It suggested that I serve Google Analytics hosted Javascript with gzip compression and that I could cut down on the number of DNS requests by serving the same JS from my domain. Great ideas guys.

One common prediction I disagree with is that The Tablet will simply be more or less an iPod Touch with a much bigger display. … If Apple’s starting with a hardware size where the iPhone OS can’t be used one-handed, then trust me, they’re designing a new interaction model.

Of course, it’s easy to be a pundit after the news breaks. Color me surprised that this was an evolution, not a revolution.

To apply, email your resume along with a link to your greatest Web Development project. Describe your responsibilities of that project and any additional information (looking for writing structure and literacy here). What makes you unique and different than other programmers and Web Developers? Your message will be deleted if this information is not contained in the body of the email. Limit your message to 250 characters or less. Thank you.

They should just cut email out of the process and only accept applications through Twitter. Or in haiku.

@register.filter(name='percentage')
def percentage(fraction, population):
    try:
        return "%.2f%%" % ((float(fraction) / float(population)) * 100)
    except ValueError:
        return ''

Usage

There were {{ yes.count }} yes votes ({{ yes.count|percentage:votes.count }}) out of {{ votes.count }} responses.

Result

There were 40 yes votes (40%) out of 100 responses.

Constant Contact is typically used through a web interface, but they do provide an API to allow some basic functions to be handled remotely. It’s a pretty limited API (you can’t even send email through it!), but that’s a rant for another day. All I’m using it for is adding contacts and basic list management. Simple stuff.

I’ve had a lot of problems with reliability in the past, but last night takes the cake. Constant Contact had a scheduled downtime for the API that resulted in all requests returning a 200 OK HTTP status code and an HTML page explaining the issue. If you tried to search for a contact, you got the page. If you tried to add a contact you got the page. Etc. But the 200 OK status code makes it look like the request was processed correctly and this HTML was the response (which should be XML if everything did go as planned). They’re using a browser error screen for API responses… Insane.

Why return an HTTP 200 OK status code when it’s most certainly not OK? How is my code supposed to know that when you say everything is OK and here’s our response that you really mean “our shit’s off, we’ll be back soon”? A 503 Service Unavailable seems much more logical, but there’s a whole list to choose from. Almost every one is better than 200.

My code can figure out it’s not the XML that should be returned by catching the exception from the XML processor, but it shouldn’t have to. Also, I still need to get alerted to when this is caught because what if next time it’s not that there is downtime but something else that would require a change on my end? There’s no way to tell since it’s an HTML page returned and not a simple error code or message.

Even better is the HTML error message (for a service never designed to be used by a device that reads HTML) has a nasty JavaScript error that loops and eventually crashes Safari. Woo! Is there any possible reason for having JavaScript on a page that should only be read by computers? I’ve gotten a lot of errors back from various APIs and this is the first time it has been a HTML/JS page. And even then it crashes the browser. Fail.

Hosting

Hosting is through a firm called Airnet that operates hosting services its SMARTTech brand. If you haven’t heard of them, you aren’t the only one. They host only a few thousand domains and primarily serve GOP political interests (most famously the gwb43.com email server). The site is hosted on Windows, using IIS 7 and PHP 5.2.11. Curiously they didn’t spring for the dedicated IP address, GOP.com is sharing an IP with domains like georgebush.com and the venerable flippercam.com.

CMS

ExpressionEngine is the content management system. This is easily confirmed by the presence of a text file you typically delete before launching a site (in case it’s deleted, it says “Welcome to ExpressionEngine!”. Looking for files like this is a great way to see how a site works—WordPress can often be confirmed along with its version number by looking for readme.html on the root level).

ExpressionEngine is a fine CMS and is in use for other political sites on both sides of the aisle. The performance issues were more likely due to poor planning than anything with ExpressionEngine. One example of said poor planning is the Expires header sent is set 12 years in the past.

Libraries / Tools

There’s lots of social media API integration which is pretty typical these days. Facebook loads JS on every page load for example. SWFObject is used throughout. The main Javascript library used is MooTools and MooTools More, which are embedded in a single JS file that also does the other sitewide scripting.

Shadowbox.js is also embedded in that file though without any attribution.

Speed

Speed is being kind, the site is dog slow. For good reason too, all the previously mentioned social media integration makes for a huge number of requests. I just loaded the home page and Firebug says: 194 requests, 2.02MB and an amazing 83 seconds for full completion. Compare this to Democrats.org which has 69 requests, 900KB and loads in under 4 seconds (not a speed demon in its own right, but not insane).

No CDN is used and far in the future expires headers aren’t used for navigational elements.

It would have been great if the widget included a download option (even Save is disabled), but option-clicking on the link works well enough.

Google “broccoli casserole” and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks.

He’s right. Not that Gourmet was the only publication who could publish a good recipe, but in the age of everyone being an expert quality has suffered. The first hit for broccoli casserole includes brozen broccoli, canned soup, a pound of cheese and a package of Ritz crackers. No thanks.

I subscribe to Kimball’s wonderful Cook’s Illustrated website and you should too.