StartSSL Overview for the Impatient

StartSSL might not be known to many, but it's actually a very interesting and, if you think about it, very logical concept. First off, we're talking about a CA (certification authority) that signs your SSL certificates. But, unlike other CAs, it charges for identity verification, rather than individual certificates. In this post, I'll give you a quick overview of what getting the free Class 1 certificate looks like.

All your cache is belong to us

I promised an article on how we do cache busting a while ago, and never got around to writing it... until today. As promised here it is.

Normally, for optimal cache performance, you want to minimize browsers' checking for freshness as much as possible. So, to do this, you need to configure your server to send the so-called 'far-future expiration date'. This assures the browser that the assets it has just downloaded will be fresh for very long periods of time (say, a year?). However, at the same time, you want to 'bust' the cache when the assets are updated.

Herd Hound 2.0: The need for speed

It was April 2011 when work on Herd Hound officially started. Six months later, we were finishing up a port of GAE-Bottle backend to Node.js. Less than Six months from there, we have a completely rewritten frontend and partially rewritten backend, with a reduction in total code base of almost 50%, mean and lean appearance, and very good performance. Let me just quickly recap what we did to reduce the payload and dramatically boost responsiveness, and then I'll cover the details in the following posts.

Prevent text selection during mousemove

Let's say you are trying to implement drag & drop action for your flashy web 2.0 3.0 app. You are happy that it all works, and slap it onto the page. The draggable item appears over that article on the home page, and you happily proceed to test your new functionality. Alas, as you move your cursor, gripping the left mouse button, the article becomes selected, and soon enough, the whole page is marked as selected.

While working on something like the above, I've stumbled upon a nice solution to this problem. The answer is CSS3!

Useful online tools for web developers

We are currently working on v2.0 frontend for our service, and testing our new email interaction model (I'll write in more detail about that in upcoming posts). During development of the new features, I've come across a few tools that came in very handy.

Herd Hound is Live

Yes, we are officially live. But live in an early-preview sort-of-way. So what does that mean? Well, it means that everything more or less works, but we are still in the refinement process. We're not just reevaluating some technical decisions, we're also in the process of completely overhauling some user-experience and business decisions. But, to reiterate, everything works just fine, so we can definitely start moving some herds. If you have an interest in going anywhere, please don't be shy.

Online Payments and Some Tricks

We are finishing the final bits and pieces to make the alpha Herd Hound ready for prime time. Yesterday, we spent about half our working hours debugging the booking system, and I'd like to share our insights regarding payment processing.