CSS for frontend engineers

If you are working on a webapp, it is likely that sooner or later you will find yourself tasked with generating some web UI. While the esteemed colleague from the web design department excels at that (disclosure: I'm not a web designer), when asked for advice on how to get something "simple" done you'll find … Continue reading CSS for frontend engineers →

HTTP pipelining, Tomcat 7 and Firefox 4

During an optimisation cycle for Bazarooma aimed at further reducing latencies I started experimenting with Firefox' HTTP pipelining [1] feature, which is disabled by default. This can be enabled by typing about:config in the URL bar, locating the network.http.pipelining entry and setting it to true. While Firebug did not report any measurable improvement, it turned … Continue reading HTTP pipelining, Tomcat 7 and Firefox 4 →

Speeding up Ubuntu 11.04 boot time

Just because I have nothing else to do on a lazy, rainy Sunday morning I thought it would be fun to see how much I can slash off the startup time for Ubuntu 11.04 64Bit on my HP Probook 4720s. The OS boots from a class 6 SD card (16 Mbyte/sec read) and 6 GB … Continue reading Speeding up Ubuntu 11.04 boot time →

HP Probook 4720s on Ubuntu 11.04 64bit

Last Winter I posted [1] about installing Ubuntu 10.10 64bit on a HP Probook 4720s with 6GB RAM which was only a moderate success, as it required a manual driver update for the WLAN, the touchpad right-click would not work reliably and the external microphone produced only static noise. Now that the new Ubuntu … Continue reading HP Probook 4720s on Ubuntu 11.04 64bit →

Squeezing the last bit out of RPC GWT

My latest web project [1] is setting up a real estate site in Indonesia with GWT. While the number of internet users grow at an astonishing rate, much of the internet connectivity is achieved through slow dial ups or mobile connections. Thus the primary technical goal was keeping network payload to a minimum. GWT RPC … Continue reading Squeezing the last bit out of RPC GWT →