Wielding the true power of a CSS preprocessor is an adventure. There are countless languages, syntaxes, and features, all ready for use right now. In this article, we will be covering the various features and benefits of using three different preprocessors—Sass, LESS, and Stylus. Introduction Preprocessors produce CSS that works in all browsers. CSS3 preprocessors are languages written for the sole purpose of adding cool, inventive features to CSS without breaking browser compatibility. They do this by compiling the code we write into regular CSS that can be used in any browser all the way back to the stone ages. There are...

PHP 5.4 is here; the next major step forward since version 5.3 – keeping PHP 6 (full Unicode support) on hold for now. The latest enhancements significantly improve its elegance, while removing deprecated functionality, resulting in a dramatic optimization of the runtime (up to 20% more speed and memory usage reduction). New Features and Improvements Some of the key new features include traits, a shortened array syntax, a built-in webserver for testing purposes, use of $this in closures, class member access on instantiation, <?= is always available, and more! PHP 5.4.0 significantly...

Maybe you saw that tweet: ”jQuery is a gateway drug. It leads to full-on JavaScript usage.” Part of that addiction, I contend, is learning other JavaScript frameworks. And that’s what this four-part series on the incredible Dojo Toolkit is all about: taking you to the next level of your JavaScript addiction. In this, the final episode of our session, we’ll look at the last member of the Dojo trinity: DojoX. What’s DojoX? DojoX is a place where modules can grow and evolve at whatever rate they need to. But don’t get the idea that DojoX is a coding free-for-all. Hardly. You could think of...

Planning to start working on a new web application? In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how to create an API-centric web application, and explain why this is essential in today’s multi-platform world. Introduction API? For those who are unfamiliar with the term, API is short for Application Programming Interface. According to Wikipedia: An application programming interface (API) is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. An API may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables. API Visualization Image courtesy of http://blog.zoho.com In simpler terms, an API refers to a set of functions...

In the last part of this series, we looked at the life-cycle methods, automatic methods and the custom methods that our widget requires or can make use of. In this part, we’re going to finish defining the widget’s class by adding the attribute change-handling methods that we attached in the bindUI() life-cycle method. Let’s get started right away! Attribute Change Handlers The attribute change-handling group of methods are called when some of our attributes change values. We’ll start by adding the method that is called when the showTitle attribute changes; add the following code directly after the _uiSetTitle() method: _afterShowTitleChange: function ()...