Real-world connection simulator
and bandwidth limiter

 So you're new to Sun, or you're new to Solaris. Maybe you have lots of experience developing mission-critical software, maybe you have none. But if you haven't already figured it out, we take quality very seriously around here. Developing Solaris is very hard, and it's very important. This is good news, not bad news -- solving easy problems is boring and solving irrelevant problems is, well, irrelevant. But you should be prepared that you will need to push yourself to deliver highest quality software.

Yeah, yeah. You’re agile. You always test first, you work in tight iterations, you have YAGNI tattooed on your forehead. Good for you. Guess what? You’re building on sand. Do this stuff first:

ImageAlpha converts 24-bit PNG to paletted 8-bit with full alpha channel. This greately reduces file sizes with only minor loss of quality. Such images are compatible with all browsers, and even degrade well in IE6.

Over the last few years there has been one tool that has helped out every web developer more than any other – the browser developer tools. Working in harmony with the web browser, the developer tools allows us to manipulate DOM elements, CSS styles, JavaScript and other useful information from the same window often in real time.

With the rise of mobile devices, web development and debugging is more complex than ever. We have more browsers and platforms to support. We have more screen sizes and resolutions. And we’re building in-browser applications instead of the flat, brochure-ware sites of yore.

A screencast of the talk I gave at TXJS 2010. An introduction to the various techniques involved with third-party application development.

This small library allows for detecting if miscellaneous variables are being leaked into the global Javascript scope. It is useful to sanitize your scripts, both in browser and CommonJS environments.

Web application developers today need to be skilled in a multitude of disciplines. It’s necessary to build an application that is user friendly, highly performant, accessible and secure, all while executing partially in an untrusted environment that you, the developer, have no control over. I speak, of course, about the User Agent. Most commonly seen in the form of a web browser, but in reality, one never really knows what’s on the other end of the HTTP connection.

What's your favourite quote about programming?

We spend a whole lot of time making shit flashy and making it feel fast. That’s good, it provides a more pleasant user experience. But it should never be disingenuous. Sometimes it takes a second or two for an operation to complete.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Chicago. The topic I presented, “Making WordPress Faster: Front-end Performance Tips,” was a introduction on how to analyze and speed up websites built with WordPress.