November 2010 Summaries

In November 2010, an HTML5 game jam brought together over 50 developers in Hilversum, Netherlands, and San Francisco, California, showcasing the potential of HTML5 for game development. Within just 24 hours, participants created innovative and visually appealing games using standard web technologies, demonstrating HTML5's capability to develop games for web browsers, mobiles, and tablets with a single code base. Notable entries included "Ninja Leap" and "Monkey Fortress," which won first place in San Francisco and Hilversum, respectively, by utilizing the Canvas element for gameplay mechanics. The event highlighted the growing interest in HTML5 gaming, with additional competitions like Mozilla's, aiming to advance the field further. Keynote speakers, including Tino Zijdel and Marcin Wichary, shared insights into web-based gaming development and technologies, while sponsors like SPIL Games and Samsung supported the event, providing resources such as a Galaxy Tab for testing touch applications. More details, including links to code repositories and demos, are available at HTML5GameJam.com.

Google introduced a sample site aimed at helping websites transition from traditional password-based logins to identity provider-based systems, integrating feedback and concepts from the Internet Identity community and pioneering websites. The initiative addresses the growing trend of sites incorporating identity buttons from providers like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, which users prefer for new site registrations due to their convenience. Despite this, existing users accustomed to email and password logins may resist switching to identity providers. Google’s sample, available at openidsamplestore.com, showcases how to ease this transition, accompanied by a video highlighting user experience elements and an FAQ to guide developers in reducing password dependency on their sites.

Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) #2 is a global hackathon event scheduled for December 4 and 5, 2010, where software developers, independent hackers, and students will collaborate in various cities worldwide to develop software solutions for disaster risk and response. Sponsored by prominent organizations like Google, Microsoft, The World Bank, and Yahoo!, RHoK aims to unite volunteer programmers with disaster response experts to create and enhance open-source applications that assist communities in disaster recovery. Notable past projects include the "I'm OK" app used during the Haiti and Chile earthquakes and the landslide prediction tool "Chasm." The event will feature five main stages in Chicago, Sao Paulo, Aarhus, Nairobi, and Bangalore, with additional satellite events in numerous global cities. Participants have the chance to work with leading developers and experts, contribute to meaningful solutions, and potentially win prizes.

In a guest post by Ismail Elshareef, Principal Architect at Edmunds.com, the company shares its collaboration with Google's Make the Web Faster team to enhance the performance of its car enthusiast site, insideline.com, later extended to beta.edmunds.com. The redesign, initiated in Fall 2008, focused on implementing performance best practices such as reducing HTTP requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files, serving static content from different domains to maximize parallel downloads, using Expires headers for caching, and employing lazy-loading techniques for page modules. These strategies significantly decreased page load times from an average of 9 seconds to 1.5 seconds, resulting in a 3% increase in ad revenue. On beta.edmunds.com, a controlled test revealed a 17% rise in page views and a 2% decrease in bounce rates. While acknowledging the need for further improvements, Elshareef highlights the successful partnership with Google as a crucial step towards making both Edmunds' sites and the web faster, encouraging others to adopt similar enhancements.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee's proposal for the World Wide Web, the Chrome team created an online guide titled "20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web" to educate users on the evolution of web browsers and programming languages. This guide, illustrated by Christoph Niemann and built using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 with the help of Fi, offers an engaging reading experience that merges the nostalgic feel of books with modern web capabilities. Key features include offline access via the Application Cache API, progress tracking with the Local Storage API, and a clean URL structure using the History API. The guide employs the HTML5 canvas element for dynamic transitions and animations, while CSS3 enhances its visual appeal through web fonts, animations, gradients, and shadows. Designed to be best experienced in Chrome or any modern HTML5-compliant browser, the guide is available at www.20thingsilearned.com.

Google Person Finder, an open-source tool developed by Google, facilitates reconnecting people separated during natural disasters by providing a centralized platform for missing person registries. Initially launched in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it has since been utilized following disasters in Chile, China, and Pakistan. Google is now hosting the project on Google Code, inviting developers to contribute to the improvement of both the platform and the PFIF (Person Finder Interchange Format) data format. They offer resources such as a Developer Guide and discussion groups for collaboration. Google plans to operate each instance of the Person Finder only temporarily, archiving records for one year for historical preservation and seeking permanent custodians for the data; if none are found, the records will be deleted after a year.

Instant Previews, a feature introduced by Google Search, allows users to view a preview of search result pages with the relevant content highlighted by clicking on a magnifying glass icon. The implementation of this feature required significant client-side JavaScript work to ensure it did not slow down the page. Google utilized the Closure Compiler to minimize and optimize JavaScript, deferred script execution, and aggressively cached scripts on the client side. Instant Previews employed JSONP for fetching data, which circumvents same-origin restrictions and allows for aggressive caching by browsers, unlike XmlHttpRequest (XHR). Previews are delivered as data URIs, which are base64-encoded images that can be displayed without additional server requests, with the JSONP response containing both the image data and relevant content. Despite data URIs increasing image size by about 33% due to base64 encoding, gzip-compressed data URIs were found to be comparable in size to original JPEGs. The approach reduces the number of requests and leverages browser caching, ensuring users receive previews quickly, even when reloading or repeating searches.

Cloudstock, an event described as the "Woodstock for Cloud Developers," was scheduled for December 6, 2010, at San Francisco's Moscone West, bringing together developers and leading cloud technology companies like Google, VMware, Salesforce.com, and Amazon. The event aimed to facilitate learning, hacking, and networking within the developer community, emphasizing the efficiency and innovation cloud computing can bring by eliminating the need for traditional server management. Google planned to present sessions, including an in-depth review of its Cloud Platform Technologies and guidance on selling apps on the Google Apps Marketplace. The company highlighted the benefits of integrating technologies such as OpenID-enabled Single Sign-On, OAuth, and AtomPub to enhance user experiences, with the event offering free registration to interested participants.

Google Project Hosting introduced a feature in 2010 that allows software developers to respond to issue comments, code reviews, and wiki page updates directly via email, streamlining collaboration and communication. Previously, developers received notification emails with links directing them to respond on the platform, but now they can simply reply to these emails to address issues more quickly. This enhancement enables project committers and owners to update an issue’s status and other values, such as assigning ownership or adjusting priority, directly from their email client, thereby improving workflow efficiency. The feature aims to facilitate seamless interactions among team members working on shared projects, with documentation provided for further guidance on using this email-based response system.

Google's Developer Relations team introduced the Advocate Bios and Developer Events pages to enhance developers' access to information about Google APIs and related events. The Advocate Bios page offers details about team members, allowing users to filter by expertise and location. The Developer Events page, integrating Calendar and Maps APIs, helps users find relevant events worldwide, such as upcoming Android events or specific speaking engagements. Both resources are accessible via the Google Code home page, aimed at fostering face-to-face learning and community engagement among developers.

In November 2010, Google introduced mod_pagespeed, an Apache HTTP Server module designed to automatically optimize web performance, as part of its initiative to accelerate the internet. This tool provides over 15 on-the-fly optimizations, such as enhancing caching, reducing client-server round trips, and minimizing payload size, which can potentially decrease page load times by up to 50%. Unlike manual processes, mod_pagespeed simplifies tasks like altering content management system-generated pages and extending cache lifetimes. Google has partnered with companies like Go Daddy, which plans to implement mod_pagespeed to enhance their customers' website performance, and Cotendo, which aims to incorporate it into their content delivery network services. Released as open-source software, mod_pagespeed is available for various Linux distributions, and Google encourages feedback from the community to further refine and improve the module.

Google has introduced the Google APIs Console, a new tool designed to enhance API management for developers across websites and applications, allowing for streamlined project management, developer credential tracking, and usage insights. Alongside the console, Google has launched a new and improved Custom Search API and a Translate API, replacing the older Web Search and Translate APIs, which are being phased out along with the Local Search API. The Custom Search API now offers more output formats, including Atom and JSON, to provide a tailored search experience for website visitors. As part of ongoing updates, Google is tightening rate limits on deprecated APIs to encourage migration to newer versions, with the new console initially supporting over half a dozen APIs and plans for rapid expansion. The announcement reflects Google's commitment to evolving its API offerings and invites developer feedback on these tools, which aim to facilitate a more integrated and efficient development environment.