This is interesting news for web designers as it seems Safari is even getting traction in the Windows world:
Apple said Friday that more than 11 million copies of its new Safari 4 web browser have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads by users of Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.
Some interesting points about the new Safari 4:
– It uses the Nitro JavaScript engine that executes Javascript code several times faster than IE 8 or Firefox 3.
– Safari (according to Apple) renders HTML three times faster than Firefox 3 or IE 8.
And for Mac users, this is an interesting point:
With the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard this September, Safari will run as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent, Apple claims.
Besides the speed improvements, Safari 4 has some really cool features like the Topsites feature that basically gives you a large thumbnail preview of recently viewed web pages.
In the following video, I go over the two basic ways to insert video into your web pages:
1. Using a site like Youtube.
2. Embedding the videos directly using a Flash video player.
I also get into the video formats you can use to embed video in a website:
1. Flash FLV
2. H.264
3. Quicktime video
4. Windows WMV
For details and pro’s and con’s, watch the video:
As you probably noticed, I am using Youtube to deliver this video as part of an ongoing experiment. If you can’t see the video, it is probably because your work place is blocking Youtube. Let me know and I will release another copy of the video on the killersites.com servers.
This is just a quick warning that the trial download of Premiere CS4 is buggy .. at best.
Install Process Craps Out
I tried to install it on my Mac several times and I kept getting an error message that did not help. In the end, after rebooting several times and following all trouble shooting instructions that Adobe provides .. it would not install.
… Talk about lousy software!
Seriously, when a company can’t even make their install process work … you have to wonder! I should also point out that (after some digging with Google) that I am not the only one who has had this problem. That said, the trial worked fine on Windows XP.
Premiere’s Trial Version is Crippled!
The not so nice thing (due to licensing issues,) is that the trial version cannot work with several common video file types like h.264! That meant that I could not test how well Premiere would handle editing the file types I deal with daily. Sucks.
Oh well, I guess I will have to take a look at Final Cut.
These are part of my new growing collection of Javascript video tutorials that aim to teach total beginners how to read and write practical Javascript.
I would like to point out that I’ve invested in making the sound for these videos as clear as possible … so let me know what you think.
Before MySpace, Facebook and Twitter there was once GeoCities. Yes back in the 90’s, GeoCities was going to take over the world and change the face of the Web. So Yahoo spent a bunch of cash ($3 billion) and bought up that very ‘valuable’ piece of Web real estate.
…. Hmmm this kinda reminds me of the Facebook and Twitter hoopla.
Geocities is closing its’ doors
After a decade of spuddering about, it seems that Yahoo has finally figured out that there is no money in having a bunch of lame web sites filled with lame content:
Yahoo Inc. said Thursday that it would shut down its GeoCities free Web-hosting service after paying about $3 billion for the unit in 1999.
GeoCities isn’t accepting new accounts and will close later this year, Yahoo said. GeoCities, Yahoo’s second-biggest acquisition behind Broadcast.com Inc., lets users design personal websites to show off photos, promote local clubs or publicize business services.
The recent Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Twitter race opened my eyes to the fact that celebrities are jumping all over Twitter. Being a curious nerd who is sometimes (mildly) interested in the next Internet fad (anyone remember Geocities or Friendster?) .. and so I decided to finally take a quick look at Twitter.
… Also, being a former student of psychology, I was curious as to why celebrities seem to be falling over themselves to get on the Twitter bandwagon?
So first, what is Twitter?
In a nutshell, Twitter is a virtual-home for narcissist and people who have no lives. The narcissist send out the messages and the people who have no lives, wait around to learn what fascinating things the narcissist chooses to write about in 40 characters or less.
I just wanted to make a quick announcement: I’ve released about 40 minutes of new video tutorials on beginners Javascript. Check out my new micro-site:
This is a ‘sneak peak’ of a new video tutorial course that targets total beginners to Javascript and programming in general. If you want to learn Javascript, I think these videos will be helpful.
Since killersites.com is largely a web learning portal, I figured that I should outline my top 5 learning tips.
Tip #1: Making mistakes is normal. Actually it can be a good thing!
When it comes to web design and web programming (PHP, ASP etc) making mistakes is par for the course. Even old web-nerds are constantly correcting errors, so don’t sweat it. Actually, making mistakes can be a great way to learn. I actually recommend that people ‘break’ things on purpose to see how errors occur in a controlled manner.
… This will soon teach you how to better read errors which in the end, will save you a lot of time in your work.
Tip #2: Be patient
Web design can sometimes be a frustrating process, so one of the most useful qualities of character you can develop is patience.
