1. Use compression, either of the JPEG or PNG variety. PNGs will need to be crushed in order to not be huge file sizes. Your front page should not be filled with images over 10kb (aside from maybe the banner). If you have a blog, try to keep images under 50kb. You can have users click on thumbnails to see larger versions.

2. Use appropriate sizes. If your HTML declares an image to be 250×150, the image should actually be that size. If you resize a larger image, the visitor’s browser will still have to load the full sized image, which takes longer to load.

3. Use the appropriate alt tags. In order to be standards-compliant, all images on any page should be properly described in alt tags so that visually impaired visitors will know what they are.

4. For large packs of images, use a gallery. If you are going to be displaying images in bunches, use some type of gallery or light box (modal windows). People who see the initial page will still get fast load times, and if they want to see the images up close, they can choose to wait longer.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

In most circumstances involving financial transactions, you should purchase a signed certificate, but there are instances when self signing will suffice. Some examples include private intranets, internal business groupware, web-based control panels, and other content backends. In all of those situations, you need encryption, but it does not matter to you if the certificate is official since you are the one who signed it.

You will still receive the browser warning the first time, but your browser should have a function that allows you to add your site to your browser’s trusted sites. From then on, you will not see the warning, although other users still would see it. If you ever decide that you do actually need to purchase a certificate, you can always change it later. For information about creating a self-signed certificate, see this site.

Photo Source: Flickr

Originally, HTML 5 video was supposed to support an open standard, such as Ogg Theora. Mozilla, Opera, and others were in favor of the standardization and began to support it. Apple and Google felt that the Theora codec was not mature enough and did not match the quality of H.264, a proprietary and patented codec. Mozilla, being a provider of a free and open source browser (Firefox), could not legally (or perhaps even ethically) support H.264, while Apple (in Safari) chose to only support it, and Google (in Chrome) supported both.

Not long ago, Google acquired On2 Technologies, the company that originally released the Theora format into the free software community. I speculated that it would be great if Google used On2 to improve Theora or create a new superior open format. Now it seems that Google is going to do just that, and Mozilla will support the new open codec.

Answer: Yes, using .htaccess you can force most browsers open a “save as” prompt rather than opening a particular file type with a browser plugin. Add the following to an .htaccess file inside the directory with the files:

AddType application/octet-stream .pdf
AddType application/octet-stream .doc
AddType application/octet-stream .txt

Nevertheless, nothing is fool proof. If you want to make sure your clients will save the documents, there is no substitute for good education. Make sure they know how to do and that you mark that clearly on the download page. If you want to be particularly diligent, you can even add a popup window to remind them again before they click the link.

Photo Source: Flickr

Enter: Webshell, a cross-platform mobile SSH tool that allows the user to access a remote server on a computer, iPhone, or any other mobile device that has a web browser. Webshell is written in Python and therefore runs on any Unix-like system, including Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X.

Webshell supports multiple terminal emulations, UTF-8 enconding, including chinese/japanese glyph support, a virtual keyboard for iPhone users, customizable appearance, and maintains all of the security of SSH since it still operates over SSL/TLS. Webshell is free and open source software (GPL) and available for download from the project’s website.

If Microsoft intends to keep their commanding share of the browser market, they will need to continue to adapt to web standards. At their MIX 2010 developer conference in Las Vegas, experts predict that Microsoft will unveil a new IE version that takes into account HTML 5 elements, including support for vector graphics like SVG.

Even with IE 8, the current version, Internet Explorer is still far behind competitors like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera. If ever there were a time for Microsoft to make a game-changing play, that time is now.

Source: Webmonkey

“Today, we are opening the full potential of the Web for everyone,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Opera CEO, in a statement. “With server capability in the browser, Web developers can create Web applications with profound ease. Consumers have the flexibility to choose private and efficient ways of sharing information.”

Each service is started independently. A user only chooses the ones he wants to run. It relies on UPnP to connect to a user’s router, eliminating the need for port-forwarding. It also sets up a proxy that should create a security layer, protecting the user’s computer from Internet attacks. The small web server is design to not tax a user’s CPU or broadband connection, allowing it to work in the background without interfering with regular computing.

Source: Ars Technica
Photo: Flickr