Jakob Nielsen of useit.com is no stranger to controversy and his recent Repurposing vs Optimized Design article makes a bold statement:

It’s cheap but degrading to reuse content and design across diverging media forms like print vs online or desktop vs mobile. Superior UX requires tight platform integration.

Jakob states there are two opposing schools:

• Repurposing (responsive design): make as few designs as possible and reuse the same material across platforms. This has cost advantages, but results in a substandard user experience.
• Platform optimization (device-specific design): create different user interfaces for each platform and integrate the user experience layers as tightly as possible. The result: higher costs but better usability and bigger profits.

The article resulted in a Tweetstorm:

Jakob Nielsen analyzes Responsive Design and comes up with dumb conclusions. Again.

For 17 years, Jakob Nielsen has been citing his own work as proof of everything. Somebody make it stop.

I’ve thought Jakob Nielsen was a self-important snob for years. Glad to see the Cult of Nielsen crumbling at last.

Do people still pay any attention to Jakob Nielsen or is he hanging around just to annoy web developers?

Jakob Nielsen is 100% right on mobile. Says Jakob Nielsen.

It’s amazing to watch Jakob Nielsen make himself more and more irrelevant with almost every piece he writes.

The Weaknesses of Responsive Design

Jakob claims most responsive websites are too primitive. They rearrange the same content and change dimensions of some elements, but rarely:

• Adapt the content, i.e. provide shorter and simpler articles for mobile.
• Use alternative, cropped or zoomed images.
• Cater for touch input.
• Reduce or modify the feature set to suit smaller devices.

Websites should consider the user context. Requirements change depending on where a user is, what they’re doing and what device they’re using. Consider the website for a bus company; a desktop user may want to browse timetables whereas a mobile user may need to find the nearest station.

Jakob admits this could be achieved with responsive techniques but, once you account for all these differences, you effectively have two separate designs. But he makes a valid point: if potential revenue is greater than cost, a site designed specifically for mobile devices makes good business sense.

Calculating Potential Revenue

This is where Jakob’s argument breaks down. For most websites, the cost of developing a separate mobile site makes no commercial sense whatsoever. This is especially true when you consider Jakob’s suggestion of creating and maintaining two or more sets of content.

The majority of websites receive few mobile users — usually less than 10% of visitors. It may be increasing, but does it make commercial sense to throw money at a problem which does not yet exist and is subject to radical technical changes? I’m all for being pro-active, but this leads to another point: you cannot make assumptions about user a user’s habits, desires or requirements.

Jakob paints a black and white picture: mobile users want less content and simpler features. However, it’s impossible to determine context when all you actually know is the screen resolution. The situation is made more difficult with newer mobiles which have screen sizes approaching those of tablets and the relatively diminutive iPad 3 exceeds the resolution of a top-end desktop PC. You may be able to make context judgments based on the current time or GPS location but, ultimately, you don’t know whether the user is rushing for a bus or lying in bed.

The Strength of Responsive Design

Responsive design provides a solution. A website primarily designed for desktop use can be restructured to provide a mobile-friendly experience at minimal expense. It may not be perfect, but it opens access and your site isn’t restricted to certain devices or user groups.

It’s a starting point — not the end. It’s now possible to gather statistics about devices and tie them to typical user journeys. If you can establish that X% of access is from a smartphone and Y% of those users proceed to feature Z, you may be able to justify further development. In extreme cases, a standalone mobile site will aid usability and increase profitability.

It’s Not a Battle

Jakob makes two broad assumptions but the reality is not as clear-cut:

1. You have a mobile context or a desktop context.

   There are thousands of differing devices, screen sizes and situations when they are used. People use their mobile while watching TV — should they always receive a summarized article? Mobile exceeds desktop usage in many African countries because it’s cost-effective and reliable — should they be offered restricted functionality?

2. Repurposing and optimizing designs are opposing technologies.

   Why? There are an infinite number of ways to develop the same solution. An optimized design can still use responsive techniques and vice versa. Ultimately, either can be used in differing quantities to achieve the same goal.

Jakob has been accused of bashing responsive design. The tone of his article gives that impression and it detracts from his main point: a dedicated mobile design offers a better mobile experience. If he’s guilty of anything, it’s stating the obvious.

51% of all web site traffic is non-human. If you’re reading this, you’re in the minority. Unless you’re a machine (check your ports — if they’re warm and moist, you’re probably OK).

The study was undertaken by Incapsula, a website security company. While we haven’t quite reached the point where Skynet becomes self-aware and dispatches Terminators to wipe us out, it does appear that the web would continue to operate happily without us.

Data was collected from a sample of 1,000 websites which use Incapsula services. The report concluded that web traffic is generated from:

• 49%: people browsing the web
• 20%: search engines bots indexing pages
• 19%: spy-bots collecting competitive intelligence
• 5%: website scrapers
• 5%: automated hacking tools searching vulnerabilities
• 2%: automated comment spammers

It’s easy to be cynical about these reports, especially when they’re conducted by a security company which could enjoy commercial benefits from scare-mongering. That said, it does indicate a significant volume of hacking activity even if the report is somewhat skewed or exaggerated.

If you or your clients aren’t concerned about security, perhaps it’s time to evaluate that policy. If we assume Incapsula report is over-estimated by a factor of 300%, malicious activity will still account for one in ten website requests. That’s equivalent to the average number of all IE6, IE7, Firefox 3.x and Opera users combined. Nasty.

Humans may be losing the web war, but at least we can win a few battles.

Do you believe Incapsula’s report? How does it compare with your website statistics? Have you successfully defeated a major hacking attempt?

February 29 is a great day for a product release and the Raspberry Pi has been anticipated for months. It’s a mini PC about the size of a credit card. The cost: $35. You read that correctly; a fully-functional PC for the price of a decent lunch. There’s even a model for $25 if you don’t require an Ethernet connector.

Admittedly, you’ll require a case, TV/monitor, keyboard, micro USB power cable and SD card to do anything with it, but the 700MHz ARM processor and 256MB RAM and is capable of running Linux, office applications and full-screen video.

The device has been developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK charity promoting the study of computer science, especially at school level, which hopes to put the fun back into computing. In essence, they want kids and hobbyists to experience the excitement of IT enjoyed during the late 1970s and early 80s. 8-bit computers may have been basic but they encouraged programming and experimentation.

Various editions of Linux are available for the Pi. It’ll happily run a web server, PHP, Python, Ruby, node.js and most other languages. Add a few browsers, MySQL, GIMP and decent text editor and you have a fully-fledged environment for budding web developers. It’s a great way to learn the techniques:

• the tools are free
• it won’t matter if you trash the software or hardware
• it’s far better than the tedious Microsoft Office skills taught by most schools.

Hopefully, the knowledge will help tomorrow’s developers avoid the mistakes we’re making today.

It’s not only kids who’ll benefit from the Raspberry Pi. The devices may be ideal for:

• testing your application in different environments e.g. you could install PHP5.3 and MySQL 5.0 on one Pi, and PHP5.4 and MySQL 5.5 on another
• testing multi-server set-ups for MySQL replication or parallel processing
• automating back-ups
• running source control systems
• performing long-running data analysis tasks
• demonstrating applications in locations without internet access. You could even leave Pi devices with potential customers for further evaluation.

I want one. I’m sure you do too. Unfortunately, so do many other people and both online shops crashed within minutes of the launch at 6:00 UTC this morning. Did you manage to grab a slice of Raspberry Pi?

For more information, refer to www.raspberrypi.org

• MoFuse Instantly Converts Sites for the iPhone – MoFuse is a service that will take your website and instantly create a mobile version of it, sparing you the development costs of doing so by hand.
• The 4 Cs of Good Form Design – A simple model, the 4 Cs, for designing new forms or critiquing existing ones.
• Lawsuit targets Network Solutions, ICANN over the 'front running' of domain names – A Los Angeles firm this afternoon has announced a class action against Network Solutions and ICANN over the former's practice of locking up domain names as soon as they are searched for on its site
• BlazeDS – Released in conjunction with Adobe AIR 1 and Flex 3, BlazeDS is an open source backend for connecting AIR and Flex applications to server-side data sources.
• Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex 3 Now Available – They’re out! Full press release here.
• The Rise of Click Fraud: Is Everyone on the Internet a Criminal? – The overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 16.6% in fourth-quarter [2007], up from the 14.2% click fraud rate for the same quarter in 2006 and 16.2% for third-quarter 2007.
• All clicks are not equal, says Microsoft – Microsoft is proposing on Monday a new way for marketers to think about the value of clicks on Internet ads, with the understanding that the last click a consumer makes isn't necessarily the most important.
• WaSP Round Table: IE8′s Default Version Targeting Behavior – A worthwhile listen, in which Aaron Gustafson, Faruk Ates, and Porter Glendinning sit down with Microsoft’s Chris Wilson to discuss IE8′s proposed (and controversial) X-UA-Compatible feature for browser version targeting.
• How it works | Openvatar – Openvatar is a avatar system that links with your openid, brilliant
• Click Fraud Keeps Rising, Up 15 percent in 2007 – Forensics has some data out on click fraud (clicks on Internet ads that are not real) in the fourth quarter of 2007 and for the full year. The industry-wide average click fraud rate for the entire year went up 15 percent, ending the year with 16.6 percent
• Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues – In an editorial on The Register, Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie complains that the browser market is effectively a monopoly, and suggests what changes Microsoft must make in order to remedy this.
• Google Analytics Hack » Count Me Out! – keep your Google Analytics data pure you should remove all traffic generated by yourself or others that may not be real visitors. For example, if your company has a large call center you should remove the traffic they generate
• Microsoft Sings a New Tune? Wants to Play Nice With Open-Source – Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols.
• Logo War: Red Hat Takes On DataPortability – After months of positive news, the DataPortability group has had its first hiccup, a cease and desist letter from RedHat over their use of the Fedora logo.
• 500 Million Downloads of Firefox (almost) – The Firefox browser has been downloaded nearly 500 million times, says their SpreadFirefox website. Parent organization Mozilla is celebrating by raising 500 million grains of rice on FreeRice.
• The Internet Explorer 8 User-Agent String – That’s right. Microsoft has lifted the veil on IE8′s user agent string. Yawn.
• YUI 2.5.0 Released – 6 new components: Layout Manager, Uploader, Resize Utility, ImageCropper, Cookie Utility and a ProfilerViewer Control that works in tandem with the YUI Profiler.
• Facebook loses a few users – Facebook has suffered its first drop in monthly users, according to numbers from web analytics outfit Nielsen Online. Five per cent fewer people in the UK visited the site in January compared to the previous month.

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• Social Media Buzz Pocket Mining: The New Keyword Research – An interesting description of tools that take the temperature of a social community's “chatter” patterns.
• Beware of id and name attribute mixups when using getElementById in Internet Explorer – "When using getElementById to get a reference to an element via the id attribute, Internet Explorer for Windows (and some versions of Opera) will also match an element whose name attribute contains the same value."
• Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 3 Release Notes – "Firefox 3 Beta 3 includes approximately 1300 individual changes from the previous beta, including fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements."
• GWT-Ext 2.0 Released – The GWT-EXT team has announced the release of version 2.0 this week. The project is a combination of the Google Web Kit and Ext.
• 6% of users click 50% of all ads – This study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population, yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks.
• Handy jQuery API Reference – A simple, useful reference guide for the jQuery API.
• Yahoo Offers All-You-Can-Eat Storage and Bandwidth – Yahoo! launches surprisingly reasonably priced web hosting for small and medium sized businesses. Unlimited storage and bandwidth for $11.95 per month.
• Gallery: How Google Got Its Colorful Logo – The various iterations that the designer of Google's logo went through before settling on the final logo. I have to say, they're pretty ordinary!
• ICANN turns on next-gen IP addresses | CNET News.com – The great migration from Internet Protocol version 4 to IPv6 has officially begun, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers added the first addresses to its root servers that conform to the new version.
• Macworld Encore – Very funny and useful Macworld session by Merlin Mann. Another angle on GTD.
• Microsoft Responds to Yahoo! Announcement – Microsoft issued an official statement in response to the announcement by Yahoo! Inc. that its Board of Directors has rejected Microsoft's previously announced proposal to acquire Yahoo!

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It’s been a while between drinks. Luckily, we’re back. There’s been a lot going on across the intarwebs lately — check it out:

• $1.2m paid for the letter ‘s’ in a domain
  A British travel company has paid $US1.1 million ($A1.2m) for the domain name cruises.co.uk, a price that is effectively $1 million just for the letter “S” since it already owns the address cruise.co.uk.
  (tags: domain valuation)
• uTest – Software Testing Community
  A software testing tool based on the “crowdsourcing” business model.
  (tags: testing crowdsourcing development software qa)
• Yahoo Offers All-You-Can-Eat Storage and Bandwidth
  Yahoo! launches surprisingly reasonably priced web hosting for small and medium sized businesses. Unlimited storage and bandwidth for $11.95 per month!
  (tags: hosting yahoo!)
• Safari is about to get crazy fast
  Holy cow is this thing fast! I am currently testing Webkit build r30090 (DMG download link) against standard Leopard Safari 3.04. This unoptimized WebKit build version is running circles around the standard Safari browser. It isn’t even close.
  (tags: apple safari browser firefox)
• W3C Gets Excessive DTD Traffic
  The W3C is suffering from its own success. If only developers could get a handle on XML catalogs, or popular XML validating parsers began bundling common DTDs like these, the W3C might be able to put these resources to better use.
  (tags: w3c standards xml)
• PayPal funds freeze plan draws fire
  Plan to hold payments sent through its PayPal payment service for up to 21 days in certain circumstances. The freeze will apply to transactions eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) considers high-risk, and is intended to protect buyers from the hazards of a bad tran
  (tags: ebay paypal)
• Court Finds That Trolls Can Remain Anonymous
  New judgement from the California courts, affecting anyone who owns a blog or forum where people can comment.
  (tags: blog comment troll forum privacy)
• Apple’s Safari 3.1 to support downloadable web fonts, more
  The ability to download and immediately render non-standard web fonts is just one of several advancements Apple Inc. has planned for Safari 3.1, a small but significant update to its share-gaining web browser for both the Mac and Windows PCs.
  (tags: apple safari design fonts)
• OpenID Welcomes Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM
  OpenID is welcoming some big new partners to the club – Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM
  (tags: openid microsoft google verisign ibm)
• Heroku Lifts Ruby on Rails Development into the Cloud
  A completely in-browser development environment where RoR programmers can build their apps instead of doing so with software on their own computers. Allows you to deploy your application to Amazon EC2 automatically when you’re done.
  (tags: rails ruby amazonwebservices ec2)
• Exposing device capabilities to web applications
  “There is huge potential for mobile web applications that can access device capabilities from client-side scripts.” The W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative takes on mobile phone API access from web applications.
  (tags: mobile standards w3c javascript)
• Web Site Grader
  This reporting tool produces some pretty useful statistics from an SEO point of view.
  (tags: seo tools analytics marketing )
• Performance Research, Part 5: iPhone Cacheability – Making it Stick
  The YUI blog investigates how to optimize web performance for the iPhone. The iPhone’s cache clears at each power cycle, and it will not cache files 25KB or larger. These facts call for special considerations when optimizing for performance.
  (tags: yahoo! apple iphone mobile)
• The Times (UK) Spamming Social Media Sites
  Yesterday, I discovered that The Times (UK), a well-respected newspaper owned by News Corp., is involved in an extensive campaign to spam social media websites with links to their articles.
  (tags: SEO black.hat bad.publicity)
• Opera Mobile 9.5 with Flash Lite 3.0
  Opera brings Flash Lite 3.0 to millions of new devices with the release of Opera Mobile 9.5. The new version also adds support for Opera Widgets, SVG 1.2, and more.
  (tags: opera mobile software flash)
• Amazon Payments Account Management
  Do you want to accept Amazon Payments on your website? Integrate within few minutes and accept payments on your website with “Pay Now” button. Give your customers a familiar Amazon payments experience and fraud protection.
  (tags: web amazon ecommerce payment api development)
• Aviary Invites Readers To Try Their Online Design Suite
  Aviary has released the first of its massive suite of online design apps to private beta testing: image editor Phoenix and pattern maker Peacock. An impressive YouTube video shows Phoenix in use.
  (tags: design ria aviary phoenix peacock)
• Bobby and WebXact No Longer Free Tools
  As of February 1, 2008 the Watchfire WebXact and Bobby Online products will no longer be publicly available.
  (tags: accessibility tools testing usability 508 bobby)

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• Is your website greenhouse friendly?
  The organizers of the Web Directions South conference share their advice for Australian-hosted sites seeking to eliminate their carbon footprint.
  (tags: business hosting )
• Google Presentations Released
  Google has launched the latest in its stable of web-based office applications: Google Presentations. A direct competitor to Microsoft PowerPoint, Presentations is still a simple offering, but may be enough for many less demanding users.
  (tags: google ajax gwt )
• Facebook investors start $10 million fund for developers
  Facebook will be giving away $10 million to developers who submit worthy proposals for Facebook applications—no strings attached!
  (tags: socialnetworks php business )
• Yahoo! Acquires Zimbra
  Yahoo! acquires all the coolest companies! The latest (joining Flickr and del.icio.us) is Zimbra, the pioneers of Ajax-powered email. Yahoo! hopes to use Zimbra to break into educational and institutional markets.
  (tags: yahoo! ajax java business )
• Mozilla tries Firefox recipe with Thunderbird
  Mozilla is splitting off a new company to focus on the development of Thunderbird, its open-source, cross-platform desktop email client.
  (tags: business opensource firefox )
• CSS Grid Positioning Module Level 3
  A convincing alternative to the long-promised CSS 3 Advanced Layout module, CSS Grid Positioning has just been released as a public working draft by the W3C. But with critics questioning whether the W3C can finish anything it starts, will it do any good?
  (tags: standards css design )
• jQuery UI: Interactions and Widgets
  jQuery seems set to continue their unbroken streak of “holy crap!”-impressive releases with jQuery UI, a library for building rich web application user interfaces in JavaScript.
  (tags: javascript opensource software )
• The Times, they are a chaaangin’
  After two years of being one of the most notorious paid access sites on the Web, the New York Times has stopped charging for access to the bulk of its content. Could this be the death knell for mass market paid content business models on the Web?
  (tags: business )
• How to create an unobtrusive print this page link with JavaScript
  A quick script that demonstrates how to add a “print this page” link to the page dynamically, using JavaScript, in an unobtrusive manner. For users browsing with JavaScript disabled, the link (which requires JavaScript to work) will not appear.
  (tags: javascript )
• Better Connected, Better Results: Alt Text
  A clear and concise description of the alt attribute, and how to use it to improve the accessibility of your web site.
  (tags: html accessibility )
• WAI-ARIA in HTML
  The Accessible Rich Internat Applications (ARIA) spec specifies roles and states for user interface elements that will enable assistive technologies to make RIAs accessible. This article shows how to include these properties in HTML documents today.
  (tags: accessibility javascript html standards )
• The longdesc lottery
  The latest debate to spring up in the HTML 5 Working Group is over the fate of the longdesc attribute, meant to point to a full description of a complex image. The WHAT-WG’s research shows less than 1% of images that use this attribute do so correctly.
  (tags: html standards accessibility )
• CSS 3: A Giant Serving Of FAIL
  Dojo’s Alex Russell is the latest industry voice to publicly despair at the state of CSS standards development.
  (tags: css standards )
• We Are Opening the Social Graph
  Six Apart, the company behind LiveJournal and Vox, is working with open standards like hCard, XFN, and FOAF to turn the entire Web into an open social network – something the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world are desperately trying to prevent.
  (tags: socialnetworks standards )
• IBM Releases Office Desktop Software at No Charge to Foster Collaboration and Innovation
  IBM has released Lotus Symphony, an IBM-branded variation of the free, open source OpenOffice.org office suite. Yawn.
  (tags: opensource )
• WordPress 2.3
  The latest version of this popular, open-source, PHP-based blogging platform is now available. WordPress 2.3 “includes native tagging support, plugin update notification, URL handling improvements, and much more,”
  (tags: php opensource software )

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• +1.5 Years: Where Are We Now?
  The Dojo Toolkit’s Alex Russell notes the amount of time that has passed since IE7 was released, and how little has been said by Microsoft about IE.Next. Is Microsoft working on something amazing in secret, or is IE at risk of renewed stagnation?
  (tags: ie microsoft )
• Screen Shots And Feature Overview of Delicious 2.0 Preview
  Like the SitePoint Design Contests, Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is launching a complete re-write of the service to improve the scalability and agility of the system. A complete rewrite means a complete redesign, however, with plenty of new features!
  (tags: socialnetworks yahoo! )
• Mobile Usability Tips #1 – Registration and Login
  The first in a series of tips on enhancing the usability of mobile web sites, this brief article provides hints on how to design usable registration and login forms for mobile web sites.
  (tags: mobile design usability )
• WordPress 2.2.3
  WordPress 2.2.3 contains an important security fix. Upgrade your installation immediately.
  (tags: security php software )
• Rainbow Hash Cracking
  An eye-opening peek into the password cracking technique of Rainbow Hashes, which in a recent test was able to crack the password “Fgpyyih804423″ in 160 seconds. The good news is there are simple things you can do to guard against this kind of attack.
  (tags: security )
• WYMeditor 0.4 released
  The latest release of this somewhat experimental JavaScript semantic HTML WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) editing component is built on jQuery 1.1.4 and includes its own XHTML and CSS parsing code, rather than relying on the browser to do it.
  (tags: software javascript wysiwyg )
• Why we need standards support in HTML email
  This call to action from Campaign Monitor, the experts in standards-compliant HTML email (or as close as it is possible to achieve these days), builds a case for HTML and CSS standards compliance in email clients, and asks you to help make it happen.
  (tags: email html standards )
• Help us form a baseline for standards support
  The Campaign Monitor folks begin the process of encouraging widespread standards support for HTML email by developing a baseline list of features that we should be helping email client developers to support.
  (tags: email standards html )
• Holy Komodo!
  ActiveState (yes, as in ActiveState Perl) is open sourcing large chunks of its flagship product, Komodo IDE, a complete environment for Web developers working with Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, as well as client-side HTML/CSS/JavaScript code.
  (tags: software opensource php rubyonrails python )
• jQuery 1.2: jQuery.extend(“Awesome”)
  A major new release of this nimble JavaScript library, jQuery 1.2 contains too many new features to go into here. Suffice it to say, this upgrade will make any JavaScript developer’s day.
  (tags: javascript software opensource )
• BEA and Adobe Form Enterprise Partnership
  In enterprise news, BEA will bundle Adobe® Flex™ Builder™ 2 with BEA Workshop™ Studio. In return, Adobe will distribute evaluation licenses of BEA Weblogic Server with Adobe LiveCycle® Enterprise Suite (ES).
  (tags: enterprise adobe flex air java )
• Sun/Microsoft Announcement
  In a break from long tradition, Sun will offer Windows Server OEM licenses to run on Sun x64 server hardware. It will be interesting to see if (and how) this will affect the Solaris market.
  (tags: enterprise windows solaris )
• The name riddle
  A solid piece on how to design forms to prompt users for their name. This sounds simple, but the form of names—and how they should be used—varies wildly in different parts of the world.
  (tags: design i18n )
• Can the alt attribute be omitted without hurting accessibility?
  Roger Johansson provides an excellent summary of discussion within the HTML 5 working group about the fate of the alt attribute.
  (tags: html standards accessibility )
• Social Networks And Group Formation
  A fascinating article about the structures of online social networking. It turns out they very much mirror the patterns of real-world social networks, which were described as far back as the 1940s.
  (tags: socialnetworks )
• User Testing footage of header/id combinations, @summary and @longdesc
  Controversy surrounding HTML table markup within the HTML 5 Working Group continues. These user testing videos not only seeks to settle the argument, but makes fascinating viewing if you haven’t a seen screen reader in use by an experienced user.
  (tags: html accessibility )
• Styling File Inputs with CSS and the DOM
  Long thought to be un-stylable, file upload fields in HTML forms can actually be styled to look however you like with this clever JavaScript hack by Shaun Inman.
  (tags: html css javascript design )
• The Browser.Next List
  Another excellent list from Dojo’s Alex Russell. This time, it’s a list of simple JavaScript/DOM features that would make developers’ lives so much easier.
  (tags: javascript )

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• Update to Internet Explorer’s Cookie Jar
  The latest auto update to Interent Explorer increases the limit on the number of cookies per domain from 20 to 50. The total size limitation of 4KB of cookie data per domain remains unchanged.
  (tags: ie http )
• Forbidden Color Combinations?
  The COLOURlovers site has a fascinating article showing off color combinations that traditionally don’t work, but in specific cases actually do.
  (tags: design )
• Google Gears 0.2 developer release ready for download
  Google has a developer preview of Google Gears 0.2 Beta, its browser extension for building offline-capable apps for Firefox and IE6. The new release offers a cross-origin API and improvements to WorkerPool, including XMLHttpRequest and Timer support.
  (tags: google javascript software ajax )
• Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design Revisited: A Survey of 500 Top E-Commerce Websites
  A list of common mistakes with e-commerce shopping cart design were identified in a 2002 usability study. This article revisits that list and reviews how 500 of the top Internet retail sites of today implemented their shopping cart design.
  (tags: usability design )
• Lazy Function Definition Pattern
  A classic example of a functional programming pattern in JavaScript. Many developers are familiar with object oriented programming in JavaScript, but functional programming can often provide cleaner, more efficient solutions.
  (tags: javascript programming )
• Microsoft settles browser patent spat
  The patent dispute between Microsoft and Eolas over interactive plug-ins is over. The original 2003 ruling in Eolas’s favor was overturned in 2005. But now the companies have settled under undisclosed terms. Which browser will Eolas target next?
  (tags: java flash flex ie microsoft )
• The Tagging Growth Curve
  The apparent lull in the growth in popularity of tagging is not necessarily a bad sign. Rather, as with most new technologies, tagging may simply be undergoing a process of “punctuated equilibrium.”
  (tags: business informationarchitecture )
• Focus Areas during Kestrel Development
  A preview of what to expect in the first public alpha of Opera 9.5 (codenamed Kestrel), due out today.
  (tags: opera )
• Code Beautifier: CSS Formatter and Optimiser
  An online tool for applying consistent (and efficient) formatting to your CSS code.
  (tags: css )
• Magento – Open Source eCommerce Evolved
  Built on the Zend Framework, Magento is a powerful, open source eCommerce platform in early beta release. It’s probably a bit early to use this in production, but it’s a very promising project!
  (tags: php software opensource )
• jQuery for JavaScript programmers
  Ex-SitePoint blogger Simon Willison provides a complete overview of jQuery, and why it’s worthwhile for experienced JavaScript developers to learn.
  (tags: javascript )
• CoScripter
  A Firefox extension that lets you record actions online as a script and then share that script. Other CoScripter users can then load and run the script you created one step at a time, or all at once to achieve the same result. (thanks paul.annesley)
  (tags: firefox software )
• Opera Mini 4 Beta 2
  A thorough review of the newly-released Opera Mini 4 Beta 2. The major new features are a landscape viewing mode, and quick access to a custom list of favorite search engines.
  (tags: opera mobile )
• Go and get Opera 9.5 alpha!
  As promised, Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) alpha is now available for download.
  (tags: opera software )

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• GWT 1.4 release and out of beta
  The latest release of Google Web Toolkit is out, and this is the first release not marked as Beta! As usual, the release is full of must-have improvements, including fundamental improvements to application size and performance.
  (tags: java javascript google gwt software opensource )
• Plone 3.0 released!
  A major update to the venerable Python CMS based on the Zope framework , Plone 3.0 includes many powerful new features, including document versioning, inline (Ajax) editing, link checking, and tons more!
  (tags: python opensource software )
• 12 Things You Should Dislike About PHP
  Another impressive list of things you may not know about PHP, this time focusing on the annoying foibles of the language.
  (tags: php )
• 15 Cool Things About PHP That Most People Overlook
  Far from another lame collection of semi-obscure PHP functions, this list of language features will likely contain at least a few mind-blowing items for all but the most seasoned of PHP veterans.
  (tags: php )
• The IPhone Is IE4 Again (in a good way)
  Joe Hewitt (of Firebug and iUI fame) speaks out against those who decry the iPhone for encouraging the development of sites that only work on a single device. His point is well taken, but his attack against the standards community is a bit over the top.
  (tags: standards mobile ie )
• New Flash(R) Developer Center launched
  In addition to the respected YUI JavaScript library, Yahoo! has now launched its Flash Developer Center to host ASTRA: the ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Applications, including many useful Flash components and libraries.
  (tags: flash flex yahoo! opensource software )

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• Slap in the Facebook: It’s Time for Social Networks to Open Up
  Wired magazine puts out an open call to the web programming community to build a social networking service based on open standards like XFN.
  (tags: socialnetworks standards xml)
• XRAY :: for web developers
  Westciv has released a free bookmarklet called XRAY that allows you to inspect the style properties of elements of a web page in Safari and Firefox. While XRAY is very slick, most developers will find Firebug is a better day-to-day tool.
  (tags: software css)
• Gang of Four Design Patterns – Does it stand the test of time?
  A tight summary of recent discussion surrounding the classic “Gang of Four” design patterns book, and its relevance today.
  (tags: programming)
• YUI 2.3.0: Six New Components and a Prettier Face
  Yahoo!’s recent update to the YUI library contains some pretty massive improvements: a beta rich text editor component, a beta color selection widget, dynamic dependency loading, a beta unit testing framework, and a formal skinning system!
  (tags: javascript software)
• MWI Team Blog – Progress for XHTML Basic 1.1
  The W3C delivers XHTML Basic 1.1 as a Candidate Recommendation, closing the divide between the two previous specifications for mobile web markup. But with mobile devices increasingly able to cope with full HTML, does this specification arrive too late?
  (tags: mobile html standards)
• What happened to object databases?
  An interesting thread on Javalobby about object databases (as opposed to relational databases), and why they haven’t seen the success that many have predicted.
  (tags: databases)
• blueprintcss
  “Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build you project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing.”
  (tags: css software opensource)
• Syncotype Your Baselines
  A short-and-sweet tool to assist in aligning page elements to a regular baseline grid. When invoked, this bookmarklet will overlay any page with a regular horizontal grid so that you can check your element alignment. Works in all major browsers. (thanks gnarly!)
  (tags: css software design)
• design|snips
  This site collects snippets of good design from all over the web. Need some inspiration for a particular aspect of your design? Just browse the relevant category. (thanks spiky_simon!)
  (tags: design)
• The Wii Remote API: Now your userbase is four.
  Opera has published an API for the Nintendo Wii version of its browser that allows JavaScript developers to monitor and respond to the four controllers supported by the console simultaneously.
  (tags: opera javascript)
• Moonfall: CSS with variables
  A neat little program written in Lua that will dynamically generate CSS property values to ease some of the maintenance associated with static CSS layouts.
  (tags: css software)
• Fixing The Web – Part 1
  A fascinating collection of problems that web technology currently faces, followed by brief interviews with some of the leading minds currently working to tackle them.
  (tags: html accessibility ajax security standards mobile)
• The Positive Side of Negative Margins
  A clear and concise run-down of how negative margins work in CSS.
  (tags: css)

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• ACCC takes on Google
  Google is facing charges from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission claiming that the difference between sponsored links and organic search results is unclear and misleading.
  (tags: google search business)
• Google To Add “Unavailable After” META Tag
  Google plans to introduce support in its search engine for an “unavailable_after” meta tag that will let Google know when a page’s contents will no longer be relevant.
  (tags: google search)
• Conflicting Absolute Positions
  A fascinating article about an improvement in IE7 that has gone largely unnoticed until now. Better support for CSS positioning in IE7 makes the creation of stretchy layouts much easier, and with a big of JavaScript IE5/6 can be made to play nice too.
  (tags: css javascript design)
• Google Gears ORM v0.1
  The first official release of GearsORM, the first object-relational mapping layer built on top of Google Gears.
  (tags: google databases javascript)
• CSRF Redirector
  In his ongoing efforts to spread the word that Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerabilities are a real danger, Chris Shiflett has developed a simple script that generates a forged POST request out of any GET request. Maybe now Amazon will fix its security?
  (tags: security)
• A Recipe for OpenID-Enabling Your Site
  From Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect for Plaxo, an awesome calendar and address book syncing service, comes this practical guide to adding OpenID authentication support to an existing site.
  (tags: identity)
• Tables in HTML Emails: Nesting, Padding and Widths, Oh My
  The fine folks at Campaign Monitor report on the current state of support for table-based positioning within email clients. The behavior of widths in relation to table cell padding/spacing may surprise you!
  (tags: html email)

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• Dojo 0.9 lands softly.
  Dojo 0.9 beta is out with a significant speed boost, pervasive improvements to accessibility (including keyboard navigation), a revamped and consistent themeing engine for widgets, and redesigned online documentation.
  (tags: javascript software opensource accessibility)
• 30 free HTML email templates
  The fine folks at Freshview (and Campaign Monitor) have assembled a collection of 30 clean, free, and highly compatible HTML email templates for download—no strings attached.
  (tags: email design)
• Presentation Layer Performance Tuning
  This article provides a nice summary of client-side performance issues and the solutions available for solving them.
  (tags: http css javascript)
• HTML elements index
  A table of HTML tags, with their availability in HTML 3.2, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, as well as the work-in-progress specs, XHTML 1.1, HTML 5, and XHTML 2.0.
  (tags: html standards)
• Ultimate htaccess Blacklist
  An interesting approach to combatting comment spam and bandwidth theft, this .htaccess blacklist will also block legitimate users of mass download and screen scraper products such as GetRight. Whether this is an acceptable tradeoff is up to you.
  (tags: apache security)
• Web Application Form Design
  A fascinating look at HTML form design, from the perspective of usability. As described in this article, different form layouts may facilitate different usability goals.
  (tags: html design usability)
• Realitycheck: What Works on the Web
  Information Architects Japan shares some of the lessons is has learned in building an online business. These lessons include the discovery that giving things away for free works better than charging a little in the hopes of attracting a lot of customers.
  (tags: business)
• New WordPress Blogs: 12 Steps to Set Up for Success
  This to-do list for newly-installed WordPress blogs is full of really useful (and non-obvious) advice. They should really make some of this stuff part of the installation wizard.
  (tags: search marketing opensource)
• Introduction to Programming Using Java, 5th Edition
  A free, online textbook on introductory programming, which uses Java as the language of instruction. This book is directed mainly towards beginning programmers, although it might also be useful for experienced programmers who want to learn about Java.
  (tags: java programming)
• Dojo Offline: 0.9 and Gears
  “Brad Neuberg and SitePen have released a new beta of Dojo Offline. This release includes a full port to Google Gears, a port from Dojo 0.4 to 0.9, and more.”
  (tags: javascript software google opensource network)
• GoPHP5.org – helping speed the transition to PHP 5.2
  This grassroots campaign calls for PHP developers to cease support for PHP 4 in new releases of their projects from Tuesday, February 5th, 2008. Significant projects include Swift Mailer, PHPUnit, Drupal, phpMyAdmin, Typo3 and Symfony.
  (tags: php hosting opensource)
• PHP 4 end of life announcement
  On the 3rd anniversary of PHP 5’s release, the PHP development team has announced that support for PHP 4 will cease at the end of 2007 (with critical security fixes continuing until August 8th, 2008).
  (tags: php hosting)
• JDocs beta
  A major update to this community-driven Java API reference site includes wiki-based versioned annotations at all levels and, at long last, includes documentation for the Java SE core API.
  (tags: java)
• Authoring HTML 5 – A Call to Web Professionals
  The W3C HTML 5 WG responds to criticism that the HTML 5 draft specification does not address the need for a specification that describes how HTML documents should be authored, including rich semantics (as opposed to font tags) and consistent syntax.
  (tags: html standards)
• Google Mapplets Officially Released – Mashups 2.0
  Google has officially released the Mapplets technology it announced in beta in May. The new name for the technology is Mashups 2.0, and is essentially a plug-in API for Google Maps.
  (tags: apis google javascript)
• Bringing the Browser to the Server
  John Resig has thrown together an impressive experiment: a virtual browser that will run ”headless” on a web server, or any other environment that can host the Rhino JavaScript engine. This environment is already sophisticated enough to run jQuery!
  (tags: javascript opensource software)
• CSS Selectors – Speed Myths
  Jack Slocum tackles a few of the myths surrounding the impressive performance gains made recently by the popular JavaScript libraries in their support for CSS-style node selection.
  (tags: javascript)
• Various Notes
  Dojo’s Alex Russell wishes that Jack Slocum’s analysis of CSS selector performance had included Dean Edwards’s Base2 library, claiming it’s the fastest implementation around. This point is debated in the ensuing comments.
  (tags: javascript)
• Gears Roadmap and Development Process
  Google announces its plans for the ongoing development of Google Gears, including short-term plans for a cross-origin API (allowing site A to access the local database of site B) and improvements to make the Workerpool API easier to use.
  (tags: google opensource javascript)

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• iPhone JavaScript Experiments: Day One
  JavaScript guru Joe Hewitt is not impressed with the iPhone as a rich application development platform. Lack of mousedown and mousemove events, for example, prevent developers from taking advantage of the iPhone’s multi touch display.
  (tags: javascript mobile)
• Firebug for iPhone
  Firebug creator Joe Hewitt sensed the need for a Firebug-caliber diagnostic tool for the iPhone. He has built an experimental Python-based server that you can run on your desktop computer to provide a remote JavaScript console for an app on the iPhone.
  (tags: javascript mobile python software)
• Building a desktop application with Ext, AIR, Aptana and Red Bull
  A proof of concept ends up producing quite a polished result: a desktop-like to-do list application that will run either in the browser (with Google Gears offline storage) or on the desktop (with Adobe’s AIR).
  (tags: javascript air google)
• Flip
  A cute online tool that will rotate plain Unicode text 180° (upside down). The result is not exactly accessible, but it is impressive.
  (tags: design)
• jQuery 1.1.3: 800%+ Faster, still 20KB
  jQuery keeps getting better with a massive speed boost. A smattering of new features, a revamped animation system, and a rewritten events subsystem round out this update. Also in this announcement: jQuery UI, a new drag & drop library for jQuery.
  (tags: javascript software)
• HTML Purifier – Filter your HTML the standards-compliant way!
  HTML Purifier is an impressive PHP library for filtering HTML user input against XSS attacks and to ensure standards compliant output.
  (tags: php security html)
• Web App Autopsy
  A look inside four web application startups at different stages in their lifecycle. Compares them in terms of lines of code, daily support requests, conversion rates, average revenue per customer, and best/worth month of the year.
  (tags: business)
• Zend Framework
  The first production release of the official PHP framework is now available! If you’re in the initial stages of a PHP project, you could do a lot worse than adopting this framework for the foundations.
  (tags: php opensource software)
• Project Zero
  IBM has launched Project Zero, a closed-source framework and Eclipse-based IDE for agile web applications in PHP and Groovy with an emphasis on REST architecture. The documentation is very beginner-unfriendly, but maybe a project to watch.
  (tags: php groovy http software)
• What is the CSS Working Group Doing?
  An informative—if not particularly encouraging—post from the W3C CSS Working Group that attempts to answer many of the criticisms levelled at the group recently.
  (tags: css standards)
• GPLv3 and LGPLv3 have been released!
  The Free Software Foundation has released the final text of both the GNU General Public License v3 and the GNU Lesser GPL v3. The main differences are in allowing users to modify software for private use, and freeing developers from software patents.
  (tags: opensource)
• Planet I18n
  The W3C’s Internationalization Activity Lead Richard Ishida has created an aggregator for blog posts related to Internationalization.
  (tags: i18n)
• London 2012 Olympics branding film causes epileptic seizures
  As if the story surrounding the London 2012 Olympics logo and branding weren’t twisted enough, we now have reports of members of the public suffering epileptic seizures after viewing a promotional film posted on the Games’ web site.
  (tags: accessibility design)
• Mashing up microformats
  From Jeremy Keith, a fascinating look at how multiple microformats may be combined in overlapping code to enable a single piece of HTML content to express more than one semantic data structure.
  (tags: microformats html)
• Memory Leaks: Gone!
  It appears Microsoft has updated IE6 to largely (if not completely) correct widely-known JavaScript memory leak issues with the browser. The fix is for Windows XP only, however, where the forced IE7 may render this fix moot.
  (tags: javascript ie)
• AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide (free PDF book)
  Courtesty of Adobe and O’Reilly comes this free PDF version of the upcoming pocket guide for JavaScript developers looking to get up to speed on the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).
  (tags: javascript air adobe)
• WYMeditor 0.4 beta released
  WYMeditor, the web-based What You See Is What You Mean XHTML editor now has improved XHTML code cleanup abilities thanks to a built-in XHTML parser. Also now includes a CSS parser used for configuring available styles.
  (tags: javascript html css software)

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