Get over 500 free Programming books from GitHub

Free e-books

Beginning programming? Or already a coder? Doesn't matter. Here is a Git repository with over 500 free programming books (and growing!). You'll find books on professional development, specific platforms like Android and Oracle Server, and about 80 programming languages. There are also lists in other languages.
On GitHub: https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md

Go ahead! There are some wonderful books out there! 

The future of search

While skimming through business magazines, I recently read this article on how Google will change the world, again. Google gets down to doing what it knows best - developing new tech - to change your life. I thought it was worth sharing and here it is.

Business Today : How Google will change the World

One Div: The single element HTML/CSS icon database.

Here's something that I came across when I was surfing through the Web last night. I thought it would be extremely useful for all your web projects. Its called One Div, a single element HTML/CSS database that gives you CSS, HTML codes for awesome shapes like this:  

Loading indicator

Facebook symbol

And much more. Find more here: http://one-div.com

The 7 Biggest Web Design Errors And How You Can Avoid Them

1 – Busy pages make bad pages

Trying to cram too much on to a single page is a sure fire way of putting visitors off. Not only is this practice generally a bad idea, but it can actively impede users logging on via a mobile device (of which there are ever-growing numbers).

White space is a good thing and gives users valuable breathing space to digest content. Make sure you’re spacing out columns, graphics, text and especially links. Above all, don’t try and do too much on one page.

2 – Hiding your links away

Links are arguably the most important feature of your website, so don’t hide them away or obscure them. First and foremost, you want to be consistent with how you highlight links, then apply this format across your entire site.

The opposite also applies, so don’t make un-linked text look like linked text. Some easy ways to distinguish links from regular text are with colour, underlining or bolding.

3 – Needless navigation is a no-no

It’s hard to overstate the importance of navigation on web design. This element will impact how easy and ergonomic your site is to get around, so spend some serious time putting yourself in the shoes of a new visitor.

While arty navigation (e.g. turning the page on a virtual book) is both pretty and tempting – and was fashionable for a period – it’s remarkably unintuitive to use. When setting out navigation for your site, bear in mind the key tenet of content being easy to find with the least amount of effort.

You should apply this doctrine to every aspect of your site, from drop-down links to images and beyond.

4 – Where’s your call to action?

Having a brilliantly designed and easy-to-navigate site is all well and good, but if it doesn’t prompt visitors to do the thing you want (i.e. click on something, share something, sign up to something), then it’s of no use at all.

You need to make sure that you include a clear call to action in a relevant place. However, this should by no means be intrusive, nor should it annoyingly interfere with navigation.

5 – Search and ye shall find

If you’re running a website (and particularly an e-commerce site) there is no excuse not to include a search function. Whether you have the resources to create this yourself or outsource it to a specialist, this is a necessity in the 21^st century.

Not only will this improve the functionality of your page, but it will also help to keep visitors who couldn’t immediately find what they were looking for on-site. One easy solution for newcomers to site design is Google’s Custom Search. By simply copying over the appropriate HTML code, you can incorporate a custom Google-powered search box for your users.

6 – Testing

Like GLaDOS from Portal, this should be your watchword. People will visit your site via a growing variety of means and it’s more important than ever to ensure an ergonomic experience for all.

Some common issues to look out for include being able to view the site in different environments, browsers and with different settings (e.g. having JavaScript disabled). There’s a vast variety of tools for such tasks available for free or at a marginal price, so there’s nothing holding you back from getting stuck in and keeping your website functioning at its peak.

7 – Keep your content coming and current

If you do opt to include a news, blog section or social media feed on your site – make sure to keep it up to date. If you fail to keep content relevant, it can make it appear like you’re out of businesses or are vastly behind the times.

Even if you have nothing to say yourself, it’s always possible to curate content you – and ideally your target audience – will find interesting and relevant.

Conclusion

Successful web design is more of an art than a science, but what doesn’t mean you can’t be empirical about the process. Look at your competitors’ sites and see what they do well – and badly – and then co-opt or discard these elements as needed.

Test the functionality of the site on those who’ve never used it and above all, have empathy. When viewing your work, try and put yourself in the shoes of a first-time visitor and alter elements accordingly.

Google's New Portal Provides Help for Hacked Sites

This week, financial giant JPMorgan Chase's Chase.com website became the latest victim in what appears to be an escalating series of cyberattacks from a variety of sources over the past several months. For an entrepreneur, a website hack can be disastrous, disrupting revenue and causing customers to lose confidence. Perhaps mindful of the increasing frequency and severity of cyberattacks, Google has launched a one-stop shop for advice on how to recover after your website has been compromised.

On the new "help for hacked sites" portal, which opened Tuesday, you'll find a series of videos that walk you through how to assess the damage, contact your website host, quarantine your site and more.

Of course, protecting your site before hackers find it is always best, says Maile Ohye, a developer programs technology lead on Google's Webmaster Support Team who narrates the first video. Her tips for safeguarding your site, which she writes in an accompanying blog post, include:

• Keeping software updated
• Removing extraneous software
• Using strong passwords (and making sure that your employees use them)
• Backing up your site on a regular basis

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226086#ixzz2O0GAKmE9

Which Cloud platform is right for you?

We saw earlier what cloud computing basically is. If you missed that, here's the link: What is cloud computing?
Here is a video that I picked up from youtube which lets you know about the types of cloud platforms. ie. Public cloud, Private cloud and the hybrid cloud.

The Power Of Coding

Super useful online tools to work with images

Images are indeed a big part of a website, and as a developer or designer you often have to work with them. Sure, there’s desktop applications like Photoshop or Gimp, but there’s also a bunch of super useful online tools to store, resize, and modify images online. Here’s a round up of the best tools available.

Practical tips to save bandwidth and reduce server load

11 Tips to Reduce Server Load and Save Bandwidth

01. Use CSS Text Instead of Images

Images make your Web pages slower and consumes a lot of bandwidth of your server. Instead of using a background image, use the CSS code. For example if you want to use plain red background in your website then use CSS code background-color:#F00 instead of a red-bg.jpg. With CSS, you can set the background color or background image of any CSS element.

02. Optimizing Your Images

Spread out your shares on Facebook to improve your reach

If you are looking to spread your content on Facebook you are going to want to make sure that you don’t share them too closely together, whether you share from a different account or page, if you share the same content too close together they will be bunched together on Facebook losing the effect of why you shared it twice in the first place.

Google Cloud Storage, App Engine and Cloud SQL

As you probably noticed over the past couple of years there was a lot of change and innovation on the web/cloud hosting space. Amazon is one of the most popular examples, with its S3 plataform, but many companies followed close behind.

One that impressed me so far is Google. 

Their Cloud Storage platform looks very competitive and cost effective, to the point that I am considering to start using it for my future projects. For instance, one thing you could do is to host your WordPress site there.

The main WordPress files would still be on your own hosting account, but all your data, even images, could be stored on Google’s services, which probably would improve the access speed and the reliability. Check out this post on Google’s Developers Blog explaining how you can do it.

Another very interesting service they are offering is called Google App Engine. It allows you to develop and host your entire web application on Google’s infrastructure, using either Java, Python or Go. The service is also free initially, and only when your reach a certain consumption quote you start getting charged for it.

Finally, if the main aspect of your website/application is a database (as is often the case), check out Google Cloud SQL. Again it allows you to host your MySQL database on Google’s infrastructure, increasing the speed, reliability and security.

It’s a nice time to be a web developer, huh?

This article originally appeared on dailyblogtips.com

Top Free Clone Scripts

Are you looking for free clone scripts of popular websites. Just take a look at this following list. Complete free best clone jQuery, Ajax, PHP and MySQL scripts with live previews.
These scripts helps you to improve your programming skills, download and experiment.. 

HTML and other programming language editor: NOTEPAD++

NOTEPAD++

Cloud-based security softwares

Data handling nowadays is very different from the past, and we can see the rapid changes of technology. And also, the capacity of its storage has become bigger to provide enough storage for our data. Indeed, it’s a very crucial and it has to be safe always.

I mentioned earlier about the rapid development of technology and about data storage, and we all know about data storing in the cloud, it’s not the cloud that we see in the sky, but it’s what we called Cloud Computing.

What is Cloud-computing then?

It is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud Computing entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation.
-wikipedia