How is it to sell websites to a client?

Pretty much like this..

Bing! to replace Microsoft Live Search

Microsoft have recently unveil Bing, their new search engine. The main concept is to give a more personalized search result by understanding the reasons behind your search, instead of only analyzing the keywords. For example, if you are looking for “Samsung tv H342340″, it would give you reviews, prices, and more, all on the same screen.

This is certainly a bold move and it’s at the opposite of Yahoo and Google at the moment. I will be looking forward to this, anyway it can’t be worse than live search.

A jQuery inline form validation, because validation is a mess

When it comes to form validation, it’s hard to have a versatile solution that works with every form. Figuring out how to display errors is not a simple task. This is something I tried to remedy with this script. When an error needs to be displayed, the script creates a div and positions it in the top right corner of the input. This way you don’t have to worry about your HTML form structure. The rounded corner and shadow are done with CSS3 and degrade well in non compliant browsers. There is no images needed.

Download the source code View demo

Validations range from email, phone, url to more complex calls such as ajax processing.
Bundled in several locales, the error prompts can be translated in the locale of…

Friday Video: Javascript, The Good Parts

Today on Friday video we have Doug Crockford really getting down the good and bad parts of Javascript. It really explains how you can take advantage of the odd way JavaScript works. He also gives a little insight on Ecmascript5, which will be the next iteration of the JavaScript language.

HTML5 video tag in the wild

Daily Motion and Youtube have a cool beta on their respective sites. They implemented an early version of their sites replacing flash with the new HTML5 tag and using the ogg video format. Which means you don’t need any plug-in to view their sites. Talk about a loss of productivity for those companies that only block the flash plug in.

I’m really impressed with Daily Motion’s implementation, 300,000 videos and a full featured website! You need Firefox 3.5 or Safari 4 to view the websites.
http://openvideo.dailymotion.com/
http://www.youtube.com/html5 (Reports are it crash Safari)

State of the Mobile Web Report

The mobile web is quite new, and it is starting to become a great niche. We see more and more smartphones and before 5 years I’m pretty sure most cellphone users will have some data plans with their phones. From the Opera numbers, we can see a big jump in data use from last year. Libya saw usage rise 4,155% since April 2008. Nigeria, which joined the worldwide top 10 countries this month, saw usage grow 2,353% over the past year.

For all the details, head to the Choose Opera blog.

The Five Second Test

fivesecondtest.com is a cool concept where a web developer can upload a picture of his website in development and have free usability tests from other developers. Of course you can also run the test for other developers’ websites.

The five second test all comes down to finding the prominent elements in a mock-up, you have 5 second to tag down what is standing out with your mouse, and comment on your tags after. It’s fast and easy.

For now it’s in beta and it’s free, have a look!

Google Chrome gets Shinier

Google just updated their browser to version 2.0, with this version comes a speedier JavaScript engine, an updated webkit version and some minor UI overhaul. They also claim a 30% faster loading time in some cases.

It’s unfortunate that Google still lags behind when browser development features are concerned. This is a bummer for me, I love Chrome but I do all my web developement on Firefox, so it’s a bit counter intuitive to launch Chrome only for web browsing.

Head here for all the details.

Jetpack fires up, Firefox add-ons developed in javascript

Mozilla labs has just announced Jetpack, a new api to develop Firefox add-ons with Html, Css and JavaScript. This addition to the Mozilla arsenal will be warmly welcomed, any web developer that tried to dive into XUL knows the no end of grief it causes.

With this jewel, Mozilla bring Firefox add-ons development to every web developer out there, with mean, tha for now on pretty much anyone can dive in add-ons development. This is still an early implementation but it’s worth the look.

jQuery vs. MooTools, frameworks showdown

jQuery vs Mootools is something I would ratter not get into, both have a dedicated community, both are good JavaScript framework, but is one really better than another.

Well that’s exactly what they try to find out at jqueryvsmootools.com, a very good article with developer comments. I personally like jQuery because of it similarity with CSS, also it’s easy, it’s fast and it works in every browsers.

Have a look, it’s certainly worth the read.