It's almost 2015. Should you still test and make sure your new website functions properly all the way back to Internet Explorer 8? Or should you forgo older browsers and not care if your site is unusable on them?

In Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google introduced a white background to the app drawer screens. This follows their material design philosophy, but may be too bright for some of us.

The new default keyboard in Android 5.0 Lollipop has a light/white background, which is a departure from previous versions of Android that had a dark background. If you want to change it to a dark background, or revert to the previous Holo keyboard style, follow these steps.

Update: Gmail now has a combined inbox. Just use the "All inboxes" button on the slide-in menu.



Continue reading on for some Gmail alternatives.


Google has done away with the stock email app in Android 5.0 Lollipop. You're now forced to use the new and improved Gmail. If you try to open the stock email app, you'll get this message:

This is a technical post on how the YouTube player works, including the kinds of http requests it makes and how it streams video and audio. This information was researched with the modern HTML5 player. It will likely differ from the discontinued legacy Flash player that YouTube used to use.

In the latest version of Chrome released with Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google is trying out a new feature where Chrome tabs are now merged with recent tasks in the app switcher. The tab menu is gone from the browser and you now switch between browser window tabs using the system-wide app switcher.

Lately, Chrome has been saving my session logins even though I have Keep local data only until you quit your browser checked in the settings. I've noticed this on Google sites, where I'm still logged in even after exiting, and on Facebook, where it remembers my email address.

With Chrome version 38, there is a regression bug that causes a strange behavior with the caret position in HTML input fields. The caret sits at the top of the input until text is typed in:

There are a number of different ways to detect if the user has an ad blocker. It can be useful information if you want to hide stray elements when ads are blocked, such as ad containers, or display a message to your users.

As of Firefox 33, if you type a single-word host name that you're defined in your hosts file, Firefox will search for it instead of treating it as an address. It will then have a little menu pop down with the message "Did you mean to go to XYZ?", which is very similar to what Chrome does.

I created a simple Chrome extension that replaces any Google Doodle on Google's US homepage (www.google.com) with the regular default Google logo:

Here is a compact PHP function that you can use to convert two-digit country codes to their corresponding full names in English:

Chrome's New Tab page contains a lot of content that can take a few moments to load. If you're like me you prefer to have a simple blank page show up with each new window or tab.

This simple JSON minifier removes all line breaks, tabs, and any unnecessary spaces from your JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).