Uncommon Knowledge interview with Thomas Sowell about his latest book, “Dismantling America.” Topics include: Decline and Fall, Marriage, Dismantling Self-Government and Foreign Policy.

Web page performance is critical to keeping customers and visitors moving along on your site. Slow responses typically result in frustrated users, unhappy customers and worse, abandoned orders. It is important to reduce the number of requests generated by a web page in order to increase its actual and perceived performance.

One critical way is to reduce the number of external files loaded by a page. Another one is to reduce their size through compression. This post aims to take this concept a step further by automating this tedious process using open-source libraries.

Example

This example will accomplish the task by executing the following steps:

1. Create a temporary directory, /build
2. Compress each JS files into {original}-min.js files
3. Compress each CSS files into {original}-min.css files
4. Concatenate all compressed JS files into /js/complete.js
5. Concatenate all compressed CSS files into /css/complete.css

Requirements

• Make sure Apache Ant has been installed on your system.
• Check out a copy of the sample project from my public SVN repository. This project already contains the open-source libraries necessary, YUI compressor and YUI compressor Ant task.
• Setup a system variable, COMPRESSOR_HOME that points to the location of the sample project’s /lib directory.
  • On Windows, right click My Computer and select properties. Then click the “Environment Variables” button under the advanced tab. Add a new system variable, COMPRESSOR_HOME, and set its value to your local path, for example: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Desktop\yui-compression-sample\lib
  • On Mac OSX and Linux, update ~/.profile or similar file and add export COMPRESSOR_HOME=~/YourProjectDir/yui-compression-sample/lib

Examine the configuration

Take a look at the contents of build.xml. The first portion defines variables and locations of the libraries.

<!-- tells Ant to refer to your environment vars -->
<property environment="env" />

<!-- defines location of libraries -->
<property name="lib.dir" value="${env.COMPRESSOR_HOME}" />

<!-- defines output directory -->
<property name="build.dir" value="build" />

<!-- output files, one for JS one for CSS -->
<property name="final_js" value="${basedir}/js/complete.js" />
<property name="final_css" value="${basedir}/css/complete.css" />

<!-- define nicknames for libraries -->
<property name="yui-compressor" location="${lib.dir}/yuicompressor-2.4.2.jar" />
<property name="yui-compressor-ant-task" location="${lib.dir}/yui-compressor-ant-task-0.5.jar" />

<!-- adds libraries to the classpath -->
<path id="yui.classpath">
	<pathelement location="${yui-compressor}" />
	<pathelement location="${yui-compressor-ant-task}" />
</path>

<!-- define tasks -->
<taskdef name="yui-compressor" classname="net.noha.tools.ant.yuicompressor.tasks.YuiCompressorTask">
	<classpath refid="yui.classpath" />
</taskdef>

The second portion of build.xml defines the Ant targets to be executed. These tell YUI compressor how the source files are to be processed.

<!-- targets -->
<target name="concat">

	<!-- concatenates all compressed JS files into one -->
	<concat destfile="${final_js}" force="true" fixlastline="true">
		<fileset dir="${build.dir}" includes="**/*.js" />
		<fileset dir="${build.dir}" includes="**/widgets/*.js" />
	</concat>

	<!-- concatenates all compressed CSS files into one -->
	<concat destfile="${final_css}" force="true" fixlastline="true">
		<fileset dir="${build.dir}" includes="**/*.css" />
		<fileset dir="${build.dir}" includes="**/flexgrid/*.css" />
	</concat>

</target>

<target name="compress">

	<!-- compresses each JavaScript and CSS file -->
	<!-- and saved as {original_name}-min.{extension} -->
	<yui-compressor
		warn="false"
		munge="true"
		preserveallsemicolons="false"
		fromdir="${basedir}"
		todir="${build.dir}"
	/>

</target>

<!-- deletes the temporary directory and all its contents -->
<target name="clean">
	<delete dir="${build.dir}"/>
</target>

<!-- creates the temporary directory -->
<target name="start">
	<mkdir dir="${build.dir}" />
</target>

<target name="main" depends="start,compress,concat,clean" />

What does this do?

If you are new to Ant you are probably wondering why the tasks are defined in reverse order of execution. This is just a personal preference and it does not affect execution.

The order of execution is controlled by the main task. This is the task Ant runs when a target is not passed to it. The attribute depends tells Ant the order in which the tasks must be executed.

Give it a try

All you have to do to execute the entire operation is open a command prompt (or a terminal window on OS X), change into the project directory where build.xml lives and type ant and hit Enter. You should see some output that looks like this:

claude$ ant
Buildfile: build.xml

start:
     [echo] Building JS-CSS-Compression-and-Concat-Sample with Apache Ant version 1.7.1 compiled on April 8 2010 - System Java 1.6
    [mkdir] Created dir: /Users/claude/Documents/www/yui-compression-sample/build

compress:
[yui-compressor] [53%] global-print.css [920] ---> global-print-min.css [488]
[yui-compressor] [80%] global.css [11895] ---> global-min.css [9564]
[yui-compressor] [79%] style.css [1148] ---> style-min.css [910]
[yui-compressor] [64%] googlemaps-yelp-ext.js [6604] ---> googlemaps-yelp-ext-min.js [4270]
[yui-compressor] [70%] split-filepath.js [814] ---> split-filepath-min.js [576]
[yui-compressor] [73%] ContactForm.js [4711] ---> ContactForm-min.js [3461]
[yui-compressor] [57%] InfoTabs.js [1160] ---> InfoTabs-min.js [669]
[yui-compressor] [55%] InfoWindow.js [1228] ---> InfoWindow-min.js [686]
[yui-compressor] [68%] Intraday.js [9559] ---> Intraday-min.js [6536]
[yui-compressor] [68%] MediaCenter.js [5728] ---> MediaCenter-min.js [3906]
[yui-compressor] [JavaScript] Compressed 7 files to 67% (29KB to 19KB, saving 10KB)
[yui-compressor] [CSS] Compressed 3 files to 78% (13KB to 10KB, saving 3KB)
[yui-compressor] Compressed 10 files to 70% (42KB to 30KB, saving 12KB)

concat:
     [echo] Building /Users/claude/Documents/www/yui-compression-sample/js/complete.js
     [echo] Building /Users/claude/Documents/www/yui-compression-sample/css/complete.css

clean:
   [delete] Deleting directory /Users/claude/Documents/www/yui-compression-sample/build

main:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 1 second

What Now?

Change your HTML code to point to the newly created complete.js and complete.css instead of the individual files. Your page will load and render faster.

Squeeze even more performance out of your site by implementing other best practices. Get a copy of High Performance Web Sites by Steve Souders and read Yahoo’s rules for exceptional performance.

That was the headline from the New York Times after McDonald vs. Chicago was decided by the supreme court.

Isn’t it great how the statist media chooses to twist the facts?

The recent ruling returns constitutional rights to the people. It does not “extend” or “create” new ones. After all the 2nd amendment has existed since the constitution was ratified in 1789.

I invite all my open-minded friends to read the majority opinion (PDF) to understand the historical precedent used to justify their decision. Specifically, read Thomas’ reasoning.

Applying what is now a well-settled test, the plurality opinion concludes that the right to keep and bear arms applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because it is “fundamental” to the American “scheme of ordered liberty” and “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’” I agree with that description of the right. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to “process.” Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.

See summary on the Wall Street Journal.

As usual, the anti-gun left mischaracterizes the decision. Here is a statement by U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ):

While I am disappointed that this decision limits the ability of states and communities to determine how best to protect their residents, we must continue to focus on the reasonable restrictions that are critical to keeping guns out of the hands of felons, terrorists and domestic abusers.

This decision does not change existing laws that already prevent felons from acquiring guns. It simply removes draconian limitations imposed by states and local governments in the name of public safety.

It was precisely the lack of police action that prompted the plaintiff’s lawsuit against the city of Chicago.

Steve Wozniak and David Flynn sit down with Neil Cavuto to talk about iPad sales, Fusion-IO, Apple’s business practices and Steve’s billions.

David Asman talks about crony capitalists, like Warren Buffett, who are lobbying to have their businesses avoid new regulations being introduced by the politicians they helped elect.

By editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. H.T to Kim Priestap.

As you might already know, despite looking like a typical select box, Ext.form.ComboBox doesn’t behave exactly as you would expect since it submits the display text instead of the option value. The documentation states:

A ComboBox works in a similar manner to a traditional HTML <select> field. The difference is that to submit the valueField, you must specify a hiddenName to create a hidden input field to hold the value of the valueField. The displayField is shown in the text field which is named according to the name.

this.add([
	{
		xtype: 'combo',
		name: 'suffix',
		hiddenName: 'suffixId', // post this name
		hiddenValue: 0, // default value
		fieldLabel: 'Suffix',
		mode: 'local',
		store: this.suffixStore,
		valueField: 'key',
		displayField: 'display',
		triggerAction: 'all',
		forceSelection: true,
		allowBlank: true
	}
]);

Adding a hiddenName and a default value in hiddenValue does the trick, the default value (0) is set in the hidden field until a user chooses a different value. Unfortunately this breaks when the ComboBox is set to allow blanks and the user tabs over the field. When this happens, the hiddenValue is set to a null string and the user is never prompted to select a value.

Upon form submission, the hiddenField (suffixId) will be set to neither the default nor a valid value.

One solution is to listen for the focus and blur events to reset the value of the hidden field when it has been set to a null string.

this.add([
	{
		xtype: 'combo',
		name: 'suffix',
		hiddenName: 'suffixId',
		hiddenValue: 0,
		fieldLabel: 'Suffix',
		mode: 'local',
		store: this.suffixStore,
		valueField: 'key',
		displayField: 'display',
		triggerAction: 'all',
		forceSelection: true,
		allowBlank: true,
		listeners: {
			'focus': this.handleSuffixChange,
			'blur': this.handleSuffixChange,
			scope: this
		}
	}
]);

handleSuffixChange: function(field) {
	if (field.value=='') {
		field.hiddenField.value = '0';
	}
}

Upon form submission you will be guaranteed a valid value, which is especially beneficial if you’re using the form values to populate a server side bean object.

“While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant’s primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite. We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine’s warning that ‘Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.’” –George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams

Reposted from The Patriot Post Brief, March 8th, 2010

George Orwell defined doublethink as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

I wonder if there are some out there who still believe this bullshit.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been unable to burn DVDs on my MacBook Pro. I insert a blank disc whenever the SuperDrive prompts for one, it then checks and checks for about a minute before ejecting the disc. At first I thought this was related to the type of disc I was using, TDK DVD-R 1-16x 4.7GB, but they burned just fine on my wife’s slightly older iMac.

Have you reset your PRAM and NVRAM lately?

After a bit of Googling for a fairly recent and verifiable solution I decided to reset the machine’s parameter random access memory (PRAM) and nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) as suggested by some folks and Apple’s technical support site. It works!

Try this before you declare your SuperDrive dead and go out and buy a new one.

This is a response to Gavin Roy‘s post on the subject.

While I agree with the basic concept that broadband providers should not place restrictions on users, I believe strongly that a company is entitled to create products that result in better value for their shareholders.

I am sure there are good intentions behind “net neutrality,” but the unintended consequences could be disastrous for anyone using the Internet as a business platform, including providers and consumers, since government intervention typically results in increased operational costs. More often than not those costs are passed down to consumers in the form of higher premiums and lower quality of service.

My position on the issue is one that places the consumer directly in charge of researching the best available service offering for his business. One where the consumer addresses the service provider directly and forces the provider to create better services at the customer’s direction. While this could be a slow and painful process, new smaller businesses will sprout up to innovate and promote competition while stodgy providers will risk going out of business.

I believe net neutrality is destined to become another boondoggle that will simply add a layer of bureaucracy to an already bloated public sector.

Matt Mullenweg reported the following:

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.

Here are two quick steps to avoid unnecessary risks:

Turn off user registration

This one is simple. Just log in to your administrator screen and visit the “General Settings” screen (listed under Settings) and make sure the checkbox labeled “Anyone can register” is not checked.

Block access to your blog’s admin area

This can be accomplished with simple authentication.

If your site runs on Apache, you can create an .htaccess file in your /wp-admin/ directory to require authentication before the page is displayed. This post provides the necessary steps.

Accelerometers, drywall and a suppressed .22 caliber Ruger Mark III make for an interesting combination, and a potentially great training system.

I just read an article by Ben Forta on the new features of ColdFusion 9. Here is my initial take on them.

What I Like

• I’m really excited about CF9′s support for Object Relational Modeling. I think thorough testing must take place to make sure it scales properly under load. I imagine it’s solid since it’s based on Hybernate, but I’ve seen a few promising ORM frameworks flame out before they had a chance to be adopted due to their inability to scale.
• Access to server variables is also good. There is nothing worse than having to create service initializer hacks to pre-cache components in a clustered load balanced environment (think 4 physical boxes with 7 instances each) after server/instance restarts.
• Multi-server admin tools. Enough said.
• Although I prefer to code JavaScript applications separately from CFML, I am glad Ext-JS (3.0) continues to be the official JavaScript framework that ships with ColdFusion.

Not so Hot

I don’t think the new “local” scope adds any value. It seems we’re trying to hard to allow people to write inefficient code by being careless about scoping. Using “var” is fine with me as it is similar across multiple languages. “local” will just add another thing to remember when coding in CFML.

The Jury is Still Out

I’d like to get more testing done with the IDE, ColdFusion Builder, before making up my mind. I’ve been a fan of Aptana, the Eclipse-based IDE, for working with my favorite JavaScript frameworks, PHP and HTML/CSS. I hope the tool is both capable and fast, which has been tough to achieve with Flex Builder.

ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder Now Available on Labs

I wasn’t too happy having to click on the HD button of a video in order to view it in high resolution, so I whipped up this little grease monkey script. It simply enables HD, when available, for any links on the YouTube Homepage, My Videos & My Favorites.

Feel free to improve it, and leave a comment if you find it useful.

Install

// ==UserScript==
// @name			YouTube HD-fier
// @version			1.0.0
// @namespace		http://claude.betancourt.us/greasemonkey/youtube/hdfier/1.0.0
// @description		Modifies links to enable HD, when available.
// @include			http://www.youtube.com/*
// @license			(CC) Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
// ==/UserScript==

// Add jQuery
var GM_jQuery = document.createElement('script');
GM_jQuery.src = 'http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.2.6.pack.js';
GM_jQuery.type = 'text/javascript';
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(GM_jQuery);

// Wait until jQuery has loaded
function GM_wait() {
    if( typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == 'undefined' ) {
        window.setTimeout(GM_wait,100);
    } else {
        $ = unsafeWindow.jQuery;
        GM_ready();
    }
}
GM_wait();

// Once document and jQuery are loaded
function GM_ready() {

	var selectors = [
		'.video-short-title a',
		'.video-mini-title a',
		'.clipper a'
	];

	HDify(selectors);

}

function HDify(selectors) {
	try {
		$.each(selectors,function(i,s){
			var l = $(s);
			$.each(l, function(i,a){
				a.href += '&fmt=18';
			});
		});
	} catch(e){}
}

Evan Trimboli of the Ext-JS team just published an article describing Ext.Direct, a remoting API that is part of Ext 3.0. The team has created a remoting specification that you can use to implement the server-side stack of your choice.

Details about server-specific implementations already being maintained can be found here.

Ext.Direct is a new package in Ext JS 3.0 that helps alleviate many of these issues by streamlining communication between your client and server. When using Ext.Direct, you can expect to write 30% less code by eliminating common boiler plate code.

The Ext.direct namespace introduces several new classes for a close integration with the server-side. New classes have also been added to the Ext.data namespace for working with Ext.data.Stores which are backed by data from an Ext.Direct method.

Ext.Direct uses a provider architecture, where one or more providers are used to transport data to and from the server. There are several providers that exist in the core at the moment, for example a JsonProvider for simple JSON operations and a PollingProvider for repeated requests. One of the most powerful providers is the RemotingProvider.

Read the rest here.

The prolific team at DIY Themes has released the latest version of Thesis, the best theme/framework for WordPress. See what customers are saying about their Thesis experience!