Category: LinkedIn

Progressive image rendering: Good or evil?

I’ve always thought that Progressive JPEGs should be used more often than they are. In my experience they usually end up being a tiny bit smaller than standard (though not enough to matter on today’s Internet), plus it really does seem like showing a low-res image that resolves into a sharper one would be more useful than slowly watching the image fill in from one edge. Well, it turns out that people really dislike those initially-blurry images. First impressions are important, and even when the sharpening is fast, it makes the viewer’s brain work harder to process the image because it has to do it twice.

Progressive image rendering: Good or evil? – Web Performance Today


Which offers a better user experience: baseline or progressive images? New neuroscientific research from Radware has the answer.

Introducing Universal SSL

This is pretty awesome: CloudFlare is rolling out SSL support to ALL its customers. Even the free accounts will get the bare minimum, which encrypts the connection between the browser and CloudFlare’s CDN, and uses SNI to avoid having to use up precious IPv4 addresses. (For full encryption including the connection from your server to CloudFlare, or unique IP to support older browsers *cough*WinXP*cough*Android 2*, you still need a paid plan.)

Introducing Universal SSL

The team at CloudFlare is excited to announce the release of Universal SSL™. Beginning today, we will support SSL connections to every CloudFlare customer, including the 2 million sites that have signed…

jQuery.com Compromise: The Dangers of Third Party Hosted Content – ISC

Uh-oh: the JQuery website was compromised to serve malware. They didn’t get the library — this time — but it’s something to think about when relying on third parties to serve your JavaScript libraries.

jQuery.com Compromise: The Dangers of Third Party Hosted Content – Internet Security | SANS ISC

jQuery is a popular Javascript framework, used by many websites (including isc.sans.edu) . jQuery provides many features, like easy access to webservices as well as advanced user interface features. When using jQuery, sites have the option to download and host the complete code, or let jQuery.com and it’s CDN (Content Delivery Network) host the code…

Maximize Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen

Hiding the user interface to show more content isn’t always the best way to go. If there’s room for it, show it, so people have some idea of what they can do (and how).

Maximize Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen

On a large screen, hiding the chrome significantly affects discoverability and interaction cost, with virtually no improvement to the content-to-chrome ratio.

On LinkedIn

Remember macro viruses? Infected Word and Excel files? They’re back…

Apparently, macro viruses/malware are making a comeback, using social engineering tricks to work around the changes to Word, Excel, etc. that made them less practical.

Remember macro viruses? Infected Word and Excel files? They’re back…

In 1995, a macro virus called Concept changed the malware landscape completely for several years. Infected Word and Excel files finally died out in the early 2000s, but as SophosLabs researcher …

Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and W3C EME

Tough choices: Users want to watch media from the entertainment industry. The industry is only willing to provide it with DRM, which goes against Mozilla’s goals of transparency, openness, and user control. It used to be easy to let plugins deal with it, but Flash and Silverlight are slowly giving way to built-in browser functionality, and leaving it out means lots of users will just switch browsers when they can no longer watch Netflix etc. with Firefox.

Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and W3C EME

With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C EME specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implement EME as well so our …

Can Email Be Responsive?

Way too much HTML email is still done with the old slice-and-dice table-and-spacer method. In a world where people are reading mail on their phones first (and remember that means connectivity is sporadic & slow too), we should be doing this better.

Can Email Be Responsive?

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the popularity of HTML emails. And, like the web before it, the inbox has officially gone mobile, with over 50 percent of email opens occurring on mobile devices….

Manton Reece: Write locally, mirror globally

Are Facebook and Twitter a core part of the web…or are they just today’s portal into that core? The article argues that if you want your content to last, it’s better to post it on your own site, and mirror it on today’s social networks.

Manton Reece: Write locally, mirror globally

The Atlantic has an interesting essay on whether Twitter is on a slow decline, less useful and meaningful than it once was:…

Bookmarked

Advice on dealing with email without letting it take over.

Advice on dealing with email without letting it take over. I do some of these already: I use filters to pre-classify a lot, and I’ve pared down notifications to only the most critical. But it’s still a struggle to keep on top of it sometimes. Some of the other suggestions look like they’ll be helpful.

My Life with Email

Does your inbox constantly beg for attention? Do you suffer from always-on inbox anxiety? Email can easily take over your life—especially if you’re running a business. If that’s happening, it’s…

On LinkedIn

The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted away

Remember the “million dollar homepage?” 9 years on, it’s still online, but 22% of its pixels/links are dead.

The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted away

Before Kickstarter and Indiegogo made crowdfunding projects simple for everyone, Alex Tew financed his college education by selling 10-by-10 pixel chunks of a webpage for $100 each. The Million Dollar…

Save Your Eyes with f.lux

Interesting idea: adjust the color temperature of your computer screen based on time of day. You probably don’t want to use this if you’re a graphic designer, though.

Save Your Eyes with f.lux

I never thought I felt eye strain from looking at big, bright screens all day—I thought my young eyes were invincible. Then I started getting sharp headaches at the end of every day, and I realized…

On LinkedIn

Are PCs Dying? Of Course Not, Here’s Why

The desktop/laptop PC isn’t dying so much as the market is saturated and the upgrade cycle has slowed, while smart phones and tablets continue to demand regular replacements. Plus of course the lines are blurring.

Are PCs Dying? Of Course Not, Here’s Why

Reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. We’ve all heard that everyone’s just buying tablets and throwing out their keyboards and mice. But if you live in the real world, you see…

The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons

Recommendations on how to best use the magnifying glass icon for search fields. Oddly, there’s no mention of the problem that the icon is ALSO used for zoom controls.

The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons


Users recognize a magnifying-glass icon as meaning ‘search’ even without a textual label. The downside is that icon-only search is harder for users to find.

The future of the desktop is a tabletop

Predicting the future of home computing: Just as PDAs, phones and cameras have converged into the modern smartphone, this article proposes that the desktop PC, tablet, and smart TV will converge (makes sense so far) …onto a tabletop. Okaaaay….

The future of the desktop is a tabletop | PCWorld

The PC isn’t going away. It’s turning into a coffee table. Or a pint-sized NUC. We talk to Intel’s desktop chief about the many faces of the future PC.