WiX: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML. If you’re a developer needing to create installers for Microsoft Windows, then this book is essential. It’s a step-by-step tutorial that teaches you all you need to know about WiX: the professional way to produce a Windows installer package

Nick Ramirez, Rob Mensching, Nicholas Ramirez

WiX is an open source project and a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. WiX, which is used internally by Microsoft and by many companies around the World, simplifies many of the installation tasks that used to be shrouded in mystery. The tool set provides a command-line environment that you can integrate into your old-style build processes or you can use the newer technology from inside integrated development environments to build your setup packages. You'll find that you understand your installer better, can create it in less time, and save money in the process. No one really wants to devote a lifetime to understanding how to create a hassle-free installer for any software.This hands-on guide takes the mystery out of Windows Installer by showing how simple XML elements can be leveraged to create a sophisticated install package. By relying on Microsoft standards, you'll be able to use features like Property elements to customize your application's entry in Add/Remove Programs, the Shortcut element to create Start menu shortcuts, and other specialized elements for building upgrade and patch support and more.This book will show you the fundamental ingredients needed to build a professional-grade installer using Windows Installer XML. The initial chapters will introduce you to the set of required elements necessary to build a simple installer. We'll then explore those basic elements in more detail and see how best to use them in the real world.In the ensuing chapters, you'll move on to learn about adding conditions that alter what the user can install, then how to add actions to the install sequence and how to author a user interface. We'll move on to advanced topics such as editing data in the Windows Registry, installing a Windows service, and building your project from the command line. Finally, you'll learn to localize your package for different languages and detect older versions during upgrades. Each chapter uses to-the-point examples to illustrate the best way to use the language.

IBM Rational Team Concert 2 Essentials. Improve your team productivity with Integrated Process, Planning, and Collaboration using Team Concert Enterprise Edition

T C Fenstermaker, TC Fenstermaker, Suresh Krishna, Suresh Madhuvarsu

Software development is a collaborative effort needing active and timely input and response from all its members. Every day, project managers face ever-increasing pressures to produce high-quality software with increasing constraints. With IBM's Rational Team Concert collaborative software delivery environment, you can tremendously improve the productivity of your entire team through a web-based user-interface, continuous builds, a customizable process with work support, team support, integration and many more features.Written by Suresh Krishna and TC Fenstermaker, experts on Rational Team Concert, this book will help you leverage the full potential of the IBM Rational Team Concert platform to improve your individual and team performance. It follows a realistic case-study example enabling you to learn about Rational Team Concert fundamentals and best practices along the way to efficiently manage your software projects and tackle various software development challenges.Beginning with an in-depth analysis of software development challenges, the book goes on to introduce the Jazz Platform followed by a complete overview of the architecture of Rational Team Concert. After you install Rational Team Concert on WebSphere and learn to configure the server and clients, you will see all the features in relation to Web and Eclipse clients.From Chapter 3 onwards a realistic sample application is constructed to give you a strong grasp of your concepts. As you proceed, you learn source control, the mechanism to create, control, and manage documents, artifacts in a software development lifecycle, followed by different tools that Rational Team Concert offers for effective team and work management. You tackle the various challenges of Team Collaboration by integrated e-mail, instant messaging, events, feeds, and work items, the basic units of the task. You also learn the various aspects of the software development process and release planning along with process templates, which provide the initial process and iteration of your project. Finally, you extend the Rational Team Concert and make use of the Jazz Platform APIs to customize your process to fit your organizational needs.

Drupal 5 Views Recipes. 94 recipes to develop custom content displays for your Drupal web site

Marjorie Roswell, Dries Buytaert

The Drupal View modules give you flexibility and freedom to customize the display of your web site's content. Although there are more than 100 views-enabled modules, few site administrators use Drupal Views to its full potential.This book will enable you to realize the fullest potential of this powerful resource by providing a wide variety of powerful recipes for creating and displaying a wide variety of views ñ essential classics you will use again and again to innovative display methods that will make your Drupal site stand out. Pick and choose the ones you would like to prepare for your web site.In this book you will find ninety-four recipes to create a wide selection of views. The list includes event listings, interactive calendars and timelines, maps, proximity search, podcasting, carousels, Views Fusion, and many more. You will also explore default views, views with CCK, and master a variety of ways to associate views with related content.Most people think of Views for site visitors. But Views can also be handy for site administrators. You will get to know the Views Bulk Operations module, along with Editable Fields, and Views Custom Fields. (You'll probably wonder why you never used them before!)If you want to take Views to the next level, the book contains a code-rich chapter on theming. However, you will find most of the recipes detailed by the author do not require any original coding at all.As you progress through the recipes, you will be immersed in such Drupal Views topics as fields, arguments, filters, exposed filters, sorting, style plug-ins, formatters, cloning and copying views.Because Drupal is a worldwide and ever adapting system, the author also includes great tips and resources for navigating the online Drupal community and expanding your knowledge of the recipes.Finally, there is an extensive Appendix, which includes listings of all default views, formatters and style plug-ins for Drupal 5, along with a categorized list of patches.

Lo-Dash Essentials. Implement fast, lean, and readable code effectively with Lo-Dash

Adam Boduch

Automating DevOps with GitLab CI/CD Pipelines. Build efficient CI/CD pipelines to verify, secure, and deploy your code using real-life examples

Christopher Cowell, Nicholas Lotz, Chris Timberlake

Developers and release engineers understand the high stakes involved in building, packaging, and deploying code correctly. Ensuring that your code is functionally correct, fast, and secure is a time-consuming and complex task. Code implementation, development, and deployment can be conducted efficiently using GitLab CI/CD pipelines.Automating DevOps with GitLab CI/CD Pipelines begins with the basics of Git and GitLab, showing how to commit and review code. You’ll learn to set up GitLab Runners for executing and autoscaling CI/CD pipelines and creating and configuring pipelines for many software development lifecycle steps. You'll also discover where to find pipeline results in GitLab, and how to interpret those results. Through the course of the book, you’ll become well-equipped with deploying code to different environments, advancing CI/CD pipeline features such as connecting GitLab to a Kubernetes cluster and using GitLab with Terraform, triggering pipelines and improving pipeline performance and using best practices and troubleshooting tips for uncooperative pipelines. In-text examples, use cases, and self-assessments will reinforce the important CI/CD, GitLab, and Git concepts, and help you prepare for interviews and certification exams related to GitLab.By the end of this book, you'll be able to use GitLab to build CI/CD pipelines that automate all the DevOps steps needed to build and deploy high-quality, secure code.

AngularJS Web Application Development Cookbook. Over 90 hands-on recipes to architect performant applications and implement best practices in AngularJS

Matthew Frisbie

Packed with easy-to-follow recipes, this practical guide will show you how to unleash the full might of the AngularJS framework. Skip straight to practical solutions and quick, functional answers to your problems without hand-holding or slogging through the basics. Avoid antipatterns and pitfalls, and squeeze the maximum amount out of the most powerful parts of the framework, from creating promise-driven applications to building an extensible event bus. Throughout, take advantage of a clear problem-solving approach that offers code samples and explanations of components you should be using in your production applications.

Network Automation with Go. Learn how to automate network operations and build applications using the Go programming language

Nicolas Leiva, Michael Kashin

Go’s built-in first-class concurrency mechanisms make it an ideal choice for long-lived low-bandwidth I/O operations, which are typical requirements of network automation and network operations applications.This book provides a quick overview of Go and hands-on examples within it to help you become proficient with Go for network automation. It’s a practical guide that will teach you how to automate common network operations and build systems using Go.The first part takes you through a general overview, use cases, strengths, and inherent weaknesses of Go to prepare you for a deeper dive into network automation, which is heavily reliant on understanding this programming language. You’ll explore the common network automation areas and challenges, what language features you can use in each of those areas, and the common software tools and packages. To help deepen your understanding, you’ll also work through real-world network automation problems and apply hands-on solutions to them.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with Go and have a solid grasp on network automation.

Machine Learning for Data Mining. Improve your data mining capabilities with advanced predictive modeling

Jesus Salcedo

Machine learning (ML) combined with data mining can give you amazing results in your data mining work by empowering you with several ways to look at data. This book will help you improve your data mining techniques by using smart modeling techniques.This book will teach you how to implement ML algorithms and techniques in your data mining work. It will enable you to pair the best algorithms with the right tools and processes. You will learn how to identify patterns and make predictions with minimal human intervention. You will build different types of ML models, such as the neural network, the Support Vector Machines (SVMs), and the Decision tree. You will see how all of these models works and what kind of data in the dataset they are suited for. You will learn how to combine the results of different models in order to improve accuracy. Topics such as removing noise and handling errors will give you an added edge in model building and optimization.By the end of this book, you will be able to build predictive models and extract information of interest from the dataset

The Art of Crafting User Stories. Unleash creativity and collaboration to deliver high-value products with a delightful user experience

Christopher Lee

The Art of Crafting User Stories is a must-read for product managers, UX professionals, and product developers dedicated to creating meaningful digital experiences. This book provides a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to empower you to master the techniques for creating user stories that drive effective product development.This book takes you on a journey from identifying and capturing user needs, goals, and perspectives through user stories, to crafting impactful stories for design choices and organizing tasks efficiently. You’ll learn how to define the problem area, recognize user personas, and develop user scenarios with the aid of real-world examples, practical tips, and exercises designed to help you develop your skills in crafting user-centered experiences. Moreover, you’ll gain a thorough understanding of user stories, their role in Agile development, and how to use them to plan and manage products effectively.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to improve the quality and efficiency of your own products by applying the hands-on practical skills to create compelling digital experiences that resonate with users and stay relevant in the market.

In-Memory Analytics with Apache Arrow. Perform fast and efficient data analytics on both flat and hierarchical structured data

Matthew Topol, Wes McKinney

Apache Arrow is designed to accelerate analytics and allow the exchange of data across big data systems easily.In-Memory Analytics with Apache Arrow begins with a quick overview of the Apache Arrow format, before moving on to helping you to understand Arrow’s versatility and benefits as you walk through a variety of real-world use cases. You'll cover key tasks such as enhancing data science workflows with Arrow, using Arrow and Apache Parquet with Apache Spark and Jupyter for better performance and hassle-free data translation, as well as working with Perspective, an open source interactive graphical and tabular analysis tool for browsers. As you advance, you'll explore the different data interchange and storage formats and become well-versed with the relationships between Arrow, Parquet, Feather, Protobuf, Flatbuffers, JSON, and CSV. In addition to understanding the basic structure of the Arrow Flight and Flight SQL protocols, you'll learn about Dremio’s usage of Apache Arrow to enhance SQL analytics and discover how Arrow can be used in web-based browser apps. Finally, you'll get to grips with the upcoming features of Arrow to help you stay ahead of the curve.By the end of this book, you will have all the building blocks to create useful, efficient, and powerful analytical services and utilities with Apache Arrow.

Unity 3D Game Development. Designed for passionate game developers—Engineered to build professional games

Anthony Davis, Travis Baptiste, Russell Craig, Ryan Stunkel

This book, written by a team of experts at Unity Technologies, follows an informal, demystifying approach to the world of game development.Within Unity 3D Game Development, you will learn to:Design and build 3D characters and game environmentsThink about the users’ interactions with your gameDevelop an interface and apply visual effects to add an emotional connection to your world Gain a solid foundation of sound design, animations, and lighting Build, test, and add final touchesThe book contains expert insights that you’ll read before you look into the project on GitHub to understand all the underpinnings. This way, you get to see the end result, and you’re allowed to be creative and give your own thoughts to design, as well as work through the process with the new tools we introduce.Join the book community on Discord to read this book with Unity game developers, and the team of authors. Ask questions, build teams, chat with the authors, participate in events and much more. The link to join is included in the book.

Implementing Samba 4. Exploit the real power of Samba 4 Server by leveraging the benefits of an Active Directory Domain Controller

Marcelo Leal

Data Augmentation with Python. Enhance deep learning accuracy with data augmentation methods for image, text, audio, and tabular data

Duc Haba

Data is paramount in AI projects, especially for deep learning and generative AI, as forecasting accuracy relies on input datasets being robust. Acquiring additional data through traditional methods can be challenging, expensive, and impractical, and data augmentation offers an economical option to extend the dataset.The book teaches you over 20 geometric, photometric, and random erasing augmentation methods using seven real-world datasets for image classification and segmentation. You’ll also review eight image augmentation open source libraries, write object-oriented programming (OOP) wrapper functions in Python Notebooks, view color image augmentation effects, analyze safe levels and biases, as well as explore fun facts and take on fun challenges. As you advance, you’ll discover over 20 character and word techniques for text augmentation using two real-world datasets and excerpts from four classic books. The chapter on advanced text augmentation uses machine learning to extend the text dataset, such as Transformer, Word2vec, BERT, GPT-2, and others. While chapters on audio and tabular data have real-world data, open source libraries, amazing custom plots, and Python Notebook, along with fun facts and challenges.By the end of this book, you will be proficient in image, text, audio, and tabular data augmentation techniques.

Production-Ready Applied Deep Learning. Learn how to construct and deploy complex models in PyTorch and TensorFlow deep learning frameworks

Tomasz Palczewski, Jaejun (Brandon) Lee, Lenin Mookiah

Machine learning engineers, deep learning specialists, and data engineers encounter various problems when moving deep learning models to a production environment. The main objective of this book is to close the gap between theory and applications by providing a thorough explanation of how to transform various models for deployment and efficiently distribute them with a full understanding of the alternatives.First, you will learn how to construct complex deep learning models in PyTorch and TensorFlow. Next, you will acquire the knowledge you need to transform your models from one framework to the other and learn how to tailor them for specific requirements that deployment environments introduce. The book also provides concrete implementations and associated methodologies that will help you apply the knowledge you gain right away. You will get hands-on experience with commonly used deep learning frameworks and popular cloud services designed for data analytics at scale. Additionally, you will get to grips with the authors’ collective knowledge of deploying hundreds of AI-based services at a large scale.By the end of this book, you will have understood how to convert a model developed for proof of concept into a production-ready application optimized for a particular production setting.

Arduino Electronics Blueprints. Make common electronic devices interact with an Arduino board to build amazing out-of-the-box projects

Donald Wilcher, Don Wilcher

RHCSA Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. Comprehensive Mastery for Advanced System Administration and Certification Success

Asghar Ghori

Embark on a journey through Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, beginning with the basics of local installation and initial system interactions. Our course guides you through fundamental and advanced file management techniques, ensuring you can handle any file-related tasks with ease. Explore user management in-depth, from basic to advanced levels, providing you with the skills to manage users and groups effectively.Delve into the core aspects of the Linux operating system, including the Bash shell, process management, and job scheduling. Gain expertise in package management, both basic and advanced, to keep your system up-to-date and efficient. Understand the intricacies of the Linux boot process, system initialization, and system tuning to optimize performance and reliability.The course also covers essential networking concepts, including device management, connections, and hostname resolution. You'll learn to secure your system with SSH, firewall configuration, and SELinux. Additionally, explore storage management, local file systems, and swap configurations to ensure robust data handling. Finally, enhance your automation skills with shell scripting and containers, preparing you for modern DevOps environments.

Advanced Penetration Testing for Highly-Secured Environments: The Ultimate Security Guide. Learn to perform professional penetration testing for highly-secured environments with this intensive hands-on guide with this book and

Lee Allen

The internet security field has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade. Everyday more people around the globe gain access to the internet and not all of them with good intentions. The need for penetration testers has grown now that the security industryhas had time to mature. Simply running a vulnerability scanner is a thing of the past and is no longer an effective method of determining a business's true security posture. Learn effective penetration testing skills so that you can effectively meet and manage the rapidly changing security needs of your company. Advanced Penetration Testing for Highly-Secured Environments will teach you how to efficiently and effectively ensure the security posture of environments that have been secured using IDS/IPS, firewalls, network segmentation, hardened system configurations and more. The stages of a penetration test are clearly defined and addressed using step-by-step instructions that you can follow on your own virtual lab.The book follows the standard penetration testing stages from start to finish with step-by-step examples. The book thoroughly covers penetration test expectations, proper scoping and planning, as well as enumeration and footprinting. You'll learn how to clean up and compile proof of concept, exploit code from the web, advanced web application testing techniques, client side attacks, post exploitation strategies, detection avoidance methods, generation of well defined reports and metrics, and setting up a penetration testing virtual lab that mimics a secured environment. The book closes by issuing a challenge to your skills and ability to perform a full penetration test against a fictional corporation; followed by a detailed walk through of the solution.Advanced Penetration Testing for Highly-Secured Environments is packed with detailed examples that reinforce enumeration, exploitation, post-exploitation, reporting skills and more.

Hands-On Deep Learning Algorithms with Python. Master deep learning algorithms with extensive math by implementing them using TensorFlow

Sudharsan Ravichandiran

Deep learning is one of the most popular domains in the AI space that allows you to develop multi-layered models of varying complexities. This book introduces you to popular deep learning algorithms—from basic to advanced—and shows you how to implement them from scratch using TensorFlow. Throughout the book, you will gain insights into each algorithm, the mathematical principles involved, and how to implement it in the best possible manner. The book starts by explaining how you can build your own neural networks, followed by introducing you to TensorFlow, the powerful Python-based library for machine learning and deep learning. Moving on, you will get up to speed with gradient descent variants, such as NAG, AMSGrad, AdaDelta, Adam, and Nadam. The book will then provide you with insights into recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and LSTM and how to generate song lyrics with RNN. Next, you will master the math necessary to work with convolutional and capsule networks, widely used for image recognition tasks. You will also learn how machines understand the semantics of words and documents using CBOW, skip-gram, and PV-DM. Finally, you will explore GANs, including InfoGAN and LSGAN, and autoencoders, such as contractive autoencoders and VAE. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with all the skills you need to implement deep learning in your own projects.

Mastering Adobe Photoshop Elements. Bring out the best in your images using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024 - Sixth Edition

Robin Nichols

Dive into the world of digital photo editing with this latest edition, crafted by Robin Nichols, a seasoned photographer and digital imaging expert, which brings the latest Photoshop Elements 2024 to your fingertips. With a unique blend of in-depth tutorials and practical applications, this book is an essential resource for photographers at all levels.It introduces new features like Dark Mode, Match Color, and Photo Reels, along with advanced techniques like layering and artistic effects. The book also addresses common user feedback from previous editions, ensuring a refined and user-friendly experience. Elements 2024 extends its AI capabilities by simplifying complex editing processes. Learn to stitch widescreen panoramas, remove people from backgrounds, de-focus backgrounds, re-compose images, and even create a range of calendars and greeting cards for your friends and family.Take your prowess to the next level by learning how to correct optical distortion, re-shape images, exploit layers, layer masking, and sharpening techniques—create the perfect picture or imaginative fantasy illustration. You’ll also learn the online realms of animation, video creation, and third-party plug-ins.By the end of this book, you'll learn how to leverage the incredible features of Photoshop Elements 2024 with complete confidence.

MicroPython Cookbook. Over 110 practical recipes for programming embedded systems and microcontrollers with Python

Marwan Alsabbagh

MicroPython is an open source implementation of Python 3 that runs in embedded environments. With MicroPython, you can write clean and simple Python code to control hardware instead of using complex low-level languages such as C and C++. This book guides you through all the major applications of the MicroPython platform to build and program projects that use microcontrollers.This MicroPython book covers recipes that will help you experiment with the programming environment and hardware programmed in MicroPython. You'll find tips and techniques for building a variety of objects and prototypes that can sense and respond to touch, sound, position, heat, and light. This book will take you through the uses of MicroPython with a variety of popular input devices and sensors. You'll learn techniques to handle time delays and sensor readings, and apply advanced coding techniques to create complex projects. As you advance, you'll deal with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and integration with other online web services. In addition to this, you'll use MicroPython to make music with bananas and create portable multiplayer video games that incorporate sound and light animations into the gameplay.By the end of this book, you'll have mastered the tips and tricks to troubleshoot your development problems and take your MicroPython project to the next level.

JavaScript Projects for Kids. Gear up for a roller-coaster ride into the world of JavaScript and programming with this easy-to-follow, fun, and entertaining project-based guide

Syed Omar Faruk Towaha

JavaScript is the most widely-used programming language for web development and that's not all! It has evolved over the years and is now being implemented in an array of environments from websites to robotics. Learning JavaScript will help you see the broader picture of web development.This book will take your imagination to new heights by teaching you how to work with JavaScript from scratch. It will introduce you to HTML and CSS to enhance the appearance of your applications. You’ll then use your skills to build on a cool Battleship game! From there, the book will introduce you to jQuery and show you how you can manipulate the DOM. You’ll get to play with some cool stuff using Canvas and will learn how to make use of Canvas to build a game on the lines of Pacman, only a whole lot cooler! Finally, it will show you a few tricks with OOP to make your code clean and will end with a few road maps on areas you can explore further.

Simplifying Service Management with Consul. Overcome connectivity and security challenges within dynamic service architectures

Robert E. Jackson

Within the elastic and dynamic nature of cloud computing, efficient and accurate service discovery provides the cornerstone for all communications. HashiCorp Consul facilitates this service discovery efficiently and securely, independent of the operating environment. This book will help you build a solid understanding of both the concepts and applications of HashiCorp Consul.You'll begin by finding out what you can do with Consul, focusing on the conceptual views of configuration samples along with Terraform code to expedite lab environment and hands-on experimentation, which will enable you to apply Consul effectively in your everyday lives. As you advance, you'll learn how to set up your own Consul cluster and agents in a single datacenter or location and understand how Consul utilizes RAFT and GOSSIP protocols for communication. You'll also explore the practical applications of primary Consul use cases, including communication flows and configuration and code examples. With that knowledge, you'll extend Consul across datacenters to discuss the applicability of multiple regions, multiple clouds, and hybrid cloud environments.By the end of this Consul book, you will have the tools needed to create and operate your own Consul cluster and be able to facilitate your service discovery and communication.

Introduction to Software Architecture. Get familiar with the basics of software architecture and design concepts

Adrian Ostrowski, Piotr Gaczkowski

Software architecture refers to the high-level design of complex applications. It is evolving just like the languages we use, but there are architectural concepts and patterns that you can learn to write high-performance apps in a high-level language without sacrificing readability and maintainability.If you want to become a software architect, this audiobook will get you up to speed with architectural concepts, including established patterns and rising trends. It will also demonstrate effective approaches to its design and documentation. Next, you'll discover the design concepts involved in application architecture and the patterns in software development. We’ll introduce you to a few concepts and fallacies related to architectural design and show you when to use the said patterns.

Mastering HTML5 Forms. Create dynamic and responsive web forms with this in - depth, hands-on guide

Gaurav Gupta

HTML5 has given web developers the ability to easily develop sites and applications which, previously, were extremely time consuming. Now, they can not only build visually stunning forms and web pages, but can also increase the scope of their applications, as well as collect valuable user inputs and data through customized forms.This practical guide will teach you how to create responsive forms, and how to link them to the database. This will enable you to take advantage of the power behind HTML5 elements for building forms, and make the user interfaces attractive and more interactive.Explore the benefits of web forms, and learn how to create them using new HTML5 form elements. This guide will take you through a number of clear, practical examples that will help you to take advantage of the forms built and customized using HTML5 and related technologies, quickly and painlessly. Your ability to build responsive forms will be enhanced throughout the book.You will also learn about the necessity of validations, CSS3 properties for improving the look of the form, and how to link the form to the server. Lastly, you will learn to make the standard forms responsive by making them compatible with desktops and mobile devices.