Category Archives: Web development

Google Chrome 13 released to stable channel

Google released Chrome 13 into its stable channel this morning with over 5200 revisions including Instant Pages. If your webpages are not already differentiating between attended and unattended pageviews using the Page Visibility API for site analytics (and other functions assuming live eyeballs and the opportunity for interaction with page elements) your pageview numbers are now likely inflated.

WebKit and Chrome prerendering

Google search result pages now trigger a prefetch of top search result links in an effort to make navigating search results as easy as changing channels on your television. If Google’s search algorithms determine there is a significant probability of user click-through on particular result they will instruct supporting browsers to preload the entire destination page including images, JavaScript, advertisements, and analytics. Update your web pages to be aware of the current page visibility state and track interactions, not background tasks.

SSL statistics from Chrome and Googlebot

The Google Chrome team released new statistics and implementation details on their proposed “False Start” abbreviated TLS handshake. Google claims the new handshake, introduced in version 9 of the Chrome browser in February, shaves an average of 120 milliseconds from a typical four-flight TLS handshake by accepting application data before both sides have communicated a “Finished” status.

HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback

The emerging HTML5 specification lifts video playback out of the generic object element and into specialized video handlers. Explicit markup for audio and video places elevates moving pictures to a similar native rendering capacity as img markup we are used to but with more fine-grained details about underlying formats and compression available before loading. In this post I will dive into implementation details of HTML5 video based on currently available consuming agents and outline some of the nuances of preparing media for playback.

Measuring efficiency in the cloud

In the world of cloud computing every action has a cost. Every HTTP request fires off a chain of actions, each uniquely measured on a variety of billable meters. Gone are the days of idle or unused resources on our local servers. Cloud computing charges by the sip (when sips are available) aligning business goals of resource efficiency and its cost. The cloud computing world shares many similarities with the plug-in and go world of electricity, including the need to run green for the sake of resources and cost savings. What can the world of green energy teach us about the future of cloud computing? How can we measure computing resources in the cloud for efficiency, replacement costs, and cost savings?

The anatomy of cloud computing

Cloud computing is changing the way we provision hardware and software for on-demand capacity fulfillment. Lately I have been thinking about the ways on-demand servers, storage, and CDNs are changing the way we develop web applications and make business decisions. In this post I will provide an overview of the cloud hosting landscape with a particular focus on cloud utilization by web companies. I will walk through a managed infrastructure stack and examine a few major business targets.