When you use FireFox, you might notice that the Google search results show a different URL once you click on a link.

Google has been experimenting/implementing/… this for quite some time now but apparently not in all countries/browsers/users/… simultaneously?

It is caused by some JavaScript script that re-routes the link through Google in order for them to be able to track clicks. Although I can imagine some people make a fuss about this, personally I do not care as long as the results are good.

But this becomes annoying once you right-click a link to copy it (e.g. in an e-mail): I want to send the original URL and it sounds a bit strange to track other people clicking on my search result (for some good reason it probably makes sense to Google though).

You can easily avoid this (at least in FireFox) with a Greasemonkey script. Scripts have been available for some time, but I made a simple one with jQuery that does the trick for me.

Download or install jQuery Google click tracking removal script.

I couldn’t look past this new site from Nick La of Web Designer Wall:

Actually, IconDock is your average stock icons shop and if you’ve ever seen work from Nick, it goes without saying the artwork couldn’t get any better.

But what was really nice is the way you actually fill a shopping basket with the icons you want by dragging them into your “basket”. Powered by jQuery.

There are a lot of happy people because of the announcement that Microsoft and Nokia will use jQuery in their products.

Count me in!

A quick tip: use a CDN when you include jQuery in your project. e.g.:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js

As Google states “Once we host a release of a given library, we are committed to hosting that release indefinitely“.

It’s also a good time to thank Yoeri from Yappa who told me about jQuery almost 2 years ago.

Last month I developed an online bikini store for a design company based on Zend Framework and some jQuery widgets. It wasn’t only a fun subject – the site also performs very well. Both on organic search and on conversions.

One thing that I found to be a life saver: use caching for Zend_Currency.

$cache = Zend_Cache::factory('Output',
                             'File',
                             $configFrontend,
                             $configBackend);
Zend_Currency::setCache($cache);

Or another caching mechanism of course – this will visibly speed up page loading.
Edit: also do this for Zend_Translate but you could have thought of that yourself.

Besides that the finishing touch is a local touch: Clickini loves your country (if they are shipping to you that is). Thanks to my flexible hosting company (who installed Maxminds PHP GeoIP extension) & the world’s favorite icons, that was easy to accomplish.