October at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web 2009 at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

Evolving the look of Google Maps. Or, How To Make Information-Dense Interfaces Easy To Use.

"Underscore is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that provides a lot of the functional programming support that you would expect in Prototype.js (or Ruby), but without extending any of the built-in JavaScript objects. It's the tie to go along with jQuery's tux."

Underscore provides 44-odd functions that support both the usual functional suspects: map, select, invoke — as well as more specialized helpers: function binding, javascript templating, deep equality testing, and so on. It delegates to built-in functions, if present, so JavaScript 1.6 compliant browsers will use the native implementations of forEach, map, filter, every, some and indexOf.

"During the development of Internet Explorer 5 for Mac, Microsoft found themselves with a surprising problem. The upcoming version of their browser had improved its standards support so much, older pages no longer rendered properly. Well, they rendered properly (according to specification), but people expected them to render improperly. The pages themselves had been authored based on the quirks of dominant browsers of the day, mostly Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4. IE5/Mac was so advanced, it actually broke the web."

An interesting bit about optimizing JS download speeds by putting it in HTML comments or just plain strings, then eval()-ing it later. Turns out the download is massively faster, but the parsing is quite a lot slower, making it not ideal for desktop browsers. But the real bonus is on mobile devices, where the download itself is so awfully slow that the slow parsing becomes a much more acceptable option.

Summary and links to slides from Steve Souders' web performance meetup, SpeedGeeks LA

"A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, from the book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th)."

"The poster's winding maze, when travelled, represents the exact length of tape needed to record this [Kraftwerk's 'Computer World'] album – 51.625 metres. If the path is cut from the poster, and left to hang in an tangled strip to the floor…you can see and interact with a tangible representation of the tape needed for 'Computer World'. Finally, the points when various songs from the album begin are marked on the path as well.

Recently, someone did the unthinkable: they published their own version of Dive Into Python and got it listed on Amazon.com. This apparently caused a small firestorm within Apress…You see, the book is published under the GNU Free Documentation License, which explicitly gives anyone and everyone the right to publish it themselves.

I'm practising some Agile Python development and need somewhere to note this URL. Buildbot is Python based open-source build management and continuous integration software.

Secure String Interpolation in JavaScript

"Execute JS is Firefox-Extension which provides an enhanced JavaScript-Console, where you can comfortably enter and execute arbitrary JavaScript-Code and modify functions."

A useful line-by-line look at the Webkit Sticky Notes demo, discussing HTML5 local storage, JavaScript getters and setters and CSS3 transitions.

Nice roundup of current web development technologies and helpers.

"In the middle of the 19th Century a slightly fanatical Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries published a scheme for an hexagonal London."

Thomas as in Thomas the Tank Engine. A theme park in Staffordshire. Looks very British.

Bruce Tognazzini (founder of the Apple Human Interface Group) on how to improve Springboard, the formal name of the home screen on iPhones.

"One reason people never return to an app after three days is that, should they get interested again, they can no longer find it, hidden as it is, randomly slotted on one of eleven look-alike Springboard pages."

Includes suggestions such as Page Labels, Vertical Scroll, User-Controlled Icon Positioning and Containers.

A wonderfully clear, coherent explanation and demonstration of why there should be no SVG versus Canvas debate, why you need them both, and how to successfully combine them. Straightforward, simple language, excellent images and example code. Wonderful. Bonus: will only take you about 5 minutes to read.