Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

If you find Web Performance exciting, you shouldn't miss watching the Velocity 2010 videos & slides . Velocity is an annual Web Performance and Operations conference conducted by O'Reilly Media. There are a lot of speed tips, suprising facts & interesting thoughts shared by experts. Did you know, seventy five percent of that traffic comes through third-party apps via the Twitter API rather than the Twitter.com web site? Twitter manages 700 million searches & 65 million tweets a day. There are sessions by folks from Facebook and Twitter on how they scale to millions of users. The list of videos also includes Lightning Demos of Web Performance & Analysis tools like HttpWatch, AOL Pagetest, Speed Tracer, Fiddler, dynaTrace, Firebug, YSlow, and Page Speed by people directly involved with the development of those tools. Among the few I watched already, I liked Lenny Rachitsky's "The Upside of Downtime: How to Turn a Disaster Into an Opportunity...

As per StatCounter Global Stats, IE6 is the most popular browser in India with 26.56% users preferring it (during this year) . Interestingly, Internet Explorer 6 usage has fallen to approximately 5% in US & UK. All the IE versions combined are used by 50.13% of Indian users while Firefox is the second most popular. Among social media websites, Facebook (61.59%) is the most popular in India while Twitter (6.1%) ranks fourth. Orkut is not featured in that list. These stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. StatCounter is a web analytics service that has both free & paid versions Also see: Comparison of free Web Analytics tools Free ASP.NET Charting Tools Get IE6 to retire 40

The Tech-Ed Online website features recorded presentations of sessions conducted at venues around the world. There are over 1700+ videos just from TechEd North America. The entire collection of recorded presentations are spread across 19 categories - Application Integration & Interoperability Application Server & Infrastructure Architecture Business Intelligence Cloud Computing & Online Services Database Platform Developer Tools, Languages & Frameworks Development Practices Dynamics IT Strategy Management Office & SharePoint Security, Identity & Access Unified Communications Virtualization Web Platform Windows Client Windows Phone Windows Server After some cursory browsing, I picked these for viewing in the coming weeks - How Frameworks Can Kill Your Projects, and Patterns Can ...

I've been taking notes from Eric Lawrence's recorded presentation at MIX10 on Fiddler for future reference. This is the third part, check the earlier two tips if you haven't already read them - Track HTTP traffic in Firefox with FiddlerHook FiddlerCap makes HTTP Traffic Capture easier Fiddler offers multiple ways to filter the HTTP traffic for analysis with varying degrees of granularity so that you can jump to the point of specific interest - 1. Application Type Filter - You can click on this Filter that's in the status bar to toggle between one of these options - All Processes Web Browsers Non-Browser Hide All 2. QuickExec - The QuickExec box is a thin black box just above the Fiddler status bar that lets you type commands instead of clicking on the menu options. Just type CLS when you wish to clear the Web Sessions, use ?word to look for a specific word among the Session URLs or filter URLs that are of a specific size using the commands > size and ...

Over at SEOmozBlog, Dr. Pete informs that there are 200+ Webmaster Help videos on YouTube featuring  Matt Cutts, Google's most visible anti-spam engineer. Occasionally, some Google secrets slip out during these videos. He watched 70 of the videos posted in 2010 & gathered some unusual facts.  Excerpts - Google does not use the keywords meta tag for ranking. Meta description still has value for other reasons Cross-linking 3 sites probably isn't a big deal, but 30 or 300 could likely get you into trouble. ...footer cross-links are often low-value Google does not guarantee that pages in your XML sitemap will be indexed. Indexation has a lot to do with your authority and trust – an authoritative site will get more love from the crawlers, plain and simple Matt (Cutts) says: "Most people can switch their IP address and never have any issue whatsoever." As long as your domain name and hosting country stay the same, switching from one reliable host to anoth...

Google gets you results fast but if you are searching for something complex, how do you frame your input to Google so that you can relevant results immediately? If you haven't already tried, you should read up on search operators & take advantage of it. Google supports several advanced operators, which are query words that have special meaning to Google. Typically these operators modify the search in some way, or even tell Google to do a totally different type of search. For instance, "link:" is a special operator, and the query [link:www.google.com] doesn't do a normal search but instead finds all web pages that have links to www.google.com. There are also some undocumented operators listed in the Google Guide . Some of these operators may work in other search engines as well. Search operators for GMail are also available. Also see: Search Engines in the pre-Google era Search Engine Wars

This excerpt from David A. Karp's Windows 7 Annoyances has tips on features to look for while buying a webcam. Here is a paraphrased list - High frame rate (for smooth, blur-free video) Motorized face tracking enables video chat without having to sit perfectly still Look for UVC (USB Video device Class) compliance as such a webcam can work on a variety of operating systems without any special drivers. Pick a known brand name (like Logitech, Creative Labs or Microsoft) as they are more likely to ensure driver availability in the years to come. Read online reviews (plentiful at YouTube) to see how well a particular model actually renders an image. Good mounting system (for attaching to laptop and desktop screens, resting on a desktop, or perching on a tripod) Built-in microphone should reproduce voice clearly. Widescreen aspect ratio (16×9) is a plus Network streaming capability can be useful for surveillance, baby monitoring, and web publishing Resolution—is the least imp...

Google Goggles is a visual search application available currently for Android powered phones. It may possibly be available for phones of other platforms in the future . You can take a photo of a book with a Android phone & Google Goggles will show you search results pertaining to that. So an image acts a keyword for Google Goggles. It can scan a business card, extract information from it & store contact details on your phone automatically. It can get you the title & artist of a painting or get you landmark information for a place that you take a snap of. This computer vision technology can also do translation of text . This YouTube video explains more about this interesting app. An excerpt from it about what it holds for the future - Visual search is still in its infancy.  In the future it will help you do more cool things like suggesting a move in a chess game or taking a picture of a leaf to identify the plant available for Android powered phones The tech...

The website currently in beta describes itself as a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). To me, O'Reilly Answers looks like a cross between Stack Overflow & LinkedIn Answers . The nice thing about it is that you can get to interact with O'Reilly authors & earn points for participating that can be redeemed for books, training, courses, and conferences. 40

If you are getting started with Windows Phone 7 development, you can check two preview chapters from the book Learning Windows Phone Programming being written by two Microsoft folks Yochay Kiriaty and Jaime Rodriguez . On the book's dedicated website, the authors specify their objective - "Our goal for the book is to share an insider view into Windows Phone. We want to share the insights from the product team, and lessons learned from the very early adopters." The site also has a Windows Phone FAQ that has links to two other FAQ compilations . Also see: What's in Windows Phone 7 for Developers 180

As a web developer, if you would like to debug HTTP traffic of web pages that your site users are having problem with, you can have the end-users record the traffic details as a Session Archive Zip (.SAZ) file & then send it to you. Talking about Traffic Import options with Fiddler in his session titled "Advanced Web Debugging with Fiddler" at MIX10 , Eric Lawrence highlights a lesser known tool called FiddlerCap . For non-technical folks, FiddlerCap Web Recorder is a lightweight version of Fiddler that's easier to use than Fiddler. The interface is more intuitive with Start Capture, Stop Capture, Save Capture buttons. IE9 is going to have a Network tab like Firebug under Developer Tools (accessible through the menu or F12 key). The traffic details collected through the IE9 Network tab can be exported in a soon to be standardized format called HAR (or HTTP Archive Specification) . The XML version of the HAR format file that is emitted by can be opened within Fidd...

Eric Lawrence, the creator of Fiddler (his side project since 8 years) & an Internet Explorer Program Manager at MS, presented an interesting session titled "Advanced Web Debugging with Fiddler" at MIX10 . I have gone through the half-hour breezy presentation and also downloaded it (.WMV version is 68.2MB) so that I can watch it again to digest & try out the many tips discussed in it. I plan to blog about the tips that Eric shared in his presentation with my own observations, starting with this one. I agree with him when he says "people are using Fiddler in a shallow way" as I'm one among them ( having started using it on & off since 2005 ). Although the documentation is pretty good, I guess there should be more ways of creating awareness. I found that Fiddler now has a dedicated blog on MSDN & a Discussion Group . While current versions of Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera all automatically use Fiddler when Fiddler is ...

Sitepoint is giving away the video tutorials of it's CSS Crash Course . The offer ends today so grab those videos right away. They take your email address to send you the Order Id which you'll need before you can start downloading. In case, you have trouble logging in with the email address & Order Id credentials, write to their Customer Support. Here's what's in the nearly two and half hour tutorial - An Introduction to CSS (17:40) Videos 1 & 2: CSS Selectors (40:56) Videos 3 & 4: Text Properties (35:41) Video 5: Inheritance (13:10 mins) Video 6: The Cascade (25:21 mins) Video 7: What’s Next? (12:45 mins) CSS is a very powerful but vastly under-rated technology. This tutorial is a good resource for web developers. Also see: My favorite Developer Cheat-Sheets 60

The upcoming versions of all browsers are busy implementing HTML5 features. Chrome & Safari 4 already have lead over the rest. Some of the most notable new additions in HTML5 are the video tag that will let videos to be displayed directly in the browser without having to rely on plugins and Offline Storage. YouTube has a preview of it's HTML5 Video Player. Web developers can benefit from proactively understanding & planning on incorporating HTML5 features in their websites. There are some good learning resources online for HTML5 - W3Schools HTML5 tutorial Dive Into HTML 5 HTML 5 Demos and Examples HTML5 Rocks HTML5 Doctor Also see: HOW TO disable Flash in IE and Firefox 60

PhraseExpress is a free utility that saves the time spent typing with features like Autotext, Auto-complete (found in MS Word), Text Suggestion etc. It integrates with Windows applications (like Notepad, WordPad, Office applications, browsers) & kicks in from the System tray whenever user starts typing. The mobile phone text input T9 -like predictive text feature is present in the paid versions of the tool. One of the product's touted benefits is that it prevents Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)! Also see: Giveaways Phone number to word - mnemonic generator WordWeb - the desktop English teacher 80

Cross-browser issues are caused by  browsers not complying with W3C standards while rendering pages. Increasingly however the browser UI features are getting consistent. If a particular browser brings out an innovative feature that is lapped up by users, chances are the rest of the browsers would implement it too. Here are some examples - Pop-up blockers - At the height of the pesky pop-up window scourge inflicted by unscrupulous webmasters for making money out of ads, there were paid tools to prevent pop-up windows. IE 6 started having a in-built pop-up blocker & so did other browser versions that came in that period. Inline Find, Find As You Type - These were some of nifty features that endeared me to Firefox. IE8, Chrome, Safari now also sport this feature. Opera (v 9.6) still retains the intrusive Find dialog box. Inline Spell-checking - Firefox, Safari & Chrome point out spelling mistakes with red squiggles as soon as you finish typing a word within a textbox or...

 If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it - Lord Kelvin [Update:26-Dec-2016] - I got a chance to revisit the tools I listed below six years ago. I'll leave the original list as it is but below are what I would try in the future as they are extremely convenient to use - Chrome Developer Tools, Audit tab (F12 keyboard shortcut) Google  Page Speed WebPageTest Web Page Analyzer DOM Monster YSlow Following is the approach I would take to fix performance issues - 1. Run all the free perf tools to study the issues pointed out by them 2. Consolidate them based on which are serious & workable (not all suggestions may have easy fixes & there has to be a trade-off between usability, maintainability, security, SEO, cost & performance) 3. Make modifications & measure continuously There are a bunch of free Web Performance Analysis & Optimization tools that web developers can take advantage of to build blazing fast web pages - Page Speed ...

It came as a nice surprise to me that clicking the scroll wheel in between the right & left mouse buttons while positioned on a link can open that in a new tab. I found this feature working on all the popular browsers - IE (version 8), Firefox (version 3), Opera (version 9.6), Safari on Windows (version 4) & Chrome (version 5) Also see: HOW to continuously refresh any web-page in IE8 & Firefox 60

How quickly users can view your web pages depends on a variety of factors like the browser they are using (newer browsers can download page elements concurrently & faster), their Internet connection speed, where the web server hosting the site is located (results in lesser hops) , size of the browser cache . The freeware Fiddler which can be used to debug HTTP traffic provides very rough estimates of download times of any page element for different kinds of Internet connections (modem, DSL) across US, Europe & Asia. WebPagetest offers a free service that's a lot more better! Not only does it provide an web page assessment of a submitted URL but it also let's you choose the test location from among USA, UK, Netherlands, Germany, China & New Zealand to conduct an actual test. It also lets you choose browser type (IE 7 or IE 8) & connnection type (Dial-up, DSL, Custom). Also see: HOW TO easily verify your website design in different browsers/OSs 130

"Well, it's better to be silent than to be a fool." - Harper Lee Online Forums are a great place to learn new tricks . I learnt today that DotNetZip is an open source class library and toolset for manipulating zip files or folders that's easier to use than the other popular library SharpZipLib . Built by Dino Chiesa, it is hosted on CodePlex and has extensive documentation & samples. It takes just a few lines & the ZipFile.ExtractSelectedEntries Method to filter specific files from a zipped file using a selection criteria expression . Talking of  open source compression\decompression Libraries, there is yet another Library on SourceForge that has been immensely popular - 7-Zip . The code is available in C++ for whoever wants to tinker. Like 7-Zip, there is a ready to use WinForms sample app based on DotNetZip which can be a free replacement for the commercial WinZip utility. Rant: At a lot of places in CodePlex, like the Issue Tracker & Reviews s...