So, I have been toying with the idea of putting together a daily or weekly list of links that I have found around the web to be of particular interest. Having spent a whole lot of time sharing, and reading links shared by others, on Google+ and through my Google Reader account, I have decided it is about time a stop thinking about it and do it already.

Today the marks the inaugural edition of LinkedList. The amount of links shared will differ from week to week but I am sure you will always find something to spark your creativity and fuel your weekend. If there is something I missed and you feel absolutely needs to be part of the list, please let me know in the comments.

1. Finding Memory Leaks : Tony Gentilcore

Over lunch last week Mikhail Naganov (creator of the DevTools Heap Profiler) and I were discussing how invaluable it has been to have the same insight into JavaScript memory usage that we have into applications written in languages like C++ or Java. But the heap profiler doesn’t seem to get as much attention from developers as I think it deserves. There could be two explanations: either leaking memory isn’t a big problem for web sites or there is a problem but developers aren’t aware of it.

2. Chrome Developer Tools: Heap Profiling

After reading the above you might want to dig deeper into the Web Inspector’s heap profiler, the documentation here will provide you with everything you might want to know.

3. Calculated drop shadows in HTML5 canvas – Chris Heilmann

One of the best new features of HTML5 when it comes to visual effects is the canvas element and its API. On the surface, it doesn’t look like much – just a rectangle in the page you can paint on and wipe. Much like an etch-a-sketch. However, the ability to transform, rotate and scale its coordinate system is very powerful indeed once you master it.

4. JPEGMini – Your Photo’s On A Diet

Performance is a big challenge in web development and one of the areas where we make some gains is in compressing images appropriately to be as small in byte size as possible without loosing to much of the quality. JPEGMini has been making waves this week with it’s impressive compression of images that has already been optimized. Head over to their site and give it a whirl.

5. Pythoscope : Your way out of The Lack of Testing Death Spiral

This week I stumbled on an article about open source over at the Disney Animation Studios. There is a bunch of really awesome apps there and this is just one of them. “Pythoscope is a unit test generator for programs written in Python. It’s open source, licensed under the MIT license.”

6. Patternizer : Stripe Patter Generator

Earlier this week Robert Nyman shared this useful little tool that generates custom, striped patterns on the fly using HTML5 canvas. Once you are happy with your pattern, hit the Code tab, grab the code and be on your way.

7. HTML5Video.org Relaunched

HTML5 video is one of the big wins for web developers and end users on the web and HTML5Video.org has tons of the information you might be after. From the site: “html5video.org has relaunched as a video development community center with continuous integration testing and a video player demonstration section to help you choose the best video player for your needs.”

8. Ender : The no-library library

If you have not heard of Ender before, now is the time, from their site: “Ender is a full featured package manager for your browser. It allows you to search, install, manage, and compile front-end javascript packages and their dependencies for the web. We like to think of it as NPM’s little sister.”

9. Leaflet : Modern, Lightweight Open-Source JavaScript Library for Interactive Maps

If you work with maps in your day to day work or want to experiment with some new ideas, this is the library for you. From their site: “Leaflet is a modern, lightweight BSD-licensed JavaScript library for making tile-based interactive maps for both desktop and mobile web browsers, developed by CloudMade to form the core of its next generation JavaScript API.”

10. Continuous Integration for JavaScript : Eric Wendelin

Write JavaScript? Have you used Jenkins or another continuous integration engine for your server side projects? Well, it’s time you bring that same love to your JavaScript development cycle.

“Jenkins is a CI tool that is often used for Running tests and code analysis for Java and .NET projects. There are a lot of benefits that we as a community are not taking advantage of for our web (CSS, JS, etc) code. In this article I’m going to walk you through setting up automated building and testing for a JavaScript project.”

11. Firefox 9 JavaScript performance will be improved by 20-30%

I have touted this for some time now, the Firefox Nightlies are super fast and stable. This article just proves what I have been carrying on about ;)

After more than 18 months of hard graft, Mozilla has finally succeeded in landing a big addition to Firefox’s JavaScript engine that, upon initial testing, speeds up the web — or at least the vast swaths of it that use JavaScript — by around 20 to 30%. The new feature is the introduction of type inference to Firefox’s JaegerMonkey JIT compiler, and it will debut with Firefox 9.

12. How Github Develops

Ever wondered how the folks over at Github uses Git? Wonder no more….

13. Open Source at Walt Disney Studios

I hinted to this one earlier and here then is the article I was referring to. Really amazing work that the people over at Disney are creating.

14. 10 Practices for Good Open Web Standards Development

Over the last here I have become more involved in web standards then ever before and something I have learned very quickly is, to do it right, is not easy. Luckily there are great mentors such as Tantec Celic that can guide us on our way.

15. The Public Domain Review

Paul Irish shared this one yesterday and it’s a real gem. When you need some imagery for demos or articles and blog posts it is incredibly useful to have a resource to dive into which you know, is free and can be used without fear of repercussions. Creative Commons is a really nice resource but now we have another one in the public domain review.

16. Web Accessibility for Designers

The focus of web accessibility is often on web development – the things that happen in HTML, CSS, or JavaScript after a site has been designed visually. Optimal accessibility should start much earlier, as part of the visual design process. WebAIM created an infographic that highlights a few important principles of accessible design.

17. Making web content more accessible with iOS VoiceOver

On the topic of accessibility, this article discusses how VoiceOver on the iPhone works and also touches on some points that is not specific to iOS but, can be applied everywhere.

18. Writing CSS for Others

Recently, I have begun to think that CSS authors could take a leaf from the programmers’ book. We need to write CSS that others can understand and use with ease. Programmers have been writing sharable code since day one, and it’s high time that CSS be written with as much organization and openness.

19. First Look at Ubuntu Linux 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” Beta

“Like most Ubuntu updates, version 11.10 isn’t a huge overhaul; rather, it improves on the big changes made in 11.04, by cleaning up the Dash, overhauling the Ubuntu Software Center, and bringing in some new default software.” – Lifehacker provides a nice high level overview of what is new in the upcoming next release of Ubuntu.

20. Reliable Cross-Browser Testing, Part 1: Internet Explorer

In a perfect world, cross-browser testing would be straightforward. We would download a legacy version of a browser, run it, and be able to instantly test our pages and scripts without a single care in the world. The reality of cross-browser testing, though, is very different. Issues such as runtime conflicts when running multiple versions of the same browser and inaccurate third-party testing tools mean we can spend hours just evaluating whether a testing set-up is anywhere near reliable.

21. jQuery 1.6.3 Released

The jQuery team released another maintenance release of the 1.6 branch with the following ‘highlights’

• Fix an XSS attack vector
• No more animation “worm holes”
• Better handling of HTML5 data attribute names

22. The Browser Fountain

A fun canvas particle experiment well worth your time, enjoy!

Image courtesy: annshi