogre3d, cocos2d, unity). Haven't really programmed directly using openGL, trying to fix that :). I am ready to spend considerable time, Please let me know about the APIs? and how would an expert like you would take on this problem? Why 2D? I think it's easier to solve the problem only considering 2 dimensions. Artistic inspirations: Only the tree, with fruits and leaves, without the shrubs at the bottom The large tree (visible branches, green leaves, flowers, fruits, etc) on the left, behind monkey. PixelJunk's Eden (Art style inspiration). Procedurally Generated Apple Tree using Fractals Please let me know if it was easy for you to understand the question, I may elaborate further. I hope a discussion of various approach would be helpful for everyone. You guys are awesome.

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• Recommened design pattern to handle multiple compression algorithms for a class hierarchy

  - by sgorozco

  For all you OOD experts. What would be the recommended way to model the following scenario? I have a certain class hierarchy similar to the following one: class Base { ... } class Derived1 : Base { ... } class Derived2 : Base { ... } ... Next, I would like to implement different compression/decompression engines for this hierarchy. (I already have code for several strategies that best handle different cases, like file compression, network stream compression, legacy system compression, etc.) I would like the compression strategy to be pluggable and chosen at runtime, however I'm not sure how to handle the class hierarchy. Currently I have a tighly-coupled design that looks like this: interface ICompressor { byte[] Compress(Base instance); } class Strategy1Compressor : ICompressor { byte[] Compress(Base instance) { // Common compression guts for Base class ... // if( instance is Derived1 ) { // Compression guts for Derived1 class } if( instance is Derived2 ) { // Compression guts for Derived2 class } // Additional compression logic to handle other class derivations ... } } As it is, whenever I add a new derived class inheriting from Base, I would have to modify all compression strategies to take into account this new class. Is there a design pattern that allows me to decouple this, and allow me to easily introduce more classes to the Base hierarchy and/or additional compression strategies?

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• Low-level game engine renderer design

  - by Mark Ingram

  I'm piecing together the beginnings of an extremely basic engine which will let me draw arbitrary objects (SceneObject). I've got to the point where I'm creating a few sensible sounding classes, but as this is my first outing into game engines, I've got the feeling I'm overlooking things. I'm familiar with compartmentalising larger portions of the code so that individual sub-systems don't overly interact with each other, but I'm thinking more of the low-level stuff, starting from vertices working up. So if I have a Vertex class, I can combine that with a list of indices to make a Mesh class. How does the engine determine identical meshes for objects? Or is that left to the level designer? Once we have a Mesh, that can be contained in the SceneObject class. And a list of SceneObject can be placed into the Scene to be drawn. Right now I'm only using OpenGL, but I'm aware that I don't want to be tying OpenGL calls right in to base classes (such as updating the vertices in the Mesh, I don't want to be calling glBufferData etc). Are there any good resources that discuss these issues? Are there any "common" heirachies which should be used?

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