How to design fast web sites?

The best reference for the design of fast web sites is, IMHO, Steve Souders's book on front end optimization. He recommends the following best practices:

• Rule 1 - Make Fewer HTTP Requests
• Rule 2 - Use a Content Delivery Network
• Rule 3 - Add an Expires Header
• Rule 4 - Gzip Components
• Rule 5 - Put Stylesheets at the Top
• Rule 6 - Put Scripts at the Bottom
• Rule 7 - Avoid CSS Expressions
• Rule 8 - Make JavaScript and CSS External
• Rule 9 - Reduce DNS Lookups
• Rule 10 - Minify JavaScript
• Rule 11 - Avoid Redirects
• Rule 12 - Remove Duplicate Scripts
• Rule 13 - Configure ETags
• Rule 14 - Make AJAX Cacheable

I strongly recommend his books, which you can easily find using this link on amazon.

You can easily check the enforcement of these best practices using the firebug extension for firefox, or Chrome developer tools.

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How to secure access to gmail account?

Have you ever wondered how to secure access to gmail account? If not, you should! Think for a minute about what the search for following keywords in your mailbox would return: "sick" "problem" "secret" "pwd" "password" "don't tell" "don't repeat"...

I think I have convinced you, so let's seek for solutions to secure the access to gmail:

1. You should of course use a strong password. 
2. In addition, google supports 2-factor authentication. This methods uses your phone + your password to authenticate you. The setup of this method is very simple, just follow the instructions on the link below: http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=180744   If you have an android phone I advise you to install "google authenticator" application too, to have access to your emails even when you do not have a cell coverage.

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How to manage contacts in android / google / gmail ?

How often do you tidy your contact list? Do you know how to manage your contacts in android / google / gmail ?

Your contacts represent your social graph, that is, the links that tie you to your friends and family. This information is invaluable for intelligence agencies and for advertising. Here is the link to the contact management interface in gmail:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#contacts 

If you are concerned about your privacy, I advise you to

1. Regularly remove contacts that you do not need and 
2. Cleanup your mailbox to delete all emails older than 2 years. To do that, see the related post: how to delete all old emails in gmail.

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How to install peerblock to improve web/p2p privacy in debian?

Peerblock is a program that prevents some peers to connect to your host when you use some P2P application. On Debian I wanted to install something similar, to avoid defining the firewall policies by hand.

Moblock is the name of the Debian side solution that corresponds to Peerblock. It's documented on the source forge page of the project.


To install moblock on debian squeeze:

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines:

deb http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/debian squeeze main
deb-src http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/debian squeeze main

Then, run the following commands:

sudo make me a sandwich (Photo credit: Fred​)

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys C0145138
gpg --export --armor C0145138 | sudo apt-key add 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install  pgld pglcmd pglgui
sudo service pgl start
pglgui
service pgl status

A window should open, it permits you to configure your traffic filtering policies. Have fun !

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What to buy to implement a raspberry pi based media center?

Raspberry Pi (Photo credit: barbourians)

If you want to setup a raspberry-pi based media center, you will need to buy the following elements:

• A raspberry pi computer
• An SD card to host the OS of your raspberry pi. 8 Go are sufficient for this.

Of course, you will need a way to configure the raspberry pi. That means that you will require a USB keyboard, or if you like fancy gadgets, a dongle + a wireless keyboard.

When you have all these elements, jump to my tutorial on how to transform your raspberry pi into a great media center support XBMC for samba shares and controlled through android !!

Other links:

• http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/features/raspberry-pi-media-centre-tutorial
• http://www.raspbmc.com/

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How to check if you respect web design standards and best practices?

webmaster desktop (Photo credit: FSA 2006-07)

Do you know how to check if your web page respect web design standards and best practices?

If no, the following web page provides a great checklist, which permits you to verify (or discover) if you have designed your website correctly:

 http://webdevchecklist.com/

It may be a good idea too to learn about responsive design, if you want your page to work on all screens. We are in the mobile era !

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