Speed – or to be more precise the lack of it – is one of the major annoyances and a main reason for users to not come back. So it is in your own best interest to reach the best possible speed.

I found a very extensive list of website optimization techniques which I wanted to share with you (and to keep a link for future references). I can’t really say that by now I even follow half the list of improvements but I will certainly try to make the next app better than the one before – as always.

Link: www.chazzuka.com: Website Optimization Best Practices, speed up your website load

Now Adobe’s looking for developers using linux to test a new release and report bugs and other problems with the new package. To check if you’re a fit for this job Adobe has outlined a few key questions you have to check before applying for the job.

If you are interested and applying you have all the best wishes from me.

Link: Adobe AIR on Linux: Call for Pre-Release Users

The team of PostgreSQL wants a redesign of their homepage and started a contest to find the new look. If you are interested to win the 2000$-prize you should visit the page and get involved.

Good luck!

Link: PostgreSQL: News: PostgreSQL.org Website Design Contest

So these tips might become in handy if you have to design your next webapp or if you have to make another site more attractive for users (i.e. redesign/relaunch).

Enjoy.

Link: Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox.

With this in mind you might tend to avoid any newer techniques, features or elements just to be on the safe side. But this also keeps you from using shortcuts and often results in worse quality.

If you planning to use a newer feature it might help if you knew which users won’t be able to enjoy your work to the full extend. To help everyone with this problem Alexis Deveria compiled a long list of the features and how are they supported by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. This list is even searchable and customizable to your needs (e.g. exclude browsers).

I can’t thank him enough for going through all that trouble finding these information and I am certain that this list will have a top spot in my future bookmarks and maybe in your’s too.

Link: When can I use… – a huge, searchable list of browser capabilities

For those of you who are already in the business with Silverlight Tim Heuer collected a list of controls useable for Silverlight. The list seems to be very long but he added some comments to help you find your way through it. The user comments below contain additional tips, too.

So, if you ever are afraid of losing control in your Silverlight app – Tim is the man to visit

Link: A comprehensive list to Silverlight Controls for developers

You might remember sentences like “But it worked yesterday!” or “Why the hell did I change that and when?” which were common companions when I looked at code I wrote a while back.

To avoid situations like this, a version control system could be a valid solution with more benefits than just less confusion.

Ernie Leseberg made the effort to collect most of the reasons I could think of on why to use a VCS with a small team or even if you are working alone.

If you don’t use a VCS yet give the article below a read and hopefully you will change your mind.

Link: Why use version control for solo developers or small teams

Note: The article mentioned here is in German. Sorry if you can’t read it. Maybe this article could be a start for you though.

Link: Code-Inside Blog: HowTo: Einstieg in “Cloud-Computing”

Maybe it’ll help you through the hard time figuring out the basics or solving specific issues.

Link: Zend Framework Book: Surviving The Deep End.

Today in Washington, DC, experts from more than 30 US and international cyber security organizations jointly released the consensus list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors that lead to security bugs and that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime. Shockingly, most of these errors are not well understood by programmers; their avoidance is not widely taught by computer science programs; and their presence is frequently not tested by organizations developing software for sale.

The impact of these errors is far reaching. Just two of them led to more than 1.5 million web site security breaches during 2008 – and those breaches cascaded onto the computers of people who visited those web sites, turning their computers into zombies.

[...much more...]

If you are a programmer and have the urge to make a perfect application you have to admit that this excerpt teases you. You want to know if you are better than these guys who messed up epically.

Let’s see, which errors could you have made?

Well, of course, we have the three regulars SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting and OS Command Injection. These three are still very common although there are a various number of best practises available to prevent them.

So if you have one of these in your application you would be in good company but you will have ignored some basic rules like “Don’t trust user input!“.

Ok, moving on. What else is there password- and cryptographie-related errors are often a source of fun or blank horror. There are the ones where you should have watched the newspages like “Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm“, things you should know to avoid like “Hard-Coded Password” and “Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security” and things you could have tested properly like “Execution with Unnecessary Privileges” or “Improper Access Control (Authorization)“.

I know, i know – you would have done (or not done) all these things if you just had enough time for it. Well, I know the clients and I know that they don’t have the feeling for tasks like “testing”. They can’t possibly understand why such a task is taking so much time. But as reality shows it is wise to invest a big chunk of your development time into it.

So it is your tasks to make sure the client (or your boss for that matter) understands the need for testing and making “unnecessarry” code for checking user input etc. It is in both his/her interest and yours to produce an application holding up against real world scenarios and bored high school kids.

Link: SANS Institute – CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors.