My School site fails on first morning of operation: "Education Minister Julia Gillard said My School was designed to take 1.7 million hits a day, 2350 hits a second, and that the problems were caused by 'huge demand'.
'The experts at our authority have done everything they can. There are nine servers backing this website up.'"
1.7 million hits per day is actually equivalent to 20 hits per second. I hope they don't think that is all they can get out of nine servers.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
My School site fails on first morning of operation
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
HTML5 video and codecs
HTML5 video and codecs: "Recently, Vimeo and YouTube announced that they were moving to support the HTML5 video tag, as DailyMotion did last summer. This is an important step in making video a first-class citizen of the modern web, and that is great news. Unlike DailyMotion, however, Vimeo and YouTube chose to rely on the patented H.264 video encoding, rather than an unencumbered encoding like Ogg Theora. This means that the pages on those sites will not work with Firefox."
There are patent licensing issues for video encoders and distributors that continue to make this area a challenge.
More on video freedom and mozilla.
H.264 Royalties: what you need to know
The H.264 Licensing Labyrinth
Friday, January 22, 2010
Analysis of 32 million breached passwords
Analysis of 32 million breached passwords: "Imperva released a study analyzing 32 million passwords exposed in the Rockyou.com breach. The data provides a unique glimpse into the way that users select passwords and an opportunity to evaluate the true strength of these as a security mechanism."
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Run IT as a business -- why that's a train wreck waiting to happen
Run IT as a business -- why that's a train wreck waiting to happen: "When IT runs as a business, it 'sells' software that 'meets requirements' to its 'internal customers.' Because its product is software, it has no choice -- it has to ask the wrong question: 'What do you need the software to do?'
Asking business managers to describe what software is supposed to do is the unavoidable consequence of a relationship in which IT's job ends with delivering software to its internal customers -- in which projects are considered successful when software is installed, users are trained in its operation, and using it to improve the business is someone else's problem.
Companies that have integrated IT and no internal customers define success differently.
Instead of asking what the software should do, they start by asking how their business counterparts run their operations now, what are their biggest problems, and how they want to run things differently and better in the future.
IT's job is to recommend better ways to operate, using technical capabilities business managers might not even know are possible.
These enlightened companies don't have IT projects -- they have business change projects that aren't done until the planned business change has been accomplished, and users are trained, not in how to operate software, but in how to do their redesigned jobs using the new software."
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Owltastic — by Meagan Fisher
Owltastic — by Meagan Fisher: "I’m currently working on a design that uses text-shadow and box-shadow, with RGBA in place to create the shadow color. I wanted to tweet about this technique because it’s simple and awesome, but to my surprise I couldn’t find a good, quick tutorial that covered the use of both text and box-shadow, along with RGBA. So I decided to create one."
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Time to stop showing clients static design visuals | For A Beautiful Web
Time to stop showing clients static design visuals | For A Beautiful Web: "Time to stop showing clients static design visuals
Demonstrating our designs to clients as XHTML/CSS pages rather than as static Photoshop or Fireworks has streamlined our workflow and helped us to set and manage a client’s expectations better than ever before."
24 ways: Make Your Mockup in Markup
24 ways: Make Your Mockup in Markup: "Die Photoshop, die
Some of you may be wondering, “what’s so bad about using Photoshop for the bulk of my design?” Well, any seasoned designer will tell you that working in Photoshop is akin to working in a minefield: you never know when it’s going to blow up in your face."
Too bad the site this article is on is really terrible, at least for my browser (Chrome), that's not the fault of the author.
Gmail Backup | Safer is better
Gmail Backup | Safer is better
toll for backing up your gmail account. works under Linux and Windows and has a command line version too.
CSS performance: UI with fewer images / Stoyan's phpied.com
CSS performance: UI with fewer images / Stoyan's phpied.com: "Often performance improvements come with their drawbacks, sometimes improving performance causes pains in other parts of the development process or strips stuff from the final product. Sometimes there's even a conflict where you have to pick: slow, unusable and beautiful or fast and looking like hacked with a blunt axe. But it doesn't have to be this way.
This post outlines some approaches to achieving common UI elements using CSS tricks in as many browsers as possible while using as fewer images as possible. Some of the tricks are brand new, some are very, very old, IE5.5. old. They all have in common the 'fewer or no images' mantra. Using fewer images comes with some pronounced benefits:
less time spent in Photoshop
lighter page, less HTTP requests, less image payload
fewer elements in the sprite to maintain (and sometimes fewer sprites) which means longer lived sprites with fewer updates and cache invalidation
generally easier maintenance - it's much easier to change a color value than to update and push a new image version
Sometimes some browsers may not be fully supported but that's ok - as long as there's progressive enhancement and the basic page is usable, people rarely notice 1px glows and other ornaments."
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Shindig - Welcome To Apache Shindig!
Shindig - Welcome To Apache Shindig!: "Apache Shindig is an OpenSocial container and helps you to start hosting OpenSocial apps quickly by providing the code to render gadgets, proxy requests, and handle REST and RPC requests.
Apache Shindig's goal is to allow new sites to start hosting social apps in under an hour's worth of work."
An integrated Atlassian thanks to OpenSocial (Q&A) | The Open Road - CNET News
THis company uses OpenSocial for integrating its products, not for linking with other social networks. It uses Apache Shindig as its Google Gadget container.
Simons: One, it's open. OpenSocial's openness means it is consistently benefiting from the contributions of the community. Dozens of companies now are starting to work with it, from Atlassian to Google, and the spec is evolving quickly. Gadgets are an important ongoing part of Google's strategy across several products, so our customers benefit from Google's investments and innovations, as well as our own.
Two, easier for developers to grok. Writing portlets for Jira was an art form. Gadgets are far more pervasive, and the technology underpinning them--HTML and XML over HTTP--is the linqua franca of the Web. OpenSocial meant our products were immediately more accessible to more developers.
Three, instant interoperability. We not only got interoperability within our own portfolio, but with other OpenSocial gadget containers, like iGoogle and Gmail, and with hundreds of other OpenSocial gadgets, from Box.net to Remember The Milk."
CSS Techniques I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Websites - Noupe
CSS Techniques I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Websites - Noupe: "CSS Techniques I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Websites"
Derek Powazek - Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists
Derek Powazek - Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists: "Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned."
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Object-oriented CSS
The most confusing thing about OO-CSS is its name and some of the terminology used which is borrowed from Object Oriented programming.
It might have been better to have called Component Based CSS because it is way of composing layouts out of components which have no coupling to each other. Instead of true inheritance, new components can be extended through compositing.
Discussions - Object Oriented CSS | Google Groups
OOCSS video available Hi Guys, Just wanted to let you know the video from Web Directions North about OOCSS has been published over at yahoo developer network. [link] Cheers, Nicole By Stubbornella - Mar 24 - 1 message -
w3c beta site live, uses OOCSS The w3c beta website launched! It uses hybrid-OOCSS. I was very lucky to be able to contribute to the scalability and performance of the front-end. They are seeking feedback and testers. More info at [link] Cheers, Nicole By Stubbornella - Mar 21 - 1 message -
Standard module format CSS Where can I find the css for the standar module format? Thanks By byqsri - Mar 19 - 2 messages -
Designers weighing in on Object Oriented CSS Hi All, I've been pimping OOCSS at SXSW in Texas this week. :) I fly back to California today. It was great to meet some of you while I was here. Just a warning, I'm *way* behind on email (both to me and to the group)... time to start catching up. Smashing magazine has launched a poll on OOCSS. I'm really excited,... more » By Stubbornella - Mar 19 - 2 messages -
the AG test, sensible defaults, and vertical rhythm Hi again Nicole - If the default line-height is 16px, why are most styled elements in content.css given 5, 10, or 20 pixel padding? It seems to break the vertical rhythm of the page, so that different columns of text don't share a common baseline. This is visible, for example, in the AG test that's included with the current download.... more »
OOCSS testing Hi, I am a front end developer in USA and will love to be part of OOCSS. I will like to help in testing and discussion. Regards, Vinod By vinod - Mar 16 - 2 messages -
Something Good Hi Stubbornella, After looking at the slide show, I think you are on to something really good here. It will be interesting to see how it develops. I have some questions about how best to use the templates and grids in a fixed width setting. I know if I just assign a fixed width to "page" everything under page... more » By Greg Fuller - Mar 13 - 4 messages -
avoiding the cascade Hi - I'm primarily a php programmer, but I've got love for the front end. When I'm writing PHP or other object-oriented code, rather than reuse code implicitly (by "inheriting" from another class), I prefer to be explicit, by actually feeding one object to another ("composition over inheritance," a pretty basic OOP rule of style). Avoiding inheritance... more » By jared - Mar 12 - 3 messages -
Templates I'm a Programmer that is obsessed with OOP, I separate dang near everything that I have into a new framework. It doesn't matter if it's a different motivation behind the same idea, or a different name for my functions. I swear, I've been addicted since I began. I got a wiff of OOCSS I've decided to dedicate a portion of time to... more » By Jon - Mar 11 - 4 messages -
can main be moved before left & right cols? Hi All, I have adjusted the template trying to get main above the cols in mark up and between the cols example <div id="bd"> <div class="main"> <h2>Main Content</h2> <p>but remian inbetween lef and right not above</p> </div> <div class="leftCol"> <h2>Left Column</h2>... more » By sams - Mar 10 - 8 messages -
Progressive rendering via multiple flushes / Stoyan's phpied.com
Perceived page loading time is just as important as the real loading time. And when it comes to user perception, visible indication of progress is always good. The user gets feedback that something is going on (and in the right direction) and feels much better.
via phpied.com
Using chunked HTTP1.1 to improve perceived delivery times
Daring Fireball: Why the HTML5 'Video' Element Is Effectively Unusable, Even in the Browsers Which Support It
Not exactly unusable but these are certainly valid points, there is a js workaround
OAuth WRAP support in FriendFeed for feedback - Bret Taylor's blog
As David Recordon mentioned on the Facebook Developer Blog, the Facebook Platform team is working to move Facebook Connect over to OAuth over the next year. As a part of that effort, we have been working with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and a number of other engineers on the OAuth WRAP standard, which aims to be much simpler to implement than the existing OAuth standard.
via bret.appspot.com
This looks like a really simple thing to implement when compared to the original OAuth standard. Instead of needing signatures this protocol uses https. here is an his example code: http://github.com/finiteloop/friendfeed-wrap-example/blob/master/friendfeedwrap.py
Monday, December 21, 2009
Open Colour Standard: free/open alternative to Pantone Boing Boing
Open Colour Standard: free/open alternative to Pantone: "'What we have, then, is a venerable, widely supported, but largely inflexible and very expensive de facto standard. It has a huge impact on both print and digital media, not to mention the clothes you wear, the color you paint your living room, even the specific shades used to define healthy dirt or high-grade orange juice. It is, in short, a bloated monopoly eating up more and more of the color market... If [Open Colour Standard] works, this effort could open up spot color, make open-source software more viable for pre-press, and maybe even inspire a little kitchen table chemistry. Most importantly, it would take the cross-platform treatment of color out of the hands of a private company and put it where it belongs, with users.'"
Persistent Trees in git, Clojure and CouchDB � EclipseSource Blog
Persistent Trees in git, Clojure and CouchDB � EclipseSource Blog: "I have to admit I found it a bit eerie seeing a single pattern pop up in so many different places. It may be just an idea whose time has come (similar to Garbage Collection a few years back). Or it may be just that now we simply have enough memory and computing resources at our disposal, which allows us to never have to delete something from the record, but instead only add incrementally. And oftentimes the history of data is just as interesting as the data itself. The benefits of immutability may also be a good way to tame the concurrency beast in the years to come."
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Charlie's Diary: Gadget Patrol: 21st century phone
Charlie's Diary: Gadget Patrol: 21st century phone Very interesting analysis of the decade's transformation of the mobile sector. Google is set to transform telcos into raw-data ISPs.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
OpenID on App Engine made easy with AEoid - Nick's Blog
OpenID on App Engine made easy with AEoid - Nick's Blog: "I'm pleased to present AEoid, a new App Engine library that aims to make user authentication with OpenID on App Engine simple."
CSS Mojo: Adding Polish To Your Pages
CSS Mojo: Adding Polish To Your Pages: "CSS Mojo: Adding Visual Polish To Your Pages" Elegant rounded corners in CSS.
Stubbornella � Blog Archive � Object Oriented CSS video on YDN
Stubbornella � Blog Archive � Object Oriented CSS video on YDN: "Object Oriented CSS: for high performance websites and web applications."
Friday, December 18, 2009
4.10.5.2 Common input element attributes — WHATWG HTML (Including HTML5)
4.10.5.2.6 The
multipleattributeLast call for comments
Tests: 0
Demos: 0
Latest Internet Explorer beta: no support whatsoever
Latest Firefox trunk nightly build: incomplete support
Latest WebKit or Chromium trunk build: incomplete support
Latest Opera beta or preview build: no support whatsoever
JavaScript libraries, plugins, etc: no support whatsoever
The
multipleattribute is a boolean attribute that indicates whether the user is to be allowed to specify more than one value.The following extract shows how an e-mail client's "Cc" field could accept multiple e-mail addresses.
<label>Cc: <input type=email multiple name=cc></label>The following extract shows how an e-mail client's "Attachments" field could accept multiple files for upload.
<label>Attachments: <input type=file multiple name=att></label>
via whatwg.org
This feauture is supported in Chrome 4, Safari 4, and Firefox 3.6
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