Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category

Zen & The Art of Coding

24th June 2010

Foreword
Apologies to our regular readers if this comes as a jolt, but I’m going tech in this one…

I’ve been using a new programming technique for markup, known as Zen Coding. It’s a combination of XPath and CSS syntax that greatly speeds up markup generation.

For example, to automatically create the following markup…

    <ul id="nav">
	<li class="tier1"><a href="#" class="tier1"></a></li>
	<li class="tier1"><a href="#" class="tier1"></a></li>
	<li class="tier1"><a href="#" class="tier1"></a></li>
	<li class="tier1"><a href="#" class="tier1"></a></li>
	<li class="tier1"><a href="#" class="tier1"></a></li>
    </ul>

…you need only type the following Zen Coding snippet:

    ul#nav>li.tier1*5>a[href="#"].tier1

It’s a really elegant, streamlined syntax and something I’ve found incredibly useful so far. It doesn’t affect your source code, because it’s just an inline helper in your editor — a bit like auto-complete in Word, or Intellisense in Visual Studio.

The best thing is that Zen Coding is available as an add-on for loads of different programs – on PC and Mac – including 3Sixty’s two favourite code editors:

  • Visual Studio
    —via a download from Codeplex
  • Komodo Edit
    —go to Tools → Add-ons and select Zen Coding from the list

You can find out more about Zen Coding over at Smashing Magazine.

Posted in Markup, Programming, Web | Comments Off

Decorating the tree

11th December 2009

“And so this is Christmas, and what have we done?”  Quite a bit as it happens…

This year, 3Sixty wanted to do something a bit special for Christmas.  Something simple, quick to use and that everyone could interact with and enjoy. And the best way to achieve all of this? Social media.

Now, whilst some of you will be as sick of hearing the term as you will be of turkey on the 4th of January, it’s had an undeniable impact on all areas of life this year.  From news reporting to charity work and brand interaction, social media has propelled itself far beyond even the lofty heights of 2008′s digitally connected ambitions.

So we thought we’d do something to celebrate this, but something that would also fit the season.  The idea we came up with was the Twitmas Tree.  Anyone can post a message (or “wish” as we like to call them) on the tree and everyone else can read it.

But going a step further, we wanted the Twitmas Tree to be something people could embrace and truly make their own.  So we devised a way for the Twitmas Tree to interact with your Facebook account.  Any time one of your friends sends you a Twitmas Tree wish on Twitter, it’ll appear in your Facebook stream too.  Lovely.

We’re really proud of the Twitmas Tree and hope the web at large enjoys it this Christmas. At less than 24hrs old we’ve had almost 200 wishes posted already, in languages ranging from English to Dutch, Swedish and Spanish.  We hope you like it too.

Merry Christmas.

Posted in Branding, Design, Flash, Programming, Social Media, Social networking, Twitter, User Experience, Viral marketing | 2 Comments »

Sitecore code reviews

25th February 2009

Some of the most common Sitecore coding pitfalls.

Posted in Programming | Comments Off

What can we expect from Visual Studio 10?

30th September 2008

Microsoft is not yet saying when we can expect the next incarnation of Visual Studio, but it has let out a few of the details. What glorious future awaits us, then?

Microsoft employee Jeffrey Schlimmer blogged about some of the changes for VS10, which would include:

For VS10:

  • A new Windows Presentation Foundation-based (WPF) text editor
  • More “modern,” with more of a WPF look and feel throughout the suite
  • Smaller in size (in code and data) than Visual Studio 2008
  • More reliable and modular

For some time “later”:

  • Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) used for macros, plus other “end-user extensibility” improvements
  • The ability to create more add-ins in managed code
  • Full WPF shell
  • Extensive support for the parallel framework for multicore hardware

Though interestingly enough, he has since removed his original blog posting…

Reliability improvements are always good, and I look forward to VS being able to harness our multicore machines and hopefully build and compile significantly more quickly. If anyone can elaborate on how (or even if) WPF can help us, comment away!

Meanwhile, Noah Coad (gotta love that name) has mentioned multiscreen support, including dragging tabs out to their own locations on another monitor Nice!

Posted in Programming, Uncategorized, Web | Comments Off

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