This is a cool online tool - Preloaders. It generates preloaders for websites and applications from ready-made stencils using user entered parameters (colors, size). If you’ve been wasting time trying to insert a preloader into a web app, and just couldn’t make it look right, this is a great way to avoid frustration, and they look pretty cool too.

It’s done in AJAX, there are four categories of animations to choose from, and you can even control animation speed. I especially like the drop down preloader picker in which you actually see the offered animated examples.

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So, Live Search is availiable on Facebook. What does that mean from a search visibility perspective? Even though Live Search has a very small take on the search market, this development will bring a lot of search users their way. With over a hundred million users, Facebook represents a great resource for Live Search. Showing organic results within Facebook is certainly going to have an impact on Live Search’s overall performance.

Let’s take for example the UK user base on Facebook, which is about 8.3 million active users per month. If you’re a UK company, looking to show up in organic search results, or sponsored search results, this is a great chance to get exposure to a concentrated audience.

Let’s say the usage rate for web search stabilizes at about 10% of Facebook users, projected on UK users, that’s about 830K active search users per month. If we factor in the percentage take of particular search patterns, we’d get the number of potential visitors to our UK based site. Sounds like a small number, but when you think about it tens of thousands of potential visitors who’d be searching for targeted search patterns is a significant source of visits, and with a moderate to significant probability of conversion. If a company offers products or services globally, the numbers escalate dramatically.

Question is whether Facebook users will indeed adopt Live Search based results on FB as their primary source for search needs, at least if they spend a lot of time on Facebook. If that proves to be the case, then Microsoft may just have found a way to increase their presence on the search market, even if by just a little bit. It will be interesting to see whether organic resutls and sponsored results get higher conversion when shown on Facebook. It’s time for testing, and I have a feeling some interesting results are going to show up.

Also see these posts:
Facebook blog
Livesearch blog

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JQuery, probably one of the best libraries for JavaScript development, is being adopted by Microsoft and Nokia.

Microsoft is going to include JQuery in the future versions of its Visual Studio developer tools. According to C|NET News, the library will continue to adhere to the MIT license. On the other hand, Nokia will be adopting JQuery for use within their WebKit based Web Run-time, a simplified browser rendering engine that makes application development a lot easier.

Both companies will continue to contribute to JQuery through patches, bug reports, and will not actually change the library for implementation within their products.

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Finally got some time to post this. I’ve been using Chrome for about two weeks, so here are my observations (subjective, yes).

First of all, it is very fast. It loads faster, pages load faster (when burdened with lots of JS), things simply work faster. Great, but there are glitches and plenty of them:

- when bookmarks bar is disabled I can’t access my own bookmarks any other way except to re-enable the bar again
- first exploit? (via Dave Naylor’s site)
- erratic behavior especially when quickly closing a few tabs; page goes blank, even though previously loaded the content at the URL given in the address bar; once clicked on the address bar, page loads again
- opening multiple tabs can cause it to freeze temporarily (5 tabs seem to do it for me)
- appears to be faster, but mostly on applications that are JS intensive; not that much difference on “normal” pages
- browser tab switching hangs for a while current tab is still loading (similar to FF behavior)
- mouse scrolling and click-scrolling doesn’t work occasionally, while page is loading (cause probably similar to tab switching behavior)

Then there are page layout rendering differences (mostly regarding CSS), like here (on one of the sites I frequently visit):

These guys found a rendering difference in WordPress 2.6.

Security issues are unavoidable, and Chrome is not immune to them it seems.

Here are a couple of “official” resources, in case you didn’t catch all the introductory info about the new browser initially:

Google Chrome Forum
Google Chrome Developers
Google Chrome Features

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It’s amazing what can be done with SVG and VML. Raphaël is a great example of what can be done with graphics in modern browsers. It’s a JavaScript library that enables users to view vector graphics in their browsers, using SVG and VML as base for graphics creation. This way, every created object is a DOM object which means events and handlers can be attached to them, and the objects themselves modified. Right now the library supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+, which pretty much covers the largest portion of internet users, except for Google Chrome (already number 4 browser in the world) which has a little trouble rendering the effects (for example Text Rotation). Nevertheless, a great advancement in web graphics.

They’ve got some very cool demos so check them out - Reflection, Image Rotation, Text Rotation (this doesn’t work very well in Google Chrome).

[Via: SitePoint]

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Google is releasing its browser Google Chrome to the public. Starting today, the browser should be available in more than 100 countries. Its an early launch, but like they pointed out on the official G blog - they like to “launch early and iterate.”

The download should be available from this address.

Google has released a document explaining the Chrome browser from top to bottom, and they’ve done it, in their fashion, through a cartoon slide show, which is available here. Basically, among other things, it’s about tabs as separate processes which enables the browser to do parallel processing, reducing memory consumption, and improving reliability of the browser, which is especially important during time, money or communication sensitive activities on the web (browser failure during online payment, or email editing, etc). The interface is meant to be as simple as possible. What’s also interesting is the approach Google has taken on testing the new browser against different pages and content available on the web. Basically, they are using their own search index to access pages that are ranked well, which should produce test results against content that is most viewed by web users everywhere. Chrome will make use of Gears to give it local storage capabilities. The rendering engine used in Chrome is Webkit, and there is advanced support for JavaScript, through the so called V8 Java Virtual Machine.

There is much more about it, so take a look at the Chrome cartoon.

It will be interesting to see how many people will actually use Chrome in the months to come. Apart from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (ok, and Safari), it’s good news another browser is available as an alternative, possibly with improvements that will make web browsing a better experience. Google certainly has a large user base, so I expect many people will download and use the new browser. Regarding standards, I expect at least a FF level of standards compliance, if not better.

Update: screenshots and demo videos on TechCrunch.

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Another great idea from Mozilla Labs (Aza Raskin, to be more precise). Like the Aurora I posted about a couple of weeks ago, this is also a nice vision of what web-browsing should be all about. Check it out in the video below:

I like the idea of having everything available through a few clicks in the browser. The fact that we’d stay within the same application interface is good, as I find jumping from window to window tiresome sometimes, so the idea scores big points right there. If you prefer to read, here’s an in-depth blog post about Ubiquity that goes into the details of what the concept is all about and how it works.

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Adaptive Path have taken things pretty far with their new initiative for designing the new browsing experience for the users of tomorrow. Aurora is indeed a magnicent site on the web horizon. The whole thing is still just a concept, being developed in association with Mozilla Labs, but the video they released, the first in a series dealing with Aurora, is quite an interesting vision of the future. The movie “Johnny Mnemonic” comes to mind, when Keanu Reeves searches for the sent fax from Japan, on a VR terminal in a computer shop in New York (okay, I like SciFi, what can I do).

Basically, Aurora allows for a browsing experience where information is organized according to time and usage. The less you use something or the older it is, the farther “downwards” it lives on the Z axis (perpendicular to screen). The words “out of sight, out of mind” truly have a literal meaning here. The interface looks very interesting, and I especially like the little touch device in the end, which helps you take the information you need or like with you.

Anyway, here’s the video:

Key components of Aurora project (from official site):

- Natural interaction: Spatial, visual, and physical engagement with the Web
- Continuity: Seamless, consistent Web and browser experience across devices
- Multi-user applications: The Web as a space for collaboration, sharing, and remixing
- Context awareness: Products that know where you are and what you’re doing, both physically and virtually

Who knows what it will eventually be like, when the time comes to introduce it as a product, but so far it’s looking very interesting.

[Via: TechCrunch]

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Cuil has been live (or down apparently) for days now. While I immediately formed an opinion about the interface and result presentation, I wanted to keep using it for my own day-to-day searches in order to get a more complete picture about its search value.

Basically, I expected a lot more from all the information I read about it prior to launch. The results are presented in a grid, which would be ok (easier to scan results) except that the grid is actually a set of columns which resemble a newspaper page much more than an organized set of information. Since grid blocks are not the same size, quick scanning is more difficult, as you have to scroll up and down to see the titles and descriptions. Furthermore, since the results are organized in two dimensions, the usual linear approach of ranking results is absent, so I expect users to have a little trouble determining which result is deemed more relevant compared to others, although this is not necessarily bad.

That aside, they kept the right margin space for advertising options, which aren’t there and probably won’t be for a while. This I think was a bit too quick. Why not offer more results on the page, and introduce paid results later? Since the results are two-dimensional, there is no clear way to distinguish a result that ranks better, and is therefore a desired position over other results. Google (and the rest) give linear results based on ranking priority, so the vertical component is much more important for ranking. Maybe a bit too soon to beyond this, since Cuil has only just started and is probably going to experiment a lot (hence the 2/3 column kayout option in bottom left of the screen).

The “Explore by Category” that appear for certain queries are neat, and actually do return interesting links towards content/results that may help me drill down further on a topic. But that’s pretty much in vain, since many of the queries I performed were answered with “no results found”, which wouldn’t be very strange, if it wasn’t for the fact that they boast billions of pages in the index (120+ billion!). Long tail search doesn’t seem to work, and basically if you type in more than 2-3 words, you’ll get scarce results if at all, but I am seeing improvements regarding this over time. Again, something that will probably change over time, simply too early for a more firm opinion. Sometimes, Cuil reports incorrect number of results compared to what you’re shown - for example “pamp for uiq symbian” returned 3 results, but showed only 2. Another bug?

Some of the queries returned results in multiple languages - for example French and English - all on the same page, side by side. I speak a few languages but if you are researching something, one language is really enough. It would be better if the application offered a choice to see results in other languages, if for example I didn’t find anything useful in English. This, however, didn’t happen too often, so I guess this was either a bug, or an experiment.

Notably, there is a clear absence of rich media results, or at least I didn’t get any, but I’m sure this will also change in the future.

Then there are numerous reports about the service being down due to overload. I haven’t experienced their down time intervals, but have frequently come upon the “no results found” scenario already mentioned. This is probably a start-up fluke, so I don’t expect this to happen too often.

Cuil could be an interesting new search option, especially since the people behind it certainly have the necessary experience and knowledge. I expect it to develop over the next months, and the real picture about its performance compared to ther search engines will be more complete then.

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I have just read the BrowseRank document released by Microsoft regarding their work on a new alternative to PageRank and TrustRank.

Basically, the whole ranking algorithm comes down to giving more value to visitor behavior, as opposed to simply counting and valuating the number of links pointing towards a web page. Visitor clicks and time spent on a web page are key factors in determining its ranking potential.

The document explains the mathematical theories behind BrowseRank, and although this is more useful for search engineers, I got a pretty good picture of where they are going with this. The point is this is just the beginning, and there is a lot more work that’s going to happen before BrowseRank gains real validity.

Since it relies on recording user behavior, there are small obstacles in front of BrowseRank.

First of all there is the privacy issue (users have to opt-in for data to be gathered), and although their document states they used data from millions of visitors who opted in for the purpose of research, the question remains whether BrowseRank can actually work in the long term if it has to rely on users opting in to be tracked all the time. Not that we are not tracked already without permission by numerous web sites already, but that’s another story. I suppose social networking data can also be used to this effect (social bookmarking perhaps), but the other dimension is still critical - how will they manage to record time spent on pages in an easy and unobtrusive way?

What the document also mentions is that BrowseRank is a more valid measure of a page’s importance since it takes into account clicks and time spent on a page, and is thus more immune to manipulation techniques already present with PageRank. It is believed that a person will not click to a page and spend time there unless there is good content and their need for information has been answered. I think there is room for manipulation here as well, since you can theoretically engage an army of users to use a search engine, click on a specified result and go spend some time there, and gather “points” for a particular page to “help” it rank better for related search queries. Naturally, this is a very naive scenario, but quite plausible.

Nevertheless, BrowseRank is an interesting evolution of search, and is quite welcome in my opinion. Is it going to give Microsoft (Live Search) the edge to ride the same waves with Google and Yahoo? Well, I am just not sure. I think it’s going to take a lot more than that.

A really independent and safe way to rank content on the internet has yet to be found. Basically, if it involves people and their behavior, it’s going to be open to manipulation. Maybe we’ll get there some day, but not just yet… Anyway, my two cents.

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