João Prado Maia’s Weblog

I found out about Monoslideshow at keoshi.com, a web site that was featured in the Web Design Index 7 book.

It looks really cool and quite simple to use. I like how the browsing controls are hidden away and they show up when you hover the mouse pointer over the picture. I didn’t try setting this up myself, but just by reading through the documentation at their website, I also like that you can customize the hell out of it by writing a simple XML configuration file.

I found out about Litmus several months ago but forgot about it, and didn’t even write something down. Litmus allows you to check how your web site designs (even your newsletter email designs) look to your final customers.

They have a cheaper version of their monthly plan that provides a 1 week trial for free.

Another cool little tool available from the same Litmus developers is called CSSVista, a Windows application that lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox at the same time. It works by having a code editor on a vertical pane, and then two frames on the side with the two browsers showing off the design applying the CSS styles live. Very cool stuff.

Wow, I thought I was good at learning about new tools, but I never heard about HttpWatch. I just found out about it by browsing through the sessions that will happen at the Velocity conference.

It works much in the same way as Firebug, as a add-in to Internet Explorer. It looks really really cool, and some of the features are even better than Firebug. I like how it even gives you insight into the TCP level of your browsing sessions, such as how much time a DNS lookup takes. There is a very extensive features page explaining the most useful features full of screenshots.

A free version of this add-in is available, and a single-user license is $295.

Looks like O’Reilly has announced the list of speakers and sessions for the upcoming Velocity conference. The sessions seem really interesting, so I’ll try to get my company to send me to this conference.

Registration before May 5th entitles you to an early bird discount, bringing the total to $1,145.00. Pretty expensive for a two day conference. I also hoped that there would be a session specific to YSlow (and the 13 performance rules), but no luck.