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This week the big news is Apple's new Safari browser. Based on Konquerer's KHTML, the Safari beta is at least 40% faster than competing browsers in rendering HTML and executing JavaScript. Of course the beta has some CSS rendering bugs, which the developers are hard at work ironing out. Read the Safari roundup later in this issue. In other voices Jakob finds an impressive ROI for usability, and Webword reviews "The Elements of User Experience."
Speaking of books... Your humble editor has finally written one, titled "Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization" from New Riders. As the name implies this book shows you how to speed up your site to avoid the slow-loading blues. Our first exclusive excerpt on speeding up JavaScript launched on Wednesday:
http://www.webreference.com/programming/optimize/speedup/
with more on the way.
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| 1. OTHER VOICES: | |
| 2. NET NEWS: | |
Like what you see? Spread the word! Feel free to send a copy of this newsletter to your friends and colleagues, and while you're at it, snap a link to WebReference.com.
| 1. OTHER VOICES: | Return on Investment for Usability Book Review: The Elements of User Experience Who Had the Worst User Experience? |
Return on Investment for Usability
The average cost of usability is 10% of each project's budget.
Following a usability redesign, web sites increase usability by
135% on average.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030107.html
Useit.com, Jan. 7, 2003
Book Review: The Elements of User Experience
"I wish that this book and the diagram upon which it is based
were available when I first attempted the design of user
experiences. It could have saved me from false starts, sub-optimal
choices, and other hard-won lessons, and would have made it much
easier for me to communicate my ideas to my fellow team members
and to the managers for whom I worked."
http://webword.com/moving/garrettreview.html
Webword.com, Jan. 8, 2003
Who Had the Worst User Experience?
Big brands, big boo-boos. Lessons learned from user experience
shortcomings at Amazon, NBC, and Sony.
http://www.clickz.com/crm/crm_strat/article.php/1566251
Clickz.com, Jan. 9, 2003
| 2. NET NEWS: | Apple Launches New Browser at Macworld Overture Gleeful Over Yahoo!-Inktomi Deal |
Apple Launches New Browser at Macworld
Apple's Steve Jobs announced a number of new products at this week's Macworld in San Francisco. Safari, a fast new web browser, is Apple's browsing solution for Mac OS 10.2x users. The Safari beta is based on the open source Konquerer project. Apple claims Safari is at least 40% faster than other browsers in HTML rendering speed and JavaScript execution speed. However, early reports indicate slower Flash ActionScript frame rates (which the developer's claim they've now fixed), and some rendering peculiarities. While Safari supports many standards, Mark Pilgrim found a number of Safari CSS rendering bugs.
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/01/07.html#safari_review
Safari can also confuse some browser sniffers, with its new user agent string of:
Netscape 5.0 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/48 (like Gecko) Safari/48
Dave Hyatt, one of the Safari developers, explains why Apple adopted this approach for DHTML script compatibility:
http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/2003_01_05_mozillian_archive.html
Dave Hyatt goes onto outline what standards Safari supports:
"KHTML supports much of DOM level 2 and CSS2, including the DOM level 2 event model (e.g., mutation events too!) and rich selector syntax (even a little bit of CSS3 selectors). In addition we have added and fixed CSS support in a number of key areas, including partial support for min/max-width, better support for z-index (including support for auto z-indices), and better support for the CSS white-space property."
Apple's quick response to these beta reports is heartening. Despite these beta bugs Safari set a record for one-day downloads at Apple.com. Speed sells.
http://www.apple.com/
http://www.zeldman.com/
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/kdeqt/kde3arch/khtml/
http://www.NewsFactor.com/perl/story/20409.html
News Factor Network, Jan. 8, 2003
Overture Gleeful Over Yahoo!-Inktomi Deal
Having notched a series of recent wins against Google for paid
listings contracts, Overture was pleased to learn its rival might
soon feel even more pressure.
http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/1566971
Internetnews.com, Jan. 9, 2003
That's it for this Thursday, see you next time.
Andrew King
Newsletter Editor, WebReference.com
aking at jupitermedia dot com
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Created: January 9, 2003
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