GTmetrix | Website Speed and Performance Optimization

GTmetrix uses Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow to grade your site’s performance and provides actionable recommendations to fix these issues.

via GTmetrix | Website Speed and Performance Optimization.

PDF Converter Online – Free HTML to PDF converter, PDF converter online

PDF Converter Online is a simple service to convert the web pages to PDF files. No need to install applications on your computer.It’s free and without registration!

A few jQuery links

Today just a short list of a few links for jQuery that I came across recently:

• farbtastic: jQuery plug that can add one or more color picker widgets into a page through JavaScript. It uses layered transparent PNGs to render a saturation/luminance gradient inside of a hue circle. No Flash, no pixel sized divs.
• jGrowl jGrowl is a jQuery plugin that raises unobtrusive messages within the browser, similar to the way that OS X’s Growl Framework works.
• markItUp! Universal markup editor is a JavaScript plugin built on the jQuery library. It allows you to turn any textarea into a markup editor. Html, Textile, Wiki Syntax, Markdown, BBcode or even your own Markup system can be easily implemented.
• MyJUI looks promising in the demo (click the link), but there are no docs or downloads available yet.
• Superfish is an enhanced Suckerfish-style menu jQuery plugin that takes an existing pure CSS drop-down menu (so it degrades gracefully without JavaScript) and adds enhancements.
• jTip a jQuery tool tip solution.
• Visual jQuery is a nice interactive API browser for jQuery.

Google Chrome – A Fresh New Approach to Surfing

Today Google has released the first beta version of their own new web browser “Google Chrome” (currently for Windows only). It seems to be a cross-over of Safari (is uses the Webkit rendering engine) and Firefox (some code is shared with Mozilla) plus a new-developed super-fast  Javascript engine.

My first tests with Chrome showed that it is already on an impressive level, I found only 2 pages that did not render correctly (compared to Firefox 2/3 and IE7).

For PRTG Network Monitor we make heavy use of context menus, something that works fine on FF and IE, but Apple Safari and Opera do not support it. Chrome passes this test perfectly. Also all Javascript functionalities (and we make heavy use of JS and AJAX in PRTG 7) works perfectly.

Judging with just a subjective eye (I did not do measurements) I would say that Chrome’s javascript functions are much faster than IE7′s and still at least as fast as <a href=http://hotware.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/firefox-to-get-massive-javascript-performance-boost/>Firefox 3.01 Beta</a> with the new JIT compiler enabled, actually it feels faster.

Google wants this browser to be the perfect engine for AJAX driven applications (it even includes Google”s Gears engine for offline apps). The result of my first look would is that Google has already gotten quite far on this trip!

JSLint, The JavaScript Verifier

JSLint, The JavaScript Verifier  is a JavaScript program that looks for problems in JavaScript programs. JSLint takes a JavaScript source and scans it. If it finds a problem, it returns a message describing the problem and an approximate location within the source. The problem is not necessarily a syntax error, although it often is. JSLint looks at some style conventions as well as structural problems. It does not prove that your program is correct. It just provides another set of eyes to help spot problems.

Comparison: GoGrid Cloud versus Amazon EC2 | GoGrid Blog

I found this nice comparison of GoGrid vs. Amazon EC2 on the GoGrid Blog:

Feature Comparison Matrix

Feature	GoGrid	Amazon EC2
Instant server deployment	YES	YES
Instant server network scaling	YES	YES
Linux	YES	YES
Static IP address	YES	YES
Windows Server 2003	YES	NO
Microsoft SQL Server	YES	NO
FREE 24/7 phone support	YES	NO
FREE persistent storage	YES	NO
FREE inbound data transfer	YES	NO
FREE hardware f5 load balancing	YES	NO
FREE managed DNS	YES	NO
FREE DoS protection	YES	NO
Service Level Agreement	YES	NO
Graphical User Interface (GUI)	YES	NO
Hardware VLAN segmentation	YES	NO
Multiple IP addresses per server	YES	NO
Standard server images	YES	NO
Volume discounts	YES	NO
Private IP addresses on separate VLAN	YES	NO

There are more comparisons tables on the blog entry linked above.

The Virtual Machine & Virtual Appliance Library | JumpBox Inc.

JumpBox Inc. offers a collection of easy to use virtual appliances for Open Source software. Each JumpBox is focused on a single task (or single application) and is carefully crafted to capture the best practices for how the software should be implemented. The goal is to save you time and allow you to get more done with less effort.

Better prepared, sorted and categorized than the overflowing VMWare Virtual Appliances directory, but not all appliances are available without buying their $200 yearly subscription.

A short Cloud Hosting Link List

Amazon EC2

• The “mother of all clouds” (Amazon was the first to offer these services and apparently has the most servers)
• Barely usable without an interface like http://www.rightscale.com
• No monthly minimum
• Cloud hosting of specialized Linuxes (no native Windows)
• More: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011
• First Impression after setting up a system: Looks like the best solution for Linux hosting, great control panel (I mean rightscale, of course), easy to use, virtual server runs solid

GoGrid (US, San Francisco, servepath subsidiary)

• Cloud Hosting of Linux and Windows
• No monthly minimum
• More: http://www.gogrid.com/
• First Impression after setting up a system: Looks like the best solution for Windows hosting, great control panel, easy to use, virtual server runs solid

Flexiscale (UK)

• Cloud Hosting of Linux and Windows
• No monthly minimum
• More: http://www.flexiscale.com
• First Impression after setting up a system: Webinterface looks and feels “old style” and sluggish. Starting my first server failed. My support ticket was solved 17h later with the manual start by their team.

ElasticHosts (UK)

• Will start in August
• Minimum Pound 29 per month
• Linux, Windows
• More: http://www.elastichosts.com

Mosso (US, Rackspace subsidiary)

• Cloud hosting of various web based platforms (php, ASP etc)
• No “real” virtual machines, no non-web custom software
• More: http://www.mosso.com

Joyent (US)

• Cloud hosting focused on Rails (running on Solaris)
• More: http://joyent.com

[ added July 30th 2008 ]

AppNexus (US)

• Cloud hosting focused on larger customers (Linux and Windows)
• Quote from an email from AppNexus: “We are focused on larger customers than GoGrid and flexiscale. We do have some small customers that only have a few servers in our cloud, but most of our customers spend $5 to $10,000 with us each month.“
• First Impression: None yet.
• More: http://www.appnexus.com

GoGrid :: Scalable Load-Balanced Windows and Linux Cloud-Server Hosting

GoGrid is the world’s first multi-server control panel that enables you to deploy and manage load-balanced cloud servers in just minutes.

It took me less than 15 minutes to create a Windows 2003 Server and install our PRTG Network Monitor software on it to create an offsite monitoring system for our company. Daily costs seems to be between a dollar or two for our app (a permanently running monitoring system).

Create scalable web applications on Amazon EC2 — RightScale

RightScale‘s automated cloud computing management system helps you create scalable web applications that run on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. The RightScale Dashboard makes it easy to setup, launch, and monitor all of your EC2 and AWS activities.