Initial reaction

I couldn’t believe it! Have I finally figured out a way to stop the bedroom door from slamming closed?

I could potentially have one of the coolest and most expensive doorstops in the world!

And then the reality set in

Personally, even though it’s only $199, I simply cannot justify dumping my perfect 1st generation iPhone.

Third generation…

... is going to be a huge hit and a big upgrade. Until then, I’m perfectly happy.

John Gruber said it best:

Today’s message is pretty simple: Apple is going for iPhone market share in a big, big, way.

No front-facing camera. No video from the rear camera. Instead of building a better $400 iPhone, they worked on halving the price of last year’s phone.

‘nuff said

Here’s my quick view on the two strategies:

In the words of Agent Jay:

Old and busted: pages and technologies that work for older browsers

New hotness: think AJAX

Both strategies have the same end goal: provide support for the widest variety of user agents, but have opposite approaches of doing so.

More reading

This is a quick high level overview, so read below for more information and examples:

• Accessites.org goes more in depth
• Yahoo developer articles

Scope chain pain

If you’re like me and use a lot of framework singletons, such as the popular YAHOO.util.Dom, there’s something you can do so speed things up.

Every time you use a global variable, the browser has to work its way up the scope chain until it reaches the global scope. By giving all those pesky global vars a local reference, you can significantly lower the time it takes to find that variable.

Remember, JavaScript code is executed on the end-user’s computer, so writing efficient code should always be the #1 priority. Here’s an example with using YUI core components which are accessed frequently:

(function() {

var lang     = YAHOO.lang,
    dom      = YAHOO.util.Dom,
    event    = YAHOO.util.Event;

var newObject = function() {
  // 'lang' is much faster to lookup than 'YAHOO.lang' and so on...
  alert(lang.JSON.stringify({"key" : "value"}));
};

})();

By writing your code within a self-executing function, variables lang, dom, and event are only local to that function and everything inside of it. So, lookups to such frequent tools like YAHOO.util.Dom are much faster.

DOM caching

Similarly, lowering the times you access the DOM improves the performance as well, most of the times drastically.

So if you have something along the lines of this (but hopefully more profound):

for (var i=0; i<100; i++) {
  document.getElementById('el').innerHTML = i;
}

Do this:

var el = document.getElementById('el');
for (var i=0; i<100; i++) {
  el.innerHTML = i;
}

In other words, only do one DOM lookup per element and save the reference to a variable.

That’s it. Happy coding.

... at least according to the TIOBE index, which measures language popularity based on the number of web searches:

The ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular search engines. The search query that is used is +”<language> programming” The search query is executed for the regular Google, Google Blogs, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube web search for the last 12 months. The web site Alexa.com has been used to determine the most popular search engines.

Observations

• PHP moves up one spot from last year into #4 and still dominates the web languages
• ActionScript enters top 20 (as #20) and I expect it to grow even more in the coming years
• Java dominates with 20% market share and sits comfortably at the #1 spot
• Pascal enters top 20 as well at #15, jumping up eight spots in one year! This one I’m just confused about, but I do miss the language
• JavaScript and Ruby are #9 and #10 respectively, though over last 4 years, Ruby has risen tremendously (#27 in 2004) with the help of Ruby on Rails

View the rest

In just a few short weeks, we will all have a new domain extension to be excited about: .me. On July 17th, 2008, .me domains will go on sale to be registered by the general public. They were available as early as May 1st for registered trademarks of Montenegro, the owner of this top-level domain.

Country code

Montenegro became independent from Serbia only 2 years ago on June 3rd, 2006. Its telephone country code is a boring +382, but its internet country code is most likely the next big thing in the domain name business.

The future

I’m willing to bet that .me will be much more popular than .biz, .mobi or even .tv (if not all those combined). None of those really took off, but .me possibilities are much greater.

On January, 2008, GoDaddy was named one of operators of the .me domains (it currently operates .info and .org).

Imagine the possibilities. After all, .ME translates to a wide range of catchy words throughout the world – including the obvious English translations, such as “about me.” Others include “amar.me,” which means “love me” in Spanish, and “secondo.me,” which is Italian for “in my opinion.”

Cost and registration

Currently, the domain is in “Landrush” period where you can submit domains that you’re interested in. If there are no other interested parties, you will be awarded the domain name. If there are, the domain enters a bidding war. Landrush ends June 26th, 2008 (register here).

As mentioned above, on July 17th, anyone will be able to register the domains on first come, first serve basis. They’re $49.99/year with 2 years minimum which reminds me of the good ol’ .com days.

Notables

Apple is registering apple.me, ipod.me, and itunes.me. (via Macworld)

Will you be grabbing one?