BRAINFART

You heard the therm Web 2.0. It’s one of the biggest base words in the concepts on the web today.

While the Web has always been a tool for collaboration, only in the last few years has software permitted individuals to use it as a platform for true collaborative activities. Web 2.0 is about users and content, instead of just surfing on the Internet. It’s about what the Internet can do for an active collaborator, rather than a passive viewer...

When you think of interactive multimedia on the Web, you probably think of Flash. Flash offers the webmaster a single platform to create content that will be seen by the majority of Web site users, and that everyone who sees Flash will be able to interact with it in exactly the same way. However, there are some arguments against Flash, and many webmasters choose to use Flash in only limited pockets within their site. What many people don’t realize is that you can create similar experiences in JavaScript, and by doing so you can avoid many of the problems inherent in Flash...

Do you really understand them? The sprite is actually one big image. Have you ever seen the CSS technique where the “on” and “off” states of a button are contained within the same image and are activated by shifting the background-position? Think of CSS Sprites as an extension of that technique. The difference is that instead of just two or three images being combined into one, you can combine an unlimited number of images into one...

It’s a good practice to use many small JavaScript and CSS files instead of one large JavaScript/CSS file for better code maintainability, but bad in terms of website performance. Although you should write your JavaScript code in small files and break large CSS files into small chunks, when a browser requests those JavaScript and CSS files, it makes one HTTP request per file. Every HTTP request results in a network roundtrip from your browser to the server and the delay in reaching the server and coming back to the browser is called latency. So, if you have four JavaScripts and three CSS files loaded by a page, you are wasting time in seven network roundtrips. Within the USA, latency is average 70ms. So, you waste 7×70 = 490ms, about half a second of delay. Outside USA, average latency is around 200ms. So, that means 1400ms of waiting. The browser cannot show the page properly until CSS and JavaScripts are fully loaded. So, the more latency you have, the slower the page loads...