I got prompted to update my Firefox 4 to Firefox 5 beta last week. New features include better standards support, speed improvements, better integration with Linux desktops, in-browser software channel selection and support for CSS animations. The final version of FF5 is expected to ship on June 21th.
Firefox 5 will probably not include one of the much discussed hidden features in Chrome 13; the possibility to hide the navigation bar, but Mozilla indeed is experimenting with that as well. I’ve got Mozillalabs Prospector’s Simplify Firefox add-on installed on my netbook and in that 1024X600 context the extra screen real estate is a huge advantage. On the other hand, on my 1440X900 work laptop screen I don’t need (or want) those measly extra pixels. Maybe hiding the navigation bar should be an option which is by default off on normal-sized screens and is automatically turned on for screens with a netbook-like resolution?
Month: May 2011
Like walking on a fluffy cloud
So what would a small-time web-tech blogger all of a sudden need Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine expertise for? For his real job, that’s why!
On Thursday, May 12th someone pretty high up in the company hierarchy decided we had to have a web application ready on the 19th. The catch: it had to be able to handle a shitload of traffic in only 2 days time. After consulting with a couple of specialists and reviewing our options, we decided to go for it with our existing web-development partner. Because of available expertise and resources however, we decided to switch from J2EE to .Net and to deploy the application on Microsoft’s “platform as a service” offering, called Azure.
In 5 days time (what weekend was that?), using a shared Google Docs spreadsheet as project hub (for bug-list, todo’s, translation strings and in document IM) the application was developed, tested and hammered upon with a huge load-test and on Wednesday-evening the final version was deployed on Azure.
The most interesting technical tidbits (as designed by a smart and very motivated lead-developer):
- the architecture is based on Azure’s Compute “web role” and “worker role” instances, with the “web role” instances taking care of capturing user data and putting it on a queue and the “worker role” instances asynchronously picking up, processing and storing the data
- data relevant for the “web role” instances is available in distributed cache
- processed data is stored in Azure Storage’s blobs & tables (i.e. not in Azure SQL)
- static files are offloaded to Azure’s CDN
The application handled a huge amount of traffic the first two days. Due to circumstances the load was especially high on Thursday morning (with over 800 HTTP-requests/second), but performance and availability remained perfect. It was like walking on this fluffy cloud, really:
As found on the web (May 25th)
 | frank posted Google Docs offline: Coming this summer. |
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 | frank liked High Highs – Open Season (Official Video).  |
| | frank liked Sister Crayon – Souls Of Gold.  |
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| | frank posted A Better Life Index. |
As found on the web (May 18th)
 | frank Frank zoekt iemand met hands-on ervaring met amazon ec2/ simpledb (of rds). ben of ken je zo’n guy/girl, geef dan een seintje. zou kunnen dat we daar dan heel binnenkort iets tofs mee gaan doen!. |
 | frank published Do you know Amazon EC2 & simpledb?. |
| | frank Frank a bit stressy maybe, but big fun at work! :-).. |
Do you know Amazon EC2 & simpledb?
I’m all of a sudden developing a keen interest in Amazon EC2 & simpledb (or RDS), but Google AppEngine might be an acceptable alternative. Do contact me if you have hands-on experience with webapps developed for and deployed on those platforms, or if you know someone who does. We could be in for a fun little project! 🙂
As found on the web (May 4th)
| | frank posted Chrome Covers Your Tracks with new ‘Flash Cookie’ Killer. |
| | frank posted Chrome 11 released. |
| | frank posted Fixing the Slideshare HTML displayer. |
| | frank posted Mozilla overhauling Firefox graphics, JavaScript. |
| | frank posted Web Engagement Management with Drupal. |
| | frank liked 2 videos.   |
| | frank posted Actual JavaScript Engine Performance. |
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| | frank liked PJ Harvey – Written On the Forehead HD.  |
| | frank published Code Rush: watching Mozilla’s history in the making. |
| | frank liked Plaid – Gel Lab.  |
Code Rush: watching Mozilla’s history in the making
A couple of days ago I saw “Code Rush“, a non-fiction movie about life at Netscape while they were in the process of open sourcing their browser in 1998. It’s a great documentary about a defining moment in the history of the web, touching on subjects like code & quality (zarro boogs), the fight with Microsoft, the awkward marriage with AOL, the stock market, technology start-up culture and work versus life.
Open sourcing Communicator didn’t save Netscape as a company, but it did allow the Mozilla Organization to create a whole new browser suite based on XUL and NGlayout (later Gecko), which were 2 important building blocks for Phoenix, a standalone browser (instead of a suite) which we now know as Firefox.
Code Rush aired in 2000 on PBS in the States, but was released under a Creative Commons license in 2009. You can check out all footage (and search the transcripts) on clickmovement.org.