Yahoo! recently announced they are in the testing phase of have Yahoo! Search results powered by Microsoft. Initial testing will only provide the Microsoft powered results to about 25% of the U.S. search traffic on Yahoo!

During this testing the user will not notice a difference in the listings powered by Yahoo! versus those by Microsoft; however, other layout tests are being conducted with this Microsoft test. The near future will also see Microsoft powered results making it to Yahoo!'s mobile platform.

Following successful testing, Yahoo! states their timeline to roll Microsoft powered organic search results to all U.S. and Canada traffic in August or September of 2010. Paid search listings will following suite in October.

The “alliance” between Yahoo! and Microsoft was announced back in February of 2010.

What does this mean to you?

Users of Yahoo! will likely see more focus from the company on usability improvements and an effort to pitch Yahoo! has a complete launching point for all of your Internet needs. Less competition in search algorithms, but probably a smart business move for Yahoo! Time will tell.

Since Google's Caffeine search index announcement, all the buzz around search indexing has been about page load speed. In a May 26, 2010 report Google released some interested stats on some key factors that play into page load speed.

Key takeaways from the data:

• Average web page transfers 320 KB of data.
• Most websites could reduce their HTTP requests by combining JavaScript and CSS files respectively.
• The average page has almost 44 resources, 30 of which are images.

Some of the metric data does have a yep factor; though it's not all that suprising. The era of "cloud computing" lends a lot to the gets per post and hosts per request.  Just keep in mind, reduction of some of the reported metrix data could improve your web page's page download speed.

The data in the report is based upon a sample size of 4.2 billion pages. Yes, that is billion. We are talking about Google's search index.

A cookie, or browser cookie, is a snippet of text stored on your hard drive by your web browser. Typical use for cookies include user authentication, storing site preferences, shopping cart contents, session data, etc.

Internet Explorer does give you the ability to delete cookies from within the browser by going to Tools > Internet Options and deleting cookies from your Browsing History. While this option typically works, there are a few scenarios that may prevent you from deleting cookies from Internet Explorer. In that case you may need to resort to a manual deletion of the cookies.

Manually deleting Internet Explorer's cookies from your hard drive differs depending on which operating system you have. In this post we will discuss Windows 7 and Windows XP. Windows Vista structure is likelly very similar to the Windows 7 instructions but has not be tested against the steps outlined in this blog post.

Windows 7

1. Open Windows Explorer

2. Click "Organize" in the upper left corner

3. Click the "Folder and search options" drop down menu item

4. In the Folder Options window, click the "View" tab

5. In the Advanced settings pane:

   5.a. Turn on "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"

   5.b. Turn off "Hide extensions for known file types"

   5.c. Turn off "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"

6. Windows will prompt you with an alert box, Click Yes or OK

7. On the Folder Options window, click Apply to accept the changes

8. Click OK to close the Folder Options window

9. Now, in Windows Explorer, you can navigate to and see the content of the Cookies folder

Path to Cookies folders in Windows 7:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low

Replace username with your Windows login name.

10. Select the Cookie or Cookies and delete

11. After you are finished managing your cookies you can revert your changes taken in the steps above

Windows XP

1. With Windows Explorer open go to the menu item "Tools > Folder Options…"

2. In the Folder Options window click the "View" tab.

3. In the Advanced setting pane:

   3.a. Turn on "Show hidden files and folders"

   3.b. Turn off "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"

   3.c. Windows will prompt you with an alert box, Click "Yes"

4. On the Folder Options window, click Apply to accept the changes

5. Click OK to close the Folder Options window

6. Now, in Windows Explorer, you can navigate to and see the content of the Cookies folder

Path to Cookies folder in Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies

Replace username with your Windows login name. If you do not login with a username then replace username with "Administrator".

7. Select the Cookie or Cookies and delete 

8. After you are finished managing your cookies you can revert your changes taken in the steps above

In an aspx page you can't include the runat=”server” attribute for a script file.

Problem:

<script src=”~/scripts/jsfile.js” type=”text/javascript”><script>

Including the runat=”server” attribute will produce a compilation error on the page. A work around to this issue is to use the ResolveUrl() method.

Solution:

<script src=”<%ResolveUrl(”~/scripts/jsfile.js”)%>” type=”text/javascript”></script>

Utilizing the ResolveUrl() method will replace the instance of ~ in the string with the value of the application’s path; thus, providing the same benefit that runat=”server” gives you in style sheet links and image tags.