A while back I stumbled upon (using the sweet Firefox plug-in, StumbleUpon), this discussion of the 20 things you should do, or the applications you should install, after performing a fresh install of Ubuntu Linux. Now, I’m primarily a Mac person, but if I need to use Linux for basic or desktop needs, Ubuntu is by far the distribution of choice (for a Linux server, I’m currently using CentOS). I like Ubuntu because:

• You can test it by running it from a CD on your computer, without doing an actual install.
• If you do want to install it, that’s quite easy.
• It just plain works.

I’m not trying to start a debate as to which version of Linux is best, or as to whether you should use Linux at all, I’m just saying that I think Ubuntu Linux is sweet. (Although I’ll add as an aside, that I occasionally see messages from people new to Linux claiming that it’s the greatest thing ever and they wonder why everyone doesn’t use Linux; I do wonder if such people are still using Linux so religiously six months later.)

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Benchmarking a Web site is the simple act of measuring its performance. Measurements may look at how long it takes a page to load in the client ( see my post on the YSlow Firefox plug-in). This can be a reflection of the page itself—the amount of images, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other media—and a reflection of the client: their download speed, their computer speed, the browser they’re using, etc. Because of the client-side factors, this kind of benchmarking is best, I feel, to just analyze the amount of information being downloaded and how efficiently that’s taking place (again, see YSlow for more on this).

On the other side of the equation, you can perform benchmarks on the server. Finding, and later improving upon, these measurements will improve the experience for all clients, regardless of download speed, computer, or browser type. This is particular important when using server-side technologies like PHP.

Among the many utilities available to benchmark a Web site is Siege, from Joe Dog Software. One of the nice things about Siege, besides it being free, is that it tests a Web server under duress, something that’s impossible for a single individual to replicate. So you can tell Siege to access your site using X number of simulataneous connections and then see the result. On the downside, you have to compile it on Unix-like systems, including Mac OS X, in order to use it. For more, see the Siege Web site and it’s simple-to-follow manual.

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Last month I started discussions with the Studio B agency, which represents technical writers. Studio B is a bit different than the agency I used to be represented by (I’m not currently represented by an agent) in that they can represent book writers in full, which is the kind of representation I had before, or work with writers on an individual project basis, primarily for online articles. I’ve been speaking with Studio B under these latter pretenses, initially with the intent of writing articles on Adobe Flex and AIR.

Anyway, the point in this post isn’t to dicusss my history with agents and agencies, rather to point you towards Studio B’s Web site. I am frequently asked about what steps one would take to get published. The answer isn’t a secret, you just need to come up with a good idea and follow the publishers’ guidelines for submission. Studio B has quite a bit of good information on their site for getting published, including this article on writing winning book proposals. If you click on the “Studio B for Authors” link, you’ll find several other articles that are well worth reading. Finally, I will say that you don’t necessarily need an agent in order to get published (I signed with an agent after already publishing three books) but some argue that it is worth your while to have one. Regardless of that decision, if you’re interest in writing, check out those articles on Studio B’s Web site for some great, no-nonsense information.

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In this edition…

• About This Newsletter
• On the Blog => User Interface
• On the Web => Sitepoint
• On the Web => Less known SQL syntax and functions in MySQL
• On the Web => Essential Bookmarks for Web Designers and Developers
• Q&A => How do you argue for PHP?
• Book Giveaway Preview
• My Book News => Announcing the E-Commerce Book!

About this Newsletter

Nothing special in this newsletter, just a bunch of useful information (I hope)!

On the Blog => User Interface

In my previous newsletter, I announced my blog ( http://blog.dmcinsights.com). I created it mostly because there aren’t enough blogs out there yet. So maybe that’s a joke. Anyway, part of the thinking was that I’d use the blog to take notes on the new things I learn about—stuff that may show up in a book further down the line—and to report upon things that have never made it into a book, for whatever reason. It’s also a good place to address question that get answered in a more timely manner than I do using this newsletter. Anyway, in the past month, much of my extracurricular studies have been on “user interface” (UI). User interface is simply how a user interacts with something. On a Web site, this interaction involves graphic design, HTML forms, handling errors, etc. I’ve already written four posts on this subject, which you can read at http://blog.dmcinsights.com/tag/user-interface/.

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On Yahoo!’s Developer pages you can find the YSlow plug-in for the Firefox Web browser (the plug-in works in conjunction with Firebug, which you should probably already be using anyway). After installing YSlow (and Firebug, if you haven’t already), restart Firefox, then load your Web page in Firebox. Click on the YSlow icon in the lower-right corner of the browser window, and you’ll see:

• A “report card” for the page’s performance
• The files and images loaded on that page, including JavaScript and CSS
• Listings of specific strengths and weaknesses of the page

Using the built-in YSlow tools, you can also view: page statistics (total size of all files, number of HTTP requests made, etc.), all of the CSS compiled together, and all of the JavaScript involved. You can even test the JavaScript using JSLint. For more on using YSlow, check out its documentation or this screencast.

In case you’re curious, when I tested my site’s home page, I got a ‘B’ (85), which is a decent start. To improve the performance, I need to add expiration headers, use a CDN, and add ETags. And, to be honest, I didn’t even know what these last two were!

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A new version of Adobe AIR–version 1.5–was released in mid-November in conjunction with the 2008 Adobe MAX conference in San Francisco (it was originally released for Windows and Mac OS X, a Linux version came out a few weeks later). I’ll talk about the features of this new version in a separate post but I wanted to quickly mention what your AIR application’s end user will see when the framework is updated.