Websites Doubled in Size just in 1 Year

The Internet now has 555 million Websites, up from just 255 million at the end of 2010.

Did you launch a new website last year? If so, you’re not alone. According to Web monitoring service Pingdom, there were a total of 555 million websites online, as of December 2011. Of those, 300 million were created in the last year alone.

That’s not the only staggering statistic available in Pingdom’s thorough report. Here are a few others to chew on:

• There are currently about 2.1 billion Internet users in the world, compared to the world’s total population of about 6.99 billion. Of those online, 922.2 million come from Asia, 485 million of which come from China alone. The US and Canada combined account for only 271.1 million Web surfers.
• Of the 2.1 billion Internet users, 45 percent are under the age of 25.

How SOPA Is Dangerous

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that SOPA is bad and would ruin the Internet, but have you actually read the bill? If not, it’s worth reading, for two reasons. First, if you are going to oppose a bill, you should know exactly what you’re opposing, not just the vague principle behind it. Second, it’ll provide you with a valuable insight: that these bills are written in an attempt to obscure the truth.

First off, we are going to qualify that we are not  lawyer. However, we are programmers, and that’s made us pretty good at unraveling spaghetti code. If ever a bill was spaghetti, this is it. If a programmer on our team wrote code as convoluted as this bill,we would fire him on the spot. That being said, there may be provisions we wrong about; if there are, please do correct us. our intent is to communicate the truth of this bill as cleanly as possible.

Here is the full text of the bill, as of Jan. 15, 2012. Open a copy, because I’ll be referring to it. It helps to click the “Printer Friendly” link to access a single-page view of the bill.

CSS3 technology replaces JavaScript functionality

It is a known fact that JavaScript allows us web developers to create some amazing interactions with web user interfaces, and now with some thought, ingenuity, and knowledge, the same types of effects can be created with the tools and technology of CSS3.

This post will highlight several CSS3 techniques and tutorials that push the envelope and create similar effects that in the past were relegated to just JavaScript only functionality. The examples are organized into three sections, Image and Photo Galleries, Text and Typography, and finally Navigation and Drop-Down Menus. Each example will highlight the CSS3 technology, provide a screen capture of the demonstrated usage, and supply a snippet of the CSS3 code that helps to make it all happen. Many of these examples are quite useful while others are just making a statement for the importance of CSS3 and its place in the future for web development.

Image and photo galleries

Polaroid Photo Gallery by Chris Spooner on Line25 utilizes CSS3 -webkit and -moz prefixes with transform, rotate, box shadow, and z-index properties to create this imaginative photo gallery and the tutorial provides the clues behind the code. The demonstration is available for viewing in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

This is a snippet of the CSS3 code that highlights the use of transform to create part of the Polaroid-like gallery:

ul.gallery li a {

       position: relative;

       float: left;

       padding: 10px 10px 25px 10px;

       background: #eee;

       border: 1px solid #fff;

       -moz-box-shadow: 0px 2px 15px #333;

}