WSJ is beaten hands down by Google News!

When Mr. Ruperd Murdoch is busy complaining and drawing legal strategies against Google, a data generated from comscore comparison has popped up that is definitely going to give Mr. Murdoch a fresh new point to look at the ‘News’ issue (if he is not painstakingly prejudiced).
According to a recent survey it is revealed that, more people trust Google News over any other dedicated news brands, when it comes to getting news online. The closest competitor being New York Times, who has been outnumbered by an astonishing margin of 34million unique visitors. According to the survey Google had attracted almost 100 million unique visitors November,2009, with compare to 66millions by NYT. And if you are thinking where the hell is Mr. Murdoch, he is right at the bottom layer fetching just about 6 million unique visitors last month. Someone please go and tell the gentleman that it is just not the way to go about things!
You simply can not afford to be a hard nut, when it comes to compete with a brand as innovative and as trustworthy as Google! This striking data has not only given WSJ a lot of stuff to think, but also raised a serious question over the acceptability of the News Brands.
At this point you must be thinking that Google is doing just a great job!
You are right Google indeed is doing a great job, but there is another player who’s doing greater job in this field. Guess who?
It’s Yahoo!!!
The survey has revealed that almost 138 million (WOW!!) unique visitors had knocked Yahoo News, when it came to getting the news. Now that was some finding!
You just cannot write Yahoo off.
Following is the Comscore’s unique visitor’s graph(as posted in tech crunch);

Why should people hire a car?

If a person has traveled abroad he/she has in all probability experience having problems with the transportation and This is true to a lot of people this may be the reason why Car rental Companies like cheap car hire Geneva Airportand cheap car hire Grenoble Airportare so accepted and the business are booming as a lot of people opt to hire a car. The Rental Industry is on rise and this is predominantly true to places that attract most tourists. This industry is providing an enormous service to those people who are in actual fact into their comfort and taking their time enjoying their vacation. The increase in demand of car for rent may not be only due to tourists but also because car owners are now looking for car rental just because their car is broken or in the shop for monthly check-up. Also the growing reputation of "road trip" especially for the young ones helped in the growth of the rental industry juts like the service of car hire france. The terms and conditions should be clearer to the customer and one can expect to receive the same service that the person had before. It is better not forget to do a little background check of the company the person is having a transaction with and A little search in the net won't hurt. In such a way a person will at least know if the company is reputable and dependable.

Google's Real Time Search - Its Real Now!

It was new, it was happening, it was futuristic and above all it was related to “Search”. So how could Google stay away from it? It’s just little over six months since Larry Page had announced that they ‘have to do it’, and they have done it. It just proves their commitment and why they are the leaders. Of course they are not the first bring it, Bing has already been providing real time updates from twitters and all, but Google’s ‘RTS’ feature makes more sense to me. Let me tell you why;
 To avail Bing’s real time search you have to go to a dedicated page. That’s a complete repeller for me. We simply don’t have enough time to access different pages for regular results and real time search results. That’s where Google scores higher. Their feature makes more sense to me. You only get to see it ‘if’ there is any interesting updates available in the web, otherwise you will never get stuffed with crappy and unnecessary updates. And above all you will not have to go to another page to get them.
 Another overhead of Bing’s RTS is I think the retweet option. These tweets never get updated, so whats the point in retweeting? Google’s newest offering is atleast clean from such overheads.
But till now Google has covered very specific and little space for updated news. So you get to see real time search results for very few and selective keywords. But I guess that’s going to change, as its understandable that it’s still in an experimental phase, and they are definitely going to improve it.
But we go by the words of Amit Singhal, Google’s Ranking System’s head; Google will stay away from providing unwanted and unnecessary updates so that it never becomes annoying. Singhal added that Google RTS covers updates from the following domains,
• Tweets from twitter
• Google Blog Search contents
• Jaiku updates
• Identi.ca updates
• TwitArmy updates
• Google News updates
• Updates about newly created WebPages
And we think, this list is just going to get longer.

Urgent Loan that Available for You

Some people said that getting some loans in the banks would be even more difficult these days. They said that based on their experiences that they have ever applied for the loans in the past, but there are too many conditions and too many complicated procedures that they must faced. The condition even worse when the banks told them to wait for several days could be weeks. After waiting for sometimes, the banks called them just to tell them that they couldn’t approve the loan. Such a time wasting, isn’t that?
Well, for some people, this isn’t the best option at all. They need the urgent money and the banks push them to wait for so long just for nothing. Somehow, they would need some instant helps. The best help that they could get is the fast loan. Luckily, there are some banks that have provided some easy to get loans. Those loans are available in the internet. They called the loan as the online payday loan.
The customers would only need to get the loan via the internet. They could make a direct online loan application. This is one of the simplest banking procedures that the banks have ever set to the customers. Click the Fastcashonline.com to apply for the loans. This is definitely the best loan for some people who need the urgent loan

Why Adsense Essential For Content Sites

The abstraction is absolutely simple, if you anticipate about it. The administrator or the webmaster inserts a java calligraphy into a assertive website. Each time the folio is accessed, the java calligraphy will cull advertisements from the Adsense program. The ads that are targeted should accordingly be accompanying to the agreeable that is independent on the web folio confined the ad. If a company clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster confined the ad earns a allocation of the money that the advertiser is advantageous the chase agent for the bang.

The chase agent is the one administration all the tracking and payments, accouterment an accessible way for webmasters to affectation content-sensitive and targeted ads after accepting the altercation to accost advertisers, aggregate funds, adviser the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming assignment in itself. It seems that there is never a curtailment of advertisers in the affairs from which the chase agent pulls the Adsense ads. Also webmasters are beneath anxious by the abridgement of advice chase engines are accouterment and are added focused in authoritative banknote from these chase engines.
The aboriginal acumen why Adsense is capital for agreeable sites is because it already has appear a continued way in compassionate the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its connected progression is the actualization of added avant-garde arrangement that allows abounding ad customization. Webmasters are accustomed the adventitious to accept from abounding altered types of argument ad formats to more good accompaniment their website and fit their webpage layout.
The altered formatting enables the armpit owners the achievability of added bang through from visitors who may or may not be acquainted of what they are beat on. It can additionally address to the bodies visiting appropriately accomplish them booty that abutting footfall of attractive up what it is all about. This way the bodies abaft the Adsense will get their agreeable apprehend and authoritative accumulation in the process.
The additional acumen is the adeptness of the Adsense publishers to clue not alone how their sites are advanced but additionally the balance based on the webmaster-defined channels. The contempo improvements in the chase engines gives webmasters the adequacy to adviser how their ads are assuming application customizable letters that has the accommodation to detail folio impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now clue specific ad formats, colors and pages aural a website. Trends are additionally calmly spotted.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the added targeted your agreeable is, the added ambition the chase engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused added on their armpit capacity and how best to advance them rather than the banknote that the ads will accomplish for them. This is the allotment area the capability is alive its best, There was a time back bodies were not yet acquainted of the money to be accomplished from advertisements. The banknote generated alone came into actuality back the webmasters and publishers accomplished how they can accomplish Adsense be that generator. In those days, the agreeable were the best important factors that is taken absolutely seriously. It still is. With the attraction of money.

Pull Up Your Socks to Optimize Your Site's SPEED to Rank Well

Last Monday in a remarkable presentation at Pubcon, Matt Cutts has revealed that there is a strong possibility that Google might start considering loading speed of a site while ranking it. He said that the this parameter is under the review for quite some time now and lately it has caught a strong wind behind it through several lobbies within Google.

He said that Google's aim has always been to provide it's users with fast and most relevant search results. And with perception like that how could they overlook the speed factor. After all there's no use having a SERP full of relevant results that take ages to load. That's definitely not where the future of search lies. Specially when real time search is gaining more and more wind, this discrepancy is annoying not only from users point of view but also from that of Google's.

There's already around 200 parameters that Google consider in their algo, it could very well be an addition to the list shortly.

Though it might not be the most important factor, but still it could very well be decisive in its own term. So I think the time is not very far when webmaster's will start optimizing the speed for their sites.

To know more on this topic, see the webpronews video below that features the Matt Cutts interview.

Is News Corp Really a Crusador for Modern Day Journalism

When the several news agencies under the self proclaimed leadership of News Corp raised their voice against Google's authority to publish their news without their consent, I really gave it a thought that 'is Google really going a bit too far to please it's users?'

I thoroughly analysed their claims and their accusations. In spite of being a great fan of Google, I kept myself neutral to avoid even the single pixel of biasedness.

Their main allegation against Google was that they are providing their users first click info about a news, which is simply unacceptable. And I agreed with them in that point. But when I looked in to the matter with a slight seriousness, it sounded to be honest ridiculous to me, Why so?

Well how much info Google is providing in the first click?

The answer is, it's only the amount that you are providing them to publish. And you have full capability to control this amount. A person with the modest knowledge on web technology can put a limit on this.

And in an age, when a 10 year old kid knows how to protect his data using password, it sounds really nonsense that a big media house like News Corp are incognizant about that.

So if they want only their paid users to view the news, they can easily design their site in a way that SERPs will only show the news titles, and whenever a viewer wants to get in to it, it will ask for user name and password. And if the user is registered, then only he/she can read the news. It's as simple as that! So why they are making such a big noise out of it ?

Are they trying to use this issue to clear up their own guilts?

Specially if we think of News Corp, they have had a long tradition of plagiarism. And when 'they' speak against it in a way, it really sounds fishy.

I have no personal grudge against News Corp and all, but all these just seems to be too easy a problem to make a noise for.

And if you are thinking that why should news media make that extra technical effort to ensure their privacy, I think its too little a compromise compare to what they are going to get for it.

Google Introduces "One Box" Music Search feature

Google now has gone one up over yahoo in the domain of music search with their newly announced “One Box” venture. It also marks the beginning of a new journey by Google in an arena once overlooked by them. And here they have done almost a catching up job by embedding this new music search feature. But as they say, its always better late than never! Though Google was lethargic to react, still when they came up, they came up with a feature that is much superior to the one already in motion by yahoo. While Yahoo’s music search only returns live playable music results for the artists name only, Google’s will return results for album and songs name also along with the traditional artist name results.

Turning down the speculations thrown out by the media that this music search results will come up with links to purchase the songs, Google’s RJ Pittman said that, they have no intention to give a commercial touch to this search feature, at least at this point of time. But going by the past records, one can easily assume that this option is always on the cards. Any ways, who cares, at least I’d care the least even if they had embedded it with commerciality.

Google has tied up with online music majors like, Lala, iLike, Pandora and Myspace for this venture. And depending upon the availability, viewers will be able to listen to the songs live, provided by these content partners.

Real-Time Search is Not Far from Reality Now

If the current development tracks are maintained, we are not really far from celebrating the true advent of the 'Real time Search Experience'. In a win win deal proceeding Microsoft defeated Google by roping in Twitter in a dramatic table turn. Just when it seemed that the Search Emperor was going to get hold of the most promising and talented kid in the block, Microsoft flown in to the picture and snatched the prey to sport the last laugh.

And just to make the dish sweeter, Facebook also joined in the flock.

Now that's definitely one deal Google didn't want to see kissing success. Well, not much really revealed at this stage, but still it seems that the impregnated deal will soon give birth to the wonder baby who can completely change the face of the Search World in coming future. With millions of users tweeting about almost every thing under the sky, its definitely the future of searching. And the company from facebook is definitely going to make the road smoother.

Google Drops Page Rank from Webmaster Tools

After seeing that all their suggestions regarding the ineffectiveness of page ranks in deciding a page’s true quality falling in the deaf ears, Google finally decides to drop the page rank statistics from Google Webmaster Tools. Google has been saying discouraging things regarding page rank’s authenticity for long now. But it seemed like a rather contradictory policy on their side as they kept providing page rank statistics in their Webmaster Tools. So finally Google has sealed their thoughts on page ranks with this move, that got reflected in their recently released Webmaster Tools Lab.

The obsession over the little green bar among the webmasters community was like insane. Though many of them admit that it has very little significance while judging a page’s quality, still they simply couldn’t stop themselves from giving a glare at the little green devil. Many a time I wondered how on the Earth Google could give a vulgarly high pr to some pages that simply looked like craps!

It was Susan Moskwa from Google Webmaster Central team who came out explaining the exclusion as a reminder from their end to the webmasters community about their dangerous liaison with the green bar.

Google Chrome OS..the Raw Version got Leaked

At last we got to take a peek at the first glance of Google Chrome OS, and that too strangely enough came not from the Google’s end. And although it has come with loads of bugs and

problems in it, still it has already succeeded to generate enough curiosity among enthusiasts. You can now easily download the raw or unstable version as it is named. Google is definitely not happy about this. And they have already started an internal investigation to find out the source of this leak. I’ve here also posted some screen shots that were originally posted by Jonathan Frederickson of Techcrunch, who was actually the first person to find this out.

Ask Launches "Deals" to Survive the Search Engine War

To 'Deal' with the competition thrown by the heavy weights like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, Ask has introduced a new service or feature, 'Ask Deal'. It is almost in the same line as 'yahoo Deal'. Using its decent enough search technology Ask promises to churn out more than 1 million discount deals available in the web that covers offers from both the national and local merchants.

In its press release(as published in the searchengineland) Ask has said,

" Ask Deals, its proprietary database of more than 1 million high-quality savings offers from national and local merchants across hundreds of product categories.

Ask Deals scours the Web for all the deals available online – from savings on ‘skinny jeans’ to restaurant coupons – and organizes the best money-saving offers front and center on the results page, eliminating the need for consumers to search multiple sites or multiple coupon sites or search engine links to find their answer. The Ask Deals database is continuously refreshed and editorially refined, giving consumers the most up-to-date and highest-quality savings offers every time they search on Ask."

With its wide range of merchandise covering and looking at the approaching festive season, it seems that Ask has struck the right chord at the right time.

Being a relatively unexplored territory, 'discount deal' search has given Ask, the required breathing space. And being early in the competition will definitely enrich them with great advantage.

Woorkup.com: 9 Hours to the launch

Hello everybody. I'm leaving Blogger to switch to a custom domain http://woorkup.com. The new website will be on-line within 9 hours from now. Stay tuned...

Microsoft Urges it's IE Users not to Install Google Chrome Frame

Microsoft's recent urge to it's IE8 users regarding the usage of Google Chrome Frame has not gone down well with the web community. According to a Microsoft representative who spoke with ars technica said;

"With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers. Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."

And that at least to me sounded really fishy. To me it was just a reflection of Microsoft's growing anxiety regarding Google. Yes,There were security issues with Chrome at it's nascent stage, but they have sorted it out now. And the most funny thing was that why they are only concerned about the IE8 version! And that too when the version still could not achieve the success that it was meant to. Isn't it a fact that more people use IE than Chrome and so the hackers also mainly target IE rather than Chrome. So their concerns in the security issue looked more of a protective grudge to me.

jQuery Visual Cheat Sheet

jQuery Visual Cheat Sheet is an useful and practical reference to jQuery 1.3 for web designers and developers designed by me. This cheat sheet (6 pages) contains the full jQuery API reference with detailed descriptions and some sample code. The simple visual style I used to design this sheet allows you to find at a glance everything you are looking for. Here's a preview:

Download You can download the full PDF version for free at the following link.

Donate If you like this Visual Cheat Sheet you can also make me a little donation with PayPal.

Screen shoots
Here is a preview of this visual cheat sheet (click on each picture to enlarge):

Scribd Version
Here is the Scribd version:



Scribd Version

Download You can download the full PDF version for free at the following link.

Donate If you like this Visual Cheat Sheet you can also make me a little donation with PayPal.

What do you think about this cheat sheet? Please leave your comments, thanks!

How to implement a perfect multi-level navigation bar

A question I often receive is what's the best way to implement a multi-level navigation bar for a website. In some cases, some of my readers ask to me a little help and send me "very original" solutions but not so suitable in terms of semantic and unobtrusive approach to coding. For my experience, I always suggest to use simple and standard methods. So in this tutorial I want to illustrate you how to implement a perfect multi-level navigation bar using HTML, CSS and some lines of unobtrusive JavaScript code with jQuery to show and hide sub sections. The result is the following:



You can quickly reuse the code I provided in this tutorial into your web projects, customizing the CSS file and changing the links. You can take a look at the demo here or download the source code here.


Navigation bar structure
Here is the standard box model of a typical navigation bar:

...and here is the standard HTML structure you would have to use to implement it

<div id="nav"> <!-- nav container -->

<ul>

<li>item <!-- main item -->

<ul> <!-- item submenu -->

<li>sub item</li>

</ul>

</li>

<ul>

</div>

How you can see the code is composed by some nested unordered list. For example, in this tutorial I used the following code (main navigation items highlighted in bold):

<div id="nav">

<ul>

<li><a href="#">Web Design</a>
<ul class="submenu">
<li><a href="http://woork.blogspot.com">Woork</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dzone.com">DZone</a></li>
</ul>
</li>

<li><a href="#">Tech News</a>
<ul class="submenu">
<li><a href="http://www.mashable.com">Mashable</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cnet.com">CNET</a></li>
</ul>
</li>

<ul>
<div>

You can add new main items or sub items simply adding new <li> tags with an <ul> tag within.


CSS Code
Now take a look at the CSS code. I prepared a very basic style you can customize how you prefer in your projects. Here is the code for the container of the navigation bar (<div id="#nav">):

#nav{

height:32px;
line-height:32px;
background:#3B5998;
padding:0 10px;
}

#nav ul,
#nav ul li {

margin:0;
padding:0;
list-style:none;

}
#nav ul li{

float:left;
display:block;

}

Here is the code for navigation links. #nav ul li {...} it's the code that defines main items (in this tutorial for example they are Web Design, Tech News, Social Network). #nav ul li ul li {...} it's the code that defines sub items for each main item.

#nav ul li a:link,
#nav ul li a:visited{

color:#FFF;
font-size:14px;
font-weight:bold;
text-decoration:none;
padding:0 20px 0 6px;
display:block;

}
#nav ul li a:hover{

color:#EBEFF7;

}
#nav ul li ul li{

float:none;
display:block;

}
#nav ul li ul li a:link,
#nav ul li ul li a:visited{

color:#444;
font-size:11px;
font-weight:bold;
text-decoration:none;
padding:0 10px;
clear:both;
border-bottom:solid 1px #DEDEDE;

}
#nav ul li ul li a:hover{

color:#3B5998;
background:#EBEFF7;

}

Here is the code for sub menu sections:

.submenu {

position: absolute;
width: 160px;
background: #FFF;
padding: 10px;
border: solid 1px #2E4B88;
border-top: none;
display: none;
line-height: 26px;
z-index: 1000;

}

jQuery Code
Now take a look at this simple jQuery code that shows and hides sub sections using mouseover and mouseleave jQuery events. The code is very simple and works independently from the number of main items contained into the navigation bar. You have to copy the following code into the <head> tag of your page. Remember first to include a link to jQuery using the following code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>

Than add this code:

<script type="text/javascript">
function nav(){

$('div#nav ul li').mouseover(function() {

$(this).find('ul:first').show();

});

$('div#nav ul li').mouseleave(function() {

$('div#nav ul li ul').hide();

});

$('div#nav ul li ul').mouseleave(function() {

$('div#nav ul li ul').hide();;

});

};

$(document).ready(function() {

nav();

});
</script>

You can also add this code in an external JS file and import it into the page that use this script. That's all! Take a look at the demo here or download the source code here.

Leave a comment for your suggestions, thanks!

How to fix your iTunes library with TuneUp

I have an iPhone and iPod and naturally I use iTunes to manage my music library through these devices. I am a neat person but for some reason until some week ago a lot of my tracks was mislabeled, without the album cover, hard to find and I didn't have the patience to fix them manually. So I searched for a solutions and I found TuneUp a great application for Mac and Windows that helped me clean and maintain neat my iTunes library searching for missing or inaccurate ID3 tags in my mp3 files. I bought a license some and the result has been really impressive.

TuneUp docks on the side of iTunes to make organizing your music easy. The only thing you have to do is to drag the track you want to fix into the TuneUp sidebar and the application fixes automatically your mislabeled music.

The Cover Art feature automatically searches your entire music collection for music files that are missing album artwork and fixes them. Cover Art lets you review all matches before the album art is saved to the file. Or you can take our first pick and "Save All." Now you can navigate iTunes using Cover Flow the way it was meant to be used.

Here is a screenshot of my iTunes library (click to enlarge)

TuneUp also enhance your listening experience with the Tuniverse feature that supplies you with the best music content on the web that's directly related to the track you're currently listening to in iTunes.

You can also stay tuned with the latest news of your favorite artists and buy tickets in just one click with the Concert feature.

TuneUp is available in two different options: a lifetime ($29.95) license or yearly license (price $19.95). You can also try a free version that cleans 100 songs and 50 album covers. I suggest you to try it!

 

10 Beautiful and free must have Serif Fonts

If you are looking for new interesting fonts, here is a collection of ten beautiful, free and must have serif typefaces for the web and print. This collection includes Medio, Jura, Fontin, Sling, Calluna, Lido STF, Salernomi, Novello Pro, Steinem, TeX Gyre Schola.


1. Medio (download)
Medio is one of my favourite fonts designed by dotcolon (the same authors of Vegur, Tenderness and Ferrum)




2. Jura (download)
Jura is a distinctive yet readable serif typeface, suitable for headings and body content alike. It features 96 of the most commonly used glyphs (characters).





3. Fontin (download)
The Fontin is designed to be used at small sizes. The color is darkish, the spacing loose and the x-height tall. Don't forget to check Fontin Sans!





4. Sling (download)
Sling is a versatile typeface available in bold, normal and light version.





5. Calluna Regular (download)
Calluna regular is a popular typeface designed by Jos Buivenga author the best seller font Museo on myfonts.com.





6. Lido STF (download)
Lido STF is a font designed by František Štorm for the periodical Lidové noviny (People’s Newspaper). This font is a modification of the original Times New Romans font.





7. Salernomi (download)
Salernomi is an elegant typeface designed by Julius B. Thyssen. You can use it with a perfect result for the web and print.





8. Novello Pro (download)
Novello Pro is a moderate Roman typeface with round serifs and modern details designed by Ingo Zimmermann.




9. Steinem (download)




10. TeX Gyre Schola (download)
TeX Gyre Schola is another great serif font especially useful for the print.

 

HTML lists: what's new in HTML 5?

There is a big and justified interest from the web community about the changes introduced in HTML 5 and in the last weeks I'm frequently receiving a lot of questions and requests about this topic. In this post I want to illustrate a quick roundup of some point of interest about the use of lists in HTML 5.
How you know HTML has three types of lists:

- <ul>, unordered list
- <ol>, ordered list
- <dl>, definition list

The HTML <li> tag defines a list item and is used in both <ul> and <ol> lists. <dt> and <dd> tags define a definition term and the related description in a definition list. These tags are all supported in HTML 5 version but there are some little changes in their attributes, in particular:

<ul> and <ol>
the attribute compact and type are not longer supported in HTML 5 (you have to use CSS instead).

<li>
the attribute type, which specifies the type of the list, is not longer supported in HTML 5 (you have to use CSS instead).
The attribute value, which defines the value of the first item of the list, is not longer deprecated and can be only used with the <ol> tag.

Unordered list for navigation bar
Another lists-related question is about the structure of the navigation bar of a website with the introduction of the new <nav> tag in HTML 5. How you know, unordered lists are commonly used to implement the navigation bar of a website. The typical structure of a navigation bar is a <div> tag that contains an unordered list with some items:

Here is the HTML code to implement the basic structure of a navigation bar

<div id="nav">
<ul>

<li><a href="...">link 1</a></li>
<li><a href="...">link 2</a></li>
<li><a href="...">link 3</a></li>
<li><a href="...">link 4</a></li>

<ul>
</div>

In HTML 5, the structure of a navigation bar is the same illustrated in the previous code. The only thing that changes is the the external "container" of the unordered list. You have to use the new <nav> instead a generic <div> tag

<nav>
<ul>

<li><a href="...">link 1</a></li>
<li><a href="...">link 2</a></li>
<li><a href="...">link 3</a></li>
<li><a href="...">link 4</a></li>

<ul>
</nav>

Definition list and the <dialog> tag
Definition lists are not frequently used in web design end a lot of people even ignore their existence! In general their use is mainly suggested when you have to represent a list of items with a related description for each item of the list. Here is the code that describes a generic definition list:

<dl>

<dt>Google</dt>
<dd>Search engine</dd>
<dt>Facebook</dt>
<dd>Social network</dd>

</dl>

Here is the output in a web browser:

Google

Search engine

Facebook

Social network

HTML 5 introduces the new <dialog> tag that uses <dt> and <dl> tags (these tag are used to define a term and its description in a definition list) to describe a conversation. Here is an example of dialog structure

<dialog>

<dt>Anna</dt>
<dd>What time is it?</dd>
<dt>Mark</dt>
<dd>Three o'clock</dd>
<dt>Anna</dt>
<dd>Thanks!</dd>

</dialog>

And here is the output in a web browser:

Anna

What time is it?

Mark

Three o'clock

Anna

Thanks!

*NOTE: the <dialog> tag has been dropped in HTML revision 3859 (2009-09-15). Thanks to Dylan for the suggestion. The new <figure> and <details> tags now use <dt> and <dl> instead of <legend>.

That's all. If you have some suggestion about this topic, please leave a comment. Thanks!

 

Adobe buys Omniture for $1.8 billion.

In a surprisingly fast development, Adobe has announced that it will take over web analytic software company 'Omniture'. This take over will be costing them about $1.8 billion. This buy by Adobe will definitely force Google to revise its strategies for the web analytic market. Many are thinking that Google might come out with an 'Enterprise' version of their web analytics service.

Adobe Systems Inc. said Tuesday it will buy the Web analytic software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. said it will buy Omniture Inc. for $21.50 per share in cash, a premium of 24 percent over Omniture’s closing stock price Tuesday.

The announcement came as Adobe said it earned $136 million, or 26 cents per share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended in August, down 29 percent from the same time a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, Adobe earned a profit of 35 cents per share, a penny above what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting. The maker of Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat software says its revenue fell 21 percent to $697.5 million.

As nobody was expecting the entry of Adobe in the web analytics market, and that too so early, it will take some time for the web geeks to come out with their own versions and thoughts regarding this development. This has already started showing its effect in their shares(NASDAQ:OMTR), as it has pushed Omniture shares up $4.43 a share, while Adobe's share went down about 4% to $34.10.
According to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan, this was an important game changer for both Adobe and their customers. He has also said that this 'Omniture take over' wil enable advertisers, media organizations and e-tailers to realize the full value of their digital assets.

Blogger now supports natively expandable post summaries

Finally! Blogger has introduced After the Jump a feature which lets you create expandable post summaries in your blog posts, so longer posts appear as an intro with a link to Read More.

Creating jump breaks in your blog posts can be easily done right from the post editor, without the need for any HTML changes.

The only thing you have to do is to add this code into the post editor:

<!-- more -->

Take a look at this post that explains in detail how to implement expandable post summaries.

Rediscovering HTML tables

I decided to write this post after several conversations I recently had with some of my readers about the use of HTML tables. In general, I noticed there is a preconceived hate about their use due to misleading information. In fact a lot of people say "I read tables should never be used", but this is absolutely false! This recommendation only regards the use of HTML tables to define the layout of HTML pages, but tables are perfect to arrange easily data into rows and columns and if you have to display tabular data within a web page you have to use them! Why not? So, in this situation, some people ignore the existence of some HTML tags for tables and how to use them properly.


HTML has ten table related tags. Here's the list with indicated if the element is defined in HTML 4.01 and/or HTML 5:

<caption> defines a table caption (4, 5)
<col> defines attributes for table columns (4, 5)
<colgroup> defines groups of table columns (4, 5)
<table> defines a table (4, 5)
<tbody> defines a table body (4, 5)
<td> defines a table cell (4, 5)
<tfoot> defines a table footer (4, 5)
<th> defines a table header (4, 5)
<thead> defines a table header (4, 5)
<tr> defines a table row (4, 5)

A basic table structure is the following:

It contains a caption, header, body and footer. The correct order of HTML elements is:

1. <table>
2. <caption>
3. <thead>
4. <tfoot>
5. <tbody>

According to definition and usage of w3schools, the element <tfoot> must appear before <tbody> within a table definition so that user agents can render the foot before receiving all of the (potentially numerous) rows of data (read more).

You can also use <col> and <colgroup> to define attributes for table columns or define group of table columns:

1. <table>
2. <caption>
3. <colgroup>
4. <col>
5. <thead>
6. <tfoot>
7. <tbody>

The following code is an example of a correct table structure:

<table border="1">

<caption>Table caption here</caption>

<colgroup span="1" style="background:#DEDEDE;"/>
<colgroup span="2" style="background:#EFEFEF;"/>

<!-- Table Header-->
<thead>

<tr>

<th>Head 1</th>
<th>Head 2</th>
<th>Head 3</th>

</tr>

</thead>

<!-- Table Footer-->

<tfoot>

<tr>

<td>Foot 1</td>
<td>Foot 2</td>
<td>Foot 3</td>

</tr>

</tfoot>

<!-- Table Body-->
<tbody>

<tr>

<td>A</td>
<td>B</td>
<td>C</td>

</tr>
<tr>

<td>D</td>
<td>E</td>
<td>F</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

The result on a browser is the following:

align and bgcolor attributes of the table are deprecated, so in HTML 5 no table attributes are supported. Obviously you can use style sheet to customize the style of each table element.

For a more detailed articles about HTML tables read this interesting post: w3 Introduction to tables

That's all. Do you have any suggestion about this topic? Please leave a comment, thanks.

 

Google Looses Kai-Fu Lee in their Chinese Crusade

Just when everything seemed to be going alright for Google, they recieved a very disguised jolt from the Google china's head Kai-Fu Lee, as he left Google to nourish his own venture, 'Innovation Works'. It was on the cards according to many. Kai-Fu Lee has served Google for four years. And just when every one was sensing that Google might at last take a bite of it's share off the China's search engine market, that is one sidedly dominated by 'Baidu', the cards fell down. Though it might seem from the surface that it's just another job switch of a high profile Googler, there's more in to it. Google had started to penetrate the Chinese 'Oasis' search engine market after years long try and the timing could not be worse. Though Kai-Fu Lee has said that he for the time being will get fully absorbed into his venture which is about helping young and talented Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs to develop fresh internet and mobile computing technology. This new endeavor, 'Innovation Works' will hire the budding talents from China and nurture them for one year and then finally let them go open.
This is no doubt a very noble initiative and quite appreciable, but what if Kai-Fu Lee thinks of building a new Chinese search engine by mobilising these pool of talents. And with the invaluable Google experience that's definitely quite viable. No matter if it does not succeed to overpower 'Baidu', even a decent attempt can bid Google's Chinese search market dream a premature good bye forever. And that is definitely the last thing Google wants.
My assumption got closer to get transfared into belief after talking to several fellow web wizards. Now it will be really interesting to see, how Google reacts to this, what strategy they incorporate to enforce their Chinese crusade, who replaces Kai-Fu Lee and what vibe he spreads.

HTML 5 Visual Cheat Sheet by Woork

HTML 5 Visual Cheat Sheet is an useful cheat sheet for web designers and developers designed by me. This cheat sheet is essentially a simple visual grid with a list of all HTML tags and of their related attributes supported by HTML versions 4.01 and/or 5. The simple visual style I used to design this sheet allows you to find at a glance everything you are looking for.
Here's a preview of my cheat sheet:

This is an example of listed tags and attributes:

HTML 5 Cheat Sheet is available in high quality for A3 paper format. Take a look at this link for a preview or download the high quality version (dark or white background):

Dark Background:

- PDF high-quality (new! thanks to Julie Webb)
- JPG high-quality




White Background New!:
I prepared this print-friendly version:

Download this version here:

- PDF Version
- JPG hig-quality




The Flickr version is here.

If you have some suggestion about this cheat sheet please leave a comment or write me to my e-mail address.

Google Finally Owns the Patent to its Homepage Design

After five long years of legal procedures Google finally got hold of the patent to its very simple yet so powerful homepage design. So any one from now on, trying to take a piece out of its design could very well be dragged into legal trouble. Many Search engines who either consciously or subconsciously got influenced in their design aspect by Google, have definitely not accepted this patent episode in open minds. They are fearing a possible Google lash out from legal grounds sooner or later. They are thinking that with this new found ammunition, Google might go for the kill to extend its monopoly by finishing off the smaller rivals. And with the merging of Yahoo and MSN search technologies, it definitely looks quite a decent possiblity to clarify their no-fuss stand.