If you’re a Web developer who’s been curious about Ruby on Rails but has never gotten around to trying it out because you couldn’t find a suitable overview of its advantages, then this article is for you. We want to bring Ruby on Rails closer to those who want to take a peek first, without going through an entire tutorial. So, this article is structured a little different from most other introductions out there; hopefully it is more useful because of this.
I assume you’re already familiar with some other form of Web development, whether PHP, Python, Perl or Java, and relational databases like MySQL. First, we’ll introduce Rails and Ruby and the basic ideas behind both. I’ll teach you just enough Ruby so that you understand the code samples. I’ll tell you how to get Ruby on Rails running on your computer, and I’ll give you an overview of the basic functionality of Rails and demonstrate how Rails’ main parts work together.
This tutorial consists of two articles: in the current, first article we get started with some basic concepts and essential components of Ruby on Rails. In the second part (it will be published next week) you will learn how to install the engine; you’ll also take a closer look at Rails’ inner workings and discover main advantages of Ruby on Rails. Please stay tuned.
After reading these parts, you should have an idea of whether Rails is for you. If you get the feeling that it is, I’ll point you to some good tutorials on the Web that you can use to learn Rails. I’ll also provide a lot of further reading recommendations so you can dig as deep into the topic as you like.
You may want to take a look at the following related posts:
* 10 Useful Tips For Ruby On Rails DevelopersRead more…
Readability is one of the more important aspects of Web design usability. Readable text affects how users process the information in the content. Poor readability scares readers away from the content. On the other hand, done correctly, readability allows users to efficiently read and take in the information in the text. You want users to be able to read your content and absorb it easily.
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On websites that have a lot of pages, breadcrumb navigation can greatly enhance the way users find their way around. In terms of usability, breadcrumbs reduce the number of actions a website visitor needs to take.
If you haven’t heard of Twitter by now, you must be living under a rock! It is everywhere, and everyone is using it. To say that the rise of Twitter has been explosive would be an understatement. As a result of this growth, the number of Twitter apps and tools available has become extensive. So, in this post we have filtered them down to a respectable 99.
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As you may or may not know, we love to smash freebies around. Today we are glad to release the Web Developer icons set, designed by Pedja Rusic, a WP Smashing WordPress theme, designed by Greg Johnson and a Cafe icon set, designed by Enk. All icons and the theme are available for free download and can be used without any restrictions whatsoever. Please feel free to suggest ideas for next icon sets or single icons in the comments to this post.
We have noticed Pedja Rusic from Serbia over a year ago, when we presented his icon sets in our free icons round-up. A while ago we contacted him and commissioned the design of icons dedicated to designers and developers. The icons should pay close attention to the smallest details, look original, cool and still remain recognizable.
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We love beautiful photography. In photos, the beauty isn’t necessarily reflected in an eye-catching combination of colors; perspectives, angle, composition and, most importantly, the idea behind the shot or the situation in which the shot was taken, are particularly important when it comes for our showcases.
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Some say that web design without typography is like an orange without its peel, it just isn’t complete. Typography encompasses the reality of effective web design and achieves success in creating web page identity, eye-catching sites, and the enhancement of visual appearance.
Typography is much more than the “art of text”, it’s the evolution of creativity within simple to intricate web designs. One can say that a good architecture needs great support, the same concept can be applied to web design in the sense that a good blog could do without the use of typography, but an astounding one could use the creative support.
Typography leaves you with the option of bringing together simple creativity with unique and effective communication in order to get your blog or sites main focus across. Now, with all of this information at hand here are 40 fantastic blogs that will allow you to expand your knowledge base of what typography really is.
You may want to take a look at the following related posts:
* Useful Design Tools For Web Typography
* Useful Type Setting Principles
* Free Fonts For Professional Design
* Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate DesignRead more…
From a web designer’s perspective, it can be very interesting to look at the top websites from a particular industry to see how they relate to their target audience, the different approaches that are used, and how they compare to websites in other industries.
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Craigslist is obviously one of the most popular websites in the world, and each month it serves millions of users who post and view classified ads on the website. At the time this article was written, Craigslist was ranked as the 28th most-visited English-language website in the world by Alexa. Despite the fact that Craigslist receives such a huge amount of traffic each month, it is also criticized for its design, which seems to be at least 10 years out-of-date.
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Subversion is a version control system that many Web developers and designers use to back up their work. Subversion was started in 2000 and is quite popular in the open-source community; major repositories such as Google Code use it to distribute source code.
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