web – Page 4 – Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

Javascript Benchmarks: Firefox 3.0RC2 vs. Webkit r34367

COMPARISON FIREFOX 3.0RC2 WEBKIT r34367 ** TOTAL **: 1.56x as fast 2597.0ms +/- 2.1% 1666.8ms +/- 0.3% ============================================================================= 3d: 1.44x as fast 327.4ms +/- 5.1% 227.2ms +/- 2.1% cube: 1.62x as fast 120.2ms +/- 1.1% 74.0ms +/- 2.9% morph: 1.43x as fast 106.2ms +/- 14.3% 74.2ms +/- 3.6% raytrace: 1.28x as fast 101.0ms +/- 2.8% 79.0ms +/- 0.0% access: 1.48x as fast 363.4ms +/- 2.0% 246.0ms +/- 0.9% binary-trees: 1.54x as fast 44.0ms +/- 2.0% 28.6ms +/- 2.4% fannkuch: 1.61x as fast 136.4ms +/- 1.4% 84.8ms +/- 2.2% nbody: 1.28x as fast 137.2ms +/- 6.1% 107.4ms +/- 0.6% nsieve: 1.82x as fast 45.8ms +/- 3.0% 25.2ms +/- 2.2% bitops: 1.53x as fast 245.0ms +/- 2.6% 159.8ms +/- 1.0% 3bit-bits-in-byte: 1.62x as fast 39.2ms +/- 5.2% 24.2ms +/- 2.3% bits-in-byte: 2.07x as fast 62.2ms +/- 0.9% 30.0ms +/- 0.0% bitwise-and: 1.35x as fast 65.4ms +/- 1.7% 48.6ms +/- 3.9% nsieve-bits: 1.37x as fast 78.2ms +/- 4.8% 57.0ms +/- 0.0% controlflow: 1.75x as fast 30.8ms +/- 1.8% 17.6ms +/- 3.9% recursive: 1.75x as fast 30.8ms +/- 1.8% 17.6ms +/- 3.9% crypto: 1.41x as fast 155.8ms +/- 2.6% 110.8ms +/- 0.9% aes: 1.43x as fast 61.4ms +/- 3.9% 42.8ms +/- 1.3% md5: 1.40x as fast 46.8ms +/- 1.2% 33.4ms +/- 2.0% sha1: 1.38x as fast 47.6ms +/- 3.5% 34.6ms +/- 3.2% date: 2.15x as fast 321.6ms +/- 7.7% 149.6ms +/- 0.7% format-tofte: 2.16x as fast 195.0ms +/- 13.2% 90.2ms +/- 0.6% format-xparb: 2.13x as fast 126.6ms +/- 1.6% 59.4ms +/- 1.1% math: 1.60x as fast 277.4ms +/- 4.4% 173.0ms +/- 0.7% cordic: 1.81x as fast 104.8ms +/- 2.1% 57.8ms +/- 1.8% partial-sums: 1.48x as fast 124.0ms +/- 8.7% 83.6ms +/- 0.8% spectral-norm: 1.54x as fast 48.6ms +/- 1.4% 31.6ms +/- 2.2% regexp: 1.35x as fast 225.4ms +/- 0.5% 166.8ms +/- 0.3% dna: 1.35x as fast 225.4ms +/- 0.5% 166.8ms +/- 0.3% string: 1.56x as fast 650.2ms +/- 0.5% 416.0ms +/- 0.5% base64: 1.16x as fast 77.2ms +/- 1.8% 66.6ms +/- 1.0% fasta: 2.30x as fast 173.8ms +/- 0.9% 75.6ms +/- 0.9% tagcloud: 1.34x as fast 133.4ms +/- 0.5% 99.8ms +/- 1.0% unpack-code: 1.67x as fast 173.4ms +/- 0.6% 103.8ms +/- 1.0% validate-input: 1.32x as fast 92.4ms +/- 0.7% 70.2ms +/- 1.5%

1461 Days Ago

HOWTO: iPhone Webclip Icons

I remember, years ago, I was baffled by the little 16×16 icons that were showing up in my URL toolbar, and it took a surprising amount of searching to find out how to create one. I refuse to let this happen again.

So: if you want to make a custom icon for your website that will show up in the Springboard when a user makes a “webclip”, using their iPhone or iPod Touch, the dirt simple way is:

* Create a 57×57 PNG.
* Name it “apple-touch-icon.png”
* Throw it in the root folder of your website. (Not the root of your server, the root of your web documents.)

Boom. If you add a webclip for vjarmy.com, you’ll see my smiling mug.
If you want more flexibility – perhaps you don’t have access to the site root, perhaps you want to use a different file name or format – you can use a link tag in the head of the document, such as:

<head>
<title>iHelloWorld</title>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/whatever.jpg"/>
</head>

I’ve tested this with a slightly larger (75×75) JPEG, and it works without trouble – it just scales things down.

If you’re testing this on your iPhone, you may notice a pause of a few seconds before the icon appears when you press “Add To Home Menu”. I’d imagine the icon only downloads when you request to make a webclip, instead of the “request it every time” method used for fetching favicon.ico. (As for why it’s a few seconds – well, that’s EDGE for you. The lag goes away when you use WiFi.)

Apple has more info on their iPhone Dev Center; look at “Create a WebClip Bookmark Icon”.

And don’t worry if your icon design skills aren’t up to snuff, but do worry if you care about the sanctity of your image:

>Safari will automatically composite the icon with the standard “glassy” overlay so it looks like a built-in iPhone or iPod application.

Addendum @ 9PM: I should note another oddity: there’s some degree of clipping off the sides of the icon that can’t really be controlled. I found this by scaling down a circular logo (in EPS format) to 57×57, and there was a noticeable clip on the sides. With that in mind, I recommend adding a pixel or two on the sides if you’re using a circular design. Note that scaling the icon down under 57×57 does not solve this, it merely scales it up to fit the 57×57.

Addendum @ 10PM: Neil Epstein, Technology Director for Gothamist LLC, says 47×47 seems to be the usable area, and that he had best luck with 45×45.

Addendum @ 1/16 7AM: Playground Blues notes that because of the resolution of the iPhone screen, using an oversized image (such as his 158×158 image) may result in a crisper icon. [via HicksDesign]