Performance Tip for HTTP Downloads « Zoompf – Next Generation Web Performance HTTPWatch has an interesting article today on their blog entitled “Four Tips for Setting up HTTP File Downloads.” They offer some great advice to make sure your downloadable files work across all browsers and are saved using the appropriate name. However they didn’t include a very important feature that all websites offering large file downloads should have: support for resumable downloads! As we will see this is an essential performance feature that improves user experience while reducing bandwidth costs. Partial Downloads and the Range Header HTTP/1.1 added many exciting features over HTTP/1.0. This seemingly odd and esoteric feature is actually quite powerful because it allows for browsers to resume HTTP downloads! Here we see the browser is trying to download a large PDF file named “report.pdf” which is approximately 9 megabytes. A few key points about resumable downloads and range requests: Conclusions Want to see what performance problems your website has?
How to Improve Website Load Times I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to speed. No, not the psychostimulant; I’m talking about website speed. I’m not alone, either. Google recently announced that they consider website speed when determining search engine rankings. Oh, did I mention that a slow website can literally kill your revenue stream? Check out what the experts at websiteoptimization.com have to say about the topic: Google found that moving from a 10-result page loading in 0.4 seconds to a 30-result page loading in 0.9 seconds decreased traffic and ad revenues by 20% (Linden 2006). It’s quite clear. What Determines Website Page Speed? The Yahoo! So, I’ll break down the top performance recommendations and show you you can apply them to your website. Let’s do it. 1. Translation: Limit the number of files required to display your website When someone visits your website, the corresponding files must be sent to that person’s browser. As expected, every file you use to enhance your design detracts from its performance. 2. 3. 4. What?
Solitude and Leadership: an article by William Deresiewicz | The American Scholar Essays - Spring 2010 Print If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts By William Deresiewicz The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009. My title must seem like a contradiction. Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. We need to begin by talking about what leadership really means. So I began to wonder, as I taught at Yale, what leadership really consists of. See, things have changed since I went to college in the ’80s. So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. That is exactly what places like Yale mean when they talk about training leaders. But I think there’s something desperately wrong, and even dangerous, about that idea.
Website Performance | Générateur de Sprites CSS holmes.css - CSS Markup Detective What does it do? The holmes.css file will display either an error (red outline), a warning (yellow outline), or a deprecated style (dark grey outline) for flags such as: Missing required attributes on tags, such as name attributes on inputs (lots of these) Potentially improvable markup, such as links with href="#" Deprecated and Non-W3C Elements - see W3C.org's article on obselete tags Non-W3C Attributes - as above, just the most important ones since there are MANY Thanks to Anthony Mann, holmes now displays an informative error message when you hover over the element. How do I use it? Simply download a version of the CSS, minified or normal (with docs), and include a stylesheet link to it on your page. In terms of configuration, such as changing the flag colours: go nuts! Why should I use it? Remember too that these are just guidelines: if something is flagged but you can't change it for a good reason, don't worry about it :) Also use a validator if you want to be 100% sure. Browser Support
Roche to provide EU regulatory update on Avastin in metastatic breast cancer Basel, 24 September 2010 Roche to provide EU regulatory update on Avastin in metastatic breast cancer Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced today that on behalf of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has started a review of Avastin® in combination with paclitaxel or docetaxel for the first-line treatment of metastatic breast cancer in view of data from the RIBBON-1 study. Roches believes that based on a positive benefit/risk profile, the RIBBON-1 data support a label expansion of Avastin with Xeloda for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in addition to the currently approved indication with paclitaxel or docetaxel. The current use of Avastin in its licensed indications including for the treatment of patients with metastatic breast cancer is not affected by this review. About Avastin: Over 5 Years of Transforming Cancer Care About Avastin: Mode of Action About an EU review procedure (referral) About Roche
CSS Stress Testing and Performance Profiling | Andy Edinborough Now let me explain: I have been losing my sanity over the oddest issue. The project I’m working on right now has a fairly complex stylesheet. Performance for the site is absolutely critical. I’ve done my best to squeeze and optimize every line I can. In all browsers, it runs like a champion. Something specific to IE9 was causing a serious performance glitch. Sadly, no one had an answer So, as I lay there in the corner of the closet, weeping bitterly, I realized that writing my own CSS stress tester wouldn’t be that difficult. Of course it took a while to work out the exact implementation. My first implementation was written synchronously. Instead of: var time0 = new Date().getTime(); window.scrollBy(0,100);var delta = (new Date().getTime()) - time0; I needed to add an event handler to window.scroll, scroll the page, then capture time in the event. (this isn’t how the code is actually written—just showing some insight into the how it works) Fast forward a several weeks. Was it box-shadow?
Pharma Blogging Panel at ACS Boston August 24th, 2010 • 11:08 Welcome to the live coverage of the Chemical & Pharma Blogging panel. Yes, this pharma blog is live blogging the pharma blogging session. It’s very meta. 12:08 A slight delay as the crowds descend upon the boxed lunches. 12:16 Derek Lowe is up first. 12:20: Derek started blogging in January or February of 2002. 12:22 Derek gets about 15-20k pageviews per day. 12:24 Nabakov extensively quoted. 12:25: A way to tell people where drugs really come from. 12:26 Ed Silverman from Pharmalot is up next. 12:28 Ed comes at blogging from a different perspective: “I’m a journalist of all thing.” 12:30 Blogging has been an interesting experience–writing a blog has been one of the best career decisions he made. 12:31 Ed also sees the crowd go quiet when he writes about patent stuff. 12:33 Now up, David Kroll of Terra Sigillata 12:35 A pharmacologist by training, but he does play well with chemists. 12:42 Derek Lowe was an inspiration for David’s blog. 12:52 David’s top posts?
Mesurer le temps de chargement d'une page Le temps de chargement a un impact direct sur l'expérience utilisateur, et dans une moindre mesure sur le référencement naturel. Un développeur ou un référenceur doit dont chercher à diminuer au maximum ce temps de chargement. Et pour cela, il est toujours intéressant réaliser des tests avant et après vos modifications. Voici donc 5 outils pour réaliser un benchmark complet des performances de votre site. GTMetrix C'est de loin mon outil préféré. GtMetrix intègre parfaitement PageSpeed et Yslow Cerise sur le gâteau, vous avez accès à un historique plutôt bien fait sur l'évolution jour par jour du temps de chargement de votre site. L'historique de GTMetrix Les points forts : Le suivi est automatiséTrès bonne intégration des outils YSlow et PageSpeed, ainsi que de la "timeline" du chargementIl permet de comparer deux URLs, et de comparer deux rapports entre eux Les points faibles : Lors du suivi automatisé, il ne prend qu'une mesure par jour, ce qui peut parfois fausser les données. Yottaa Webwait
Using rivalry to spur innovation - McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Innovation Many companies overlook the ability of productive rivalry to stimulate innovation. That could be a loss: Not only has it been a powerful contributor to innovation in the past, but according to Mark Little, the director of General Electric’s Global Research Group, rivalry also has made a difference in his company’s efforts to develop better aircraft engines, composite materials, and power generation equipment. Taken together, the two articles that follow suggest that innovation-minded executives whose R&D groups don’t employ rivalry should be looking for more opportunities to form teams, appreciate differences in their respective approaches, and conduct market tests. Embedding rivalry in a culture where what’s celebrated most is the outcome—a better product or service—can be a powerful positive force. The art of innovation Business leaders tend to raise their eyebrows when they read about parallels between history and modern management—and for good reason. Promoting “collision”
Stuff that occurs to me LeadershipChat Transcript Nov 30, 2010 « fredmcclimans.com Along the way, we hit some key topics, such as the definition of “passion” and how is it nurtured or developed, how vision and passion relate, the dual/symbiotic roles of passion and enthusiasm in leadership, the ways that passion in leaders can drive passion in others (as well as attract people who share the same passion) and how good leaders often know when to step aside and let others utilize their own passion, building both team spirit/focus and a common sense of purpose and ownership. I hope you enjoy the transcript as much as I enjoyed participating in the chat, and I encourage you to follow both this chat and the people below – they are some of the brightest people I know. Feel free to continue this conversation in the comments section below, and if you like this transcript and feel others might as well or would benefit from our discussion, please RT liberally – it’s all about the conversation. And please, remember to read from the bottom up! @wadnikhil @anthonyonesto No worries.
The latest twists in angiogenesis research Medulloblastoma cells (green) are growing around this cerebellar blood vessel and inducing growth of new vessels nearby (red). Courtesy Matija Snuderl & Rakesh Jain. An update last week on angiogenesis research revealed surprising twists in the story of fighting cancer by cutting off the tumor’s blood supply. The latest findings, reported by top researchers at an international pediatric oncology meeting in Boston, show that the story is much more nuanced. Anti-angiogenic drugs can kill some tumors by cutting off their blood supply. A smaller tumor with less blood supply and more hypoxia can be more metastatic than a better-oxygenated larger tumor, confirmed Raghu Kalluri, PhD, in a later talk. However, Jain noted that the doses used in the published animal studies are much higher than those that would ever be prescribed to patients. Rehabilitating vessels Jain’s group is working on how to exploit and expand another paradoxical feature of anti-angiogenic drugs. An option for children