8 CSS preprocessors to speed up development time

Less CSS

Less is probably the most well known CSS preprocessor. It allow a simplified syntax and the use of variables. Less CSS is for the Ruby programming language, however it looks like Aaron Russel created an extension for creating cached stylesheets your PHP projects can use.

Get it: http://lesscss.org

Sass

On their website, Sass claims to make CSS fun again. To be honest, I must admit that what this project is capable of is very interesting. Like Less CSS, it allow the use of variables and have a simplified syntax. Sass is definitely a great tool, unfortunely only available for Ruby, as far as I know.

Get it: http://sass-lang.com/

Turbine

If like me, you’re a PHP Lover, here is a css preprocessor made for your favorite language. I haven’t tested it yet, but Turbine looks very cool. It allow a minimal syntax, automatically gzip multiple css, fix cross-browser issues, and a lot more. A must check if you’re into PHP.

Get it: http://turbine.peterkroener.de/index.php

Switch CSS

Switch is a full featured, production ready CSS preprocessor. It runs under Apache with mod_python, or as an environment-agnostic command line tool.

Get it: http://sourceforge.net/projects/switchcss/

CSS Cacheer

CSS Cacheer is a very cool preprocessor which allows developers to create plugins. It requires PHP and Apache with mod_deflate and mod_rewrite in order to work.

Get it: http://retired.haveamint.com/archive/2008/05/30/check_out_css_cacheer

CSS Preprocessor

Another interesting preprocessor, written in PHP 5. Among other things, this tool allow you to use expressions such as margin-left: (200px * 3/2 – 10px); in your stylesheets.

Get it: http://pornel.net/css

DT CSS

DtCSS speeds up CSS coding by extending the features to CSS. Such as nested selectors, color mixing and more. DtCSS reads the CSS file with special syntax written for DtCSS, and outputs the standard CSS. It also comes with a smart caching system.

Get it: http://code.google.com/p/dtcss/

CSS PP

Unfortunely, CSS PP is still in alpha status, but the authors says the code will be released very soon. One of the good points of this projects is that it will be available in PHP, Python and Ruby. Great news for developpers who work with all of these languages.

Get it: http://csspp.org/

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8 CSS preprocessors to speed up development time

Video Tops P2P Filesharing Traffic: Cisco

Content providers may have finally found a way to battle peer-to-peer file sharing: by making their content easily available online. That’s one possible takeaway from Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index, which found that video now accounts for more than one-quarter of all network traffic worldwide. That means video is now the largest portion of all data that runs across the Internet, topping peer-to-peer traffic for the first time.

Video traffic, which includes streaming, Flash video and streaming via peer-to-peer technology, made up 26 percent of data traffic worldwide, according to Cisco, compared with the 25 percent of traffic made up of P2P file-sharing. That’s a dramatic reversal from last year, when P2P accounted for 38 percent of worldwide data traffic. It’s not that P2P usage is shrinking, but that video consumption is growing that much faster.

Not just that, but video makes up one-third of all data traffic delivered from the top 50 websites globally, and Cisco says video sites dominate the top 100 websites by traffic volume worldwide. The trend is particularly strong in North America, where 60 percent of the top 100 sites are either video or gaming sites.

That said, while P2P traffic tends to be fairly flat throughout the day, video traffic is extremely volatile. Online video traffic hits its peak between the hours of 9:00 pm and midnight worldwide, when it makes up around 28-29 percent of total data traffic. According to the report:

“Online video’s volatility (defined as the spread of traffic volume during the course of the day) is 51 percent higher than that of file sharing. The peak video hour is 91 percent higher than the average video hour, while the peak file sharing hour is 64 percent higher than the average file sharing hour.”

Finally, while Adobe likes to boast that some 75 percent of all web video is Flash-based, consumption numbers tell a different story, according to Cisco. It found that of the 26 percent share of traffic belonging to online video, only 7 percent is Flash video. Another 10.5 percent is streaming video; 5 percent is streaming video via P2P technologies; 3.6 percent is audio and video over HTTP; and 0.28 percent is made up of video downloads.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user comedy_nose.

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Skype Debuts Its Half, Now It’s Facebook’s Turn to Integrate

We were excited last month to find out about the integration of Skype and Facebook. This morning, the feature is going live for all to see with the release of Skype 5.0.

The latest version comes with some cleaned up design features, built-in Facebook integration and the group video chat we’ve watched develop in the beta releases. For Skype, it’s improvement all around and all we can say now is that the ball is surely in Facebook’s court.

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Group Video Chat Goes Live

We got a quick tour of Skype 5.0 and the first thing Rick Osterloh, head of consumer product management, showed off was the group video chat feature. Allowing up to 10 people at once, the chat takes advantage of Skype’s high-quality audio and video. It offers some nifty features, like “dynamic view”, which highlights the person speaking by enlarging their video feed and shrinking everyone else. While group voice and text chat will be available for free, Skype plans on charging for group video chat in the near future.

A Clean-Cut Interface

The next big feature was the new “Skype Home”, which features a cleaned-up contacts list, recent contacts, and the Facebook integration.

As Osterloh called it, it’s a “nice central place for users to go.” The contacts list now shows users’ avatars next to their names and the recent contacts list shows just that, along with recent Skype transactions.

Here Comes Facebook

Now for the Facebook integration – it’s basically your Facebook feed pulled directly into Skype. You can "like" things and post comments, but anything beyond that – like viewing profiles, photos or events – opens separately in your browser.

Viewing your Facebook feed in Skype offers another advantage – for friends who include their phone number in their Facebook profile, you will see two buttons. One lets you call either their Skype number or their home/mobile phone, while the other allows you to send an SMS. If they have a Skype account linked to their Facebook account, a “+” will appear, letting you add them as a Skype contact.

Even better than the Facebook feed – because we really don’t see ourselves browsing Facebook in Skype – is the importing of your Facebook Phonebook. Suddenly, everyone you know on Facebook that lists a phone number will be easily contactable via Skype.

The Ball’s In Facebook’s Court

We were really hoping to see Skype integration on the Facebook website. Osterloh told us that they don’t have anything to announce there today, but we’re hoping to see the vice-versa integration in the near future.

So does this embody the endless potential we wrote about last month? Not really, but it’s a decent first step. What we’re really hoping to see from this partnership are Skype buttons on Facebook that launch Skype calls and SMS capabilities. Even more, we would love to see a Skype integration in the iPhone and Android apps. Imagine using Skype’s background capabilities for ever-present chat and free, quick Skype-to-Skype phone calls connected directly to your Facebook account. What about quick connections from Facebook to businesses as a part of its fledgling Places product?

While the Facebook integration in Skype is nice, it’s the other way around that we’re really excited to see…so what do you say, Facebook? Will we see on-site voice and video calling? SMS integration?

It would be pretty neat, is all we’re saying…

The latest version of Skype is now available for download.

Discuss

Saturday Morning Awesome Sauce: Adobe Continues Bridging Gap with Flash to HTML5 Conversion Tool

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TubeMogul Finds That Most Viewers Never See Pre-Roll Video Ads

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Vimeo Now Has Couch-Mode For Google TV And Home Theater PCs

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Sprint 4G App Challenge accepting Android submissions

With Sprint (NYSE:S) continuing to roll out its 4G WiMAX network across the U.S., the operator launched its first Sprint 4G App Challenge, calling on developers to create applications that leverage next-generation data speeds as well as the unique features of smartphones like the Android-based HTC Evo 4G and Samsung Epic 4G. Sprint is accepting submissions now through Nov. 5, and will recognize the most impressive entry in each of five categories: Entertainment, Gaming, Productivity, Social Networking and Multimedia. Submissions will be judged based on four criteria–creativity, intuitive navigation, functionality and design–and winners in each category will walk off with a $50,000 grand prize, an HTC Evo 4G with one year of Sprint service and a one-year membership to the Sprint Professional Developer Program (including 250 hours in the Virtual Developer Lab).

Sprint recommends that developers learn more about building 4G applications by checking out the Sprint Applications Developer Program website, which includes resources on developing for an Android handset and maximizing the Sprint 4G network as well as the HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Epic 4G’s hardware and software capabilities. Sprint adds that developers who submit 4G App Challenge submissions by Oct. 20 will be eligible to receive one free admission to this year’s Sprint Developer Conference, taking place Oct. 26-28 in Santa Clara, Calif.

For more on the Sprint 4G App Challenge:
- read this release

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Android Market tops 80,000 apps–BlackBerry App World at just 10,000

Days after Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced its App Store now features more than 250,000 iOS-based mobile applications, rivals Google and Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) have checked in with inventory updates on their own storefronts: Android Market now boasts more than 80,000 applications, while BlackBerry App World stands at over 10,000. Google updated Android Market’s status in conjunction with the introduction of T-Mobile USA’s new Android-powered G2 smartphone–the store has added 10,000 new apps since mid-July. Google vice president of engineering Andy Rubin credited Android’s open-source ethos for fostering developer interest in the platform: “Developer-led Android innovation is flourishing,” he said in a prepared statement. “On Android Market alone, the number of applications available to consumers has grown from just 50 applications two years ago to more than 80,000 applications today.”

But access to Android Market is not available to all devices running the Android OS. Hugo Barra, Google’s director of products for mobile, said that Android 2.2 (a.k.a. ‘Froyo’) is not optimized for use on tablets, adding “The way Android Market works is it’s not going to be available on devices that don’t allow applications to run correctly. If you want Android Market on that platform, the apps just wouldn’t run–[Froyo] is just not designed for that form factor. We want to make sure that we’re going to create an application distribution mechanism for the Android Market, to ensure our users have right experience.”

Screen size and resolution appear to be the culprits. The Android Developers website states that from Android 1.6 and up, the OS supports three generalized size (large, normal and small) and three generalized densities (high [hdpi], medium [mdpi] and low [ldpi]), with an upper resolution limit of 480×854 on screens measuring from 3.5 inches to 4.0 inches diagonal. Google has hinted that future Android versions beginning with 3.0 (a.k.a. ‘Gingerbread’) will support the larger tablet form factor.

As for BlackBerry App World, RIM confirmed the 10,000 application benchmark via its Twitter account. RIM recently stated that more than 30 million BlackBerry smartphone users across 65 countries have downloaded BlackBerry App World since it first opened in spring 2009, with consumers averaging more than a million app downloads each day. RIM rolled out a revamped BlackBerry App World in late July–the store now supports credit card payments on top of PayPal, with a handful of carrier partners offering operator billing options as well. BlackBerry App World also boasts new tabbed sections for various application lists: Users can horizontally swipe or scroll to view the Top 25 Free Apps, Top 25 Paid Apps and Top 25 Themes, along with checklists spotlighting the Newest Apps and Recently Updated Apps.

For more on Android Market:
- read this TechRadar article

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Paid apps 70 percent of the App Store–and just a third of Android Market

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will hold its annual autumn press event on Sept. 1, and as usual, the rumors are piling up–the smart money says the computing kingpin will unveil a new iPod touch with a camera for video chatting, a revamped iTunes platform integrating social media features and a redesigned Apple TV running iOS. If past Apple media shindigs are any indication, we can also expect some metrics contextualizing the company’s continued marketplace dominance–Apple execs likely will announce the App Store now exceeds 250,000 iPhone, iPod touch and iPad applications, a benchmark the storefront passed Friday according to website 148Apps.biz. As of late Monday afternoon, the App Store offers consumers over 253,000 applications from more than 50,000 unique publishers, 148Apps.biz reports–the store is now adding an average of 629 new apps each day, with Books leading all other categories at close to 44,000 active applications, followed by Games (almost 37,000) and Entertainment (roughly 29,000).

148Apps.biz cites $2.66 as the average price of a premium iPhone application–subtract games (average price: $1.24), and downloads across other categories climb to $2.90. Paid apps now make up about 70 percent of the App Store’s total inventory according to website monitoring firm Pingdom–it’s a far different picture on Google’s rival Android Market, however, where free applications make up about 64 percent of the 95,000 total available apps. There’s probably no one explanation that accounts for such an enormous discrepancy, but Pingdom suggests several theories, chief among them the continued difficulties facing developers hoping to make a living selling Android apps–the firm notes that payment options are available in just 13 of the 46 international markets where Android smartphones are available, while the App Store supports premium downloads in 90 countries worldwide. (Other possibilities: Without a strict approval process, Android Market could be drawing more hobbyist app projects–also, it’s possible a significant number of Android devs hail from the open source world, where issuing free software is commonplace.)

Nor can you discount Apple’s ongoing efforts to improve the App Store consumer experience, an initiative that benefits iPhone developers as well. The latest major overhaul is the introduction of On the Grid, a new App Store section devoted exclusively to the burgeoning location-based solutions category. For now, On the Grid features just a dozen apps, including customer favorites like Facebook, foursquare, Twitter and Gowalla–all are free except for one, location-enabled productivity app GeoFences, which retails for 99 cents. The timing is interesting given that On the Grid’s rollout coincides with new Forrester Research data indicating that just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and only 1 percent use them weekly. Consumers may be slow to embrace location-based apps, but at least now there’s a dedicated section of the App Store ready and waiting when they decide to take the plunge. -Jason