Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning -- defining how the Web and web pages work -- and builds from there. By the end of the book, you'll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you'll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

• How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
• Everything you need to know about web standards -- (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
• Cascading Style Sheets -- formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
• All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
• The site development process, from start to finish
• Getting your pages on the Web -- hosting, domain names, and FTP

See how to mine the experience of your software development team continually throughout the life of the project. The tools and recipes in this book will help you uncover and solve hidden (and not-so-hidden) problems with your technology, your methodology, and those difficult "people" issues on your team.

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as "post-mortems") are only helpful at the end of the project--too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today.

Now, Derby and Larsen show you the tools, tricks, and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis. You'll see how to architect retrospectives in general, how to design them specifically for your team and organization, how to run them effectively, how to make the needed changes, and how to scale these techniques up. You'll learn how to deal with problems, and implement solutions effectively throughout the project--not just at the end.

With regular tune-ups, your team will hum like a precise, world-class orchestra.

For web developers used to wrestling with Java and XML, Grails is a breath of fresh air. Developers are instantly productive, picking up all the benefits of the Ruby-based Rails framework without giving up any of the power of Java.

Grails in Action is a comprehensive look at Grails for Java developers. It covers the nuts and bolts of the core Grails components and is jam-packed with tutorials, techniques, and insights from the trenches.

The book starts with an overview of Grails and how it can help you get your web dev mojo back. Then it walks readers through a Twitter-style social networking app-built in Grails, of course-where they implement high-interest features like mashups, AJAX/JSON, animation effects, full text search, rounded corners, and lots of visual goodness. The book also covers using Grails with existing Java technology, like Spring, Hibernate, and EJBs.

HTML5 and CSS3 for the Real World is ideal for any web designer or developer who wants to start using the latest generation of web technologies in their everyday work.

This book will teach you how to:

• understand the new semantic markup available in HTML5
• use CSS3 to make sites beautiful without sacrificing clean markup or resorting to complex workarounds
• employ native HTML5 video and audio in your pages
• use web fonts to enrich a site's typography
• make web applications accessible using WAI-ARIA
• make the most of the new HTML form elements.

It also features:

• details on all the new HTML5 and CSS3 elements and features
• information on the current level of browser support
• advice for creating great experiences for all users thanks to progressive enhancement.

Summary

Totally revised for Spring 3.0, this book is a hands-on guide to the Spring Framework. It covers the latest features, tools, and practices including Spring MVC, REST, Security, Web Flow, and more. Following short code snippets and an ongoing example developed throughout the book, you'll learn how to build simple and efficient J2EE applications.

Spring Framework is required knowledge for Java developers, and Spring 3.0 introduces powerful new features like SpEL, the Spring Expression Language, new annotations for the IoC container, and much-needed support for REST. Whether you're just discovering Spring or you want to absorb the new 3.0 features, there's no better way to master Spring than this book.

Spring in Action, Third Edition continues the practical, hands-on style of the previous bestselling editions. Author Craig Walls has a special knack for crisp and entertaining examples that zoom in on the features and techniques you really need. This edition highlights the most important aspects of Spring 3.0 including REST, remote services, messaging, Security, MVC, Web Flow, and more.

• Using annotations to reduce configuration
• Working with RESTful resources
• Spring Expression Language (SpEL)
• Security, Web Flow, and more

Nearly 100,000 developers have used this book to learn Spring!

PART 1 CORE SPRING

1. Springing into action
2. Wiring beans
3. Minimizing XML configuration in Spring
4. Aspect-oriented Spring

PART 2 SPRING APPLICATION ESSENTIALS

5. Hitting the database
6. Managing transactions
7. Building web applications with Spring MVC
8. Working with Spring Web Flow
9. Securing Spring

PART 3 INTEGRATING SPRING

10. Working with remote services
11. Giving Spring some REST
12. Messaging in Spring
13. Managing Spring beans with JMX
14. Odds and ends

Groovy, the brand-new language for the Java platform, brings to Java many of the features that have made Ruby popular. Groovy in Action is a comprehensive guide to Groovy programming, introducing Java developers to the new dynamic features that Groovy provides. To bring you Groovy in Action, Manning again went to the source by working with a team of expert authors including both members and the Manager of the Groovy Project team. The result is the true definitive guide to the new Groovy language.

Groovy in Action introduces Groovy by example, presenting lots of reusable code while explaining the underlying concepts. Java developers new to Groovy find a smooth transition into the dynamic programming world. Groovy experts gain a solid reference that challenges them to explore Groovy deeply and creatively.

Because Groovy is so new, most readers will be learning it from scratch. Groovy in Action quickly moves through the Groovy basics, including:

Readers are presented with rich and detailed examples illustrating Groovy's enhancements to Java, including

Groovy in Action then demonstrates how to Integrate Groovy with XML, and provides,

An additional bonus is a chapter dedicated to Grails, the Groovy Web Application Framework.

Early PDF chapters of Groovy in Action are available from the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) at http://www.manning.com/koenig. As part of this program, readers can also discuss the early manuscript with the author and help shape the manuscript as it's being developed by joining the Author Forum.

Even the best developers have seen well-intentioned software projects fail -- often because the customer kept changing requirements, and end users didn't know how to use the software you developed. Instead of surrendering to these common problems, let Head First Software Development guide you through the best practices of software development. Before you know it, those failed projects will be a thing of the past.

With its unique visually rich format, this book pulls together the hard lessons learned by expert software developers over the years. You'll gain essential information about each step of the software development lifecycle -- requirements, design, coding, testing, implementing, and maintenance -- and understand why and how different development processes work.

This book is for you if you are:

• Tired of your customers assuming you're psychic. You'll learn not only how to get good requirements, but how to make sure you're always building the software that customers want (even when they're not sure themselves)
• Wondering when the other 15 programmers you need to get your project done on time are going to show up. You'll learn how some very simple scheduling and prioritizing will revolutionize your success rate in developing software.
• Confused about being rational, agile, or a tester. You'll learn not only about the various development methodologies out there, but how to choose a solution that's right for your project.
• Confused because the way you ran your last project worked so well, but failed miserably this time around. You'll learn how to tackle each project individually, combine lessons you've learned on previous projects with cutting-edge development techniques, and end up with great software on every project.

Why don't typical enterprise projects go as smoothly as projects you develop for the Web? Does the REST architectural style really present a viable alternative for building distributed systems and enterprise-class applications?

In this insightful book, three SOA experts provide a down-to-earth explanation of REST and demonstrate how you can develop simple and elegant distributed hypermedia systems by applying the Web's guiding principles to common enterprise computing problems. You'll learn techniques for implementing specific Web technologies and patterns to solve the needs of a typical company as it grows from modest beginnings to become a global enterprise.

• Learn basic Web techniques for application integration
• Use HTTP and the Web’s infrastructure to build scalable, fault-tolerant enterprise applications
• Discover the Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) pattern for manipulating resources
• Build RESTful services that use hypermedia to model state transitions and describe business protocols
• Learn how to make Web-based solutions secure and interoperable
• Extend integration patterns for event-driven computing with the Atom Syndication Format and implement multi-party interactions in AtomPub
• Understand how the Semantic Web will impact systems design

Want to learn how to create great user experiences on today's Web? In this book, UI experts Bill Scott and Theresa Neil present more than 75 design patterns for building web interfaces that provide rich interaction. Distilled from the authors' years of experience at Sabre, Yahoo!, and Netflix, these best practices are grouped into six key principles to help you take advantage of the web technologies available today. With an entire section devoted to each design principle, Designing Web Interfaces helps you:

• Make It Direct-Edit content in context with design patterns for In Page Editing, Drag & Drop, and Direct Selection
• Keep It Lightweight-Reduce the effort required to interact with a site by using In Context Tools to leave a "light footprint"
• Stay on the Page-Keep visitors on a page with overlays, inlays, dynamic content, and in-page flow patterns
• Provide an Invitation-Help visitors discover site features with invitations that cue them to the next level of interaction
• Use Transitions-Learn when, why, and how to use animations, cinematic effects, and other transitions
• React Immediately-Provide a rich experience by using lively responses such as Live Search, Live Suggest, Live Previews, and more

Designing Web Interfaces illustrates many patterns with examples from working websites. If you need to build or renovate a website to be truly interactive, this book gives you the principles for success.

JBoss Seam is an exciting new application framework based on the Java EE platform that is used to build rich, web-based business applications. Seam is rapidly capturing the interest of Java enterprise developers because of its focus on simplicity, ease of use, transparent integration, and scalability.

Seam in Action offers a practical and in-depth look at JBoss Seam. The book puts Seam head-to-head with the complexities in the Java EE architecture. The author presents an unbiased view of Seam from outside the walls of RedHat/JBoss, focusing on such topics as Spring integration and deployment to alternative application servers to steer clear of vendor lock-in. By the end of the book, you should expect to not only gain a deep understanding of Seam, but also come away with the confidence to teach the material to others.

To start off, you will see a working Java EE-compliant application come together by the end of the second chapter. As you progress through the book, you will discover how Seam eliminates unnecessary layers and configurations, solves the most common JSF pain points, and establishes the missing link between JSF, EJB 3 and JavaBean components. The author also shows you how Seam opens doors for you to incorporate technologies you previously have not had time to learn, such as business processes and stateful page flows (jBPM), Ajax remoting, PDF generation, asynchronous tasks, and more.

All too often, developers spend a majority of their time integrating disparate technologies, manually tracking state, struggling to understand JSF, wrestling with Hibernate exceptions, and constantly redeploying applications, rather than on the logic pertaining to the business at hand. Seam in Action dives deep into thorough explanations of how Seam eliminates these non-core tasks by leveraging configuration by exception, Java 5 annotations, and aspect-oriented programming.

This second edition of a Manning bestseller has been revised and re-titled to fit the 'In Action' Series by Steve Loughran, an Ant project committer. Ant in Action introduces Ant and how to use it for test-driven Java application development. Ant itself is moving to v1.7, a major revision, at the end of 2006 so the timing for the book is right. A single application of increasing complexity, followed throughout the book, shows how an application evolves and how to handle the problems of building and testing. Reviewers have praised the book's coverage of large-projects, Ant's advanced features, and the details and depth of the discussion-all unavailable elsewhere.

This is a major revision with the second half of the book completely new, including:

In this truly unique technical book, today's leading software architects present valuable principles on key development issues that go way beyond technology. More than four dozen architects -- including Neal Ford, Michael Nygard, and Bill de hOra -- offer advice for communicating with stakeholders, eliminating complexity, empowering developers, and many more practical lessons they've learned from years of experience. Among the 97 principles in this book, you'll find useful advice such as:

• Don't Put Your Resume Ahead of the Requirements (Nitin Borwankar)
• Chances Are, Your Biggest Problem Isn't Technical (Mark Ramm)
• Communication Is King; Clarity and Leadership, Its Humble Servants (Mark Richards)
• Simplicity Before Generality, Use Before Reuse (Kevlin Henney)
• For the End User, the Interface Is the System (Vinayak Hegde)
• It's Never Too Early to Think About Performance (Rebecca Parsons)

To be successful as a software architect, you need to master both business and technology. This book tells you what top software architects think is important and how they approach a project. If you want to enhance your career, 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know is essential reading.

Grails is a full stack web development framework that enables you to build complete web applications in a fraction of the time and with less code than other frameworks.

In Grails: A Quick-Start Guide, you'll see how to use Grails by iteratively building an unique, working application. By the time we're done, you'll have built and deployed a real, functioning website.

Along the way, we'll learn about domain classes, controllers, and GSP views. We'll see how Grails allows us to use powerful frameworks like Spring and Hibernate without even knowing it.

Using this hands-on, pragmatic approach, we'll explore topics such as AJAX in Grails, custom tags, and plugins. We'll dig into Grails' powerful view technology, Groovy Server Pages, and see how we can easily leverage the help given to us by scaffolding to create custom user interfaces faster than you would have thought possible.

With Grails, you can get a lot done with little effort. With this book, you'll get a lot done as well. It's time to bring the fun back into web programming. Get started with Grails today.

All true craftsmen need the best tools to do their finest work, and programmers are no different. Java Power Tools delivers 30 open source tools designed to improve the development practices of Java developers in any size team or organization. Each chapter includes a series of short articles about one particular tool -- whether it's for build systems, version control, or other aspects of the development process -- giving you the equivalent of 30 short reference books in one package.

No matter which development method your team chooses, whether it's Agile, RUP, XP, SCRUM, or one of many others available, Java Power Tools provides practical techniques and tools to help you optimize the process. The book discusses key Java development problem areas and best practices, and focuses on open source tools that can help increase productivity in each area of the development cycle, including:

• Build tools including Ant and Maven 2
• Version control tools such as CVS and Subversion, the two most prominent open source tools
• Quality metrics tools that measure different aspects of code quality, including CheckStyle, PMD, FindBugs and Jupiter
• Technical documentation tools that can help you generate good technical documentation without spending too much effort writing and maintaining it
• Unit Testing tools including JUnit 4, TestNG, and the open source coverage tool Cobertura
• Integration, Load and Performance Testing to integrate performance tests into unit tests, load-test your application, and automatically test web services, Swing interfaces and web interfaces
• Issue management tools including Bugzilla and Trac
• Continuous Integration tools such as Continuum, Cruise Control, LuntBuild and Hudson

Whether it's in Java, .NET, or Ruby on Rails, getting your application ready to ship is only half the battle. Did you design your system to survivef a sudden rush of visitors from Digg or Slashdot? Or an influx of real world customers from 100 different countries? Are you ready for a world filled with flakey networks, tangled databases, and impatient users?

If you're a developer and don't want to be on call for 3AM for the rest of your life, this book will help.

In Release It!, Michael T. Nygard shows you how to design and architect your application for the harsh realities it will face. You'll learn how to design your application for maximum uptime, performance, and return on investment.

Mike explains that many problems with systems today start with the design.

"Since its original introduction in 1997, the Unified Modeling Language has revolutionized software development. Every integrated software development environment in the world--open-source, standards-based, and proprietary--now supports UML and, more importantly, the model-driven approach to software development. This makes learning the newest UML standard, UML 2.0, critical for all software developers--and there isn't a better choice than this clear, step-by-step guide to learning the language."

--Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO, OMG

If you're like most software developers, you're building systems that are increasingly complex. Whether you're creating a desktop application or an enterprise system, complexity is the big hairy monster you must manage.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) helps you manage this complexity. Whether you're looking to use UML as a blueprint language, a sketch tool, or as a programming language, this book will give you the need-to-know information on how to apply UML to your project. While there are plenty of books available that describe UML, Learning UML 2.0 will show you how to use it. Topics covered include:

• Capturing your system's requirements in your model to help you ensure that your designs meet your users' needs



• Modeling the parts of your system and their relationships



• Modeling how the parts of your system work together to meet your system's requirements



• Modeling how your system moves into the real world, capturing how your system will be deployed

Engaging and accessible, this book shows you how to use UML to craft and communicate your project's design. Russ Miles and Kim Hamilton have written a pragmatic introduction to UML based on hard-earned practice, not theory. Regardless of the software process or methodology you use, this book is the one source you need to get up and running with UML 2.0.

Russ Miles is a software engineer for General Dynamics UK, where he works with Java and Distributed Systems, although his passion at the moment is Aspect Orientation and, in particular, AspectJ. Kim Hamilton is a senior software engineer at Northrop Grumman, where she's designed and implemented a variety of systems including web applications and distributed systems, with frequent detours into algorithms development.

Spring in Action 2E is an expanded, completely updated second edition of the best selling Spring in Action. Written by Craig Walls, one of Manning's best writers, this book covers the exciting new features of Spring 2.0, which was released in October 2006.

Spring is a lightweight container framework that represents an exciting way to build enterprise components with simple Java objects. By employing dependency injection and AOP, Spring encourages loosely coupled code and enables plain-old Java objects with capabilities that were previously reserved for EJBs. This book is a hands-on, example-driven exploration of the Spring Framework. Combining short code snippets and an ongoing example developed throughout the book, it shows readers how to build simple and efficient J2EE applications, how to solve persistence problems, handle asynchronous messaging, create and consume remote services, build web applications, and integrate with most popular web frameworks. Readers will learn how to use Spring to write simpler, easier to maintain code so they can focus on what really matters-- critical business needs.

Spring in Action, 2E is for Java developers who are looking for ways to build enterprise-grade applications based on simple Java objects, without resorting to more complex and invasive EJBs. Even hard-core EJB users will find this book valuable as Spring in Action, 2E will describe ways to use EJB components alongside Spring. Software architects will also find Spring in Action, 2E useful as they assess and apply lightweight techniques prescribed by Spring. and learn how Spring can be applied at the various layers of enterprise applications.

When Lucene first hit the scene five years ago, it was nothing short of amazing. By using this open-source, highly scalable, super-fast search engine, developers could integrate search into applications quickly and efficiently. A lot has changed since then-search has grown from a "nice-to-have" feature into an indispensable part of most enterprise applications. Lucene now powers search in diverse companies including Akamai, Netflix, LinkedIn, Technorati, HotJobs, Epiphany, FedEx, Mayo Clinic, MIT, New Scientist Magazine, and many others.

Some things remain the same, though. Lucene still delivers high-performance search features in a disarmingly easy-to-use API. Due to its vibrant and diverse open-source community of developers and users, Lucene is relentlessly improving, with evolutions to APIs, significant new features such as payloads, and a huge increase (as much as 8x) in indexing speed with Lucene 2.3.

And with clear writing, reusable examples, and unmatched advice on best practices, Lucene in Action, Second Edition is still the definitive guide to developing with Lucene.

The strength of Java is no longer in the language itself; it's in the Java Platform (the JVM, JDK, and rich frameworks and libraries). But recently, the industry has turned to dynamic languages for increased productivity and speed to market.

Groovy is one of a new breed of dynamic languages that run on the Java platform. You can use these new languages on the JVM and intermix them with your existing Java code. You can leverage your Java investments while benefiting from advanced features including true Closures, Meta Programming, the ability to create internal DSLs, and a higher level of abstraction.

If you're an experienced Java developer, Programming Groovy will help you learn the necessary fundamentals of programming in Groovy. You'll see how to use Groovy to do advanced programming including using Meta Programming, Builders, Unit Testing with Mock objects, processing XML, working with Databases and creating your own Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs).

This book is a reality-based guide for modern projects. You'll learn how to recognize your project's potholes and ruts, and determine the best way to fix problems - without causing more problems.

Your project can't fail. That's a lot of pressure on you, and yet you don't want to buy into any one specific process, methodology, or lifecycle.

Your project is different. It doesn't fit into those neat descriptions.

Manage It! will show you how to beg, borrow, and steal from the best methodologies to fit your particular project. It will help you find what works best for you and not for some mythological project that doesn't even exist.

Before you know it, your project will be on track and headed to a successful conclusion.

Ship It! is a collection of tips that show the tools and techniques a successful project team has to use, and how to use them well. You'll get quick, easy-to-follow advice on modern practices: which to use, and when they should be applied. This book avoids current fashion trends and marketing hype; instead, readers find page after page of solid advice, all tried and tested in the real world.

Aimed at beginning to intermediate programmers, Ship It! will show you:

• Which tools help, and which don't
• How to keep a project moving
• Approaches to scheduling that work
• How to build developers as well as product
• What's normal on a project, and what's not
• How to manage managers, end-users and sponsors
• Danger signs and how to fix them

Few of the ideas presented here are controversial or extreme; most experienced programmers will agree that this stuff works. Yet 50 to 70 percent of all project teams in the U.S. aren't able to use even these simple, well-accepted practices effectively. This book will help you get started.

Ship It! begins by introducing the common technical infrastructure that every project needs to get the job done. Readers can choose from a variety of recommended technologies according to their skills and budgets. The next sections outline the necessary steps to get software out the door reliably, using well-accepted, easy-to-adopt, best-of-breed practices that really work.

Finally, and most importantly, Ship It! presents common problems that teams face, then offers real-world advice on how to solve them.

Are you still designing web sites like it's 1999? If so, you're in for a surprise. Since the last edition of this book appeared five years ago, there has been a major climate change with regard to web standards. Designers are no longer using (X)HTML as a design tool, but as a means of defining the meaning and structure of content. Cascading Style Sheets are no longer just something interesting to tinker with, but rather a reliable method for handling all matters of presentation, from fonts and colors to the layout of the entire page. In fact, following the standards is now a mandate of professional web design.

Our popular reference, Web Design in a Nutshell, is one of the first books to capture this new web landscape with an edition that's been completely rewritten and expanded to reflect the state of the art. In addition to being an authoritative reference for (X)HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, this book also provides an overview of the unique requirements of designing for the Web and gets to the nitty-gritty of JavaScript and DOM Scripting, web graphics optimization, and multimedia production. It is an indispensable tool for web designers and developers of all levels.

The third edition covers these contemporary web design topics:

• Structural layer: HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 (9 chapters), including an alphabetical reference of all elements, attributes and character entities
• Presentation layer: Ten all-new chapters on Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2.1, including an alphabetical reference of all properties and values.
• Behavior layer: JavaScript and scripting with the Document Object Model (DOM)
• Web environment: New web standards, browsers, display devices, accessibility, and internationalization
• Web graphics optimization: Producing lean and mean GIF, JPEG, PNG, and animated GIFs
• Multimedia: Web audio, video, Flash, and PDF

Organized so that readers can find answers quickly, Web Design in a Nutshell, Third Edition helps experienced designers come up to speed quickly on standards-based web design, and serves as a quick reference for those already familiar with the new standards and technology.

There are many books for web designers, but none that address such a wide variety of topics. Find out why nearly half a million buyers have made this the most popular web design book available.

A good web development framework anticipates what you need to do and makes those tasks easier and more efficient; jQuery practically reads your mind. Developers of every stripe-hobbyists and professionals alike-fall in love with jQuery the minute they've reduced 20 lines of clunky JavaScript into three lines of elegant, readable code. This new, concise JavaScript library radically simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.

jQuery in Action, like jQuery itself, is a concise tool designed to make you a more efficient and effective web developer. In a short 300 pages, this book introduces you to the jQuery programming model and guides you through the major features and techniques you'll need to be productive immediately. The book anchors each new concept in the tasks you'll tackle in day-to-day web development and offers unique lab pages where you immediately put your jQuery knowledge to work.

There are dozens of JavaScript libraries available now, with major companies like Google, Yahoo and AOL open-sourcing their in-house tools. This book shows you how jQuery stacks up against other libraries and helps you navigate interaction with other tools and frameworks.

jQuery in Action offers a rich investigation of the up-and-coming jQuery library for client-side JavaScript. This book covers all major features and capabilities in a manner focused on getting the reader up and running with jQuery from the very first sections. Web Developers reading this book will gain a deep understanding of how to use jQuery to simplify their pages and lives, as well as learn the philosophy behind writing jQuery-enhanced pages.

Want to be a better developer? This books collects the personal habits, ideas, and approaches of successful agile software developers and presents them in a series of short, easy-to-digest tips. This isn't academic fluff; follow these ideas and you'll show yourself, your teammates, and your managers real results. These are the proven and effective agile practices that will make you a better developer.

This book will help you improve five areas of your career:

• The Development Process
• What to Do While Coding
• Developer Attitudes
• Project and Team Management
• Iterative and Incremental Learning

These practices provide guidelines that will help you succeed in delivering and meeting your user's expectations, even if the domain is unfamiliar. You'll be able to keep normal project pressure from turning into disastrous stress while writing code, and see how to effectively coordinate mentors, team leads, and developers in harmony.

You can learn all this stuff the hard way, but this book can save you time and pain. Read it, and you'll be a better developer.

All of your projects and programs make up your portfolio. But how much time you actually spend on your projects, and how much time do you spend responding to emergencies?

This book will introduce you to different ways of ordering all of the projects you are working on now, and help you figure out how to staff those projects--even when you've run out of project teams to do the work.

Once you learn to manage your portfolio better, you'll avoid emergency "firedrills." The trick is adopting lean and agile approaches to projects, whether they are software projects, projects that include hardware, or projects that depend on chunks of functionality from other suppliers.

You may be accustomed to spending time in meetings where you still don't have the data you need to evaluate your projects. Here, with a few measures, you'll be able to quickly evaluate each project and come to a decision quickly.

You'll learn how to define your team's, group's, or department's mission with none of the buzzwords that normally accompany a mission statement. Armed with the work and the mission, you can make those decisions that define the true leaders in the organization.

Build and test software written in Java and many other languages with Gradle, the open source project automation tool that’s getting a lot of attention. This concise introduction provides numerous code examples to help you explore Gradle, both as a build tool and as a complete solution for automating the compilation, test, and release process of simple and enterprise-level applications.

Discover how Gradle improves on the best ideas of Ant, Maven, and other build tools, with standards for developers who want them and lots of flexibility for those who prefer less structure.

• Use Gradle with Groovy, Clojure, Scala, and languages beyond the JVM, such as Flex and C
• Get started building a simple Java program using Gradle's command line tooling and a small build script
• Learn how to configure and construct tasks, Gradle's fundamental unit of build activity
• Take advantage of Gradle's integration with Ant
• Use Gradle to integrate with or transition from Maven, and to build software more cleanly
• Perform application unit and integration tests using JUnit, TestNG, Spock, and Geb

There is a hidden revolution going on: geography is moving from niche to the mainstream. News reports routinely include maps and satellite images. More and more pieces of equipment cell phones, cars, computers now contain Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. Many of the major database vendors have made geographic data types standard in their flagship products.

GIS for Web Developers introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in simple terms and demonstrates hands-on uses. With this book, you'll explore popular websites like maps.google.com, see the technologies they use, and learn how to create your own. Written with the usual Pragmatic Bookshelf humor and real-world experience, GIS for Web Developers makes geographic programming concepts accessible to the common developer.

This book will demystify GIS and show you how to make GIS work for you. You'll learn the buzzwords and explore ways to geographically-enable your own applications. GIS is not a fundamentally difficult domain, but there is a barrier to entry because of the industry jargon. This book will show you how to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of a geographer.

You'll learn how to find the vast amounts of free geographic data that's out there and how to bring it all together. Although this data is free, it's scattered across the web on a variety of different sites, in a variety of incompatible formats. You'll see how to convert it among several popular formats including plain text, ESRI Shapefiles, and Geography Markup Language (GML).

With this book in hand, you'll become a real geographic programmer using the Java programming language. You'll find plenty of working code examples in Java using some of the many GIS-oriented applications and APIs. You'll be able to:

You've already lost your job. You may still be drawing a paycheck, but the job you were hired to do no longer exists. Your company has changed, the technology has changed, the economy has changed, and the ways you can add value have changed. Have you adapted to these changes? Or are you at risk?

Architect your career

• It's all about making the right choices. Choosing which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge--don't let those choices be accidental. Chad shows you all aspects of the decision-making process so you can ensure that you're investing your time and energy in the right areas.
• It's all about skills. You'll develop a structured plan for keeping your skills up-to-date so that you can compete with both the growing stable of developers in so-called low-cost countries as well as your higher-priced local peers. You'll learn how to shift your skillset up the value chain, from an offshore-ready commodity to one in high demand.
• It's all about marketing. As with any product or service, if nobody knows what you're selling, nobody will buy. Chad shows you how to create a plan for marketing yourself both inside your company and to the industry in general.

About the author Chad Fowler has been a software developer and manager for some of the world's largest corporations. He recently lived and worked in India, setting up and leading an offshore software development center for a large multinational company.