If you have upgraded from the Apple Safari version 2.0 web browser to 3.0 here are two quick tips that developers and Q&A folks might find useful. The first tip is to turn on the built-in Web Developers Kit which is similar to the Firefox Firebug plug-in. Once you activate it (instructions are below) you can launch it by right clicking the browser window and selecting “Inspect Element.” The other tip changes the page loading progress bar (the standard filling of the address bar from left to write in blue) to a simple pie chart that fills clockwise indicating page load completion. If you wish to deactivate either of these features you can use the same instructions replacing the “-bool true” with “-bool false”

Finder->Applications->Utilities->Terminal
 
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugUsePieProgressIndicator -bool true
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true

I’ve recently been working on performance tuning a set of application servers for optimal performance of a high volume website. YSlow is a Firefox Add-on that works in conjunction with the Firebug add-on that is intended to help you analyze and understand performance based on Yahoo.com’s rules of “High Performance Websites.”

If you work with the YSlow tool in a development environment you likely aren’t going to be using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Akamai or Limelight Networks. Thus, you get a lower optimization score when testing. This can obviously be misleading, and there is a work around documented in Yahoo’s YSlow FAQ. The problem is that the documentation explains the work around must be configured via: “Go to about:config in Firefox. You’ll see the current list of preferences.” The issue/confusion is that many people don’t realize that “about:config” isn’t an option of your browser preferences, or preferences of your plug-ins. You must type “about:config” into the address bar of your browser to pull up these configuration parameters.

The YSlow plug-in itself is very useful. However, the documentation seems a bit lacking so hopefully I am able to save others who attempt to configure it some valuable time.

I will be doing two presentations the second week of January. The first one will be Jan. 9th in El Segundo for the Los Angeles Java User Group (LAJUG) and the second one will be Jan 11th in Irvine for the Orange County Java User Group (OCJUG). Both presentations will be on the topic of Groovy and Grails and the experience of using emerging technologies in a “Web 2.0″ Startup.

So, It’s not the greatest source of information in the world, but its definitely a resource. If you are or have been working on a highly scalable project as I have I’d suggest a visit to HighScalability.com. There are some real world examples of web/server architectures for large commonly known sites such as Amazon, Digg, YouTube and so forth. It’s hard to say how accurate the information is, but its always nice to know what others are up too. I’m from the school of each problem has its own solution, but if you are in the field visit the site, read a few pages and share your thoughts.