Fast track your mobile success with Xamarin - Free eBook

To help developers better understand Xamarin’s complete mobile development solution, Xamarin communitytake provide a free ebook Fast Track Your Mobile Success here, in PDF format.

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Pro Android Web Game Apps: Using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

Pro Android Web Game Apps: Using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

Dive into game development and create great multiplayer online games with Pro Android Web Game Apps. This hands-on guide covers both the theory and practice of browser game development for the Android platform. You'll use cutting-edge technologies to make game engines in your browser, establish real-time server communication, and create amazing gaming experiences with artificial intelligence and rich media.

Bring your knowledge of HTML and JavaScript to the next level with Pro Android Web Game Apps. You are guided through exciting projects that give you firsthand experience with core game app development concepts. You'll start with a blank HTML page, and by the end of the book, have the skills needed to  create a multiplayer online game with rich graphics, sound, animation, and more—even if you have no previous games development or server-side experience.

What you’ll learn

• How to set up your development environment, run applications, and debug and profile code
• How to work with graphics and animations in a browser
• How to optimize rendering and make your games run faster
• How to handle events and user inputBuild an isometric game engineLearn the basics of 3D programming and WebGL
• How to use JavaScript to create full-blown server-side support for your games
• How to enrich your games using artificial intelligence

Who this book is for
The book is intended for developers with some generic HTML and JavaScript background who want to boost their experience to the next level and learn how to utilize browsers to build attractive multiplayer games for Android platform. No previous games development or server-side knowledge is required.

Table of Contents

• Preparing the Environment
• Graphics in the Browser: the Canvas Element
• Creating the First Game
• Animations and Sprites
• Event Handling and User Input
• Rendering Virtual Worlds
• Making an Isometric Engine
• 3D in a Browser
• Using WebGL 
• Going Serverside 
• Talking to the Server
• Making Multiplayer Games 
• AI and Physics 
• JavaScript Game Engines 
• Building Native Applications 
• Adding Sound
• App A: Debugging Web Applications

Free eBook - HTTP/2: A New Excerpt from High Performance Browser Networking

HTTP/2: A New Excerpt from High Performance Browser Networking
By Ilya Grigorik
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Final Release Date: May 2015

The new HTTP/2 standard is finally here. Approved earlier this year, HTTP/2 adds a new binary framing layer that will help make applications faster, simpler, and more robust. This chapter from the new release of High Performance Browser Networking provides a brief look at this updated protocol and explains how it will reduce latency, minimize protocol overhead, and add support for request prioritization and server push.

In this excerpt, author Ilya Grigorik takes you through HTTP/2's design and technical goals, and explains how Google's SPDY played a critical role in the protocol's development. You'll also learn what's required for upgrading a multitude of servers and clients to HTTP/2.

This excerpt covers:

• HTTP/2's binary framing layer
• Streams, messages, and frames
• Request and response multiplexing
• Stream prioritization
• One connection per origin
• Flow control
• Server push
• Header compression

Visit: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920042587.do

Building JavaScript Games: for Phones, Tablets, and Desktop

Building JavaScript Games: for Phones, Tablets, and Desktop

Building JavaScript Games teaches game programming through a series of engaging, arcade-style games that quickly expand your JavaScript and HTML5 skills. JavaScript is in the top ten most-used programming languages world wide, and is the basis for applications that can run in any modern browser, on any device from smart phone to tablet to PC. Especial emphasis is given to touch-based interface, but all games also run using a regular mouse and keyboard setup.

The four games you’ll develop from reading this book are:

• Painter
• Jewel Jam
• Penguin Pairs
• Tick Tick

These four games are casual, arcade-style games representing the aim-and-shoot, puzzle, maze, and platform styles of game play.

The approach in Building JavaScript Games follows the basic structure of a game rather than the syntax of a language. From almost the very first chapter you are building games to run on your phone or other device and show to your friends. Successive projects teach about handling player input, manipulating game objects, designing game worlds, managing levels, and realism through physics. All told, you’ll develop four well-designed games, making Building JavaScript Games one of the most enjoyable ways there is to learn about programming browser-based games.

The final chapters in the book contain a very nice bonus of sorts. In them you will find excerpts from interviews with two prominent people from the game industry: Mark Overmars, who is CTO of Tingly Games and creator of GameMaker, and Peter Vesterbacka, the CMO of Rovio Entertainment - the creators of the Angry Birds franchise. Their insight and perspective round off what is already a fun and valuable book.

What you’ll learn

• Create games to run on phones and tablets
• Manage sprites and other game objects
• React to player input through touch and button presses
• Allow game players to progress through different levels
• Achieve realistic movement through applied physics
• Prepare your games properly for commercial deployment

Who this book is for
Building JavaScript Games is for technology enthusiasts interested in learning about programming, and especially about game programming on their mobile devices. The book is also ideal for programmers in other languages wanting to make the move to mobile development using the cross-platform environment of JavaScript and HTML5. If you’re interested in browser-based development, especially the development of mobile games, then Building JavaScript Games is the perfect choice.

Table of Contents

Part I
1 - Programming
2 - Game Programming Basics
3 - Creating a Game World
4 - Game Assets

Part II
5 - Knowing What the Player is Doing
6 - Reacting to Player Input
7 - Basic Game Objects
8 - Game Object Types
9 - Colors and Collisions
10 - Limited Lives
11 - Organizing Game Objects
12 - Finishing the Game

Part III
13 - Adapting to Different Devices
14 - Game Objects in a Structure
15 - Gameplay Programming
16 - Game States
17 - Finishing the Game

Part IV
18 - Sprite Sheets
19 - Menus and Settings
20 - Game State Management
21 - Storing and Recalling Game Data
22 - Pairing the Penguins
23 - Finishing the Game

Part V
24 - The Main Game Structure
25 - Animation
26 - Game Physics
27 - Intelligent Enemies
28 - Adding Player Interaction
29 - Finishing the Game

Part VI
30 - Efficient and Readable Code
31 - Deploying your Game

Mobile First Design with HTML5 and CSS3

Roll out rock-solid, responsive, mobile first designs quickly and reliably

Overview

• Make websites that will look great and be usable on almost any device that displays web pages.
• Learn best practices for responsive design
• Discover how to make designs that will be lean and fast on small screens without sacrificing a tablet or desktop experience

In Detail

The mobile first design philosophy aims to develop websites that will be lean and fast on small screens without sacrificing a tablet or desktop experience. Using HTML5, CSS3, and simple, standardized modern web tools you can make one site to rule them all.

Mobile First Design with HTML5 and CSS3 will teach you the tools you need to make a modern, standards-based web page that displays beautifully on nearly any web browser—essential knowledge for anyone who makes websites!

In this book, you will learn how to set up a project from scratch and quickly get up and running with a full portfolio website that will form the base for making almost any kind of web page. Learn to develop web pages that fit the web conventions we all have to conform to. You will learn how to make responsive image slideshows; image galleries with detail pages; and bold, eye-catching banners and forms. Best of all, you will learn how to make these things fast without compromising quality.

This book will walk you through the process step by step with all the code required, as well as the thinking that goes behind planning a mobile first responsive website.

What you will learn from this book

• Develop web pages that change their layout and respond to different sized screens, so that they display well on mobiles, tablets, and desktops
• Utilize HTML5 and CSS3 to make responsive web pages quickly and effectively
• Use current technologies like LESS and SASS to work fast
• Build web page components that will function well on both small and large screens
• Create and plan designs that work for small and large screens without having to sacrifice content

Approach

A user friendly tutorial to develop websites that work for both small and large screens using HTML5 and CSS3.

Who this book is written for

This book is for beginner to intermediate developers and designers, as well as for those in management who want to understand what is possible with modern tools and strategies on the Web.