Posts tagged appengine

Browser Adaptive CSS with AppEngine

Sep 21st

Posted by Detro in Curiosity

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As I said, I’m doing some stuff with Google AppEngine. And, of course, I’m facing the usual problem of Browser Incompatibility:

Browser Incompatibility
Browser Incompatibility ;-)

=Browser Incompatibilities: the Most Common Problem=
The most common problem for Web Site developers is the fact that every browser treats HTML Tags, CSS and Javascript in it’s own way.
This Recipe tries to address one of the problem I faced the most: having a slightly different CSS for every Browser.

=The Usual Solution=
The usual solution is to load every time a different CSS depending on the Browser. But this solution has some side effects:
- It’s difficult to Maintain: very hard because every update to the style needs to be applied to multiple files
- It’s Boring: for the above reason
- It’s Not Cool: again, for the same above reason
…

So, what I did is to build a very simple solution, using the Template Engine and applying some of the concepts I learnt studying appengine and at the Google Developer Day 2008.

And, because Google built this very simple but useful Google AppEngine Cookbook application (based on appengine itself ;-) ), here is it.
Enjoy!

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Back from the Google Developer Day 2008

Sep 17th

Posted by Detro in Curiosity

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That was pretty exciting. A free, big, enlightening event about the “Google Stuff”…
Ok, ok. Who spoke with me here knows that it was NOT so enlightening: most of the knowledge they brought from USA is and was already available on the web. But that’s probably not the point. The point is, I believe, to share. Share the culture, the vision and… the APIs.

Wembley Stadium
The Venue: Wembley Stadium!!!

I went there for mainly two topics: Android and AppEngine. About Android, the presenter, Mike Jennings, was very funny (and you will see him as the second presenter in the video below) and a “great character”. But his knowledge of the Platform was pretty basic. I believe he sort of Project Manager or something like that.
Plus, in the second part they invited to do a “technical talk about the SDK” a guy, Carl-Gustaf Harroch. He is developing an application that involves a bit of LBS (Location Based Services) and some Google Maps. Ok nice, but he straggled quite soon with our questions about… almost everything of the SDK. And, yes, I was quite bastard with my own questions.
Come one: how can you do a talk like that without even knowing “enough” what is the meaning of the Tags within the AndroidManifest.xml? He was even quite young and not very confident, and he was unable to introduce the basic concepts before talking about more complex and in deep stuff.
At the end, quite disappointing session, I must say. Probably, I knew more about it :-P .

The USB freebie ;)
The USB freebie ;)

About AppEngine, I went to a “CodeLab”: a session where you are supposed to code. And I did, focusing more on my own Python code. They were available for help and questions, either about the application they proposed to build, or about your own. “In chair”, Mano Marks: confident. Probably too confident. But, at the end, he was helpful, even if an answer or two where quite “upsetting” (I mean: if I ask a question about something you don’t know, and I tell you that you are wrong, don’t be arrogant and confident; wait and see my proof!!!).

Now, let’s see the Keynote: More >

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Google AppEngine resources

Aug 30th

Posted by Detro in Curiosity

1 comment

Google AppEngine
In the last period I’m spending some time working with Google AppEngine: if you don’t know what is it, be ashamed! :P

I would like to highlight a couple of interesting resources that can make the life of who works with this framework/hosting platform/cloud computing system easier:

It was long time I was planning to learn Python: AppEngine looked like the right way to do so and jump on the Guido’s carriage.

What I’m working on? Nothing special, nothing comples, nothing huge. This time, Simplicity is the keyword. ;-)

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