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Festive Offer

by | December 2010 |

This festive season Packt is pleased to announce a special offer on all Open Source eBooks. You will be delighted to know that now you can choose any 5 Open Source eBooks from a collection of over 500 innovative books at an unbelievable price of just $40 / £25 / €30.

Browse through our collection of books to pick your favorite copies: A-Z List Of Books

This is a limited period offer. Grab your copies now!

Read Festive Offer in full

wxPython 2.8: Advanced Building Blocks of a User Interface

by Cody Precord | December 2010 | Open Source

In today's world of desktop applications, there is a great amount of incentive to be able to develop applications that can run in more than one environment. Currently, there are a handful of options available for cross-platform frameworks to develop desktop applications in Python. wxPython is one such cross-platform GUI toolkit for the Python programming language. It allows Python programmers to create programs with a complete, highly-functional graphical user interface, simply and easily.

In this article by Cody Precord, author of the book wxPython 2.8 Application Development Cookbook, we will cover:

  • Listing data with a ListCtrl
  • Browsing files with the CustomTreeCtrl
  • Creating a VListBox
  • StyledTextCtrl using lexers
  • Working with tray icons
  • Adding tabs to a Notebook
  • Using the FlatNotebook
  • Scrolling with a ScrolledPanel
  • Simplifying the FoldPanelBar
Read wxPython 2.8: Advanced Building Blocks of a User Interface in full

Cocos2d for iPhone: Adding Layers and Making a Simple Pause Screen

by Pablo Ruiz | December 2010 | Open Source

Cocos2d for iPhone is a framework for building 2D games, applications, presentations, demos, and more. It was originally made for Python and then ported to IPhone by Ricardo Quesada as an open source project with the MIT license.

In the previous articles by Pablo Ruiz, author of the book Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner's Guide, we saw how to create new scenes and move through them, and build the base for an action game and how to handle accelerometer input and detect collisions.

In this article, we will see how to add more layers to your scenes and make a simple pause screen.

Read Cocos2d for iPhone: Adding Layers and Making a Simple Pause Screen in full

Inheritance in Python

by Dusty Phillips | December 2010 | Open Source

In the programming world, duplicate code is considered evil. We should not have multiple copies of the same, or similar code in different places. There are many ways to merge similar pieces of code or objects with similar functionality. In this article by Dusty Phillips, author of Python 3 Object Oriented Programming, we'll be covering the most famous object-oriented principle: inheritance. Inheritance allows us to create "is a" relationships between two or more classes, abstracting common details into superclasses and storing specific ones in the subclass.

In particular, we'll be covering the Python syntax and principles for:

  • Basic inheritance
  • Inheriting from built-ins
  • Multiple inheritance
Read Inheritance in Python in full

Cocos2d for iPhone: Handling Accelerometer Input and Detecting Collisions

by Pablo Ruiz | December 2010 | Open Source

Cocos2d for iPhone is a framework for building 2D games, applications, presentations, demos, and more. It was originally made for Python and then ported to IPhone by Ricardo Quesada as an open source project with the MIT license.

In the previous article by Pablo Ruiz, author of the book Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner's Guide, we saw how to create new scenes and move through them, and build the base for an action game.

In this article, we will see how to handle accelerometer input and detect collisions.

Read Cocos2d for iPhone: Handling Accelerometer Input and Detecting Collisions in full

Working with Geo-Spatial Data in Python

by Erik Westra | December 2010 | Open Source

In this article, we combine the Python libraries and geo-spatial data to accomplish a variety of tasks. These tasks have been chosen to demonstrate various techniques for working with geo-spatial data in your Python programs; while in some cases there are quicker and easier ways to achieve these results (for example, using command-line utilities), we will create these solutions in Python so you can learn how to work with geo-spatial data in your own Python programs.

This article by Erik Westra, author of Python Geospatial Development, will cover:

  • Reading and writing geo-spatial data in both vector and raster format
  • Changing the datums and projections used by geo-spatial data
  • Representing and storing geo-spatial data within your Python programs
Read Working with Geo-Spatial Data in Python in full

Cocos2d for iPhone: Surfing Through Scenes

by Pablo Ruiz | December 2010 | Open Source

Cocos2d for iPhone is a framework for building 2D games, applications, presentations, demos, and more. It was originally made for Python and then ported to IPhone by Ricardo Quesada as an open source project with the MIT license.

Scenes are an essential part of any Cocos2d game. In this article by Pablo Ruiz, author of the book Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner's Guide, we will look into the creation of many scenes to hold the different menus a game can have. Once we have a couple of scenes set up, you will learn how to go from one to another and with some nice transitions.

Read Cocos2d for iPhone: Surfing Through Scenes in full

Geo-Spatial Data in Python: Working with Geometry

by Erik Westra | December 2010 | Open Source

In the previous article, Working with Geo-Spatial Data in Python, we took a look at the various techniques for using OGR and GDAL within Python programs to solve real-world problems.

In this article by Erik Westra, author of Python Geospatial Development, we will cover the following:

  • Using Shapely to work with points, lines, and polygons
  • Converting and standardizing units of geometry and distance
Read Geo-Spatial Data in Python: Working with Geometry in full

Python Testing: Mock Objects

by Daniel Arbuckle | December 2010 | Beginner's Guides

In this article by Daniel Arbuckle, author of Python Testing, we shall:

  • Examine the ideas of mock objects in general
  • Learn how to use Python Mocker
  • Learn how to mock the "self" parameter of a method
Read Python Testing: Mock Objects in full

Getting Started with Ext GWT

by Daniel Vaughan | December 2010 | Open Source

The Google Web Toolkit is a great way for Java developers to create AJAX-based rich Internet applications without requiring in-depth knowledge of JavaScript or having to deal with the quirks of different browsers.

In this article by Daniel Vaughan, author of the book Ext GWT 2.0: Beginner's Guide, we introduce Ext GWT and explain where it fits into GWT. We then move on to show you how to get up and running with Ext GWT by creating your first project.

Specifically, we will cover:

  • Installing Ext GWT
  • Creating a new GWT project
  • Preparing the GWT project to use Ext GWT
  • Adapting the GWT example application to use Ext GWT components
Read Getting Started with Ext GWT in full
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