How can we demo web services?


We're working on a Software As A Service offiering. It's part of a customer's business process. Not the whole process, just one step. How do you demo a "POST" request that responds with some unique of pieces of information?


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Author: Steven Lott
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I hate CSS -- mostly because I don't understand it


Generally, I have the luxury of avoiding it.  At some point, however, I really need to understand it.


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Author: Steven Lott
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Model - View - Controller, and Related Patterns


About three weeks ago, TP sent me a handy link on MVC and related patterns.  This is my way of bookmarking it.


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Author: Steven Lott
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Graphics Learning, Cairo and PyCairo


In response to "A Simple Graphic Learning Environment", Gabriel says "One question, is there any reason you are not using cairo to do the graphics? This is something I plan to change, once I figure out how exactly, as it looks much nicer imho".

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A Simple Graphic Learning Environment - Part 2


In Part 1, I presented a simple GTK-based framework for graphic applications. Here's a graphic application I wrote that I used to create some illustrations that were too hard to do manually in any graphics package I have.

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A Simple Graphic Learning Environment - Part 1


At PyCon, there was a excellent presentation on teaching Python. Dr. Ceder advocated using a graphic environment, rather than a text environment for an introduction to programming course.

What's important here is that you need a learning environment that students can use, and will provide gratifying results. Second you need programming assignments that range from simple "hello world" graphics to something more complex and interesting for the advanced students.

The biggest "problem" is that GTK is very sophisticated, perhaps too sophisticated for pedagogy. There's no real reason to invent something dramatically simpler -- turtle graphics already provide dramatic simplicity. However, there may be room to provide a few more helper functions and methods which make the newbie's environment simpler but still compatible with GTK.

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Sugar, GTK and OLPC


The UI for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is called Sugar and is based on GTK and the PyGTK bindings. This has always been my favorite desktop GUI toolkit.

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Layers, Interfaces and Mutability


"We are having a debate about the basic way the UI, Business Logic, and Data Access layers communicate". I don't think there's a lot of room for debate here. Muddying the layers -- in effect -- makes the interfaces more complex, and couples too many things together. Further, I think there's a usable acid test that helps you determine if you've done the wrong thing.

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The Browser as OS? Perhaps Not


In the September 18 eWeek , Jim Rapoza ponders the "Browser as OS" question in "A Promotion for Browsers?" Some of this is interesting, but it misses the most important point.

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Building a Web Interface


I want a rich interface, how do I proceed?

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