One of the most elegant features of PHP is its flexibility in array manipulation.  Since the language implements weak type-checking, interesting functionality can be built in less lines of code than that required by more traditional web languages.
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A recent letter from the new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to all employees underlines the exciting journey ahead for the company.  In addition to providing enterprise and consumer software solutions and platforms, Microsoft is planning to undergo a journey of self-discovery to find their soul, from which they can then launch bold ambitions.
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Creating HTML emails can be one of the more challenging aspects of web coding.  While HTML web browsers have become standardized, email clients have not.  Hundreds of email clients exist, each with their own rendering and display engine.  To make matters even more interesting, a host of privacy rules often exist to prevent HTML emails from rendering properly.

In line with these obstacles, a well-crafted HTML email can reap high rewards.  Well-designed emails can help develop the brand throughout the sales and marketing process, improve sales conversion, and increase lead generation.  Integrating images into emails is often an essential element in an effective digital marketing campaign.  There are three primary ways to insert the images: web links, multipart MIME messages, and embedded Base64 strings.
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Microsoft’s XNA platform was originally touted as the .NET solution to DirectX – simple and straightforward libraries to unearth the jewels of 3D programming using C# or Visual Basic.NET.  Developers could even build apps for deployment on Xbox and Windows Phone – it was meant to be the standard for graphics and game development on the Microsoft ecosystem.  And then one fatal day in 2013, with little or no fanfare, Microsoft broke up with the platform in the most disconsolate way, through a simple email.
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When designing web pages, one of the key components of any site is the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) file, which defines the font sizes, colors, design, and website layout.  The style sheets also allow a website to change appearance based on the user’s browser and device, so that the website will look great on both mobile phones, desktops, and tablets.

In an effort to make CSS design more streamlined, Less.js adds programming functionality to style sheets.  Essentially, Less.js functions as a pre-processor, enabling nested selectors, variables, math operations, and functions within CSS code.  Although it doesn’t add any actual new functionality to the resulting CSS (everything created in Less.js eventually translates to a standard CSS file), as its namesake suggests, it can sometimes shorten the code required.
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When faced with a tedious and repetitive task on the computer, it’s often tempting to think how much easier it would be to delegate that task to someone else.  With the software package AutoIt, programmers can make that a reality, by having the computer do their work for them while they are away.
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The fundamental principle behind responsive web design is that the layout of the web page will dynamically adapt to the width of the client’s browser.  As the size of the browser decreases, certain buttons may disappear, navigation elements will change, and the layout will wrap differently to accommodate the browser.  Although many mobile phones can still display a website properly at full width through their high-resolution display and zoom, websites with a significant mobile visitor base will benefit from the increased usability of a responsive design.
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While Microsoft offers a powerful integrated development environment together with its .NET platform, it can occasionally be useful to compile code directly from the command line without the overhead of the Visual Studio IDE.  Luckily, every full .NET framework installation contains the “csc.exe” command line compilation program that can turn any Windows PC into a development machine.
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Resizing images for the web has always been a challenge. On one hand, most layouts need a fixed image size in order to look good. On the other hand, most images don’t fit that correct ratio. Designers often need to crop and manipulate photos in order to get them to assimilate to the target area.

With the popularity of tables and mobile devices, responsive design has thrown yet another monkey wrench into the problem. Websites now need to dynamically scale their content to the browser width and height, and change their layouts based on the device resolution and aspect ratio.
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The previous post in this three-part “Networking Fundamentals” series reviewed the IP protocol – the backbone of the Internet. Next is the UDP protocol, which rides on top of the IP protocol to provide the delivery of actual data between computers.
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