Microsoft WebMatrix review: hands-on

Friday, January 14th, 2011

Microsoft is famous for developing new technologies only to abandon them later, leaving early adopters high and dry. WebMatrix is one of those rare exceptions to get a second life (or third, depending upon how you count them) after being dropped like a stone six years ago.

In a nutshell, WebMatrix provides a free web development environment for .NET and, to a lesser extent, PHP. The aim appears to be to provide a simple entry point to .NET web development for beginner coders – the hope being that once snared within the Microsoft development environment, programmers will upgrade to Visual Studio. The initial install includes the IIS Express web server, the SQL Server Compact Edition for databases and support for the new Razor mark-up syntax.

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How to make your website more attractive with @font-face

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

In my last blog entry I briefly mentioned CSS3 when talking about the confusion surrounding HTML5. In this post, I’m going to talk about one of the new features of CSS3 and one which will possibly be noticed most by the non-web developer.

Allow me to introduce @font-face.

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The confusion surrounding HTML5

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

There seems to be a lot of confusion lately with regards to what HTML5 actually is. Those in the web development community generally have a good idea of what it entails, if not the nitty-gritty, at least what it may contain. Not so outside of the web development world.

As generally tends to happen, external parties grab hold of these new phrases, half-heartedly look into what they mean, jumble them together and cause a wave of confusion. The latest wave is the lumping together of HTML5 and CSS3 into the general heading of HTML5. (more…)