| Global Study Stresses Importance of Public Internet Access Jul 11th 2013, 00:00 vinces99 writes "Millions of people in low-income countries still depend on public computer and Internet access venues despite the global proliferation of mobile phones and home computers. However, interest in providing such public access has waned in recent years, especially among development agencies, as new technologies become available. But a five-year, eight-country study recently concluded by researchers at the University of Washington Information School has found that community access to computer and Internet technology remains a crucial resource for connecting people to the information and skills they need in an increasingly digital world. The Global Impact Study of Public Access to Information & Communication Technologies surveyed 5,000 computer users at libraries, telecenters and cybercafés and 2,000 nonusers at home to learn about patterns of public access use. The researchers also surveyed 1,250 operators of public access venues and conducted seven in-depth case studies to examine issues that have generated controversy. The study was conducted in eight low- and middle-income countries on three continents: Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Lithuania, Philippines and South Africa." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     |  | Android Co-Founder: Fragmentation "an Overblown Issue" Jul 10th 2013, 23:15 curtwoodward writes "Sure, developers might pull their hair out trying to keep track of all the versions of the Android operating system scattered across hundreds of millions of mobile devices worldwide. But a co-founder of Android says the OS's fragmentation problem is being blown out of proportion. At an event this week in Boston, Rich Miner — now a partner at Google Ventures — said some level of fragmentation is inevitable with Android's reach and the number of partners in the ecosystem. But things are getting better, he said, and in any case most consumers don't notice the difference: `This is a bit of an overblown issue, frankly.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | NASA Wants To Bring Back Hunks of Mars In Future Unmanned Mission Jul 10th 2013, 22:28 coondoggie writes "The space missions to Mars have so far been one way — satellites and robotic rovers have all gone there to stay. NASA, as part a of a new, ambitious Mars visit, wants to change that by sending a rover to the surface of the Red Planet which can dig up chunks of the surface and send them back to Earth for highly detailed examination. These plans were laid out in a lengthy report outlining mission plans for Mars that will be acted upon over the next decade. It says a retrieval mission 'could occur as early as the mid-2020s or wait until the 2030s.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Why JavaScript On Mobile Is Slow Jul 10th 2013, 21:44 An anonymous reader writes "Drew Crawford has a good write up of the current state of JavaScript in mobile development, and why the lack of explicit memory handling (and a design philosophy that ignores memory issues) leads to massive garbage collection overhead, which prevents HTML5/JS from being deployed for anything besides light duty mobile web development. Quoting: 'Here’s the point: memory management is hard on mobile. iOS has formed a culture around doing most things manually and trying to make the compiler do some of the easy parts. Android has formed a culture around improving a garbage collector that they try very hard not to use in practice. But either way, everybody spends a lot of time thinking about memory management when they write mobile applications. There’s just no substitute for thinking about memory. Like, a lot. When JavaScript people or Ruby people or Python people hear "garbage collector," they understand it to mean "silver bullet garbage collector." They mean "garbage collector that frees me from thinking about managing memory." But there’s no silver bullet on mobile devices. Everybody thinks about memory on mobile, whether they have a garbage collector or not. The only way to get "silver bullet" memory management is the same way we do it on the desktop–by having 10x more memory than your program really needs.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | The Pentagon's Seven Million Lines of Cobol Jul 10th 2013, 21:23 MrMetlHed writes "A portion of this Reuters article about the Pentagon's inability to manage paying soldiers properly mentions that their payroll program has 'seven million lines of Cobol code that hasn't been updated.' It goes on to mention that the documentation has been lost, and no one really knows how to update it well. In trying to replace the program, the Pentagon spent a billion dollars and wasn't successful." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Ask Slashdot: Development Requirements Change But Deadlines Do Not? Jul 10th 2013, 21:02 cyclomedia writes "Over a number of years my company has managed to slowly shift from a free-for-all (pick a developer at random and get them to do what you want) to something resembling Agile development with weekly builds. But we still have to deal with constant incoming feature changes and requests that are expected to be included in this week's package. The upshot is that builds are usually late, not properly tested and developers get the flak when things go wrong. I suspect the answer is political, but how do we make things better? One idea I had was that every time a new request comes in — no matter how small — the build gets pushed back by 24 or even 48 hours. I'd love to hear your ideas or success stories. (Unfortunately, quitting is not an option)" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Dwarf Planet Ahoy! Spacecraft Spies Pluto and Charon Jul 10th 2013, 20:40 astroengine writes "As NASA's New Horizons probe powers through interplanetary space, it's keeping a careful eye forward, watching its target gradually loom larger on the proverbial celestial horizon. But earlier this month the spacecraft spotted something right next to Pluto — a pixelated Charon, the dwarf planet's largest moon. 'The image itself might not look very impressive to the untrained eye, but compared to the discovery images of Charon from Earth, these 'discovery' images from New Horizons look great!' said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD. 'We're very excited to see Pluto and Charon as separate objects for the first time from New Horizons.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | How DRM Won Jul 10th 2013, 20:20 Nerval's Lobster writes "In 2009, when Apple dropped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions from songs sold through the iTunes Store, it seemed like a huge victory for consumers, one that would usher in a more customer-friendly economy for digital media. But four years later, DRM is still alive and well — it just lives in the cloud now. Streaming media services are the ultimate form of copy protection — you never actually control the media files, which are encrypted before delivery, and your ability to access the content can be revoked if you disagree with updated terms of service; you're also subject to arbitrary changes in subscription prices. This should be a nightmare scenario to lovers of music, film, and television, but it's somehow being hailed by many as a technical revolution. Unfortunately, what's often being lost in the hype over the admittedly remarkable convenience of streaming media services is the simple fact that meaningfully relating to the creative arts as a fan or consumer depends on being able to access the material in the first place. In other words, where your media collection is stored (and can be remotely disabled at a whim) is not something to be taken lightly. In this essay, developer Vijith Assar talks about how the popularity of streaming content could result in a future that isn't all that great. 'Ultimately, regardless of the delivery mechanism, the question is not one of streaming versus downloads,' he writes. 'It's about whether you want to have your own media library or request access to somebody else's. Be careful.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | India To Overtake US On Number of Developers By 2017 Jul 10th 2013, 19:38 dcblogs writes "There are about 18.2 million software developers worldwide, a number that is due to rise to 26.4 million by 2019, a 45% increase, says Evans Data Corp. in its latest Global Developer Population and Demographic Study. Today, the U.S. leads the world in software developers, with about 3.6 million. India has about 2.75 million. But by 2018, India will have 5.2 million developers, a nearly 90% increase, versus 4.5 million in the U.S., a 25% increase though that period, Evans Data projects. India's software development growth rate is attributed, in part, to its population size, 1.2 billion, and relative youth, with about half the population under 25 years of age. Rapid economic growth is fueling interest in development. India's services firms hire, in many cases, thousands of new employees each quarter. Consequently, IT and software work is seen as clear path to the middle class for many of the nation's young. For instance, in one quarter this year, Tata Consultancy Services added more than 17,000 employees, gross, bringing its total headcount to 263,600. In the same quarter of 2010, the company had about 150,000 workers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Book Review: Assessing Vendors Jul 10th 2013, 18:55 benrothke writes "Every organization has external software, hardware and 3rd-party vendors they have to deal with. In many cases, these vendors will have direct access to the corporate networks, confidential and proprietary data and more. Often the software and hardware solutions are critical to the infrastructure and security of the organization. If the vendors don't have effective information security and privacy controls in place, your data is at risk. In addition, when selecting a product to secure your organization, how do you ensure that you are selecting the correct product? All of this is critical in the event of a breach. When the lawyers start circling, they will be serving subpoenas to your company, not your 3rd-party vendors." Keep reading for Ben's review. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite Jul 10th 2013, 18:13 Swedish Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge reports that a fansite providing subtitles for movies has been raided by Swedish police at the behest of the copyright industry. "The movie subtitle fansite undertexter.se, literally meaning subtitles.se, is a site where people contribute their own translations of movies. This lets people who aren't good at the original language of a movie or cartoon put those fan-made subtitles – fansubs – on top of the movie or cartoon. Fansubbing is a thriving culture which usually provides better-than-professional subtitles for new episodes with less than 24 hours of turnaround (whereas the providers of the original cartoon or movie can easily take six months or more). What’s remarkable about this raid is that the copyright industry has decided to do a full-out raid against something that is entirely fan-made. It underscores the general sentiment of the copyright monopoly not protecting the creator of artwork, but protecting the big distribution monopolies, no matter who actually created the art." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | City-Sized Ice Shelf Breaks Free Of Antarctica Jul 10th 2013, 17:31 LeadSongDog writes "Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite is showing that the Antarctic's Pine Island ice shelf has calved a 'berg of 720 square kilometres, 'the size of Hamburg.' Angelika Humbert says 'The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level. Its "bed" tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable and will start to slide.' The article extrapolates that 'If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 meters.' Goodbye Florida. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Study Finds Bug Bounty Programs Extremely Cost-Effective Jul 10th 2013, 16:50 itwbennett writes "U.C. Berkeley researchers have determined that crowdsourcing bug-finding is a far better investment than hiring employees to do the job. Here's the math: Over the last three years, Google has paid $580,000 and Mozilla has paid $570,000 for bugs found in their Chrome and Firefox browsers — and hundreds of vulnerabilities have been fixed. Compare that to the average annual cost of a single North American developer (about $100,000, plus 50% overhead), 'we see that the cost of either of these VRPs (vulnerability reward programs) is comparable to the cost of just one member of the browser security team,' the researchers wrote (PDF). And the crowdsourcing also uncovered more bugs than a single full-time developer could find." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Masao Yoshida, Director of Fukushima Daichii Nuclear Plant, Has Died Jul 10th 2013, 16:36 Doofus writes "Masao Yoshida, director of the Daichii Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, has passed away. Colleagues and politicos in Japan praised his disobedience during the post-tsunami meltdown and credited him with preventing much more widespread and intense damage. From the article: 'On March 12, a day after the tsunami, Mr. Yoshida ignored an order from Tepco headquarters to stop pumping seawater into a reactor to try and cool it because of concerns that ocean water would corrode the equipment. Tepco initially said it would penalize Mr. Yoshida even though Sakae Muto, then a vice president at the utility, said it was a technically appropriate decision. Mr. Yoshida received no more than a verbal reprimand after then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan defended the plant chief, the Yomiuri newspaper reported. "I bow in respect for his leadership and decision-making," Kan said Tuesday in a message posted on his Twitter account.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Google Updates Maps, Makes First Stable Chrome Release Using WebKit Fork Jul 10th 2013, 16:10 Two bits of Google news from today/yesterday. This morning, Google started rolling out a major update to mobile Maps. They've created a new tablet interface, improved integration with local places, integrated the Zagat guide, and enhanced navigation to automatically route you around traffic incidents. As usual lately, Google also removed a few features: Latitude and Check-ins. If you used those you'll have to use the Google+ application now. They also made a strange change to offline maps: instead of a menu option, you now access the area you want to make available offline and search for "OK Maps." On the Chrome front, Google released Chrome 28 yesterday, the first release featuring the WebKit fork Blink. The under-the-hood changes look promising, quoting the H: "The developers say that the increased speed is also thanks to the new threaded HTML parser, which frees up the JavaScript thread, allowing DOM content to be displayed faster. The HTML parser also takes fewer breaks, which is said to result in time savings of up to 40 per cent." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | VLC And Secunia Fighting Over Vulnerability Reports Jul 10th 2013, 15:36 benjymouse writes "Following a blog post by security company Secunia, VideoLAN (vendor of popular VLC media player) president Jean-Baptiste Kempf accuses Secunia of lying in a blog post titled 'More lies from Secunia.' It seems that Secunia and Jean-Baptiste Kempf have different views on whether a vulnerability has been patched. At one point VLC threatened legal action unless Secunia updated their SA51464 security advisory to show the issue as patched. While Secunia changed the status pending their own investigation, they later reverted to 'unpatched.' Secunia claimed that they had PoC illustrating that the root issue still existed and 3rd party confirmation (an independent security researcher found the same issue and reported it to Secunia)." There are two bugs: one is a vulnerability in ffmpeg's swf parser that vlc worked around since they don't support swf. The VLC developers think Secunia should have reported the bug to ffmpeg, which seems pretty sensible. The other bug is an uncaught exception in the Matroska demuxer with overly large chunks that merely results in std::terminate being called; the Matroska demux maintainer apologized, but, despite dire warnings from Secunia that it could be exploitable, it most certainly is not. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Upside-Down Sensors Caused Proton-M Rocket Crash Jul 10th 2013, 14:55 Michi writes "According to Anatoly Zak, the crash of the Russion Proton rocket on 1 July was apparently caused by several angular velocity sensors having been installed upside down. From the source: 'Each of those sensors had an arrow that was supposed to point toward the top of the vehicle, however multiple sensors on the failed rocket were pointing downward instead.' It seems amazing that something as fundamental as this was not caught during quality control. Even more amazing is that the design of the sensors permits them to be installed in the wrong orientation in the first place. Even the simplest of mechanical interlocks (such as a notch at one end that must be matched with a corresponding projection) could have prevented the accident." A review of the quality control procedures used by the contractors responsible is underway. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Judge Rules Apple Colluded With Publishers to Fix Ebook Prices Jul 10th 2013, 14:17 Despite many publishers themselves settling with the DOJ over allegations of price fixing ebooks, Apple held firm and recently went to trial. And now the verdict is in: Apple conspired with major publishers to control ebook prices in violation of anti-trust laws. A trial for damages has been ordered. Quoting Reuters: "The decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan is a victory for the U.S. government and various states, which the judge said are entitled to injunctive relief. ... Cote said the conspiracy resulted in prices for some e-books rising to $12.99 or $14.99, when Amazon had sold for $9.99. 'The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy,' Cote said. 'Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010,' she added." Update: 07/10 16:36 GMT by U L : The ruling is now available (160 page PDF). Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | 3-D Structures Built Out of Liquid Metal At Room Temperature Jul 10th 2013, 13:36 ph4cr writes with news that a few researchers have discovered an alloy that allows them to print 3D structures from liquid metal at room temperature. From the article: "'It's difficult to create structures out of liquids, because liquids want to bead up. But we’ve found that a liquid metal alloy of gallium and indium reacts to the oxygen in the air at room temperature to form a "skin" that allows the liquid metal structures to retain their shapes,' says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. ... One technique involves stacking droplets of liquid metal on top of each other, much like a stack of oranges at the supermarket. The droplets adhere to one another, but retain their shape – they do not merge into a single, larger droplet. ... Another technique injects liquid metal into a polymer template, so that the metal takes on a specific shape. The template is then dissolved, leaving the bare, liquid metal in the desired shape. The researchers also developed techniques for creating liquid metal wires, which retain their shape even when held perpendicular to the substrate." The paper is available online. There's also a video of the process in action, below the fold. Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | Heml.is, New Encrypted Messaging Service From Brokep of the Pirate Bay Jul 10th 2013, 12:56 First time accepted submitter freddej writes "Heml.is ("secret" in Swedish), is a new peer encrypted messaging service from some of the guys behind TPB and Flattr. They describe it as this: 'Our focus is your privacy so we are building everything from software to company structure to protect that. The others are focused on maximizing profit.' So if you agree on the mantra that 'if you're not paying, you're the product' then you might want to check them out." Caveats: they are begging for money and there is no mention whether this will be Free Software or some kind of proprietary service (in which case, how can you really trust it?). It looks more likely it will be a closed application/service: "We're building a message app where no one can listen in, not even us. We would rather close down the service before letting anyone in ... [what will codes unlock?] It will give you access to extended features of Heml.is like sending image messages and other stuff in the future. Pre-register username will let you register your username before the app is released." Read more of this story at Slashdot.     | | May The Fourth Be With You: Add Your Twitter Avatar To The Smashing Book #4 Jul 10th 2013, 10:24, by The Smashing Editorial If you've spent the last few months under a rock, then we’ve got a surprise for you. We are working on two brand new Smashing Books. The first, New Perspectives on Coding, will cover state-of-the-art techniques, case studies and coding strategies — all neatly packed into a gorgeous printed hardcover (and available as an eBook, of course). So if you've always wanted to leave a trace of yourself to posterity, now you can (well, kind of). From the very first Smashing Book, we've reserved space to feature our readers in the book, and our fourth undertaking will be no exception. Add Your Twitter Avatar To The Book! A picture says more than a thousand words, and a Twitter avatar says more about one's personality than a name ever could! So, following our tradition, we welcome you to submit your Twitter avatar for a double-page spread in the (printed and digital) book. Space is very limited, with only 750 slots available, so please be quick! How Does It Work? Easy! - Type in your Twitter username, and — voilà — your spot it reserved!
- We’ll grab your avatar automatically and will notify you about the status of the submission via email.
Presto! And if for some mysterious reason, you happen to feel like a Jedi afterwards, well, why not tweet about it using the hash tag #feellikejedi? No pressure: just sayin'! What Is The Book About? We've assembled a remarkable lineup of authors for the book. All of them are well-respected designers and developers who will be divulging practical insights, design strategies and hands-on tools as they share new perspectives on Web design today. Here is a quick summary of the book's theme and table of contents. Summary 
What works in theory sometimes doesn't quite work as expected in practice. In this pragmatic book, well-respected designers and developers analyze their personal experiences, failures and successes from working on common front-end issues, and share the tools they use to tackle these issues effectively. You’ll learn state-of-the-art techniques and strategies to make your workflow more effective. The book will feature valuable insights into large-scale projects, front-end architecture, maintainable code and responsible responsive Web design. It will also uncover smart front-end strategies, CSS and JavaScript tricks and obscure back-end techniques, and it will explore what it takes to improve performance for faster and more robust websites and Web apps. Table of Contents | AUTHOR | CHAPTER | DETAILS | | Addy Osmani | Rendering Performance Optimization For Mobile | |  Whether it's on desktop or mobile, users want their web experience to be snappy, smooth and delightful. What this means is that even if the browser is busy rendering the page (i.e drawing it) or loading in content, the user should still be able to scroll around and interact with it without any slow-down. No one likes seeing visual glitchyness. In this chapter, Addy Osmani, the mastermind behind Yeoman and Devtools, provides a walkthrough on how to find and fix visual jitter in your pages. If you care about providing fast and smooth experiences, you will care about this chapter, too. Keywords: tools, techniques, strategy, workflow, optimization, rendering. | | Harry Roberts | Breaking Good Habits: CSS Architecture For Tomorrow | |  The Web is changing. Are you keeping up? We've outgrown the methods of yesteryear and it's now up to us to update the unwritten rules of web development to fit the new landscape. This chapter explores some misconceptions about CSS, encourages a change in attitude in front-end development, explores practical approaches of and lessons learned in object-oriented CSS development, code structure, code management, naming conventions and verbosity of HTML. You'll explore a new frame of mind that is better equipped for building more powerful, pragmatic front-ends. Chapter keywords: CSS, OOCSS, BEM, architecture, strategy, semantics, code structure, front-end, naming conventions, performance. | | Nicholas C. Zakas | The Roadmap to Maintainable, Clean and Effective Code | |  Code is code no matter where you go, and code has a tendency to get messy as it gets large and old. What if you need to make changes? What if you didn't anticipate the additional features that would be required? What if the project ends up going in a different direction? Can your code adapt? We are rarely taught how to deal with messy code. However, someone is going to have to maintain that code. That someone might be you next month or it might be someone else next year, but someone eventually will need to maintain that code. On a large project with many developers, the problem is magnified. How can everyone work in the same code base in such a way that making changes in the future are easy? That's what this chapter is about. Chapter keywords: maintenance, architecture, conventions, code style, documentation, components, legacy code, testing, CSS, JavaScript. | | Tim Kadlec | The Culture of Performance | |  The Web has a serious weight problem and the users are the ones who suffer as a result. The impact of improved web performance is no minor detail: by caring a lot about how fast our websites and applications are, we can explore new markets, gain increased revenue, improved business metrics and better user satisfaction. But how do we bake performance into the design process? We must make performance part of the discussion from the very beginning of the process, and we must be concrete about it. Chapter keywords: performance budget, optimization, speed, efficiency, mobile, latency, loading, rendering | | Paul Tero | How To Fix The Web: Obscure Back-end Techniques And Terminal Secrets | |  Imagine that you wake up one morning, groggily reach for your laptop and fire it up. You've just finished developing a brand new website and last night you were proudly clicking through the product list. The browser window is still open, the Widget 3000 is still sparkling in its AJAXy newness. You grin like a new parent and expectantly click on "more details." And nothing happens. You click again, still nothing. You press “Refresh” and get that annoying swirling icon and then the page goes blank. Help! The Internet is gone! This chapter starts with the worst case scenario and works inwards, exploring the infrastructure of the Internet and the make-up of a Web server, imparting lots of little tips and commands along the way, opening up a new perspective on how websites can stop working and be fixed. Chapter keywords: back-end, DNS, servers, networking, infrastructure, SSH, firewalls, DOS, hacks, debugging, backup, Apache, security. | | Aaron Gustafson | Building Adaptive Interfaces | |  To create truly exceptional designs, we must not only reduce the friction inherent in completing a task, but we must reconcile aesthetics with usability by designing adaptive interfaces. Smartly built interfaces offer a continuum of experience. So what if we architect our interfaces to adapt to the capabilities of our user's devices in order to ensure a positive experience, even if it's not an identical one? In this chapter, Aaron explores the layers of a typical Web experience and breaks down the development process into manageable steps that enable accessible, functional and empathetic interfaces. He also describes his own process and various techniques that help him to achieve this very goal in daily routine. Chapter keywords: adaptive interface, progressive enhancement, empathy, layer cake, constraints, lazy loading, UI Construction Flow, JavaScript, adaptive components, patterns, style tiles | | Mat Marquis | Robust, Responsible, Responsive Web Design (Filament Group's Case-Study) | |  Responsive Web design is starting to get a reputation, and not the kind of reputation that it rightfully deserves. The most common death knell we've heard ringing out—lately, anyway—is that every page of a responsive site is fated to weigh in at a couple dozen megabytes and there isn't a single thing that any of us can do about it. There are good solution though. We can't blame responsive Web design for mistakes that we, developers, have been making. This is on us, and you don't see any carpenters writing blog posts about how hammers are a failed methodology because of the time they dropped one on their foot. We can do better than blaming our tools for our mistakes. This chapter is about exactly that: tools, techniques, lessons learned and practical tips to manage responsible responsive designs in real-life projects. Chapter keywords: Responsive Web design, responsive images, conditional loading, progressive enhancement, optimization, CSS, JavaScript, workflow, optimization, case-study. | | Andy Hume | Real-Life Responsive Web Design (The Guardian's Case-Study) | |  Ensuring good cross device and cross browser experiences has always been a thing, but browsers adoption of media quieries solved a key problem and let us jump forward very fast. This chapter looks at some lessons from implementing on Guardian and discussions with others like BBC, Boston Globe. In a world where the number and diversity of browsing platforms is increasing every day these orgs understand the value of having one platform and codebase for delivering their web products. Chapter keywords: Responsive Web design, optimization, performance, RESS, case-study. | | Christian Heilmann | Vanilla Web Diet | |  When we go out and use our mobile devices or wireless that is available in cafes and hotels things don't look as bright as they do on our incredibly fast connections at home. There, the larger part of our time is consumed looking at spinning animations telling us something is loading and many a time we are being told that "the connection is wonky" and that we should try again. That's a sign of the Web being broken. It's time to fix it. Let's try to take a break in our drive to be cool and new and innovative the whole time and check out what we are doing — analyze our eating habits so to say. Christian Heilmann calls this the "Vanilla Web Diet," much like people start calling using JavaScript without any libraries "Vanilla JavaScript." This chapter explores some of the fundamental ideas and thoughts that you can apply to slim down your next app or existing solution. Chapter keywords: optimization, performance, speed, strategy, browsers, quality of code. |
Authors of the “New Perspective on Coding”, a book about state-of-the-art techniques, strategies and workflow for Web developers. 
A tasty early preview of Anna Shuvalova's beautiful illustrations for The Smashing Book #4: namely, for Christian Heilmann's chapter "Vanilla Web Diet" on the left, and Mat Marquis' chapter "Robust, Responsive, Responsive Web Design" on the right. (Large view)
Technical Details 
© The Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2013. | | Leave Final Wishes for Your Online Accounts Jul 10th 2013, 07:05 
Advertise here via BSA Photos, emails, social profiles: what happens to them in case we pass away? Perpetu helps you leave final wishes for your online accounts. Practical and secure – no passwords required. Most of all it is simple and amusing, and it will make you think about your life in a whole new way. Easily connect your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail accounts and more to Perpetu, with a click of a button. They use the community standards of oAuth & APIs to carry out your wishes. These standards are recognised by Facebook, Gmail and many other popular online services. They make sure that the actions we take on your behalf are well within the boundaries allowed by these online services. 
Requirements: -
Demo: https://perpetu.co/
License: License Free
SponsorsProfessional Web Icons for Your Websites and Applications  | | Retinize It: Free Photoshop Action For Slicing Graphics For HD Screens Jul 9th 2013, 09:00, by Artiom Dashinsky High-definition (or "Retina") displays have spread wider and wider, and evidently their numbers will keep growing. So, as creators of products that will be consumed on Retina devices, we have to optimize our design and development workflow accordingly. Slicing graphics from finished designs to use for development is one of the less enjoyable parts of building a website or app. And it takes a long time. Because slicing is a monotonous and straightforward task, using the right tool and workflow can save you hours or even days of work. 
Preparing graphics for development mostly entails saving user-interface elements from the final mockups, with transparent backgrounds. And to support Retina displays, we also need to create double-sized versions of elements. Upon failing to find a tool that fits my design team's workflow, I created a set of two time-saving Photoshop actions for slicing graphics for Retina and standard displays. The great feedback from my team inspired me to share it with other designers. The tool has gotten good buzz in the Web design and front-end development community, so today I'm happy to introduce Retinize It on Smashing Magazine. 
Retinize It uses Photoshop actions and retina.js to optimize for Retina displays.
How It Works Select one layer, several layers or a group of layers, and run the action. Once you've activated it, you just need to name the files and set the directory to save them to. 
In the background, Retinize It copies the selected layers to a new file, makes the background transparent and trims the space around the element. Once that's done, the action asks what you want to name the file, saves it, scales the original element by 200%, and saves that as a separate file. After this process, you'll be returned to the original file. How Much Of The Slicing Process The Action Saves Almost all of it. The only thing you have to do is choose the directory and name the files. Remember to add a high-resolution modifier, @2x, for the Retina versions of the files. This convention was established in Apple's iOS Developer Library. If you're building an iOS application, then you'll need to provide a background and splash screen in three resolutions: standard (320 × 480 pixels), Retina (640 × 960 pixels) and iPhone 5 (1136 × 640 pixels). The naming convention for the standard and Retina versions is straightforward. For images for the iPhone 5's screen resolution, Apple recommends adding a -568h@2x suffix, although Apple doesn't require it. Apparently, this happens because Xcode does not automatically associate -568h@2x images with the iPhone 5's resolution; developers may set the suffix manually for this kind of file. I've worked with an iOS developer who has asked Apple to add a @5x suffix. So, the best way to determine the naming convention for iPhone 5 images in future is to ask your developer. In other cases, use the -568h@2x suffix. The techniques presented in the article "Towards A Retina Web" bring the @2x convention from mobile apps to the Web, helping us to optimize websites for Retina displays very quickly. Why Scale by 200% and Not 50%? Retinize It is good for those who start designing at non-Retina sizes, which is a better practice for two reasons. First, the non-Retina version of an image will look much closer to the final product, giving you more accurate feedback on how the design will actually look. Secondly, an element with an odd size value that is scaled by 50% will end up with a x.5 pixel value, making the element blurry. Bjango explains this issue in his article "Designing for Retina Display," as does Niklaus Gerber in his article "Designing for the iPhone 4." What Kind of Layers Will This Work With? The non-Retina action in this pack will work with any kind of layer. If you're using the Retina version, then you should work with shapes and smart objects, so that the 200%-scaled file will not look pixelated. Also, if your layer has an inner or drop shadow, then uncheck "Use Global Light"; otherwise, those effects in the sliced version of the layer will inherit Photoshop's default angle. What Does The Set Include? The set includes two Photoshop actions: - Slice It
This action slices a 100%-sized version of an element. - Retinize It
This action saves a 100%-sized version and a 200%-scaled version. What Makes It Special? - It's free to use.
- Install in one click.
- You don't need to change the layer structure in PSD files.
- You don't need to name layers.
- It's optimized for Retina displays.
- Run in one click, no setup needed.
- Windows and Mac support.
Download And Documentation Additional Tools PNG EXPRESS (MAC & Windows, $29) 
A specification created by PNG Express
If you will be having limited interaction with the developer who will be coding your design and you're not sure it will be pixel-perfect, PNG Express can be a great time-saver. It helps you to create specifications with instructions on element positions, margins, fonts and font sizes. PNG Express also has an option for slicing images including Retina support. ImageOptim (Mac Only, Free) 
ImageOptim reduces image sizes while maintaining quality. The tool removes internal data embedded by graphics editors, such as comments and color profiles. I recommend adding an images folder from your website to this app before compiling and going live. ImageOptim will reduce around 30% of an image's size on average. Slicy (Mac Only, $29) 
Slicy is great-designed tool most designers and developers are using for slicing graphics for iOS apps. The tool exports graphics from PSDs automatically, but it requires to organize your layers in Photoshop and name them in certain way. In addition once you make changes in Photoshop, Slicy updates the slices automatically. The main reason I decided not to use Slicy is no ability for quick export for couple of elements from PSD without preparing it for Slicy. (al)
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