Canvas Demos

Nested Elements is very excited to announce that it has spawned a child in the form of Canvas Demos - a site dedicated to showing off the fantastic uses of the canvas HTML element!

Canvas Demos will act as a repository of demos and tutorials to show exactly what can be done with just HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Canvas Demos

So check it out and make sure you add it to your RSS feeds to see the latest canvas tech demos!

Not being content with breaking the Internet over the weekend, it seems those Google guys are now focusing their attentions on destroying analytics software.

Sitepoint are reporting that Google are currently experimenting with AJAX search results in some parts of the US, and by changing their search engine queries from /search?= to /search?#= , it means no analytics tool can tell who searched for what to get to your page.

The reason Google’s AJAX search breaks this is that browsers don’t send any information after the # hash mark. This isn’t something that analytics packages can create a workaround for — the only way to change it would be to rewrite at the browser level — and it affects log based analytics software the same as it does JavaScript based.

Some are expectng Google to create a workaround so search results only return data to their own Analytics, effectively destroying the rest of the analytics market in one sweep.

Search blogger Peter Da Vanzo … suggests that Google might be gearing up to lock web site owners into Google Analytics if they want complete search referral information. He reminds us that Google has done something similar once before.

Find out more about it at Sitepoint

Google seems to be broken at the moment, informing users who run a Google search that EVERY site on the web will harm your computer.

The software, when working, is able to warn users of harmful sites; but at the moment even searching for “Google” and clicking on Google.com is returning the message “This site may harm your computer”.

The Nested Elements website will not harm your computer, we are safe to use.

We’ll post an update once we’ve heard more from Google. Hopefully, they will fix the problem soon!

UPDATE: The problem has now been resolved.

UPDATE: Google have posted a blog response explaining the site warning message:

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs.

D’oh!

“Honza has made some fantastic improvements to the Net panel. John Barton has improved the Script panel and debugging features as well as tweaking the console. Maybe more significantly were some of the changes under the covers. The new Tracing panel (FBTrace) for debugging Firebug itself during development is a huge improvement over the previous console-based system. We’re starting to get some unit test coverage through John Resig’s and Honza’s FireUnit.”

Grab a copy of the extension here

Please note: it doesn’t currently work on Firefox 3.1 beta.

Watch out Firefox, stand back Google Chrome. There’s a new browser in town.

Meet Kido’z, the new Internet browser designed especially for kids.

In all seriousness though, Kido’z is a fantastic idea offering safe and easy browsing for kids and direct access to the best kid’s websites.

Kido’z has been developed by KIDOZ Ltd - an Israeli startup - and built using Adobe AIR (which in turn uses the WebKit engine also shared by Safari and Chrome). The site uses a simple two arrow navigation system to allow kids with no previous experience of using a computer to be able to navigate the selected websites.

Kido’z sounds like a fantastic idea for those parents who are both concerned about what their child can view whilst on the Internet, but wish for their child to gain confidence in using a computer. Let’s hope it picks up with the under 8’s.

Here’s an interesting take on an online community:

The Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition have set up a virtual community watch to try and stop border crime.

An innovative real-time surveillance program designed to empower the public to proactively participate in fighting border crime… a network of cameras and sensors along the Texas-Mexico border that feeds live streaming video… Users will log in to the BlueServo website and directly monitor suspicious criminal activity along the border via this virtual fence.

Check it out at www.blueservo.net

The Y2K bug has struck again some 9 years later with Opera 10 - the first browser ever to release with a two digit version number. Some websites are incorrectly reporting that users on Opera 10 cannot view their website as Opera 1 is not supported.

Opera discuss the problem on their official blog.

If you have any Opera specific browser sniffers in AKQA websites, now is the time to check for bugs! You know, like Windows Live email and the Bank of America have…

For those who feel a little lost when they hear the word jQuery, or just those who want to get to grips with the JavaScript library, this is for you:

“So everywhere you look, you see “jQuery this” and “jQuery that”. For the last year or so, this library has been the darling of the JavaScript world. But do you feel that you just can’t seem to learn the dang thing? Do you hate how the existing tutorials assume that you know WAY more than you actually do?”

http://nettuts.com/articles/web-roundups/jquery-for-absolute-beginners-video-series/

Google have released a “SEO Starter’s Guide” PDF document designed to help web developers understand how to improve their website’s ranking in Google.

“[The guide] covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics.”

The PDF can be downloaded here. And here’s the original article from Google.

Over the last few months I have seen the issue of website accessibility become a much more important consideration to my company’s clients whenever we are building new websites. DDA compliance is no longer just a buzzword, it’s something clients request as an essential requirement. As such, it’s getting increasingly important for Web Developers to consider screen readers as they develop their web pages.

One useful tool for building screen reader friendly web pages is Fangs – a Firefox 3 extension that creates a text version of what a modern screen reader program would read.

I would strongly recommend that every web developer downloads this extension and gives it a try - you may be extremely surprised at the results and find that the accesible website you just built isn’t actually that accessible after all.