iOS 7's Design is Confused
10 June 2013
Today, Apple unveiled the newest version of iOS 7. While the fact that the design was changed radically is not surprising, the actual changes themselves are…confusing.
With Windows (Phone), Xbox, Google, and various other companies taking a "flatter" approach to UI design, it only makes sense that Apple would want to follow the trend of simplicity-- especially now that Scott Forstall, the guy known for the skeuomorphic design elements present in previous versions of iOS. After all, that is what Apple strives for (especially in their hardware).
iOS 7 directly reflects the transition from Forstall to Ive's rule over iOS, but are the changes truly an improvement?
PNG vs. WebP Image Formats
04 June 2013
Previously, we went over how the new WebP image format compared to the traditional JPG. One neat thing about WebP is that, unlike JPG or PNG, WebP has the ability to use either lossy or lossless compression, with or without transparency. While JPG is traditionally used to display photos, which have a high level of detail and are generally more complex and can suffer from a little bit of detail loss as a tradeoff for compression, WebP can also be used like a PNG, which is often used for web graphics with transparency or subtle patterns.
JPG vs. WebP Image Formats
30 May 2013
There are several kinds of file formats for images on the web. Primarily, web developers use JPG and PNG image files, depending on the content of the image itself. However, Google has made a push recently to use a new format-- called WebP-- that is supposedly more efficient than JPG, yet still has the ability to have transparency. In other words, WebP is the best of both JPG and PNG file formats-- but does it really reduce image file sizes?
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Taking the Work Out of Optimization
21 May 2013
Since I originally moved my blog to the Jekyll platform, I've been looking for several ways to push the performance of my website further.
Over the last couple of months, I've been exploring several content distribution networks for my new web course Extreme Website Performance, such as CloudFlare and Amazon's CloudFront, as well as forgoing a CDN altogether and focusing on reducing the number of network requests used (and therefore taking the bottleneck away from the distribution servers).
Recently, a Redditor asked whether it was possible to create a background that looked like a gaussian-blurred photograph with CSS. In fact, it's quite easy to do so using multiple background images and radial gradients.
Google Now is an assistant that is able to learn from your habits and predict your future actions. If you believe this sounds creepy, you're not alone. Many individuals have serious concerns with Google's privacy practices in general, and Google Now is evidence that they are willing to leverage the masses of data available on each of its users.
Development Environments the Right Way with Vagrant and Puppet
25 April 2013
As long as I can remember, I have used some form of MAMP/WAMP stack for development. I'd download the entire stack pre-packaged with some sort of control console, and develop web applications straight out of my Dropbox folder (with Git as version control), changing the web root of the *AMP configuration depending on which project I am working on.
This worked fine for many years, but recently I've discovered the magic of Vagrant and Puppet.
Conceptually, Facebook Home seems like a fantastic idea-- it places bright, large photos on your lock screen that can be swiped through when you have a free moment, and focuses on your friends. But, there's a fundamental issue with placing user generated content on your home screen.
1&1 Asks for Your Password to Cancel Your Account
02 April 2013
After a couple of long years using 1&1 Shared Hosting and Virtual Private Servers, I've completely migrated all of my hosting to Digital Ocean and Heroku, and my domains to Namecheap. And after trying to cancel my 1&1 account, I now have complete justification for doing so.
1&1's experience has always been similar to that of a larger company, with over complicated systems and procedures to do simple things. Contacting their support means waiting through a phone queue, domains sometimes can take forever to switch name servers (though the process in itself takes a while on any provider, 1&1 seems particularly slow), and the various FTP and database account management systems are nightmares.
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