Advanced Web Application Development Tools - XOOPS

XOOPS is a new technology meant for web developers. It is acronym for Extensible Object Oriented Portal System. It is a web application platform that provides tools for online application development. It was developed by organization known as XOOPS Project and is an open source content management system. It is written in PHP.

The name might suggest it as a Portal System but it is mainly used as web application platform. What Extensible Object Oriented Portal System provide is template for every type of website development. It has a modular architecture and developers require installing all the required modules. Once the installation is done it allows developers to customize, modify, applying theme and maintaining website with regular updating.

It has been one successful platform receiving many awards and accolades. It has gained a reputation in PHP based Content Management System forte and is considerably rated among top % platform since 2008.

XOOPS provide database support using Relational database, currently MySQL. It also has advanced control on the access. The access control allows administrator to manage user groups and grant them with only necessary rights. The right and facilities can be blocked by administrator.

Every single module can be handled separately including installing and uninstalling. It has different administration for every module that looks after activation and deactivation. Every module thus separately manages the comment, permissions, access controls and notifications. Along with this administrator can specify specific permission to users as well.

Since XOOPS is open source and released under the terms of GNU General Public License, the development in it depends of the contribution from worldwide communities. It is one of the best tools and web application platforms and can be developed further.

Optimizing Graphics for Web development - WebGL

There is always an advancement taking place in web development. WebGL is one such introduction to the already existing development features. WebGL stands for web Graphics library. It was introduced and managed by a group named Khronos Group. It was developed originally by Mozilla foundation and is used for inducing 3D graphics.

WebGL is based on Java Scripts and hence also known as Java Scripts API. It is used to induce 2D and 3D graphics. It is based on the Open GL ES that provides gaming graphics. It is compatible with all web browsers. It is in conjunction with HTML and hence doesn't require any plug-ins to use it in web page.  It might seem as easy to implement but is difficult to learn. It is executed on Graphic Processing unit, which is java script port meant for Open GL, which has its own set of API for game development.

Implementation:
Since it is mainly used for game development, it consist of both control code which, has to be using Java Scripts and also code for shading purpose. The program thus generated is executed on Graphic Processing Unit. This graphic library makes use of HTML5 canvas element. It is accessed using the DOM interfaces i.e. Document Object Model interfaces. It also comes braced with Automatic Memory Management which is one of the features provided by Java Scripts.

Tools like Blender or Autodesk Maya provide an alternative to programming. They are the content creation tools which allow creating scene. The scenes thus created using such tools are then exported in the graphic library. There are tools for exporting like Inka3D which is meant for Maya.

Introduction to jQuery

Developing a web site requires updating skills and use of new tools. While developing dynamic web pages, it is also mandatory to consider size. jQuery is a library and is open source library. It allows adding advancement in pages with help Java. This library was thought of due to popularity of Java Scripts. Though the scripting language was popular, it had some shortcomings. It was very basic language and has no features offering advance modification and any special effects. It was also incapable of animation. Cross browser incompatibilities was main issue that was faced using Java Scripts. All these problems needed solution and hence jQuery came into picture.

jQuery provides easy solution for every issues faced with Java Scripts. It has also maintained the benefits of scripting language by offering light weight libraries. The library strengthens the scripting language by making it cross browser compatible. It also offers advancement to the basic language. There are many components available for modifications in this library. It is compatible with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). It simplifies the client-side scripting.

It is very easy to install and use jQuery. All that is needed is to download the library package and import it in web page code. There are two versions of library package available minified version also known as min and development version. It is small yet efficient and development version makes it easy to read and debug. Following is the one method of importing library.

<script type="text/javascript" src="jQuery-1.4.1-min.js"></script>

This will upload the min version library package and is ready to use.

What is the difference between software and hardware?

Hardware and software are related to computers and are totally different in meaning. They are dependent on each other because software or hardware cannot function alone.  

Hardware:

Hardware is a set of physical devices connected to computer which one can touch. It contsists of CD-ROM, CD-RAM, motherboard, Central Processing Unit, hard disk, sound cards, video cards etc. These are the internal hardware devices while keyboard, monitor, mouse, webcam, scanner, printer are outer devices. Hardware devices are roughly divided in to two types.

Input device and output device. 

Input device are those with which commands are given to computer. Like keyboard, mouse, joystick, scanner etc. Output devices are those in or on which we get output of our commands. It consists of monitor, sounds, printer etc. We can get output in soft copy and in hard copy as well. Result which we can see on monitor, can hear on sounds is type of soft copy. If we print a document and get paper print it is a hard copy.

Software:

 Software is programs or set of instructions which have to be installed on computer. They cannot be touched. Software is categorized in three types. 1. System software 2.  Programming software 3.  Application software. 

1. Application software: Application software is suite of programs to perform a specific task. Like accounting suite, graphic suite, office suite 

2. System software: It is known as an operating system of computer. Without operating system pc is like body without soul. There are different o/s available in market viz. windows, linux, macintosh, solaris, ios etc.

3. Programming software: are set of ready-made programs like MS word, Excel, Photoshop etc. These programs again are divided in two various categories like database programs, editing programs, word processor, spreadsheet etc. 

What is an operating system?

Operating system is like soul of computer. It is a significant part of system. It is actually a software program which serves as connection between hardware devices, programs and computer systems. Your hardware parts will not work without the command of your OS. Ready-made applications and programs are useless if the pc has no operating system.

Operating system manages all the folders and files in computer. It accepts instructions from the input devices like keyboard, mouse, it gives output of the task performed in the form of soft copy and hard copy. OS controls the other attached devices like printers, Pen Drive, Webcam.

The operating system can be categorized in following types.

1. Multiprocessing: This supports any program to operate on more than one CPU.

2. Multitasking: More than one program can be run with this system. With Windows 7 user can work on unlimited programs.

3. Multi-users: Hundreds of or thousands of user can work on this using this system.

4. Multi-threading: In this type O/S allows the various functions of the one program to run simultaneously.

There are many brands present in market viz. Windows, Linux, UNIX, ios, macintosh, solaris etc.  Windows is widely used and has been developed by Microsoft company. There are various versions of Windows like Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 etc. These systems are compatible with the personal computers. MacOS and iOS are developed by Apple Company and compatible only with Apple PCs and iphones respectively. Android is operating system owned by Google and used for mobile phones.

 

What is markup language?

Markup language is method in which the text is annotated or commented so that the document is differentiated and the computer can manipulate it. It is readable by human beings because the text is written in markup tag. When you write the text to be displayed on internet, you need to differ between that text and instructions. So in simple terms markup language is a set of words and tag symbols which give instructions on how that particular document should be displayed in output.

There are broadly three types of markup languages; 1) Presentational.  2) Procedural 3) Descriptive.  Several markup languages like HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), XML (Extensible Markup Language), XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), MathML (Mathematical Markup Language), RTF (Rich text format), SVG(scalable vector graphics), SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), GuideML (Guide Markup Language) etc are used. In these languages tags are used to manipulate code. Markup language is created by typing code manually or by using editor. Text editors, Object editors, WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM are some of the examples of the editors.

HTML is most commonly used Markup language. It is used to build website. It helps to define how the text, images should be displayed in web browsers. It is one of the standard languages rated by W3C. It uses angular brackets as its tags to define code. E.g. <b> tag is used for to bold the test; <i> tag is used to make text italic; <u> for underline, <img> is used for image, <font> for size and family of font, <p> for paragraph, <marquee> for motion of the text etc.

About Scripting Languages

Scripting languages are based on high level programming language. High level languages are more compatible to human language than system and it is very useful to system hardware to recognize the various instructions. C, C++ etc. are the example of high level language and all these language are converted into machine language via interpreter and compiler. Scripting means a programs that are written in scripting languages are not executed in front of specific period for particular system. As a substitute scripts which are made in plain text get interpreted into system compatible code when the program runs.

We can add the interactivity into web pages using scripting language. We can use it in many places in our web pages to carry out various cyclic jobs like filling the content in web based form along with users.

JavaScript is popular web scripting language and we can use it with HTML language to improve the functionality of web pages. We can use java scripting with HTML many times to perform some action such as to check validation of input which is put by user, playing audio and video file and image sliding etc.

There are various browsers and they are Internet explorer, Firefox, safari, Google Chrome and Opera etc. all are interpreting these scripting languages along with languages which are used to build web page. In other way this can be done at server side means these scripting are run at server. In server base scripting common gateway interface allow client to execute the scripting located in web server.