ReadWriteWeb

Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby decided to take a look at Steve Souders' old claim that 80% of performance issues happen at the front-end. It turns out that for desktop browsers, that number is now at around 85%. But for mobile Web browsers, the number is more like 97%. He published the results here.

Regarding how large the mobile Web's front-end response time, Bixby wrote "I expected this number to be higher than the desktop number, but not this high."

One of the major pain points in developing mobile applications for iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) is testing those apps. As we've noted before, the traditional testing method is time-consuming and cumbersome - files have to be emailed or shared, then downloaded to a computer, dragged into iTunes and synced to the mobile device. When an update is required, the app in iTunes has to be deleted and the whole process must begin again.

But there's a better way, as it turns out, thanks to a change Apple made in iOS 4.0 but didn't publicize. Apps can be distributed via the "ad hoc" method for testing purposes, which means over-the-air, one-click installs for app beta testers. Here's how.

Yesterday, Digg power user LtGenPanda spotted some rather odd activity on the social bookmarking site. While looking into how the new Digg algorithm changed the makeup of the site's front page, he noticed that sites that a number of new sites that never made the front page before were suddenly very prominent on Digg. After further investigation, LtGenPanda spotted a group of 159 suspicious users with names like 'dd1' and 'diggerz29' that were systematically digging stories from major sites - either by hand or algorithmically. Once he made Digg aware of these accounts, these users' activity stopped immediately.

TestFlight is a new tool for mobile developers which is being billed as an application that fixes the somewhat painful process of beta testing iOS 4 (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) applications. And it does so without requiring the use of iTunes, manual syncing, private APIs (application programming interfaces) or jailbreaking.

Is that even possible?

Exploratory testing is a form of quality checking that does not rely on test scripts. A tester is let loose on the system, often with very little introduction, and they are encouraged to report any and all issues they find.

As you're doing exploratory testing, you attempt to use the system as a user who doesn't understand where they need to go or where they will end up.This increases the likelihood of encountering issues that a formal test script might not bring to light.

What exploratory testing techniques can you use to uncover issues?

You've probably read about Facebook and Google providing internally developed tools to the open source world. Often you'll see references to such tools during conferences or presentations during developer meetups.

One such tool you may not have heard of isn't from Google and it isn't from Facebook -- it's from Yahoo. Back in May, Yahoo released the Yconalyzer tool via the Yahoo Developer Network. Let's take a closer look at this tool and how you can start using it immediately for your own needs.

One of the topics we touch on from time to time here at ReadWriteStart is the importance of solid design aesthetics for Internet startups. One of the key elements in creating a user-friendly design is A/B testing - a process by which two or more variations of a design element are tested with different groups of users. A/B testing, however, doesn't apply strictly to the visuals of a site; it can also be a useful tool for startups hoping to learn what their users like best.

The problem with hiring an arsenal of top sales and marketing executives when you don't have a proven customer model is that you're likely to burn through all that funding you worked so hard to get. Steve Blank's latest post entitled, It Must Be a Marketing Problem is a cautionary tale about a company that continued to scale up without knowing the needs of their customers.

Over the weekend we had a chance to highlight Graphic.ly - a company that opted to release early (and imperfectly) in exchange for valuable user feedback. As companies look to their peers and audiences to help define product features, there's a greater need for scalable testing platforms. Here's a summary of eight useful services that will help put you on the path to product greatness.

TestSwarm is a new Mozilla Labs project that aims to give developers an easy way to quickly test their JavaScript code on multiple browser versions. According to John Resig, who originally initiated this project as a tool to support the jQuery team, today's methods of cross-browser JavaScript testing simply don't scale. As a solution, he proposed to crowdsource these tests and farm them out to the browsers that people are already running on their computers. If you want to contribute to the project as a tester, simply head over to TestSwarm.com and the site will tell you if your browser is currently needed.