• Tux Training: Configs to tweak Firefox 3
• Dependencies maps for popular PHP-based software - if you ever wanted to see how a certain file is used in WordPress, that’s a great way to finally find out
• DLM: 10 Tips to Move Your Blog to Stardom
• Justin Tadlock: Tips on Using and Developing WordPress happily - great post for WordPress blog owners
• Why Reputable SEO firms won’t promise guaranteed search engine ranking - a great article from SEOmoz demystifying some aspects of SEO
• Lifehacker: Enable Chrome’s Best Features in Firefox

WordPress

Gone are the days of manually clipping the WordPress logo from the official website! Last week I’ve discovered a wonderful page with all the official WordPress logos and buttons offered in PDF (with vector graphics) and PNG versions of everything.

There’s a set of WordPress wallpapers and a neat table with current colors used by WordPress engine.

Like WordPress? Find out more:

• Upgrade to WordPress 2.6.2
• WordPress 2.5 release
• Download WordPress

Looks like WordPress 2.6.2 with a few fixes is out, so I’ve just upgraded all my blogs to this new milestone.

For all the details, read the official WordPress 2.6.2 announcement or glance through the list of bugs fixed in 2.6.2 release.

See also:

• WordPress download page

It was bound to happen: I’ve joined Twitter! It would be great to hear from you there!

Follow me or leave your Twitter name in comments below so that I can follow you:

http://twitter.com/PerfectBlogger

Looks like Google has taken one more shortcut to providing best service to its fans: as of yesterday, Google’s very own Internet browser codenamed Google Chrome, is available for download.

What is Google Chrome?

My first impression is that Google Chrome is a slick ultra-light browser with minimalistic yet intuitive interface and a minimal set of settings. There’s no fixed status bar, there’s no main menu, there’s just the address bar (called Omnibox because it also combines a search bar).

The tabbing works very smoothly, and overall you kind of feel there’s something missing simply because there’s only the page content and a very subtle set of controls. You get used to such a simplicity very quickly, though.

Here’s how Google Chrome looks:

Google Chrome

Performance of Google Chrome vs Firefox

I haven’t noticed much of a performance boost yet, but maybe it’s just because I need to play with this new browser a bit more. All the pages load quickly, but I’ve yet to see the ones which load much better than in my Firefox. ZDnet did some testing already and it shows that Google Chrome is quite fast.

What’s really cool is the really simple interface and intuitive searching - as you type a URL, Omnibox tries to guess what website you’re trying to get to. Works like a charm for many well known websites!

One of the main reasons Google came up with its own browser is performance of Google services and apps in modern browsers. Firefox is not ideal, although with a bit of tweaking you can get it to work pretty fast. Is it very likely that Google Chrome, being a highly specialized product, will be the best for GMail, Google Calendar and other services - but it may take some getting used to. Google also claims Chrome will be better for most websites, so it does seem like the optimizations will have a generic nature rather than a Google-specific services customization - I think it’s great news.

That’s it! Have a look at the browser itself, I think it’s a great move for Google, but would hate to see it as a direct competition to my favourite Firefox. I think the fact that these two products both called web browsers still doesn’t make a fair apples-to-apples comparison because Firefox has got quite a history and is much more universal as it is. I’m a long way from changing my preference for Firefox to any other browser, but must admit that Google Chrome seems to have done quite a neat and easy to use browser - time will show what Google will make of it.

See also:

• Google Chrome: First Impressions @ PCpro
• Google Chrome: features
• Reasons behind Google Chrome: a fresh look at a web browser

As of today, this website will have Brian Gardner’s Vertigo theme. My main reason for changing the look of Perfect Blogger is to declutter the pages of this blog, so have a look and let me know!

If you register for Wordze between now and July 14th, you’ll have to pay only $4 for the month of July, with $38.98 for every month after (you can cancel at the end of July if you change your mind).

I find Wordze to be one of the most useful and affordable tools online, and thanks to offers like this almost everyone can give it a try at virtually no cost.

Sam Allen from Dot NET Pearls has written a great program to observe the memory taken up by each of the 5 most popular browsers. His experiment was to taken snapshots of memory usage numbers every 3 seconds for a period of 3 hours. The graphs posted on his Firefox 3 Memory Benchmarks and Comparison page are quite interesting, particularly showing that Firefox 3 is ahead of all the competitors with its rather stable and humble memory requirements.

I’ve been using Firefox 3 full-time since RC2, and must say I’m really impressed with its stability and performance.

Link: Firefox 3 Memory Benchmarks via Slashdot: Real-World Firefox 3 Memory Usage.

Just a reminder: today, June 17th 2008, is the official Firefox 3 download day - Mozilla foundation attempts to set a new Guinness record by having the latest release of Firefox downloaded the most within 24 hours.

You still have the time to make a pledge and download it: Firefox 3 download day.

Just wanted to highlight this information for you, although it’s not exactly news - AJAX Libraries API from Google allows everyone to access the latest versions of most popular JavaScript frameworks right from Google servers.

What is AJAX Libraries API?

If you were looking for a way to simplify your usage of JavaScript frameworks, Google has got you covered: AJAX Libraries API is an architecture which hosts most popular open source JavaScript libraries on Google servers and thus make them highly available to use by any of your pages.

Why use AJAX libraries hosted by Google?

There’s a few advantages to offloading JavaScript libraries onto Google’s servers. Here’s my list:

- no headaches with upgrading your JavaScript libraries - they’re updated automatically so your pages are always using the latest and greatest versions available

- universally available - you can access JavaScript frameworks using the same methods from any pages of yours

- high availability - like everything else on Google servers, your scripts will be safe, fast and highly available - distributed among many Google servers and probably delivered to you from the geographically closest location

What libraries are currently available?

Here are the ones you can start using right now:

• jQuery - versions 1.2.3 and 1.2.6 are available
• Prorotype - version 1.6.0.2
• script.aculo.us - version 1.8.1
• mootools - version 1.11
• dojo - version 1.1.1

The full list of libraries available through AJAX Libraries API can be found here: Google AJAX Libraries, I presume it will be updated as more libraries get hosted there.

Via: Google Hosts Popular JavaScript Libraries @ Google System blog