Yahoo has launched Mapmixer which allows for users to embed their own detailed maps over the existing Yahoo Maps. There is a point selection which allows for users to choose two points which match to the existing map. You can also pin up and adjust the map to fit over the Yahoo Map. There are a lot of tweaks you can do with it - adjusting the Opacity, Zoom and Pan features.
One thing i like about this product - Lets say I am visiting USC and would like to go to a particular building. I don’t need to go to the USC website to search for the USC University Park Campus Map instead, I can just go to Yahoo Mapmixer and see the USC Map provided by Yahoo and the embedded map which would highlight all the buildings easing my entire process.
Here’s what I am talking about -
http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer?lid=2b958559&pg=view
My Thumbs up for this project. Great Job!
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is not a technology in itself, but is a term that describes a βnewβ approach to using a number of existing technologies together, including: HTML or XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, The Document Object Model, XML, XSLT, and the XMLHttpRequest object. When these technologies are combined in the AJAX model, web applications are able to make quick, incremental updates to the user interface without reloading the entire browser page. This makes the application faster and more responsive to user actions.
The two features in question are that you can:
- Make requests to the server without reloading the page
- Parse and work with XML documents
A good example of a site using AJAX is www.netvibes.com and maps.google.com
Speed up your firefox… Learn how to make firefox load faster.
The whole point of this is to speed up Firefox, and for me, it worked great. Normally when you first install Firefox, the loading time is slow, even for broadband. Remember, this is a hack for those broadband users. Sorry 56k’ers, you’ll have to sit this one out. Another great thing about this is that it takes only a few minutes to tweak your browser.
Tweaking the Browser
Open Firefox and type “about:config” into the address bar. Now, scroll down and search for the following entry: network.http.pipelining. Now, set the value to “true”. Next, search for network.http.proxy.pipelining and also set that to true. Then find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set the value to whatever you want. The number you enter means the number of requests it will take at one time. Personally, 30 is what I use.
Still in the about:config file, right-click. Now select New, and from New, select Integer. Name the new integer to nglayout.initialpaint.delay and put the value to “0″. This value is the time that Firefox waits before it acts apon the information it recieves.
Now, your browser should load much faster! Enjoy using Firefox and your broadband to it’s full potential.
How It Works
The altering and creating you did in the hack is very simple and is self-explanatory. The first three values you edited(network.http.pipelining, network.http.proxy.pipelining, and network.http.pipelining.maxrequests) have to deal with the requests would make at a time. When you enable pipelining, it allows Firefox to make more requests at once. Thus, speeding up page loading.
Then, the second step(nglayout.initialpaint.delay). As I hinted earlier, this value is the time that Firefox waits before it acts apon the information it recieves. By setting the value to “0″, it makes firefox wait “0″(milliseconds probably) before it starts acting on the information it just recived. In other terms, no waiting time.