Data, Maps, Usability, and Performance
Last time I covered .io domains in Alexa 1 Million list and now I want to explore available .io domains for three letter words. Some of these words are weird and the definitions have been automatically generated using this page but it looks like there are still over 200 3 letter unregistered io domains. These domains are generally sold for about 90 USD but using the links below, you can get them for only 49 dollars:
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Engineers should always care about performance. Users certainly care about speed and there are many studies that show a clear correlation between website performance and business metrics. Speed is a fundamental component of user experience and it affects everything from bounce rates to SEO and all the way down to conversion and revenue. How is your website doing in terms of page speed?
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I have been searching around for some good jQuery autocomplete plugins or any other JavaScript autocomplete micro frameworks and wanted to share my results. I initially wanted to use datalist since it is part of the HTML5 spec but lack of Safari support is not ideal. I’ve also had some issues with click events on a datalist and my needs really require a database with the autocomplete so I started looking for some other scripts. If you are not using a database and the list is relatively small, you could implement something like jQuery live search, flexselect, or a searchable dropdowns but this list focuses on a more complete solution where you need to query a backend to retrieve and filter results. Here is a list of over 30 of the best jQuery and pure JavaScript autocomplete scripts, plugins, and libraries:
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There seems to be a trend with recent startups and interesting dev projects jumping on the .io top level domain names. One can assume that it has to do with the connotation to input-output or I/O abbreviation in programming. Ofcourse, .io is the domain name for the Indian Ocean territory, an archipelago somewhere between Africa and Indonesia. There are some good lists of IO domains out there but have you ever wondered how many io domains are in Alexa? Alexa attempts to estimate the popularity of websites and they provide a list of 1 million domains for free. Here is a list of over 400 .io domains in the Alexa Top 1 Million list ordered by Alexa rank:
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I have been recently reading about some complaints regarding StackOverflow which I cannot agree with as I think SO is an amazing resource and I have had no trouble in getting good answers very quickly on that platform. I also really like how you can run all kinds of queries on StackOverflow data which is very helpful. This allows you to generate some interesting Stack Overflow stats, graphs, and visualizations. Personally, I was interested in collecting some noteworthy programming questions and answers. Here are some of my hand picked StackOverflow links:
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What is a database index? Understanding database indexes and DB optimization can be hard and confusing. I wanted to see if I can provide a simple explanation of what a DB index is, how it works, and how database indexes can be used. A good analogy for a database index could be an index in a book. If you are looking for a specific section in a book, you can either flip through every page (full table scan in database world) or find the section in the index and get a page number (pointer). Let’s consider a simple example: a table “people” with 2 columns (name and age) and we are using this table to store millions of user names with their appropriate age.
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Bootstrap version 3 has recently been released and I wanted to cover some useful and interesting Bootstrap tools and resources. If you are currently on Bootstrap 2 or earlier versions, you might be interested in checking out Parashuram Narasimhan’s post that covers Bootstrap’s evolution over the last 2 years. He also has a great Bootstrap performance tool that charts performance metrics for each Bootstrap component for each release. Also, if you are interested in seeing some great websites created with Bootstrap, I really like the Built with Bootstrap showcase of sites and apps.
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Angular.js, a powerful JavaScript framework developed by Google and designed for building web-apps, has seen a lot of adoption in the last few years. My last Google Maps demo made me think a lot about data binding and Angular.JS, and I have actually created a pen with Google Maps powered by a pre-built Angular.js directive. But, I want to take a step back and dedicate a post to various Angular.JS resources, from guides and tutorials to demos and examples to actual projects and directives.
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