July 8th, 2008 PLEASE FORWARD
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tips, Tricks, News and Reviews for Web Coders
by Kevin Yank (techtimes@sitepoint.com)
Read the HTML version of this newsletter, with graphics, at:
http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=197
Note: This newsletter is supported solely by advertisers like the
one below. We stand 100% behind every ad that we run. If you ever
have a problem with a company that advertises here please contact
us and we will try to get it resolved. -- Kevin Yank
IN THIS ISSUE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Introduction
- Beef Up Firebug in a Jiffy: Performance Measurement
- New Technical Articles
- Techy Forum Threads
- More Techy Blog Entries
SPONSOR'S MESSAGE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Our web developer customers can sleep at night.
Your job is building great websites for your clients. Lying awake at
night wondering if those sites are accessible is not.
That's why we maintain Fully Redundant Network Operations Center
capabilities from two cities 24/7/365. So you can impress your clients
and still get some shut-eye.
Find out why 3.1 million websites call The Planet home.
Dedicated servers start at just $89:
http://www.eztrackz.com/tracking.aspx?id=86982
INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Hi gang! I'm a little rushed this week because, just between you
and me, we're gearing up to launch the new SitePoint front page
at the end of the week. Wish us luck!
Meanwhile, web designers are up in arms over Google's recent
announcement [1] that it has added Adobe technology [2] to the
Google search engine to index the text within Flash content.
Google's vague description of its new approach to Flash leaves a
lot of questions unanswered. In particular, it seems like the
accepted best-practice format for text content within
Flash-based sites (that is, dynamically-loaded XML data) is
explicitly not supported by Google.
That, and questionable advice like the following has plenty of
developers wondering just what Google is smoking:
"If you prefer Google to ignore your less informative content,
such as a "copyright" or "loading" message, consider replacing
the text within an image, which will make it effectively
invisible to us."
Use images to hide text from the search engines? Break out your
spacer GIFs; it's 1997 all over again!
In response to the overwhelmingly negative feedback to its
announcement, Google has stated that it will post a follow-up
with more information soon. I'll be watching this closely over
the coming week, and will report back next issue.
This issue, Andrew takes a look at Jiffy -- a useful tool for
JavaScript developers to measure and optimize the performance of
their JavaScript-powered user interfaces. It turns out Firebug
even has a plug-in that integrates with Jiffy, further cementing
Firebug's lead over the rest of the client-side development tools
we looked at a few issues back [3].
Firebug's competitors aren't standing still, though. In the past
week, Opera has also updated [4] its Dragonfly [5] tool built
into Opera 9.5 to make it possible to edit CSS on-the-fly, just
like you can in Firebug. This makes debugging CSS issues in
Opera easier than ever before!
[1] <http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html>
[2] <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html>
[3] <http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=194>
[4] <http://my.opera.com/dragonfly/blog/2008/07/01/opera-dragonfly-alpha-2-out-now>
[5] <http://www.opera.com/products/dragonfly/>
BEEF UP FIREBUG IN A JIFFY - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The next frontier in front-end web development tools is
performance measurement and reporting.
At the O'Reilly Velocity Conference [1] Scott Ruthfield, VP of
Engineering & Technology at WhitePages.com [2], gave a talk
titled 'Jiffy: Open Source Performance Measurement and
Instrumentation [3]' and revealed Jiffy [4], a web application
interface performance measuring and reporting tool. Jiffy
captures performance measurements for any specified event at the
client's end, storing them in a database, and reporting on them.
At the same conference Bill Scott, Director of UI Engineering at
Netflix [5], in his presentation 'Improving Netflix Performance
[6]', talked about an internal performance monitoring project
he's been working on that included a handy visualization
extension for Firebug [7].
In one of those fortuitous crossing-of-paths that seem to happen
so often at conferences, Bill adapted his Firebug extension to
use Jiffy performance data resulting in the Jiffy Firebug
Extension [8]. This extension is a handy visualization of the
performance data provided by the Jiffy JavaScript library,
making it viable to use the library in an immediate,
stand-alone, single-session mode.
Jiffy client-side measurements are captured using a JavaScript
library with a simple API, called Jiffy.js [9], and posted back
to the server via Ajax. Jiffy.js uses a "mark and measure"
approach; you mark a start time, give it a name, and then you
can measure the elapsed time between the named mark and any
event that follows. Although simple, it allows you to add as
much performance detail as you need.
[1] <http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2008/public/content/home>
[2] <http://www.whitepages.com/>
[3] <http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2008/public/schedule/detail/4404>
[4] <http://code.google.com/p/jiffy-web/>
[5] <http://www.netflix.com/>
[6] <http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2008/public/schedule/detail/3632>
[7] <http://getfirebug.com/>
[8] <http://billwscott.com/jiffyext/>
[9] <http://code.google.com/p/jiffy-web/wiki/Jiffy_js>
SPONSOR'S MESSAGE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Rackspace: Go Green Without Sacrificing Server Performance
As the leader in hosting, Rackspace creates solutions built to
fit your needs. Our sole mission is to keep your infrastructure
up and running so you and your company can stay focused on
growth, backed with our 24x7x365 Fanatical Support.
Rackspace hosted severs are designed to be as business friendly
as they are earth friendly. Do your part for the environment
without the sacrifice. We make is easy for our customers to
choose a green configuration or customize one that works for
their business needs. We just take the eco-friendly components
that we already use in our data centers. Make the smart choice
and Go Green with Rackspace Hosting.
Click to learn about how you can Go Green without the sacrifice.
http://www.rackspace.com/383/index.php?green=true&CMP=techtimes_newsletter_july_0708
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Jiffy extension allows you to create context-relevant
performance measures for your web application. For example, you
could measure the rendering time of a DOM scripted widget, the
time taken to load a 3rd-party component, the responsiveness of
your Ajax, and so on. At the point where you want to start
measuring you add a mark by calling the mark method and giving
the mark a name:
Jiffy.mark("mark_name");
Then, at any other point after that, you can call the measure
method:
Jiffy.measure("measurement_name", "mark_name");
measure will store the elapsed time between the time it's called
and the mark. The result is a JSON object that stores all the
marks and measurements like this:
{
"PageStart": { et: 2676, m: [
{et:2676, evt:"load", rt:1213159816044}
]},
"onLoad": { et: 74, m: [
{et:7, evt:"carouselcreated", rt:1213159818722},
{et:67, evt:"finishedonLoad", rt:1213159818729}
]}
}
You can get access to this object by calling:
Jiffy.getMeasures();
The Firebug extension simply looks for this JSON object and
creates a visualization like the one pictured below:
Each section provides the detail for each named mark and all the
measurements taken:
The standard behavior of the Jiffy JavaScript library is to use
Ajax to post the JSON data back to server for storage. However,
you don't have to use Jiffy at all -- you can set the extension
to use any library that implements the JSON format used by
Jiffy, by changing 3 Firefox properties [1]. This makes the
extension an extremely handy visualization tool for your
custom-written performance measurement library.
In web applications, a user's perception of interface
responsiveness is based on the aggregation of the responsiveness
of many smaller interactions with the browser, the network, and
the code that drives the interface. Professional front-end
developers need an array of tools like the Yahoo! YSlow [2]
Firebug extension and the Firebug JavaScript profiler to gain an
understanding of how the different elements within their
application's front end impact on overall performance. The Jiffy
Firebug Extension is yet another tool, but one that places the
instrument of measurement closer to the user, providing a
clearer picture of the user's experience.
Add your comments to the blog entry:
Web Tech Blog: Technically Speaking
by Andrew Tetlaw
Beef Up Firebug in a Jiffy
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/07/08/beef-up-firebug-in-a-jiffy
[1] <http://billwscott.com/jiffyext/#configuration>
[2] <http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
See you next week for the low-down (we hope!) on Google's new,
"improved" Flash indexing. Has Google saved Flash-based sites,
or sunk them?
Kevin Yank
techtimes@sitepoint.com
Editor, The SitePoint Tech Times
SPONSOR'S MESSAGE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Maintaining a website can be both fun and sometimes frustrating
especially if the web host does not catch up to your needs. The
owners behind WebHostingBuzz have experienced it all.
We have been there and done it. We know what YOU want when it comes
to running a script oriented website. We know what YOU want when it
comes to value for your web hosting dollars. We host over 150,000
domains across the globe. Surely we can host yours!
Host unlimited websites under one account. Get a free domain name
for life, tons of web space and transfer for only $40 per year.
http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/website-hosting.shtml?host_sitepoint-special
NEW TECHNICAL ARTICLES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mastering the UNIX Command Line: A Beginner's Guide
by Chris White
Do you ever wonder where your web creation went when it grew up
and moved out of home? In the first part of our series on UNIX
operating systems, Chris reveals some of the mysteries of how it
all works -- you owe it to your web site to know this stuff!
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1653
TECHY FORUM THREADS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
3 COOL Social Bookmarking sites many don't know about:
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=510064>
Wireless Operators Produce A Standardized Mobile Interface
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=557430>
Website Readability 101
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=557278>
Google learns to crawl Flash
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=557010>
Just use <script> ?
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=541787>
MORE TECHY BLOG ENTRIES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Web Tech Blog: TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
Top 5 Tips for Staying Awake (34 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/07/04/top-5-tips-for-staying-awake/
How To Engineer Your Way To The Front Page Of Digg (11 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/07/01/how-to-engineer-your-way-to-the-front-page-of-digg/
ADVERTISING INFORMATION - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Find out what thousands of savvy Internet marketers already know:
email newsletter advertising works! (You're reading an email ad
now, aren't you?)
Find out how to get YOUR sponsorship ad in this newsletter and
reach 95,000+ opt-in subscribers! Check out
http://www.sitepoint.com/mediakit/ for details, or email us at
mailto:adinfo@sitepoint.com
HELP YOUR FRIENDS OUT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
People you care about can take charge of their Website by
effectively using the information and resources available on the
Internet. Help them learn how - forward them a copy
of this week's SitePoint Tech Times.
ADDRESSES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Send suggestions and comments to:
techtimes@sitepoint.com
To subscribe, send a blank email to:
subscribe@sitepoint.com
The Archives are located at:
http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/archives.php
The SitePoint Tech Times is hosted by SparkList:
http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletters/sparklist/
The SitePoint Tech Times is (c) 1998-2008 SitePoint Pty. Ltd. All
Rights Reserved. No part of this Newsletter may be reproduced in
whole or in part without written permission. All guest articles
are copyright their respective owners and are reproduced with
permission.
SitePoint Pty. Ltd.
48 Cambridge Street
Collingwood, VIC 3066
AUSTRALIA
You are currently subscribed to The SitePoint Tech Times as:
ignoble.experiment@arconati.us
To change the email address that you currently subscribe with:
http://sitepoint.com/newsletter/manage.php
To switch to the HTML version of this newsletter:
<http://sitepoint.com/newsletter/htmlplease.php?email=ignoble.experiment@arconati.us>
To leave this list:
<http://sitepoint.sparklist.com/u?id=2266608.e57363ef99c8b59c8667cca2fd106cbe&n=T&l=techtimes&o=2222983>
Do Not Reply to this email to unsubscribe.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.