Jakob Heuser is the newest contributor to Digital Web, covering JavaScript libraries, webpage performance and loading concerns in Improve Your Page Performance With Lazy Loading. Jakob covers how to improve page weight and download times with a lazy loader utility, based on the JavaScript library of your own classic scripting skills.

Opera have just announced the first release of their upcoming developer tools suite. Dragonfly looks to be similar in form and functionality to the popular Firebug debugger on Firefox, with the added bonus of mobile integration, allowing you to remotely debug mobile devices. There’s a detailed overview and screenshots at Dev.Opera.

It’s only an alpha release at the moment, but it looks like a promising start — whether it will be enough to unseat Firefox as most developers’ browser of choice remains to be seen.

Today Yahoo! announced via the YUI blog that they’re seeking students for their Yahoo! Juku program. Yahoo! Juku is an interesting training opportunity in front-end development skills—“HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP”, plus more—as well as working experience within a guided program inside Yahoo. Yahoo is pretty direct about their goals for the Juku program, which are to grow talent they particularly need, train their own staff to teach (cool!) and also draw attention to the void around web skills in academic CS programs. Here’s Yahoo’s call-to-action:

If you’re a budding Front-End genius with a strong background in programming fundamentals and a passion to learn, [Yahoo! would] like to hear from you.
…
The vision of the Juku program is to provide top-quality training in frontend technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP) with the ultimate goal of producing great frontend engineers. Participants are put through 3-4 months of intensive training taught by some of the best frontend engineers at Yahoo!, focusing not just on concepts, but also on best practices in terms of maintainability, accessibility, and performance.

I like that Yahoo is addressing the lack of CS dept. attention toward web development skills, while so many social websites bring web programming into day-to-day lingo. And in the ashes of the Yahoo-Microsoft merger coverage (disclosure: I work for partly MSFT), it is nice to see focus continue on efforts like education, even with so many open questions about where Yahoo heads next.

LinkedIn debuted a Groups feature a while back. Being the habitual UX explorer that I am, I set up a few groups, including one for Digital Web readers. While LinkedIn has been slow to open up the directory to display all the new groups, external networks are making their own effort to publicize them. Airbag Industries recently formed an already popular geek group, Web Standards Design + Development. The future of groups in LinkedIn isn’t exactly clear. But as a member, you can connect to other members strictly through group membership which is new and more open-ended than previous methods.

All this goes to say that I spent some time looking through web professionals’ profiles, and noted early Groups relevant to web professionals (warning, URLs might not quite work):

• Digital Web Magazine
• Web Standards Design + Development
• An Event Apart
• Refresh
• Boxes and Arrows
• HCI
• IxDA
• New Media, Social Media
• Mobile Experience Design
• IAI
• Info Arch
• Mac user
• Usability Professionals
• ASA Architect

Know of more I missed? Please comment and add an invitation link. Web professionals are all about early adoption. Wherever LinkedIn Groups go, I’m sure geeks will be well networked and represented.

This week, Digital Web contributor Mike Padilla returns with an extremely thought-provoking article about information architecture, Ajax, filtering, user experience and more, in User Interface Implementations of Faceted Browsing. Dense sites have interaction rules all their own, and knowing how visitors navigate and filter your content is of paramount importance. Keeping an eye on searching and browsing strategies can help a great deal. Give Mike’s article a read and add faceted browsing to your appreciation of IA.

Digital Web’s Editor in Chief, Matthew Pennell, today asked an intriguing question on his personal blog, “Is it time to re-introduce sound to the web?” Web interfaces—and web apps in particular—now achieve a degree of interactivity previously reserved for desktop apps. But while desktop apps use lots of sound effects for passive information, the web remains largely silent (except for the .mp3s automatically blasting from MySpace page). Is there a new degree of human engagement to be gained from subtle, interaction-oriented sound effects in websites? Given bandwidth, is the time ripe? Discuss!

New Zealand-based web types are in for a treat next month, when the popular Webstock conference presents workshops by Andy Budd and Tantek Çelik. Andy will be presenting on guerilla usability testing, while Tantek is unsurprisingly talking about microformats, in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

And, if gorilla usability testing is your thing, Andy’s Brighton-based agency Clearleft is currently recruiting for a User Experience Architect – dream job, anyone?

James ‘Brothercake’ Edwards opened up a controversial can of geekiness with his recent Dev.Opera post, Stop using Ajax!. Brothercake argues that we are far more inclined to chase the latest-greatest technology than truly commit to accessibility, and Ajax methodologies are a prime offender. Using not-very-accessible technologies because they’re cool is at odds with the implicit humanistic idea underlying web standards—universal access. His point speaks to the very heart of the standards movement, and how widely we see that challenge. So, what do you think about ajax use v. accessibility? Or, even wider, what do you think about universal access v. technology trendiness? Should there be ebb-and-flow between the two?

Developers, take note. This week, Digital Web explores the mysteries of Django with contributing writer Dan Ellis. While it might seem intimidating at first glance, Django provides a flexible framework that can make development a breeze. Check out Dan’s article and see if Django can elbow its way in front of Rails as the framework du jour.