Filed under: Design, Utilities, Browser Tips
Which Loads Faster tells you, well, you know
Have you ever wanted to compare how fast one site loads against another one? Instead of futzing around with multiple browser windows or a stopwatch, just head over to Which Loads Faster, and load the URLs into the split window interface. When you hit the GO button, it will load both sites in side-by-side frames, then make a judgment.
Keep in mind, there are a lot of variables at play, and you'll want to run the same test multiple times to get a better idea of what the average load speed is. Also, it's not clear whether the site automatically clears your cache, so you're going to want to do it manually between tests.
Of course, since each test will likely be different, it can help you create smart-ass screenshots like the header image on this post. Hey, we're just havin' fun here, right Lifehacker?





I love Instapaper, and I love keyboard shortcuts. Instapaper, if you haven't come across it, is a tool that allows you to use a special bookmarklet to mark articles online that you'd like to read later. It has a website that is optimized for reading your saved articles, as well as a very good iPhone app so you can read those articles when you're not at your computer.
Flash is a much-maligned technology as of late, but for good reason! In as much as it helped usher the web forward with a standard way to present streaming video, its performance issues are a huge step backwards, particularly for mobile users.

Don't you just love it when you find a way to make something good even better? Remember the Milk is a fantastic online task management application, and here are a couple of browser extensions that make it even better if you're using Firefox or Chrome.

Moneyseize

Chromatic is one of the best time-wasters I've recently come across. It's all about the gameplay -- no Flash graphics here. You play a "circle" (it doesn't really have a name in the game). You move around with the arrow keys, and you change colors with Z, X, and C.
You can either be red, blue, or yellow, and you can switch at any time during the game. Each color has different capabilities -- yellow can double-jump, while red has a longer dash (which is like a forward sprint, activated by double-pressing DOWN).
Each ...