Web Development

Google is enabling a more naturally spoken question-and-answer interface to its search service for people with a new version of Chrome. Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has hit 10 million channel sales one month after its release. The company announced its latest milestone today just eight days after confirming that it had shipped over 6 million units of the S4 since its international launch on April 26. According to Samsung, this is the fastest ever sell rate for any of its smartphones.

When the mockups for the new Financial Times application hit our desks in mid-2012, we knew we had a real challenge on our hands. Many of us on the team (including me) swore that parts of interface would not be possible in HTML5. Given the product team’s passion for the new UI, we rolled up our sleeves and gave it our best shot. We were tasked with implementing a far more challenging product, without compromising the reliable, performant experience that made the first app so successful. We didn’t just want to build a product that fulfilled its current requirements; we wanted to build a foundation that we could innovate on in the future. This meant building with a maintenance-first mentality, writing clean, well-commented code and, at the same time, ensuring that our code could accommodate the demands of an ever-changing feature set. In this article, I’ll discuss some of the changes we made in the latest release and the decision-making behind them. I hope you will come away with some ideas and learn from our solutions as well as our mistakes. Supported Devices The first Financial Times Web app ran on iPad and iPhone in the browser, and it shipped in a native (PhoneGap-esque) application wrapper for Android and Windows 8 Metro devices. The latest Web app is currently being served to iPad devices only; but as support is built in and tested, it will be rolled out to all existing supported platforms. HTML5 gives developers the advantage of occupying almost any mobile platform. With 2013 promising the launch of several new Web application marketplaces (eg. Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Marketplace), we are excited by the possibilities that lie ahead for the mobile Web. Fixed-Height Layouts The first shock that came from the new mockups was that they were all fixed height. By “fixed height,” I mean that, unlike a conventional website, the height of the page is restricted to the height of the device’s viewport. If there is more content than there is screen space, overflow must be dealt with at a component level, as opposed to the page level. We wanted to use JavaScript only as a last resort, so the first tool that sprang to mind was flexbox. Flexbox gives developers the ability to declare flexible elements that can fill the available horizontal or vertical space, something that has been very tricky to do with CSS. Chris Coyier has a great introduction to flexbox. Using Flexbox in Production Flexbox has been around since 2009 and has great support on all the popular smartphones and tablets. We jumped at the chance to use flexbox when we found out how easily it could solve some of our complex layouts, and we started throwing it at every layout problem we faced. As the app began to grow, we found performance was getting worse and worse. We spent a good few hours in Chrome Developers Tools’ timeline and found the culprit: Shock, horror! — it was our new best friend, flexbox. The timeline showed that some layouts were taking close to 100 milliseconds; reworking our layouts without flexbox reduced this to 10 milliseconds! This may not seem like a lot, but when swiping between sections, 90 milliseconds of unresponsiveness is very noticeable. Back to the Old School We had no other choice but to tear out flexbox wherever we could. We used 100% height, floats, negative margins, border-box sizing and padding to achieve the same layouts with much greater performance (albeit with more complex CSS). Flexbox is still used in some parts of the app. We found that its impact on performance was less expensive when used for small UI components. Page layout time with flexbox Page layout time without flexbox Truncation The content of a fixed-height layout will rarely fit its container; eventually it has to overflow. Traditionally in print, designers have used ellipses (three dots) to solve this problem; however, on the Web, this isn’t the simplest technique to implement. Ellipsis You might be familiar with the text-overflow: ellipsis declaration in C

Least.js is a jQuery-powered image gallery that can display images in a Pinterest-like layout. The images are displayed from an unordered list where their order is randomized on each load. Any clicked image doesn’t load the bigger version in a modal but by sliding other items down and the big version on the top (kinda similar to Google Image search). The gallery makes use of HTML5-CSS3 features and works good on responsive layouts.Advertisements:ioDeck, a self-hosted and awesome PHP form generator. Professional XHTML Admin Template ($15 Discount With The Code: WRD.) SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)

Advertise here via BSAjQuery.swatches is a free to use that turns a one-line div into a sweet color swatch. You can customize the class as you want. Using different classes would allow you to render groups of swatches at individual times by calling swatchify() on a different selector. Requirements: jQuery Framework Demo: http://maxmackie.com/jquery.swatches/ License: MIT License SponsorsProfessional Web Icons for Your Websites and Applications

Google's Penguin 2.0 rolls out, and WebmasterWorld Members discuss the latest impact for SEO and webmasters. Join our discussion with your observations.

Lightbox has always been one of the great method to display images without having to refresh a page. Nowadays, with the booming of responsive websites, lightboxes also have evolved to adapt nicely with the trendy responsive layout. Here we have 10 responsive lightboxes. Its modal window resizes itself to fit into the window viewport. We even found one robust lightbox called Visual Lightbox that come with a free downloadable lightbox generator to create powerful lightboxes without have to learn javascript! Without further ado, check there out: Visual LightBox Visual LightBox is the only responsive lightbox that comes with a free wizard program to assist you generate cross-browser, responsive, degrade gracefully and lightweight photo galleries easily. It's available as Prototype or jQuery plugin, dozen of themes and allow you to export as Joomla module or WordPress plugin... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Sliding side menus are widely used in mobile apps as they are only visible on-demand and save space. jQuery.mmenu is a slick plugin that brings the same behavior into any -mobile- web layout. It transforms unordered lists with unlimited sub-lists into menu items and has multiple options for customization. The options include the position of the menu (left/right), if a counter for the menu items will be displayed or not and more. jQuery.mmenu can also be controlled (opening, closing and toggling the menu) with simple functions.Advertisements:ioDeck, a self-hosted and awesome PHP form generator. Professional XHTML Admin Template ($15 Discount With The Code: WRD.) SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)

The Celery API enables Crowdfunding projects to easily pre-sell product in advance of release. Sprout Social makes Google Plus Pages management easier for users. Plus: the Truecaller API is a phone directory via crowd-source and 9 new APIs. The Celery API Provides Pre-Commerce Options Airbrite, an e-commerce startup backed by Y Combinator, has announced its first product today, Celery. This “pre-commerce” platform allows crowdfunded projects to accept credit card information now and bill at a later date when the product is ready for launch.  The company provides the RESTful Celery API to allow integration options for general e-commerce platforms. The API returns data in JSON and is currently in private beta. Sprout Social provides Google Plus Pages API Integration Social media management company Sprout Social has introduces a new integration with the Google Plus Pages API. Justyn Howard, founder and CEO of Sprout Social had this to say about the integration: “Today’s Google+ integration is a highly anticipated addition and further solidifies Sprout as a truly integrated social management platform,” Justyn continued, “Our customers can now seamlessly engage with the millions of people who rely on Google+ to connect with their favorite brands in meaningful ways.” This addition will help Sprout Social customers easily manage and maintain their Google Plus presence easily from within the Sprout Social platform. API News You Shouldn’t Miss CLD Integrates Tin Can API with its eLearning Solutions and Launches its Excelerometer Tracking Statement Dashboard The Truecaller API: Phone Directory via Crowd-Source 9 New APIs Today we had 9 new APIs added to our API directory including a cracked applications and digital books for mobile devices service, a barcode and qr code generator, a bitcoin trading service, a crpyto-currency crowdfunding service and a file hosting and sharing site service. Below is more details on each of these new APIs. AppAddict API: AppAddict is an online collection of cracked applications and digital books for mobile devices. The AppAddict API allows users to automate mass uploads via HTTP GET/POST calls. Users must have an AppAddict account with mass uploading permission. Responses are JSON formatted. Barcodes4.me API: Barcodes4.Me is an online barcode generator, capable of creating barcodes of various types and sizes. QR codes can be generated with specified ECC level and size. The Barcodes4.me API provides a RESTful interface for generating barcodes. The API supports full customization including dimensions, text and borders, and color reversal. The API creates .png, .gif, or .jpg files. Bitcurex API: Bitcurex is a Bitcoin trading system that allows users to purchase, hold, trade, and sell Bitcoins within the Bitcurex community. The Bitcurex API allows the user to manipulate his or her trading account using trading bots. The API allows calls to get funds, get orders, buy or sell Bitcoins, cancel orders, get transaction history, and withdraw funds. The service uses REST calls and returns JSON. Crypto::Stocks API: Crypto::Stocks is a crowdingfunding platform that allows users to fund business ideas using Bitcoins, Litecoins, or Devcoins. The site provides an avnue to get financing for ideas, as well as invest in projects and earn dividends. The Crypto::Stocks API allows users to buy, sell and trade crypto-currencies. Calls include getting security info, get lists of securities, get dividend history, get orderbook, as well as full trading info. An account is required with service. The services uses REST calls and can return XML or JSON. Hotfile API: Hotfile is a file hosting and sharing site. The Hotfile API allows developers to automate site functions including file creation/deletion, account management, and user and file data retrieval. Some methods may be called anonymously, some methods require a login, and some require a premium membership. i.materialise API: i.materialise is an online 3D printing serv

Last month, ProgrammableWeb reported that Metwit was releasing a free, short term trial plan of the Metwit Weather API to help developers who have created applications using Yahoo! Weather APIs and have been impacted by the shut down of the Yahoo! Geocoding API. Metwit has now announced the addition of a brand new feature to the Metwit Weather API: Push Weather Notifications. Image Credit: Metwit Metwit has added Monitors to the Metwit Weather API, a collection of Monitor objects that allow developers to add push weather notifications to their applications. Applications that use Metwit Weather API Monitors can receive push notifications for precipitation alerts based on a nearby given location. At this time, the only event type that can be registered is precipitation such as rain, snow and hail. The new push weather notifications feature can be useful for many types of applications, a few examples are mentioned in the Metwit announcement post. Visit the Metwit API site for more information. Sponsored by