Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, March 24, 2008

How to Completely Test Your Website

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/design/completely-test-website-errors-html-standards/2673/

You may have developed your website using an expensive “what you see is what you get” editor but there’s no guarantee that site visitors “will get the website as you see it“.

You will need to extensively test the website to ensure that visitors have a comfortable stay and don’t leave your site in a jiffy. And here are some useful tools to help you completely check your website:

Browsershots is an online service that automatically captures full page screenshot images of your website in various browsers across all different OS platforms. You also have the option to preview the website design in browsers with or without Flash, Java and JavaScript.

browser-screenshots Browsershots is extremely popular and you may therefore have to wait a few minutes for this service to render screenshots of your website.

IE NetRenderer is another service that’s much faster than Browsershots but it can check the rendering only for different versions of Internet Explorer. Mac oriented websites can try BrowsrCamp which is like Browsershots but for the Mac OS browsers only.

To see how your website appears on the small screens of mobile phones like the BlackBerry or Windows Mobile, check out BrowserCam. Another good option is the Opera Simulator that lets you experience a mobile version of Opera from the desktop.

Some people are still using slow dial-up connections and their population in not insignificant especially in the developing world. You therefore need to make sure that the average loading time of your HTML web pages, along with all the Javascript Ads, Images, CSS, Flash animations, etc., is within reasonable limits.

Pingdom is a free online service that mimics the way a page is loaded in the web browser. It shows statistics (size, loading time) for every object on the web page so you know about the culprits who may slow down the website.

firebug-pingdom

Alternatively, you could use Firebug in Firefox to detect elements on your web page that are increasing the load time of your web pages (press F12, Goto All -> Net).

For website and blogs that syndicate content via RSS feeds, load the website in IE or Firefox and look for that orange XML icon near the browser address bar. This ensures that other online services can successfully auto-discover RSS feeds give your site address.

If you have added email forms to your website (like Contact Us, or Suggest a friend) - try some combinations in the form address field. For instance, is the email message delivered successfully if visitors add a semicolon instead of a comma to separate two or more email addresses.

You may also want to print some of your web pages to the local printer or save them as PDF to ensure that the Print CSS of your site is stripping the non-essential stuff like the sidebars and the ads.

For accessibility, load the website inside html2txt to ensure that screen readers can interpret your website. This is an online Lynx simulator (text-only browser) and will also help you understand how your website appears to Google spiders and other search engine bots.

And finally, validate your web pages against online HTML validation and clean-up service like the W3C HTML Validator and HTML Tidy. The former service help you check the website for conformance to W3C HTML standards while the latter is for cleaning up HTML source files that contain lot of nested tags.

How to Completely Test Your Website - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

Amazing Tidal Waves Photos

http://cubeme.com/blog/2008/03/17/amazing-tidal-waves-photos/#more-4447

March 17th, 2008 by Phil

Some people claim that these are pictures of water that instantly froze when it came in contact with the air. Well, I know it's cold in Antartica but the day a tidal wave or a tsunami wave will instantly freeze while breaking has not come yet. You can rest assured Armageddon is not for tomorrow.

These photos are nonetheless fantastic. You'll notice that there is blue ice, which is created as the ice is compressed and trapped air bubbles are squeezed out. The ice looks blue because, when light passes through thick ice, blue light is transmitted back out but red light is absorbed. I didn't figure that out by myself of course, but I did some research. Now enjoy the pictures and thank the mighty internet for providing more info about those so-called "frozen waves"!

CarLoft Designs Apartments with Car Parkings on Balcony

Source: http://cubeme.com/blog/2008/03/18/carloft-designs-apartments-with-car-parkings-on-balcony/

Why park you car in the underground or in a garage when you can park it on the balcony of your high-rise condo? That’s exactly what German company Car Loft thought, as they are building a residential project in Berlin that will allow its residents to park their cars on the balcony of their apartments. I’m not kidding: each resident will be able to use his garden as a car-parking space, which will be called CarLoggia. To access their condo, the lucky owners will use the CarLift, which will bring them and their car right on their floor. The prices of the luxury flats start at 450,600 euros. You better be quick if you want one, because the penthouse, the fifth floor and the ground-floor are already sold.

(more…)

Sun aims to speed up data by swapping wires for frickin' laser beams

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257096037/

Filed under: Desktops, Misc. Gadgets, Laptops

It's far from the first time we've seen lasers touted as a means of boosting data speeds exponentially, but Sun seems to think it has a better chance than most of making it a reality, thanks in no small part to $44 million in funding from DARPA. As The New York Times reports, that cash haul will be put to use to "explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams," which would not only allow for computers to be smaller, but as much as a thousand times faster as well. Needless to say, however, there's quite a few significant hurdles to overcome before that happens, and even Sun itself admits that there's a "50 percent chance of failure." They also say, of course, that the potential benefits are worth the risks, with them even going so far as to boast that the technology would be a way of "breaking Moore's Law."

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Ultra-Basic Flip Video Camera Steals 13 Percent of Camcorder Market With Its Amazing Low-Light Performance? [Whoa]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/256635832/ultra+basic-flip-video-camera-steals-13-percent-of-camcorder-market-with-its-amazing-low+light-performance

flip%20ultra.jpg The Flip camcorder is about as far from a pro camera as Mario is from an actual plumber. In his (mostly fawning) review of the latest version, David Pogue says that the camera's major "shocker" is that its low-light capabilities "trump even $1,000 camcorders." But there's another one buried in there: It has snagged a whopping 13 percent of the camcorder market. Are there untold armies of soccer moms running around with the Flip? Or is its super simple operation (and functionality) a quiet gadget revolution? [NYT]

ASUS releases Splendid HD1 video card, sure does have a way with names

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/256589384/

Filed under: Peripherals

We're still a little hazy as to exactly what ASUS's new Splendid HD1 "video enhance card" actually does differently than most other 2D-enhanced devices, but the company claims it ratchets up 1080p video quality on both digital and analog outputs, and it'll fit in right along side those Splendid-based Xondar cards. Of course, it's also got HDCP (which is a start), but it's starting to smell a little gimmicky around here, splendid or not.

[Via Far East Gizmos]

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LG adopts in-plane switching tech for new LCD HDTVs

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/256781638/

Filed under: HDTV

Hitachi's in-plane switching technology's been making the rounds of late, and LG Taiwan's the latest to pick it up for use in future LCD HDTVs. Doubling frame-rate, providing a wider field of view, and supposedly upping durability (among other things), apparently we can start to see some IPS-enabled TVs from Korea's #2 in the not too distant future.

[Via Far East Gizmos]

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Fujitsu announces world's first 320GB laptop disk to spin at 7200rpm

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/256890080/

Filed under: Laptops, Storage

Take that WD, Toshiba, and Hitachi. Fujitsu just returned from exile with a claim to the ~~biggest~~ fastest laptop-disk throne. The 3Gbps SATA-equipped MHZ2 BJ series measures in at a standard 9.5-mm and spins at 7,200rpm with a 16MB cache and 25dB idle noise level. Average seek times are listed at 10.5-ms for data reads and 12.5-ms for writes while drawing 2.3 watts of power. Oh sure, a couple of 2.5-inch 500GB disk drives have already been announced. But most of those measure in at a non-standard 12.5-mm making them unsuitable for the majority of laptops on the market today. Sales of the new MHZ2 BJ-series begins in June.

Update: Oops, almost forgot about Samsung's Spinpoint M6 which does hit the 500GB mark in a standard 9.5mm-height package.

[Via Impress]

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Quanta teams with OoVoo on HD video conferencing box for your TV

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/256981104/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Quanta, the OEM behind the OLPC and MacBook, just announced its move into home-based HD video conferencing. Quanta is teaming with OoVoo to produce the Quanta Video Messenger -- a 1,280 x 720 pixel / 30fps, multi-point-capable set-top box that plugs directly into your HDTV and home Internet connection (presumably via Ethernet or 802.11n, they don't say). OoVoo is also looking to integrate its wares in existing set-top boxes. The prototype STB is the size of a hardback book and does not currently include a webcam or mic -- those must be plugged into the device separately. They'd better bundle a webcam then, if they hope to generate mass market appeal across familial generations. Early tests of the H.264 video over an Internet connection capped at 512kbps upstream produced the occasional video sputter (when watching a fast moving object) in quality roughly equivalent to DVDs. Fortunately, Quanta and OoVoo have 9 months to sort out any issues as they don't expect to ship until "later this year" for a price meant to be "affordable to consumers."

[Via MicroHoo News]

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Cybernet's all-in-one keyboard computers get an upgrade

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257066967/

Filed under: Desktops

It's been just a little over a year since we saw Cybernet's zero footprint, keyboard-only computer -- now the company has upped the line with new features (but mistakenly stripped that shiny red paint job). The new systems -- which harken back to the glorious days of the TI-99 -- now support Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad chips, sport the GMA X3100 graphics chipset, up to 4GB of RAM, a slimline optical drive, and can astonishingly handle expansion via a Mini PCI and PCI-e slot. The all-in-one combos start at $629 and head marginally skyward from there.

[Thanks, stagueve]

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Intel's X48 chipset arrives on shelves, reminds users of the X38

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257025505/

Filed under: Desktops

For those of you looking to build your ultimate super fantasy dream system, the goal may have just gotten a little closer. According to some tipsters and the zany builders at Tom's Hardware, Intel's X48 chipset is on the street (and mobos) and just waiting to take your breath away... maybe. According to Tom and co., the new configuration may not be that far of a cry from the previously released X38, adding only an improved northbridge and "official" support for FSB-1600 memory, though they note that this was technically available in the X38 as well. Tom runs the new entry through a battery of comparisons, so you can get a much clearer idea of what this puppy does. Is this new chipset the answer to overclocker's prayers, or just a waste of an additional $65? Only burning silicon knows for sure.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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