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April 8, 2011#

CSS Compression Tool

Yahoo! has an Exceptional Performance team, and they claim that “40% to 60% of their users have an empty cache experience and about 20% of all page views are done with an empty cache.” The highlights the importance initial load speeds, and all web developers should strive to keep pages as lightweight as possible. Sans images, one major factor is a page’s stylesheet, or CSS. Minifying is a great technique to “preserve the operational qualities of the code while reducing its overall byte footprint.”

The YUI compressor is by far the best CSS and Javascript compressor. Built on Java, the YUI compressor is a simple command-line tool that makes minifying easy and safe–and, it will yield a higher compression ratio than most other tools.

At Boost, we put minifying all of our css and javascript as a high priority before launching a new project or an update, to make sure our clients’ customers can receive the fastest initial load speeds. Afterall, fast load speeds means better conversion rates and higher Google page rankings

September 28, 2010#

iAd Sores, the Android market, & TV Apps

A few days ago, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that iAd, which was rolled out in July of this year, will grab an estimated 21 per cent of the mobile-ad market by this year’s end. Chunks are being taken out of Google, which will slip from 27 per cent in 2009 to 21 percent this year, and especially Yahoo!, project to be down to 9 from 12 per cent. However–these are only estimates from IDC. With that $60 million ad-buy commitments from AT&T, Best Buy, Chanel, Walt Disney, and others, there is no question why Steve Jobs had a smile on his face during his June 7th keynote presentation.

One reason I love Apple’s new iAd system, and I may be partial as junior developer, is that it helps developers earn money so they can continue to create free and low-cost apps. This not only increases the amount of apps available for consumers, but also keeps pushing the envelop as far as what mobile applications are capable of.

Nonetheless, the push towards Android development is increasing at a (not-so) alarming rate. From IDC:

Seventy-two percent of developers say Android “is best positioned to power a large number and variety of connected devices in the future.” compared to 25% for iOS. As a result, 59% of developers now favor Android’s long-term outlook versus 35% for iOS. This gap has widened 10 points since a similar survey in June.

But, Apple iOS continues to dominate in all categories relating to market/revenue opportunity and current devices. Who’s ready for Google TV, and the TV application market? I am. Custom TV experience sounds like the next step in awesomeness. I’m getting a bit sick of paying way too much for television channels that I simple never watch. Television needs new and more effective ways to create immersive experiences, properly engage audiences with advertisers, integrate social networks, and drive viewership of original broadcasts. You know, if history has nothing to do with it, something still tells me Apple will be the first to truly dabble in it…and soon.

July 21, 2010#

The NEW Google Images

Yes, I noticed it too. Google always seems to be changing things on me. But, this new image search is nice, and there are some great new features to this image search that will make your life a lot easier (and faster). It’s all about efficiency. Right? The great thing about the new image search results is the lack of text data. All that is shown are the images–and, you can get a good idea of what kind of image it is (landscape, portrait, small, big, etc…) before you ever even click it. Google calls this a “dense titled layout.”

Now, you can simply hover over an image and preview it. The image and information about where it came from are neatly presented. This means a faster route to the image(s) are looking for. The old image results had a cluster of text data that most people never bothered to even look at.

Another great feature is the fact that the images are delivered in context to the page it was featured on. When you click the image, it loads the page and displays that particular image in a “lightbox” type display. It bothered me at first, but I quickly realized context around the images are usually just as important–and sometimes there are other images around that image that might tickle your fancy a bit more.

Less is more, right? Not in this case. Now there are over 10 billion images on Google’s image search, compared to 250 million in 2001.

Yes, Microsoft Bing has already had some of these features. But do they have Image Swirl? No sir.