The Solution Is Simple: Buy A Netbook And Test There!

Something every web developer should do, is test whatever Web related stuff into new generation devices such netbooks, low cost notebook, old PCs and/or smart phones.
If a non techie user surfs a website and the latter one horribly slows down his "device", in the most common case, and specially if the website is "famous", this user will blame its wonderful piece of technology, rather than the infamous designer/developer that created the problem.

This happened recently, as example, in Hotamail and with the latest Sherlock Holmes Flash banner.

The Solution Is Simple

Starting with the fact that Junior Flash developers are as responsible as advertisement hosts, unable to filter proper banners from annoying one, if a company would like to provide these heavy computation banners it should simply make a little investment as a whatever Atom CPU based device is (even just an all in one motherboard is enough!).
Even better, it could recycle a generic good old Pentium III based PC in order to be sure that computation is reasonable, where for reasonable I mean no more than 50% as maximum peak.

As an old ActionScript developer, I've always found disturbing the fact people paid to create ads, are too often unaware of problems they could cause.

I have already commented here or elsewhere old Tiscali or IBM heavy banners, recently improved and much less painful for low cost CPUs, I still find ridiculous that in 2010, the beginning of the mobile and low power consumption era, a good movie as Sherlock Holmes is could be sponsored in such obtrusive way: obtrusive for nowadays net dedicated devices: please change it!

noSWFUpload - Zero Plug-In Multiple Upload

As announced a couple of days ago, I am finally proud to introduce my last library free Multiple Upload Component, now compatible with every browser and always without usage of 3rd parts plug-ins.


This little project has been hosted in Google Code and I promise I'll write there a complete documentation asap. Righ now, you can read the project source code via zip to understand what he little API is doing.

Update I added a couple of sections in the Wiki page ;)

Compatibility?

• Internet Explorer 5.5 (probably 5 too), 6, 7, and 8
• FireFox? 3 or greater
• Google Chrome 1.0
• Opera 8, 9, and 10
• Safari 4 (current beta)
• other browsers via unobtrusive iframe

Try the demo if you do not believe it :P

Multiple Upload With Progress: Every Browser No Flash !!!

Update: released official version in Google Code, cross browser, and easy to use. blog enry

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Ok guys, this is a quick and dirty entry in my blog. I need to write documentation, create the project in Google Code, explain better what I have done and how it works.
I do not want to give you the zip right now because I have to change name (silly me do not check before) and to do last tests ... but basically, what I have created this week end, is a graceful enhanced multiple file upload manager compatible with Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer (5.5 or greater), Opera, Safari.



The manager wrap an input type file and manages it allowing multiple files selection, where supported, or one after one insert with possibility to remove one or more file from the list.

Everything is absolutely customizable, since the wrapper is entirely in CSS, the library has a language namespace for errors or messages, and events are created by developers.

In those browsers were Ajax upload is not supported, the progress bar is simulated, but there is the feeling that something is happening.

In FireFox, where Ajax upload is supported, the progress is still simulated but at least the size, sent or total, is real.

Stay tuned for the official announcement, enjoy the demo in my website.

Quick thanks and credit to Silk Icon Set from famfamfam!

P.S. Yes, there is a file type filter as well, Flash like, and I have solved server side $_FILES problem with Safari 4 ... but please wait next blog entry!