Browser Size, a Simple But Useful Tool From Google

December 17th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

Browser Size does just what the name implies. Enter a URL, hit "go" and you'll see just what percentage of the internet will see what without scrolling. Scrolling isn't quite the bugbear it once was, but for certain types of pages immediate impact is still very important (campaign landing pages are a good example,) so having this as an easily accessible tool is really nice. Sure, designers have these guides in Photoshop and developers can resize the window with the Web Developer Toolbar, but this handy web-based tool is just the kind of thing to use in a meeting.

For an example of the output, here's this site put through the wringer:
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Great New Google Webmaster Tools Feature – "Site Performance"

December 3rd, 2009 by Rob Larsen

You use Webmaster Tools, right? If you rely on Google traffic in any way shape or form you really should be using it.

It's an invaluable service and it just got better with the addition of a new, performance specific feature. From the Google Webmaster Central blog:
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Google's Sitelinks vs. Bing's Deep Links + D-Card

November 19th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

For some searches on both Bing and Google, the top result is enhanced with additional data. For simplicities' sake (and because I'm selfish) I'm going to focus on one search for my personal site to compare the two.

Google's result for my site looks like this:
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Google Chrome Frame- I'll Be Taking Advantage Of It

September 29th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

I did some testing today with Google Chrome Frame. I wanted to see if it would mesh with my normal methods for serving IE specific code and, as far as I can tell, it behaves exactly as desired.

Here's the code I used to test
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Of Interest- the Google Chrome Operating System

July 8th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

Between Palm letting me code directly on a killer handheld device, HTML5 starting to show up in real browsers and now Google saying things like the following [my emphasis], it's a damn fine time to be coding on the front end:

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

This is also interesting for me personally, as I'm a big fan of my Dell Mini 9 Inspiron and I'd be tempted to dual boot it- just to double my geeky pleasure.

Recent Reading (HTML5, CSS Fonts, JavaScript, rel=nofollow, Google Analytics)

July 1st, 2009 by Rob Larsen

  1. New elements in HTML 5

    An older (2007) article, but still pretty interesting. I've been slowing working my way through some HTML5 stuff. This was part of that effort. If, like me, you're fascinated by where the web is going*, you should definitely check the article out.

  2. Event Tracking Guide

    With event tracking open to everyone we've been going nuts with them at work. I've also been going nuts with them at home.

    I'm basically smothered in event tracking.

    I'm glad to have it. It saves me from doing non-standard stuff (faking page views) and it saves our analytics analyst the time of having to filter out fake page views from the data.

    Yay Google.

  3. Whiteboard Friday – How Do We Plug the Nofollow Leak?

    This isn't a read, it's a video :) But, if you've got any interest in SEO, then this discussion of the recent change in the way Google treats rel=nofollow and the way PageRank flows is a must-view.

    SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – How Do We Plug the Nofollow Leak? from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

  4. 8 fonts you probably don’t use in css, but should

    While I've been messing with "real" fonts on the web using Cufon, it's still a hell of a lot easier to just use old school fonts. The referenced article does a great job of pointing out some neglected fonts that might come in handy on a project.

  5. Event delegation in JavaScript

    Attaching an event handler to the document and then delegating based on the target has been on my mind a lot recently. I like the idea and it's actually come up in two code reviews this week as an alternative to traditional event handling.

    Serendipitous then, that Nicholas Zakas decided to write it up so that I have something fresh to point to when I reference the technique.

*I'm also fascinated by where the web is and where the web has been, so I'm not really picky on those fronts.

Google Releases Page Speed (and I add a few lines to my to-do list)

June 6th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

Check it out:

Google Page Speed

Beyond the plugin itself, the rules are definitely of interest:
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