50% of Websites use a JavaScript Library

W3Techs published an update to their JS library monthly usage trend, and says that 50% of all websites now use a JavaScript library.

jQuery is the top (by a considerable margin) at 41.7% of all websites.  Wow!

Tags: Javascript, jQuery, W3techs

Slow page load? Check Your Tags

Ghostery released information regarding the top ten “elements” that slow your website down.

We all add them, the “Google Analytics” and ad network tags to our sites.  Anytime you paste a script from another site (including Facebook) you are slowing down your page load time.  Sure some of them are asynchronous, but it still slows your website down.

From the article:

Thanks to our awesome GhostRank Panel volunteers, we can (as most of you know) monitor the internet and most of the 3rd party content on it. Out of the nearly 800 companies we watch, we pegged these guys as the ones that lag your browsing experience the most if you live in the USA. To this extent, we’ve dubbed them “Lagtags.” Yes, they’re not all tags – many of them are analytics scripts or widgets – but it just seems to fit.

Everything you add to your site isn’t free.  Sure it’s easy to paste all those scripts to get functionality, but you need to know … you will pay in milliseconds.

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Tags: Ghostery, lag, slowdown

jQuery 1.7.1 Released

jQuery 1.7.1 was released yesterday, with many bug fixes.

You can read about the fixes at the official announcement on blog.jquery.com.  Most fixes are standard bug fixes, with a few memory leaks addressed.

You can use the following CDNs to link / get the code:

• Google CDN:

  https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js

• Microsoft CDN:
  http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.7.1.min.js
• Official jQuery 1.7.1 CDN:
  http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js
  http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.js

Tags: jQuery

iOS 5.0.1 Update to fix Battery Life Problems

To fix some iOS 5 battery life issues, Apple released an update.

According to the update it:

• Fixes bugs affecting battery life
• Adds Multitasking Gestures for the original iPad
• Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
• Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation (I’d love to hear the problems with that)

Tags: Apple, iOS, iPhone

My iPhone is Fixed, Thanks Apple!

Yesterday I had a bad day.

I dropped my iPhone 4 coming down the stairs, and it shattered.  (picture is in yesterday’s post)

My phone is used heavily throughout the work day, so I needed to get it fixed / replaced.  First thing I do is make an appointment at the local Apple store (Providence, RI), and head on out.

On the way to the Apple store, I see the “flat tire” indicator turn on.  Ok, I can drive with a tire that’s going flat no problem…

BOOM!

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Tags: Apple, iPhone

My iPhone Broke, Glass Shattered

It finally happened to me.  My iPhone 4 broke (after only 9 months of throwing it around).

I was walking downstairs, and dropped it on a wooden floor.  It didn’t seem that bad, until I picked it up and it was crazy cracked.

Now I begin my journey of “Do I get the 4S?  Can I do this in the 2 days before vacation?”.

I’ll let you know how it’s resolved, and how much this sets me back.

UPDATE: Apple Replaced it Free of Charge!

Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone Broke

Adobe Giving up on Mobile Flash, going HTML5

Woke up to read that Adobe said it’s stopping development on mobile Flash, and refocusing on HTML5.

It’s bittersweet for me.

A quote from Adobe:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

I’ve had a long history with Flash, and am sad to see it go, but happy we’re moving in a good direction (even if just for mobile, because we all know this means HTML5 will be the overall direction of Flash).

Tags: Adobe, Adobe AIR, Flash, HTML5, Mobile

Firefox 8.0 Released

Developers over at Mozilla have released Firefox 8.0, Mozilla Firefox Adds Twitter Search and New Features that Make Web Browsing Easier.

Some features in the new release are:

• We no longer see “major” releases of Firefox as meaning anything
• twitter is now included as a search option
• Load tabs on demand
• Disabling add-ons installed by 3rd party add-ons
• Added support for CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)

As far as us developers are concerned:

• input and textarea now support selectionDirection and setSelectionRange()
• Focus ring on elements using the tabindex
• insertAdjacentHTML is implemented
• Nested label event handling is fixed
• window.postMessage() will pass File and FileList objects between windows
• .contenteditable areas now back to paragraph entry mode (shift enter is <br>)
• Fixed text-decoration rendering in quirks mode
• Console now has a dir() command that will display a list of the properties of an object.

Tags: CORS, Firefox, mozilla, Twitter

How to Hide all the WordPress in WordPress

I’ve been working on writing an article on Purpose Built WordPress templates.  This morning I ran across a post by Ben Word, at benword.com — How to Hide The Fact That You’re Using WordPress.

WordPress tends to add a LOT of “stuff” in both the final HTML, and all the layers that build it.  This is done to accommodate the masses.  As a developer you can write <img src=’images/image.gif’ alt=’test’> or you can ping a database, resize an image, pull the proper alt tag, construct the final img tag then output it to the screen.

All the same, WP adds code to your header to account for all the functionality it MIGHT use.  Not necessarily all the functionality it does use.

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Tags: Ben Word, benword.com, CSS, JS, WordPress, wp_head

Google+: Google Apps users Finally Welcome

Saw a “+You” link in the top left corner of my Google Apps mail, and clicked on it.

Google finally added Google Profiles to Google Apps users.

Please check out my Google+ profile – Sean Walther.

Tags: Google, Google Apps, Google Plus, Google Profile