samaxes

The new version (1.7.3) of Minify Maven Plugin has just been released. The list of enhancements include: Support for JavaScript Source Maps Better docs Update to the last version of Google Closure Compiler Add support for Google Closure Compiler angular_pass option to support AngularJS @ngInject annotations Get it while it’s still hot!…

I’ve recently implemented some new improvements to Minify Maven Plugin. Version 1.6 added support for Google Closure Compiler and version 1.7 offers several performance improvements and more detailed logs (e.g. compression benefits from minification). A complete list of changes can be found in the changelog file. For next releases I’m planning to add Source Maps support and improve the documentation.…

My previous Maven 2 Cobertura Plugin article gives a workaround for the very buggy version 2.1 of the Cobertura Maven Plugin.

This bug is fixed on versions 2.2 or higher, and consequently, that workaround does not work anymore.

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Following the previous article Combine and minimize JavaScript and CSS files for faster loading, I implemented a similar solution as a Maven plugin. This plugin combines and minimizes JavaScript and CSS files using YUI Compressor for faster page loading. More details can be found on the Minify Maven Plugin page.…

Reduce HTTP requests

On most sites, the major component of download time is not the base HTML file itself, but the number of subsequent HTTP requests to load the page’s supporting files - CSS, JavaScript, images, etc.

Each of those are extra HTTP requests, and each unique request takes a relatively long time. The fewer requests to the server that the browser has to make, the faster the page will load.

There is an inherent overhead in each HTTP request. It takes substantially less time to serve one 60K file than it does three 20K files and a lot less than it does six 10K files.

Combine and minimize files

This post will explain how to combine and minimize CSS and JavaScript files using YUI Compressor and Ant.

This can be done by just concatenating all files into two combined files (one for CSS and one for JavaScript) and minimize them. You can quickly go from 10 or more files down to 2, and their size can be greatly reduced.

To keep the modularity that comes with splitting these files out by section (or business unit), keep them split in your development process, and combine them in your build process. A first Ant task will combine them and a second task will generate their minimized versions.

This technique has been successfully used in libraries such as jQuery, MooTools, Dojo, ExtJS, YUI, etc, allowing developers to better organize their code.

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I’ve had a lot of feedback with my article Exactly what is Alfresco?. A recurrent question I’ve received was where to find more info about WCM with Alfresco. You can Download Alfresco Web Content Management 2.1 under Download Alfresco Community Network. There you can find Alfresco 2.1 Web Content Management Product Evaluation Guide which is a very complete guide about the WCM module. Hope this helps.…

Alongside with the IE6/IE7 Application Compatibility VPC Images (VPC Hard Disk Image for testing websites on IE on Windows XP SP2), Microsoft now provides an IE8 version. This is a great way to test your web applications since the IE8 Beta1 installation overwrites the previous IEs present in your system.…

You probably have already heard about Yousif Al Saif’s Multiple IE installer which makes possible to run Internet Explorer 6 in standalone mode. The problem is that Multiple IE doesn’t work on Microsoft Vista (still you can use an Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image). Hopefully Yousif Al Saif is making progresses in getting Internet Explorer 6 run natively under Windows Vista. More news to come……

The Maven 2 Cobertura Plugin web site lacks information to successfully generate Cobertura reports. Worse, some of the usage examples are incorrect and don’t work. The most common problem when generating Cobertura reports is when the generated report shows 100% test coverage while in reality many of the classes don’t even have tests. The following example shows how to configure the reports so that it would reflect real test coverage and then check if the specified packages achieved the wanted test coverage:…

With the release of Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7), web developers once again need to test multiple versions of IE. Unlike other browsers like FireFox, IE is a system component for the Windows operating system. This makes running multiple versions side-by-side very difficult. Thanks to Yousif Al Saif’s Multiple IE installer it’s possible to run Internet Explorer in standalone mode without having to over-write previous versions.…