Windows XP tips

Get rid of drab arrows
Tired of looking at the default Windows mouse pointer? Go to Start, click on Control Panel, select Mouse. Click on the Pointers tab. Choose a scheme from the Scheme area. Check the schemes and the kind of pointers they include. Select the one you like and click on OK to bring it into effect.

Super fast shutdown
Normal shutdown can take a lot of time. More so, if you have programs or background services open on your system. To shut down quickly, save all your open documents, open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete, press Shut Down from the menu and choose Turn Off.

Create personalized icons
Creating your own icons in Windows XP is a breeze. Here's how to go about it.

Create an image first which you can use as an icon. Click Start, click All Programs , go to Accessories, and then click Paint. On the Image menu, click Attributes. Type 32 , 42 or 62 for both the Width and Height of the document, selecting Pixels under the Units. Click OK to create a new icon.

Have fun adding type, colour etc, to your image. You can also shrink an image to create an icon. Save the image by opening the File menu and clicking on Save As.

Scroll the `Save in' box to select the location where you want your icon to be saved. Give your icon a name followed by .ico (without the quotes), Now scroll down the `Save as' type box and select 24.bit Bitmap. Click Save.

Now create a new folder, right-click on the folder, click Properties, go to Customize and click on Change Icon. Browse and select the icon you have just created and select OK. You have a folder icon just created all by yourself.

Block websites
It's very simple to block out certain websites that you do not want to open up on your computer: Click the Start button and select Run. Type the following: c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Windows might ask you which program should be used to open this application. Click on Wordpad.

It will open up a new window on your screen showing some text information. At the end of the last line of the file, press the Enter key. Type 127.0.0.1 and the name of the website you want to block.

For example: 127.0.0.1 knowiz.com

Save the file. The websites that you have put in this list will not open up on your system.

In case you want to open them, go back to the text file using the same commands and remove the names you have typed. Save the file.

Making menu text larger
When you change your screen resolution to a higher setting, the menu becomes too small to read. You can fix this, while retaining the new resolution. Right click on the desktop and click Properties. Click on the Appearances tab and click on Large Fonts or Extra Large Fonts to make the menu items readable. If you don’t like the color scheme of the menus and icons, you can click on the Color scheme drop down menu and chose any other. Similarly click on Effects to get a more snazzy Windows interface. Not satisfied? Explore the Advanced button here and you can have your own personalized Windows interface.

Reach Run quickly
Here’s a quicker way to reach the Run dialog box, if you don’t want to go through the Start menu. Just hit the Windows key + R.

Looking for a better screen font display?
Enable ClearType, Microsoft’s trademark font display technology, for a drastic improvement in screen font rendering. Right-click anywhere on your desktop. Now select Properties. Under the Appearance tab, click Effects. Check the box for Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts, and in the drop-down menu, select ClearType. Press OK, and apply the change.

Change your mouse pointer scheme
Bored of the same old arrow? To change your mouse pointer scheme, in the Control Panel, select Mouse and go to the Pointers tab. Scroll through the available schemes, pick one that you like and click Apply.

Check that your Windows Firewall is turned on
To make sure your Windows Firewall hasn’t been accidentally disabled, go to your Control Panel and click Windows Firewall. Make sure the radio button for On (recommended) is selected. Add exceptions to your Firewall by going to the Exceptions tab and adding the programs that you think should have access to the Internet to the list of exceptions.

Instantly activate your screensaver
In XP, you can put a short cut of your favourite screensaver on your desktop to instantly start your screen saver. Here’s how. Go to Start on your desktop and click on Search. In the help box, click on All files and folders. and then type in *.scr. Select your screen saver file and right click. Then select Send To, and then Desktop.

Put your Monitor to sleep
Right click on the desktop and click on Properties. In the dialog box that appears, click on the Screen Saver tab. Click on Power and in the dialog box that appears click on the Turn off Monitor list. Select a time to automatically after which the monitor will be turned off. Click OK twice and you’re set.

Using your Windows Key
Your Windows key can be used to for many short cuts. If you want to open your Windows Explorer quickly just press your Windows key and E. If you want to open the Run dialog box, just press the Windows key and R. If you want to open your search dialog box, press your Windows key and F.

Instantly lock your PC
If you have password protected your Windows, here is a quick way to lock it. Press the Windows key and L together.

Change the look of folder icons
If you don’t like the look of the folder icons on your desktop, you can change them. Right click on the folder, select Properties. Click on the Customize tab, and under the Folder icons area, click on the Change Icons button. Select the icon of your choice and select OK.

Minimize a Window to your taskbar
If you’re tired of using the mouse over and over again to minimize a window, here’s a handy tip. To minimize a window using just the keyboard, press Alt, Spacebar and N together.

Display album art in your music folder thumbnails
If your music files are in WMA format, XP automatically picks up the album art and displays it, both in the folder thumbnail as well as in the Windows Media Player display. If your files are in MP3 format, you can download the album art from the Internet and then customize each folder to display it. But this takes a lot of time. A faster way around is to save each image as ‘folder.jpg’ and put it in the correct folder. Once you do this, XP will pick up that image and use it as the thumbnail for the folder, and also use the image to display in Windows Media Player while playing songs from the album.

How to stop Windows Media Player from accessing your information
You may be uncomfortable with the idea of Windows Media Player collecting your information and sending it to various websites. You can stop this. Go to the Tools menu of Windows Media Player. Select Options and then go to the Player tab. Look for the check box that says "Allow Internet sites to uniquely identify your player?" and make sure it is not selected.

Opening folders with a single click
If you’d rather not have to double-click everything to open it, here’s the way out. Go to My Computer, and select Options in the Tools menu. Choose Folder options. In the dialog box that opens, select the check box that says ‘Single-click to open an item (point to select)’, and click OK.

Making web pages available offline
You may occasionally need to refer to a website, and you may not be able to connect to the Internet at the time. An easy way out of the situation is to go to the Favourites tab in Internet Explorer, and click Add to Favourites. In the dialog box that is displayed, select the Make available offline check box, and press OK.

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Recycle your computer

When new software or a new PC model hits the market, the urge to upgrade is palpable. Estimates suggest that most PC owners upgrade to a new computer within three to four years, hardly considering the fact that the old PC has as much computing power as before, and is far away from its end of life.

Estimates also show that manufacturing one PC requires about 240 kg fossil fuels, 1.8 tonnes of materials, 22 kg chemicals and about 1,500 liters of water. That’s one of the most environmental-resource-intensive production processes.

What’s more, disposing of a computer, without causing harm to the environment or to those involved in the disposal process, is a very expensive job. A computer is made of several precious metals and chemicals. Many of its components contain toxic substances and carcinogens, such as cadmium, lead, chromium, flame-retardants and mercury. Unsafe methods of disposing of computer components include landfills, burning to extract metals such as copper from printed circuit boards, or breaking and throwing components such as CRT monitors. In all these methods, toxins are released into the air, soil, and groundwater.

Considering the cost to the environment of both producing and disposing of computers, it makes complete sense to use each computer to its optimum, and to think of destroying it only when it is really useless.

A great way to do this is to encourage reuse and to put in place recycling processes for safe and effective disposal of e-waste. In parallel, production processes need to be redesigned to reduce environmental costs.

Several Western countries export their e-waste to countries in Asia, because the labor and cost of recycling is lower. Though this is a profitable activity and there are several licensed companies that recycle computers and their components; there are also many other companies who are not authorized, and which subject their workers to very hazardous environments while recycling computer parts.

Many leading computer-manufacturing firms accept all parts of PCs for recycling at a much lower cost. Countries like China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan have taken the responsibility to recover and recycle e-waste. India, however, lags far behind in this area.

To reduce the environmental cost of computers, they should be recycled only when there is no further use for them. Computers that are displaced due to upgrades often have more than enough computing power and can be used for several years. Such PCs can be donated to government-aided schools or institutions, to help impart computer skills and IT literacy to students, who wouldn’t be able to learn it otherwise. Such initiatives require the support of people and corporates, without which the problem of e-waste cannot be solved.

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For safer browsing

The main responsibility for online security lies with your browser. It’s the browser’s security and privacy settings that keep malicious code such as Trojans or spyware out, warn you when you visit potentially unsafe websites or download content from a suspicious source, and protect you from online fraud and identity theft.

By default, Internet Explorer (IE) comes preset with security levels that are good for most browsing and online transactions. But you can also tweak these settings if you require a higher security level. What’s more, you can assign a slightly low security level to websites that you trust and more stringent security for those that you visit for the first time. Similarly, you can work out the privacy settings that suit your browsing needs.

Changing security settings

The default security settings in IE block the entry of malicious code and also prevent websites from installing add-ons or other programs on your computer without your knowledge.

To view these settings for IE6, open IE, go to Tools > Internet Options, and click the Security tab. You will see four zones here—Internet, local intranet, trusted sites, and restricted sites—each of which has a default security setting assigned. The default level for the Internet zone, which includes all the websites that you browse, is Medium. Click Custom Level to see specific security settings. It is advisable to use at least this level of security for browsing. You can move the slider on the Security tab to set a higher level of security, for instance, if you plan to visit some lesser known sites for the first time.

If your machine is connected to an intranet where you view local sites, you may want to assign a lower security level. Click Local Intranet and then Default Level to set the security to Medium-Low. Otherwise, click Custom Level to set your own security preferences.

As a Netizen, you will have visited certain sites that you trust implicitly—sites that can cause no potential harm to your computer. If you are extremely sure of this, you can add these sites to the Trusted Sites zone and set a lower security level for them. To add sites, the first step is to get the exact URL—you can do this by opening the site in IE and copying (CTRL+C) the URL from the address bar. Then, go to Tools > Internet Options. Click the Security tab, click Trusted Sites and then click Sites. Paste (CTRL +V) the URL in the box titles ‘Add this Web Site to this zone’ and click Add. If you add sites whose URLs begin with http: and not https:, uncheck the check box against ‘Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone.’ However, be very sure that the site you’re adding is trustworthy. Click OK when you’re done. Now, you can customize the level of security for the Trusted Sites zone by clicking Custom Level. For instance, you could disable alerts when you download something from a trusted site.

Changing privacy settings

These deal with blocking cookies and the Pop-Up Blocker.

Cookies are used by websites to gather some information about you, mainly for the purpose of providing you a personalized and consistent experience whenever you visit that website again. For instance, shopping sites use cookies to store items in your shopping cart as you visit various sections of the website. Some cookies could help you go to a site directly, without having to sign in each time. However, some cookies are harmful, and could be used to track your online behavior for malicious purposes.

Settings for this are available by clicking the Privacy tab in Tools > Internet Options.

It’s not a good idea to block all cookies, because that may prevent some sites from functioning properly on your machine. The default setting in IE is Medium here, which you can increase to Medium-High by using the slider. For even more safety, you could select to block all cookies; when you visit websites that attempt to use cookies, you will be alerted and you can select to accept cookies from websites that you trust. A word of caution here: first-party cookies (those used by the website that you visit) are usually safer than third-party cookies (those used by banner or pop-up ads on the website).

Another way of managing cookies is to select sites from which you want to block or allow cookies at all times. For this, click Sites in the Privacy tab, and enter the URLs of the concerned sites.

The Pop-Up Blocker is a strong safety measure for unknown sites, so it should not be turned off completely. To tweak its settings, click Settings under Pop-Up Blocker in the Privacy tab. You can change the Filter Level to Low, Medium, or High here. You can also add sites from which you always want to allow pop-ups. Click Apply and OK when you’re done.


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Laptop security guidelines

A laptop epitomizes convenient computer usage. You can carry it along, work on it anywhere and at any time, and connect it to public wireless networks to communicate with your office or home.

The downside of this is the attendant security hazards. Since people travel with their laptops outside office, others can access it; it’s not uncommon for laptops to get stolen either—many companies have lost sensitive information and confidential data this way. Using laptops on public wireless networks gives hackers ample opportunity to break into not only the machine, but also into the corporate network to which the machine is connected. In fact, when a laptop with wireless capabilities is connected to a wired network, it can allow hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in the wireless setup to break into the wired network.

Here are five tips to ensure that your laptop and the data on it don’t fall into the wrong hands.

• Prevent physical access
  As far as possible, you should avoid leaving your machine unattended when you’re outside office. You should also not let anybody use your machine, for however short a period of time, unless it is a co-worker who has legitimate reasons for doing so.
• Guard against spyware
  Spyware is the prime cause of data theft from laptops and corporate networks that are accessed through infected laptops. You should not install any peer-to-peer (P2P) program or shareware on the laptop, as these are known to spread spyware. When you download anything from the Internet, be sure to read the End User License Agreement (EULA) carefully, to ensure that you are not downloading any spyware alongside. Pirated software is a way to get spyware on to your machine – stay away from them.
• Take regular backups
  It is extremely important to take regular backups of the work you do on the laptop. Since the risk of hacker attacks over wireless networks and even physical theft of the laptop is higher, it becomes critical for you to backup the data frequently.
• Use full-disk encryption
  Many encryption utilities, freeware and otherwise, enable you to encrypt the data on your hard drive and even on USB pen drives. Using encryption ensures that even in the worst-case scenario of your laptop getting stolen, the thief cannot access your confidential data.
• Use a firewall
  A firewall, along with anti-virus and anti-spyware software, is very essential to a laptop, because you may be connecting to the Internet via public hot spots, which make your laptop more vulnerable to hacker attacks.

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Tips for new bloggers

To create and retain a loyal readership, give your readers the value they deserve.

Anyone can start a blog. The problem is, with so many people across the globe blogging regularly, why would anyone want to read what you write? Some people write for the pure pleasure of it, or because for them, a blog is the equivalent of a personal diary. And they are content with a small but dedicated readership of fans or followers. But if you are not a celebrity and writing for a global audience, it can be hard to retain your readers’ interest considering the sheer volume of content that is available online. If you do a little research before beginning writing, you are likely to find that someone somewhere has already said what you want to. And at the same time, now that everyone can be published, a lot of poor quality writing is also doing the rounds online.

But there are things you can do to capture and retain the interest of your readers, improve the overall quality of your writing and ensure that your blog does not sink into the vast seas of repetitive, largely unread online content. Here are some basic guidelines to follow.

1. Define your topic
Decide what you want to write about and stick to it. This will give your writing a sense of direction and purpose. Most people will not be interested in the infinitesimally tiny details of your personal life, however interesting your own thoughts may seem to you. If you have multiple interests, create separate blogs to cover each of these, so you can avoid the verbal equivalent of trying to sell a sledgehammer to a watchmaker. Define your bounds from the start and stay strictly within them; also make them unambiguous and easily identifiable to readers.

2. Make sure you have your story straight
To do justice to your readers, you must be up-to-date with all the latest happenings in the field of your interest. When citing figures or quoting someone, don’t just make an empty statement - be sure to credit the source. Your credibility as a consistent blogger can only be built through knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, and not merely through giving the appearance of knowledge and understanding. This can only happen through dedicated study and sustained interest in the subject. When expressing a personal opinion, explain clearly that it is your personal opinion. Other people may go on to quote you, so be fair to them. Make sure your theories really hold water, and that you are not wasting your readers’ time by stating shaky opinions founded on inadequate research.

3. Get to the point
Your readers’ time is precious. Don’t waste it by giving them lengthy, useless introductions. Before you start writing, make sure you have a point, and focus on introducing it as early as you can. Each sentence should be used to focus and drive your central point. Remember, you have a very short span of time before your reader decides that he/she is uninterested in what you are saying and moves on to the next blog. Use that time as well as you can. State your case clearly and quickly and avoid the use of redundant, repetitive words. Steer clear of adjectives and long-winded descriptions - provide facts as far as possible, and let people judge for themselves. Avoid jargon and long words/sentences where simpler ones will suffice. This will let people relate to your writing with greater ease. Make each word count. Also, remember that people across the globe are going to be reading what you write; in terms of content and style, aim for global rather than local.

4. Be original
Give your readers the value they deserve. They don’t need you to reiterate opinions held by masses of people across the world, or rewrite news items faithfully without diverting from the original content of the story. Look for what people will care about and mould your content to build their interest, but don’t forget to add your own voice and personality to the content you publish.

5. Provide visual relief
Avoid large, intimidating, impossible-to-read blocks of text. Use subheads to break up your text, or insert pictures, graphs or quotes. Ensure that every element is informative, relevant and unambiguous in meaning.

6. Encourage dialogue
The concept of blogging revolves around people exchanging ideas. If you don’t allow people to comment, you lose out on the ability to find out about the large variety of alternative opinions out there. Let people come back to you with what they think, and respond to them. Respect your readers’ opinions even if you don’t agree with them.
This will help you to grow and learn as a writer and person.

7. Stick to a schedule
Figure out how much time you can invest in blogging each week/month. Try to post as frequently as you can, but stay realistic when setting expectations. Don’t overcommit and then disappear for weeks at a time. Apologise to your readers each time you come back after an absence.

8. Spellcheck!
Everyone is prone to the occasional embarrassing typo, and unless you are in the habit of reading your text over several times before you publish, it’s nearly unavoidable. Running a spellcheck before you publish can save you a lot of trouble later.

Happy posting!

MSN

Understanding IP addresses in computers

Internet Protocol or IP addresses are common in today's world of networked computers. That's because every computer connected to a single network has an IP.

An IP address is a number that uniquely identifies a computer on a network. Every computer that's connected to a network, whether that network is the Internet or a private home or office network, has a unique IP address.

IP addresses consist of four sets of numbers, with each set separated by a period (dot), such as 192.168.100.111. Every domain name, such as www. microsoft.com, maps to a particular IP address.

IP addresses are meted out either as static or dynamic. A static IP address never changes. It's the type used by most major websites. A dynamic IP address is automatically assigned to a computer when you log on to a network. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) assign dynamic IP addresses to their customers.

There are two types of IP addresses, internal and external.

An internal IP address is also typically referred to as "non routable". That means that it's an IP address which usually is not exposed to the outside world. Each computer in a home or office network has an internal IP address, and it's that address that you would use to make one computer in an office network, for example, talk to talk to another computer within the same network.

To find your internal IP address, open the Windows Start menu, and select Run. On Windows Vista, simply press Windows Key-R. The Run dialog box opens. Type "cmd," without the quotation marks, in the Run dialog box, and press Enter. A DOS command prompt opens.

From the command prompt, type "ipconfig," without the quotation marks, and press Enter. In a second, Windows will return a small report labelled "Windows IP Configuration." Note that one of those lines, labelled "IP Address," provides your internal IP address. Write those numbers down. To exit the command window, type "exit," and press Enter.

Note that if your computer is configured to obtain an IP address automatically, as many are, this number could change periodically, especially if you must unplug the network cable and then plug it in to another outlet somewhere in a corporation or your home. Therefore, remember this procedure for retrieving your IP address.

An external IP address has also assigned by your ISP to the computer or router that's connected to the ISP.

An IP address is normally no secret. Websites, your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and others can track your IP address, allowing or forbidding access to certain resources if they wish.

You can hide your IP address, however, by using one of the many so-called cloaking services available on the Internet. Cloaking services use what's known as a proxy server to conceal your identity online by providing you with a temporary fake IP address.

To use a cloaking service, you typically log on to the cloaking site and use a form field to type in the address of the website you'd like to visit. Once you click "go," you're taken to the website through the cloaking service, and your IP address is hidden. It not only disguises your IP but also allows you to determine the level of security you'd like.

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Is your PC crashing? Help is here

Eight simple steps to keep your PC healthy

For most of us now, the PC is our life. It is where we work, conduct financial transactions, listen to music and watch movies and chat with friends online. So what happens when your PC crashes?

The work that you do is now lost. All the information that you stored is gone. Almost everyone who owns a computer has had to face this grim reality at least once in his or her PC-owning life. What can you do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

Follow these steps to make sure that your computer stays healthy:

1. Scan Your Computer Regularly: Using Scandisk to scan your computer every week is extremely important. Scanning corrects errors on the hard disk of your computer.

2. Install Anti Virus: Viruses can wreak havoc on computers. It is among the main causes of system crashes. Installing an anti-virus goes a long way in keeping your PC safe and secure. It is also important to bear in mind that installing an anti virus is not enough, you need to carry out regular anti virus scanning of your computer, and keep the virus definitions updated.

3. Install a Firewall: If you are in the habit of logging on to the Internet regularly, you need to install a firewall. A firewall acts as a barrier preventing any unauthorised intrusion into your computer. It also alerts you if any program is being downloaded onto your computer without your knowledge. A firewall is essential to make sure that your computer is not compromised by spyware or adware. Windows XP and Vista come with their own built in firewall that you just need to turn on.

4. Defrag Your Computer: Defragmentation basically reorganizes your hard disk in a way to make sure your files are stored contiguously. It saves up disk space, improves the performance of your computer and prevents overloading. If you install many programs and uninstall them, or delete files often, you need to defrag the hard disk.

5. Perform Disk Cleanup: Another important thing to do to make sure your PC is running at an optimum level is to perform Disk Cleanup. This deletes the remnants of the files you have already deleted. It also compresses old files. You will be surprised to know how much disk space is freed up by performing a disk cleanup.

6. Download as little from the Internet as possible to prevent malware: Many people download free software from the Net. Many download music illegally from peer to peer sites. A lot of the so-called free software that you download can contain spyware.

7. Uninstall Programs You Don’t Use: Use the Add/Remove in the Control Panel to remove programs that you don’t use anymore. It cleans up disk space and improves the performance of your hard disk.

8. Clean the Computer Regularly: Make sure dust does not accumulate inside your computer. Clean your computer once a month with a dry cloth. Also make sure that your air vent is not facing a wall, as it is important to keep your computer properly ventilated to keep it cool.

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Cellphones greater threat than smoking

This, however, does not mean that smoking is better for health than using cellphones.

A top Australian neurosurgeon of Indian origin says that cell phones use is a greater threat to human health than smoking, which kills 5.4 million people each year. Dr Vini Khurana, a neurosurgeon at the Canberra Hospital, told UK’s Independent newspaper that there is growing evidence that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer.

Dr Khurana says that the cellphone threat is greater because far more people use cellphones than smoke worldwide, some of them starting use at the age of 3 years.

Over 3 billion people use cellphones, which is three times higher than the one billion people who use tobacco. In India, 250 million people use cellphones, second only after US’s 256 million users.

"The threat came from cell phone radiation having the potential to heat the side of the head or thermo-electrically interact with the brain, while Bluetooth devices and unshielded headsets could convert the user’s head into potentially self-harming antenna," said Dr Khurana.

He said that there have been increased reports of brain tumours associated with heavy and prolonged mobile phone use, particularly on the same side as the person’s “preferred” ear for making calls.

"Since cell phones were often a necessity," he says, "people should use them as little as possible and called on the phone industry to make them safer."

The World Health Organisation says that cellphones are safe but admits there are “gaps in knowledge” that need further research about health impact in the longterm. Three large international reviews have investigated and found no conclusive link between use of cell phones and brain cancer, tumours of the brain or leukaemia, and other cancers.

Microsoft's Zune Gets Video Store

Microsoft rolled out a spring update for the Zune this morning--updating the MP3 player's software and social networking site, Zune Social, and rolling out portable Zune cards, store subscriptions, and an all-new video store.

On the software side, Microsoft is offering closer integration between Zune Social and the player's client software. The company is also releasing various other updates that "customers have been asking for through the Zune Forums and other feedback channels," such as auto playlists and meta data editing.

Currently home to some 2 million users, according to Microsoft, Zune Social is also getting a facelift, including new interaction, recommendation, and review features. And Zune Social's Zune Card playlists are now portable, letting users import music recommendations to their own players.

Microsoft is also introducing a subscription element to the music store, letting users download unlimited music for a monthly fee, similar to Rhapsody and Napster. Marketplace is also getting video beginning today, featuring content from providers such as Comedy Central, FUNimation Entertainment, MTV, NBC Universal, , Nickelodeon, Starz Media (including Manga Entertainment), Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and VH1.

Facebook: Pakistan's Favorite Dating Destination

Young Pakistan is increasingly looking for love and companionship through social networking Web site Facebook, according to a Press Trust of India (PTI) report.

Facebook is now the eighth most surfed portal in Pakistan, coming next only to Google and YouTube - in that order, as per Alexa, a US-based research Web site.

In a conservative country where it is still relatively difficult for members of the opposite sex to interact with each other, Facebook does come in handy for scores of youngsters who're increasingly searching for love and friendship through such Web sites.

Meanwhile, the older generation who isn't quite accustomed to these newer and hipper ways of wooing and romancing, cannot but relate to the Facebook phenomenon. In turn they're closely monitoring their children who they think spend too much time Facebooking. Even educational institutions are taking steps to ensure that students don't waste their time on such Web sites. For instance, the prestigious Beaconhouse National University in Lahore has blocked Facebook in its computer labs saying it is a big 'distraction' for students.

Memo to Jerry Yang: How to make Yahoo great again

Now that Yahoo appears to be on its own path, it's time for the company to find in its past what could again make it great.

Contrary to popular opinion, the key to the future isn't becoming a technological marvel to rival Google. Instead, Yahoo should home in on what it made it special before the dot-com bust: The Yahoooooo! (cowboy twang inserted) of yesteryear.

Yahoo was an Internet media pioneer. The company built or bought every massively popular feature on the Web today--think Broadcast.com (video), Launch (music) and Groups (social networks). It also developed an advertising engine that could deliver on the dream campaign of any marketer with the data to back up that promise. You could argue Yahoo failed to take advantage of many of those assets in recent years, but the shortcomings haven't been in vision, they've been in execution.

So how does Yahoo move forward? It needs to rebrand itself an Internet media company, quit chasing Google on Web search, and get damn good at selling brand advertising to Madison Avenue once again. And it has to get it done before Google figures out how to turn the creative ad process over to robots. Does technology play a role in that future? Of course. But the emphasis should be on technology that makes ad sales possible, not ad sales that make the technology possible.

"Yahoo was basically built for brand advertisers before brand advertisers came online in a big way. Now that they have come online, Yahoo has to have better technology to allow for better targeting and scale," said Rishad Tobaccowalo, CEO of the futures-consulting company Denuo, a unit of advertising agency holding company Publicis.

Yahoo certainly has been selling technology, but not in the way Tobaccowalo is talking about. Earlier this year, executives started beating the drum about getting back to the technology roots with new products like advanced e-mail, mobile-search technology, and a universal log-on for Yahoo members across services like Flickr, Mail and Address Book.

Those initiatives are worthwhile, but Yahoo should be selling a bigger story to Madison Avenue, particularly as Google tries to build a division for selling brand advertising alongside search. Sure, Yahoo has advertising platforms like Panama, but the company still isn't reaping the full value of its media network. Quite simply, it isn't showing the swagger of its younger years among advertisers. (Note: avoid the cockiness that turned some advertisers off in the early years.)

Ad executives say Yahoo should combine Web search and brand advertising, and sell marketers a new package on the Web. "No one has properly integrated their platforms of search and display advertising. Even though Yahoo has integrated those ad sales teams, no one is treating it as a 'solution,'" according to an entertainment advertising executive who asked to remain anonymous.

That means Yahoo and its rivals are missing the chance to up-sell marketers on more ads, with better use of historical Web data. "The interactive promise is that you take this great amount of data and bake it into a pie, but that's not happening," the executive said.

Despite its talks with Google, Yahoo could easily stay independent on Web search. Several major advertisers have said the company's search marketplace performs almost as well as Google's. More importantly, Yahoo and Microsoft counterbalance Google's dominance and pricing power in the market.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

No doubt, search is essential to the Web economy, but the next major phase of growth for Internet advertising will come from major brand advertising. If smart, Yahoo should be in the cat bird's seat with a network that reaches half a billion people worldwide annually.

In 2007, U.S. online advertising spending was at $21 billion, up a whopping 26 percent year over year compared with a 7 percent decline in newspaper advertising or 3 percent drop in radio ads, according to data from Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the IAB. That spending is still only around 9 percent of the $469 billion spent on advertising in the United States across newspapers, television, radio, and direct mail.

The gap between what the top 100 U.S. advertisers spend online is even greater. In 2006, the most recent year of data on ad spending from research firm TNS, the biggest brands in this country put only 3.1 percent of their ad budgets online.

One reason is that agencies and advertisers are slow to follow audiences. Last year, people devoted about 29 percent of their media hours on the Internet, but advertisers spent only 8 percent of their budgets on the Web, according to a January report from Forrester Research. In contrast, people spent about 37 percent of their media time watching television; and with roughly equal measure, advertisers spent about 36 percent of their budgets on TV.

Newspaper ad spending was out of whack in the reverse. People devoted 8 percent of their media time to reading the paper last year. But advertisers spent 20 percent of their budgets on the medium. Put another way: advertisers are spending an average of $288 to reach a household via the Internet, vs. $818 via newspapers.

But that is changing quickly, advertisers say. Brand advertisers are quickly trying to figure out their online strategies and how they can reach the most people with the fewest number of media outlets. And they need companies like Yahoo and AOL more than ever, because portals like Yahoo can help brand advertisers reach hundreds of millions of people much like a TV audience.

Brand advertisers have a problem with search because it has inherent limits in inventory. Search makes more sense for direct marketers. Brand advertisers want video and engaging content that they can wrap their logos around, and that content online is now with the television networks and the YouTubes of the world.

Yahoo certainly has engaging content. Among the top most visited Web sites, Yahoo's audience spent an average of three hours and 12 minutes with the site in March, according to Nielsen Online. AOL's audience spent nearly four hours on its site; and Google's visitors racked up only one hour and 15 minutes. Microsoft: 44 minutes. YouTube: 50 minutes.

Brand advertisers also want the reach without the uncertainty of a social network, where their brands can appear in an unsavory context.

"A lot of the newer sites like MySpace and Facebook prove that not everything that's important can be monetized, because they haven't proved to be major places for advertising yet," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. "People equate declining importance of portals with non-importance, but portals are important for brand advertisers because they get their most valuable reach and that's not going away."

"That's why we're so far from the end story on Yahoo even with Microsoft bowing out," he said.

Despite recent proclamations of a technology focus, Yahoo has always been a media company, or a cultural curator to the Internet. Its historical talent has been in aggregating content from across the Web and creating compelling destination sites around news, finance and entertainment that keep people coming back. Technology was more of the engine, rather than the driver.

Yahoo was also one of the first companies to promote a data-mining group designed to use all those virtual tracks people left across its network to pinpoint how, when and what type of brand advertisements they would respond to next. Of course, Google came along and proved more immediate value in search.

Now it's time for Yahoo to pick up the brand advertising story once again, helping to lift up pricing of sponsorships and branded campaigns.

Yahoo's former sales chief Wenda Harris Millard, who's now the IAB's chairperson and president of media for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, said it well at a recent IAB event: "We must educate one and all about the value our digital offerings provide marketers and not trade our advertising space like pork bellies."

In short, Jerry, it's all about the ads.

"Yahoo will rebound in a different form. They have to decide who are they talking to and what value they are adding. They still have a sales force plugged into agencies and Panama that seems to be working. It also has a new open model," Tobaccowala said.

"Everyone in Silicon Valley has a strange self-esteem problem, if they don't think they're hot, they think they're not," he added. "My sense is that internal Yahoo people don't think they're hot in this game."

McAfee deal aims to make Yahoo search safer

Yahoo and McAfee announced a partnership Tuesday under which potentially unsafe Web sites appearing in Yahoo search results will be flagged as risky.

The deal, an exclusive for Yahoo, uses McAfee SiteAdvisor technology to label a variety of potentially dangerous Web sites with red warning text and links to McAfee information about what risks the site poses. Among the triggers for a red warning message are sites that host spyware, adware, or virus-infected downloads; sites that have links to other Web sites with dangerous material; and sites that have a track record of harvesting e-mail addresses later used to send spam, the companies said.

Google offers Hinglish translation

TO MAKE Google more acceptable amongst the Hindi speaking population of India, the internet search company has included Hindi in its popular Google translate application, which will allow automated translation between Hindi and English text.

The Google translator is popular for providing translation services to the net users, and its addition of Hindi is much to the delight of Indians. It is worthwhile that there is a huge population in India, which does not understand the Queen’s language, but access the net for gathering information.

Now, users can translate text, web page and issue a query in Hindi in order to obtain the information they desire. The results will also be translated in Hindi and the link for this application is http://www.google.com/translate_t.

The most interesting thing is that a user can type Hindi words using a regular keyboard. Suppose, a person wants to type ’america’, he can type it in English and after hitting the space bar, the word amercia is converted to Hindi language.

With the help of this application, Hindu users can also add iGoogle gadget to their homepage. Not only Hindi, but other regional languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam may also be used easily on the net.

Bloggers might also use this new application to create blogs in select regional languages.

How to speed up your website.

Reduce the number of colors in your graphics

Reduce the number of colors in your graphics in order to lower the size of your graphics.

Avoid using flash as much as possible

Avoid using flash as much as possible because, usually, flash loads harder due to their sizes.

Remove the HTML comments from your pages

Yes, comments can slow your website down. Big or small, comments have something to say when it comes to page size.

Use caching

Set the browser?s cache expiration. This can be easily done using PHP in order to send some headers. For example, let's take a js file called scripts.js. In order to use caching we will create a new file called scripts.js.php and add the following code at the very beginning of it which will set the cache to expire in 3 days:




By using this method you will not speed the first (initial) download but it will have some impact on the overall experience when you're browsing multiple pages or for returning visitors since the content will be already cached.

Combine multiple files into one

Your browser has a limited number of open connections with a certain website. You can use a script to combine multiple .js or .css files into one and reduce the HTTP requests.

Read this article if you want to go deeper into this technique and do some advanced stuff:
Web page optimizer

Choosing the Right DOCTYPE

A page that was built using the Strict doctype will load faster than one that was built using the Traditional doctype or much faster than one that was built with no doctype at all. Of course, it's not a good idea to go ahead and change your doctype without knowing some facts.

Do not use images to display text

Why should you use images to display text? Think of all those HTTP requests again. We talked about the limited number of open requests a browser can have with a certain website. A very good solution is to use stylesheets instead of images. Having all your stylesheets into one file solves many many problems. You result with one request for a lot of needs. Here's an example that creates a mouseover effect on a button using nothing more than css:

a:link
{
color: #ffffff;
background: #ff9900;
text-decoration: none;
padding: 0.2em;
border: 4px solid;
border-color: #99f #008 #008 #99f
}

a:hover
{
color: #ffffff;
background: #ffaa11;
text-decoration: none;
padding: 0.2em;
border: 4px solid;
border-color: #008 #99f #99f #008
}



Use CSS to call images used for decoration

Browsers usually download the background images after everything else. By loading your background files using css you have a huge advantage because the text content will be displayed first and, in most cases, this is the content that your visitor is interested in. They will start reading your text much faster and, in the meantime, your page will download the rest of the content. Here's an example of a css based background:

And this CSS:

.background-image
{
background: url(filename.gif);
width: 200px;
height: 100px
}



You may want to enjoy the alt attribute and here's a way to do it:





where something.gif can be a 1px x 1px transparent image.

Use contextual selectors

This is inefficient:

This is a sentence

This is another sentence

This is yet another sentence

This is one more sentence

.text
{
color: #03c;
font-size: 2em
}



Instead of assigning a value to each individual paragraph, we can nest them within a

tag and assign a value to this tag:

This is a sentence

This is another sentence

This is yet another sentence

This is one more sentence

.text p
{
color: #03c;
font-size:2em
}



This second CSS example basically says that every paragraph within class="text" should be assigned a colour value of #03c and a font size of 2em. At first glance this doesn't look too important, but if you can apply this properly throughout your document you can easily knock off 20% of the file size. You may have noticed the color values are shorter than normal. #03c is a shortened version of #0033cc - you can assign this abbreviated value to any colour value like this.

Use shorthand CSS properties

You can use the following shorthand properties for the margin CSS command.

Use:

margin: 2px 1px 3px 4px (top, right, bottom, left)



...instead of

margin-top: 2px;
margin-right: 1px;
margin-bottom: 3px;
margin-left: 4px



Use relative url's

An absolute url like is much bigger than and this will have a huge effect on the file size again.

Remove unnecessary META content

Most META tags have no importance at all. For SEO purposes we can talk about the keywords and description tags but, due to abuse, I don't believe they're so important any more. Anyways, if you're gonna use it, my advice is to keep it under 200 characters to reduce the overall size and also keep some sort of balanced keyword density.

Use a trailing slash at the end of directory links

By placing a simple trailing slash at the end of your link you can tell the server that you're pointing to a directory and not a file. Your server will have more time to take care of other important aspects. Here's an example:
Instead of this:

Do this:

Try to have less HTTP Requests

I think this is the most important step of all. The most time consuming task a browser has to do is to satisfy all the HTTP requests in order to display the full page by downloading all the images, stylesheets, javascript files, flash etc. Reducing this requests will have a massive effect when it comes to user experience. You don't have to cut the whole page and leave out important stylesheets or javascript files. Read this whole article and you will learn how to combine multiple files (css, js), use css to display images and lots of other tricks to keep your page as simple as possible, fast and functional.

Use image maps to combine multiple images into a single image

Image maps combine multiple images into a single image. The overall size is about the same, but reducing the number of HTTP requests speeds up the page. Image maps only work if the images are contiguous in the page, such as a navigation bar. Defining the coordinates of image maps can be tedious and error prone.

CSS Sprites are the preferred method for reducing the number of image requests. Combine all the images in your page into a single image and use the CSS background-image and background-position properties to display the desired image segment.

Inline images use the data: URL scheme to embed the image data in the actual page. This can increase the size of your HTML document. Combining inline images into your (cached) stylesheets is a way to reduce HTTP requests and avoid increasing the size of your pages.

Turn on Http Keepalives

If Http Keepalives are not turned on, you can get 30% to 50% improvements just by turning this on. Keepalives allow multiple HTTP requests to go over the same TCP/IP connection. Since there is a performance penalty for setting up new TCP/IP connections, using Keepalives will help most websites.

Use CSS to keep the important stuff at beginning of your source

Even if this technique won't have so much of an effect on your website's speed it will play a huge role in the user experience. You need to find a way to display the text content (or whatever your visitor is there for) at first and let the browser work in the background in order to finish downloading the rest of the content. Let's take for example a simple page with menu at top, categories on the left and text content on the right. We're interested in the text content but we have to wait for the browser to download and display the top navigation and the left categories until it reaches what we're there for. Well...not necessarily. We can float the categories at the left and the text content at the right and in the source, we can place the text content before the left categories as it will have the same result when it comes to source code but, you achieve something very important: the text will show up first.

Use a Content Delivery Network

This might not be a good solution for small websites since it's not so cheap to use a content delivery network (CDN). Not everyone can own a CDN or pay a provider such as Akamai or Limelight in order to deliver the content from the server with the smallest response BUT, if you think it will worth the investment, this is a big step in optimizing your website for speed and we're talking about 10% - 15%.

Add an Expires Header

"The Expires HTTP header is an instruction to the client about the document's validity and persistence. If cached, the document may be fetched from the cache rather than from the source until this time has passed. After that, the cache copy is considered "expired" and invalid, and a new copy must be obtained from the source."

The expires HTTP header tells all browsers how long an object is active (fresh) for and after that amount of time caches should check back with the server for changes, if any. The expires HTTP header are very good for caching static images like the ones used for navigation or buttons where can be set a big amount of time as expiry in order to make the website much more responsive to it's visitors.

This trick is very important for your returning visitors and for those that browse multiple pages of your site because setting an expires header somewhere in the future will tell the browser to cache the content (scripts, css, images) for that amount of time as it won't change during this period. This way, you avoid sending informations to the browser by a http request and increase the number of cached components. Let's take for example firefox which has, by default, a storage quota of 50Mb for cached content. That's a lot of space which can hold a lot of content which, otherwise, needs to be downloaded.

When you're setting an expires header far in the future and decide to make changes to the cached files you might wanna change the name of the file as well. For example a file that is named myfile.js and is cached via expires header for a long period should be renamed somewhat when we change the content in order to tell the browser that we updated it. A good idea would be to keep versions (myfile1.js, myfile2.js) or timestamps (myfile_11352617289.js) in it's name.

Gzip Components

Gzip is a very popular compression utility that is used on most websites, designed as a replacement for compress and adopted by the GNU project. Gzip is very very handy if you ask me since it manages to reduce the size of the response by nearly 60% - 70%, accelerates the browsing experience and also can cut down the bandwith used with more than a half.

Servers choose what to gzip based on file type, but are typically too limited in what they decide to compress. Most web sites gzip their HTML documents. It's also worthwhile to gzip your scripts and stylesheets, but many web sites miss this opportunity. In fact, it's worthwhile to compress any text response including XML and JSON. Image and PDF files should not be gzipped because they are already compressed. Trying to gzip them not only wastes CPU but can potentially increase file sizes.

It's not such a good idea to gzip files that are smaller than 1k since you might end up with the same result or worse. Anything that is bigger than 1k should be faster than not gzipping it at all. Also try to remember that the result might be a faster web page but a bigger load on the server. The balance is in your hands.

Try to remember that Apache 1.3 uses mod_gzip while Apache 2.x uses mod_deflate so you also depend on versions to benefit from this compression method. You can get the same benefits by adding some very simple PHP code to your web pages.





Gzip can be the real deal when you have your page mostly on text/html, it won't have such a big effect on image-based websites and it might fail on some plugins and PDF files since they're already compressed.

Ayways, you can define in apache what files should and shouldn't be compressed.

Multiple Servers:

As we've seen already, most browsers support a limited number of open connections (http requests) with a server and everything that passes this limit should wait for them to finish a certain task. Let's take for example a browser that has a limit of open connections of 4 and a webpage that is composed of 16 images. 16 / 4 equals 4 so we end up with 4 downloads. What if....we put 4 images on server1, another 4 on server2, another 4 on server3 and the rest on server4? We might notice a huge speed improvement by almost 4 times since the browser will open 4 connections at a time with each server in part since they're different.

You might notice that some websites use different servers for storing images and static content. Of course this limit can be changed by tweaking the browser's settings but you can't ask your visitors to do that for a "better browsing experience" on your website.

AJAX:

Ajax won't necessarily speed your website but has a huge effect when it comes to responsiveness and user experience. Keeping the visitor on the same page and displaying content only on demand/on action makes the page load faster and more interactive. A lot of Java and Flash based websites have switched to Ajax for the same result but in less bytes.

Put CSS at the Top

When a new visitor reaches our website is very important to show him that we have a progressive website that loads fast. Putting CSS at the top helpes the browser to render the page in a progressive way and not wait for the whole page to load in order to figure out how the display should be. This is a huge advantage when we use external stylesheets, tableless layouts, stylesheet based backgrounds etc. Since the css is placed in the header of the pages and, along with it, the structure of the page, the browser knows from the very beginning how the page should look and where should be what. It also increases the browsing experience by showing the visitor the progress of the page (think at a file transfer....if the computer fails to show you the load bar you might think that the transfer failed even if it's not because you see no true progress...think of an ajax indicator - load bar - that tells you to wait until it finishes).

Move Scripts to the Bottom

If moving the stylesheet file in the document head will help the browser show a progressive rendering, it's the other way around with the scripts. When the browser reaches scripts it will stop the progressive rendering of the page until that script is loaded. This method might not work in all cases since there are situations over situations where a script could and should be used but there are workarounds. It's a very good idea to try this small trick when you have a lot of javascript for transitions and various effects etc.

Avoid CSS Expressions

CSS expressions allows you to set the properties in a dynamic way and can be used in a big number of situations. For example a background color that changes every hour by using a Javascript expression:

background-color: expression( (new Date()).getHours()%2 ? "#B8D4FF" : "#F08A00" );



This way of setting the properties is problematic because it evaluated by the browser at very simple events such as scrolling, resizing or even when we move the mouse over the content.

One way to reduce the number of times your CSS expression is evaluated is to use one-time expressions, where the first time the expression is evaluated it sets the style property to an explicit value, which replaces the CSS expression. If the style property must be set dynamically throughout the life of the page, using event handlers instead of CSS expressions is an alternative approach. If you must use CSS expressions, remember that they may be evaluated thousands of times and could affect the performance of your page.

Make JavaScript and CSS External

At a simple evaluation, the advantage is huge since an external css file or javascript file can be cached by the browser avoiding the precious http requests on the future. When using inline styles and declarations, we force the browser to download and evaluate them on each request. The result is obvious...

Reduce DNS Lookups

Each time you type in your addressbar a website, the browser contacts the DNS resolver which is supposed to respond with the server's IP address. Nothing takes place until this task is over which, usually, takes between 20 and 120 milliseconds. This operation is called a DNS lookup. The good news is that it can be cached by the operating system's DNS cache and sometimes by the browser.

Going back to the part when we talked about the advantage of using multiple servers you might say that these 2 methods are not so "brother and sister" since it's an advantage in using more servers to allow more http requests but a disadvantage since it creates more DNS Lookups. You should always have a balance in mind when using them. I won't recommend using more than 3 - 4 servers.

Don't use regular expressions where you don't have to

"In computing, a regular expression is a string that is used to describe or match a set of strings, according to certain syntax rules."
Regular expressions are almost a whole language. Very complex and doing real wonders where anything else would fail but they come with a big price: time. Yes they need time to perform the complex operations. There are many situations where you could replace preg_replace and eregi_replace which perform operations based on regular expressions with str_replace which "Replace all occurrences of the search string with the replacement string". My advice is to use them with care and only if you have to.

Minify JavaScript

A good idea would be to remove the comments from your js files, the unnecessary characters from code, white space etc. in order to reduce the size of the files and the time needed to download them. This process is called minification and is an alternative (or vice versa) to obfuscation which also removes comments and whitespace from files but also obfuscates (makes it difficult to be reversed) it. While minification can be a safe process, obfuscating your files can damage them irreversibly. You should always keep backup files before obfuscating.

Avoid Redirects

There are many ways of doing redirects (meta refresh, php's header location, javascript etc.) but all of them take time to be processed since the file needs to be read by the browser in order to understand your message. The best way of redirecting the user to another page is to use the traditional 301 or 302 status codes in a .htaccess file like in the following example:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://someurladdress.com/newpage
Content-Type: text/html



or:

Redirect permanent /forum/discussion/17/ http://www.someuri.com/17.html



Another advantage in using this method is that the content won't be cached unless instructed so and we still have a functional back command in the browser that will take us to the previous page.

Remove Duplicate Scripts

This usually happens when a certain website is developed in a team and there's some lack of communication between individuals or when the webmaster/developer is not paying attention to this fact that forces the browser to execute the same piece of code twice or more no matter if it's cached or not and some times even worse when it also needs a new HTTP request to execute it.

Configure ETags

An Etag is a small string that represents the HTTP response header returned by an HTTP/1.1 compliant web server used to uniquely identify the version of a page component (image, stylesheet, script etc.) when compared with what's already cached in the browser. Among other informations the Etag will return the "Last-modified" time and content length of the specific component.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Last-Modified: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:03:59 GMT
ETag: "10c24bc-4ab-457e1c1f"
Content-Length: 12195



The problem with ETags is that they typically are constructed using attributes that make them unique to a specific server hosting a site. ETags won't match when a browser gets the original component from one server and later tries to validate that component on a different server, a situation that is all too common on Web sites that use a cluster of servers to handle requests. By default, both Apache and IIS embed data in the ETag that dramatically reduces the odds of the validity test succeeding on web sites with multiple servers.

If you're not taking advantage of the flexible validation model that ETags provide, it's better to just remove the ETag altogether. The Last-Modified header validates based on the component's timestamp. And removing the ETag reduces the size of the HTTP headers in both the response and subsequent requests. This Microsoft Support article describes how to remove ETags. In Apache, this is done by simply adding the following line to your Apache configuration file:

FileETag none

Use CSS For Faster Pages

I sense a huge struggle in today's design to avoid using tables which can be a mistake. It's ok to use them for rendering tubular data and it's not ok to use them for design purposes but making a tableless website just because everyone seems to claim that you're not a real designer unless you cut down all the tables might give you headaches due to the bad results.

It's again about the cached content in an external css file placed in the header of your page which is supposed to hold the structure of your page and all it's properties. This is the real advantage because, using tables for design purposes, you force the browser to parse the whole table until it knows how should the page look. Using nested tables is much worse but that's another chapter.

Use External Scripts

Supposing that you have a script to animate your menu that is present on every page. It's very small. You might think that it won't be such a good idea to create a whole new file to make it execute from that file. That's a bad idea. If you have no external javascript file to add it too you still have an advantage: the file will be cached on the next visit or page, and, if you already have js files, you can add it at the end of one but make sure you won't generate conflicts and the code will remain functional.

In the worst case, this method will create a new http request but will save you tons in size and speed since it will be cached and reused directly from the browser.

Remove Anything You Don't Really Need

Yes...I know...it's obvious. So obvious that everyone is leaving behind. A good website is not one that is full of cool javascript effects, shining colors, sliding divs and whatever fancy idea you might have. In my opinion, you should keep only what's functional and needed to enhance the browsing experience. While making a website some while ago for someone, I was asked to put a certain song on the homepage to make it cool. The result was a loaded page, hated by many since the song was always starting unless otherwise instructed by the visitor (another wish of my client) and imagine yourself at night with 5-6 websites in your tabs and one of them starting to sing....auuughh!! Do you really need such things?! Keep it simple and functional....in balance with a nice design if you can and not loaded with all your dreams, full of your talent and creation.

Avoid Nested Tables

Content and presentation should be separate. As said above, tables are good to render tubular data but a bad idea when it comes to building a layout based on them since the browser can't show any progress (like we've talked on the CSS part) until it finishes to read that table...what happens when that table has another table inside which has another...? I'm sure you guessed: NOTHING...until everything is read!

Avoid Full Page Tables for Faster Rendering

If you use tables, try avoiding the whole page being one big table. The browser won't show anything until it's read the whole thing that way. For a faster loading webpage, either try multiple tables (not nested) or having stuff above the main table to make your content in the first table show up faster. That way your visitors will have something to read while the rest of your page loads. It may not really make you page faster, but it will feel like it to your visitors.

Split Up Long Pages

This method will make the content show up faster and won't scare readers away with a huge scroll bar on the right. Use pagination or something to split your pages in readeble lengths. Don't make every article like this one :)

Remove Excess "Whitespace"

Yes white space is still space and needs space. Space means time, time means angry visitors and that's the chain as I see it. You can remove white spaces, tabs, line returns and tabs.

It may not be such a good looking code but this is not our goal. We don't build pages to have nice code. We need good code. By removing line returns you will end up with 9% - 11% reduction in your file size and that's a lot. The browser does not care how good looking is your code as long as it can read it correctly. Here's an example:

something

here

for demo

will become:

something

here

for demo

The disadvantage is human. The code becomes harder to edit and follow.

Keep Your Code Clean

Many wysiwyg editors add useless code to your pages like empty tags ( ) and other elements. Remove those for a faster page that also validates cleaner.

Don't Go Overboard On Images

CSS can do many effects that could easily replace many images used on websites. Don't use so many images unless you have to and, again, don't use images where you could use text to obtain the same result.

Height And Width Tags

If you have the height and width tags already defined, at the time of loading, the browser will know the sizes already and will know where everything will be, how much space to allow, how to render the page etc. It's the same rule for tables as well. Try to specify a width and height tag...it will help.

Faster Images? Reduce Their File Size

There are many tools out there that will optimize your images and make them smaller and web ready, they will also keep the transparency and animations in gif's. You will notice an increase in speed. Look at the bottom of this articles for more resources.

Properly Save Your Images

Photoshop and fireworks have a nice feature that says: "save for web". Why do you think it's there? Use this feature when you save a picture for use in your documents. As above, don't use a rich color palette as it will increase the size of your picture. Experiment the websnap feature that will try to cut down similar colors from the palette.

Compression

To decrease the size of your files you could try compressing them. There are many solutions on the net that will compress javascript, css or php eliminating comments, white space, tabs and breaks...anything that is not needed usually. Try to keep in mind that you might end up with non functional results, the result will most likely be very hard to read and follow and that you should in all cases keep the original documents as backup.

Global Loadbalancing:

If you have already invested in some kind of simple loadbalancing technology and are still having performance problems, start investigating in global loadbalancing which allows you to deploy multiple servers around the world and use intelligent loadbalancing devices to route client traffic to closest web server. If your organization can?t afford to setup multiple websites around the world, investigate global caching services like Akamai

Webserver Log Analysis:

The logs that your webserver keep are an open book to teach where and when errors occur. I think the most important part in the logs are the 404 and 500 errors that represent a missing page. It means that a visitor or a web crawler requested that page and it's missing. This again does not have so much of an effect when it comes to speed but it's a good idea to try and repair the bottlenecks at least for the sake of user experience. Almost any web hosting provider offer a log analizer such as awstats.

GIF vs JPG vs PNG

GIF's usually load quicker while JPG's tend to be better for photos and PNG's (optimized) have lossless compression but be aware of the PNG transparency that is not supported in IE6 and below.