If you read hongkiat.com often, you’d have warmed up to the concept of Wearable Gadgets and the sort of convenience they are capable of providing. Leaving or misplacing your smart device will be a thing of the past and a lot of the interactions will be limited to finger taps and voice commands.

One of the most popular and much-hyped device is the iWatch, which until now has yet to be announced or released by Apple. Apparently, Apple has a team of 100 designers working on the device which may carry biometric features for better security and health monitors on top of a revolutionary (see: curved glass) design.

But while the world waits, some pretty amazing iWatch concept designs thought up by independent designers are already on the streets. Some are understandably going to remain as concept designs while others will make you wish they are going to become real. Bear in mind that we’re not just looking at form, we’re also looking at function and the UI that may change the way we interact with technology, yet again.

Zach King

Although the iWatch in this concept may be flat, with no room for a lot of gears and screws inside, on the outside, it opens up a world of possibilities: with a holographic interface.

With the iWatch projecting your apps into the air, you can swipe your fingers in the air instead of a metalic surface or glass, and escape the rigid confines of a tablet or smartphone screen. Keep your health stats constantly monitored, video call a friend on the go and even passcode-lock your door with it!

Antorio Derosa

From a holographic surface, we make a return to interacting on a flat screen and this curved corner iWatch design keeps the idea minimalistic and stylish.

Merging the conventional idea of a watch but giving life to the screen this design gives users an interactive screen and three buttons for power and volume control, just like a regular smartphone.

Tolga Tuncer

The talk about curved glass being an integral characteristic of the iWatch seems possible with this rendition. At 3.3 cm wide, this watch concept looks like it is a part of the Macbook family, particularly since it also has a touchpad. The screen however is not touch-enabled, and the way the watch bends may not fit onto every wearer’s wrist.

On the bright side, the watch is solar-powered, which will give you motivation to get out more

Stephen Olmstead

Don’t let the old-school design fool you. Each part of this iWatch concept serves a purpose that would fit the way we interact with out gadgets in spite of its classic and timeless look. In this shot below you are looking at an e-ink screen that is ‘clickable’, with a camera lens above and a microphone, flanked by two speaker outlets below.

You can choose between Siri or the two side buttons to interact with the apps run on this smart watch.

Pavel Simeonov

This particular version does not try hard to reinvent itself because why break something that isn’t broken, right? Just imagine an iPhone at a size that you can strap onto your wrist. By far, this concept should have one of the largest screen sizes among the other concepts in the list, making it the perfect device to watch videos on, Facetime with friends or check Maps on.

However, there is always a problem with large screens – how is this watch going to fit on a wrist?

Edgar Rios

Like the previous concept, this one also utilizes a large screen size to fully display its contents, from the face of a traditional wall clock to weather conditions, music interfaces to new incoming notifications

The designs are available only in black and white but there isn’t a lot of information on the strap material, the screen or if there are any external buttons.

Diccarese Design

This iWatch concept design by an Italian team has been making the rounds in tech sites recently and you can clearly see why. Designed to suit the latest iOS interface, the build of the device answers a lot of ergonomic and usability needs potential buyers (will) pose.

The elegant and beautiful final solution of curving the device naturally around the wrist breaks one of the biggest hurdle of turning the design of a smart watch revolutionary yet practical.

Yrving Torrealba

The idea of a see-through smart device is far from new, and even ‘farther’ from feasible. But if concept designs have any primary purpose, it is to inspire designers to create concepts that are not only different, but jaw-dropping, and mind-boggling. Remember the iPad?

Esben Oxholm

If the iWatch is not going to fall back on straps, then the idea of fitting different-sized watches will be rather insurmountable. At least this version has sections which you can remove or add, to reduce or extend the length of the watch.

The only physical button here is the infamous Home button although there isn’t more info about what the button (or the watch for that matter) is capable of.

jivaldi

This concept seems to have everything: a large enough touch-enabled screen akin to that of a smartphone’s, the actual face of a watch, external side buttons and a Home button. The design also looks flexible (and rubbery) enough to fit snugly onto a wrist. But will it become real?

If you are looking for shared web hosting, chances are, you will not have a hard time finding potential web hosts for your website. In fact, you will, most likely, end up facing a ‘Problem of Plenty’. Yes, there are way too many hosts out there who specialize in shared web hosting. And one common trait in many web hosts is that they offer Unlimited Hosting.

Wait, let me say it with emphasis: Unlimited Disk Space + Unlimited Bandwidth + Unlimited Everything!!

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Yes, it does. But true? Sadly, nope. In this article, we shall attempt to unravel the myth behind ‘Unlimited’ Hosting. Now that I have already called Unlimited Hosting as a ‘myth’, how about we take a look at the key aspects behind this claim, straight away?

Recommended Reading: 10 Important Factors To Consider Before Choosing A Web Host

Unlimited Anything is Oversold

It is not rocket science to figure out that a server cannot actually be capable of hosting unlimited websites. Even your hard disk has its limits, you know. Naturally, a web host that claims to offer unlimited or limitless bandwidth and disk space, is overselling.

If you do your research, you will notice that each overselling web host claims to offer unlimited hosting, but only as per the terms of its ‘Fair Use Policy’ – which, by the way, is often different from the Terms of Use.

This Fair Use Policy simply states that you are free to host your website only as long as you use a given subset of resources (bandwidth and disk space, etc.) available to you. If your website crosses its bandwidth limits (let’s say, Mark Zuckerberg shares you on Facebook and sends a lot of traffic your way?), you will violate the Fair Use Policy and your website will be penalized. Not so unlimited now, is it?

99 Sites On A Host

And how and why do web hosts oversell their servers this way? The answer is simple: if there are a hundred users on a given shared server, not all of them will use all the resources available to them (Zuckerberg may give you a lucky break, but what are the chances that he will give the same to 99 others?)

So, in all likelihood, 99 out of the 100 users will consume a small fraction of the traffic and space, and this allows the host to oversell servers – claiming that hosting is unlimited and stacking 200 (or even 300 users) on a server that is otherwise, capable of handling only say, 100 websites. This is more like a game of averages.

Unlimited is Severely Limited, Actually

But what happens when you actually use the resources available to you? More importantly, what if 10 out of the abovementioned 100 users manage to really drive traffic their way, one way or another, and start eating up a lot of bandwidth?

This is where the limits of unlimited shared web hosting come into play – the exact outcome varies from one web host to another – but common results include the server becoming super slow to respond, or the ‘defaulting’ websites being taken down (temporarily, most of the time).

If this happens too often, users with popular websites will be asked to migrate to a VPS, even though their websites may be able to survive reasonably well in a not-so-oversold shared environment.

Resource Management

Another technical aspect of this fact is that your website will probably consume more memory and CPU than bandwidth or disk space. Suppose, for a moment, that your site is running 100 processes in a minute, with each process using 0.2 CPU seconds. Wanna know what will happen here? Your website will get suspended, that’s what!

However, if each process took something like 2 minutes, everything will be fine and you will not even notice it. Thus, if your website gets a lot of visitors, it will most likely consume more CPU resources, and hog it up, thereby making all the websites on that server slow to respond).

Most web hosts try to avoid this CPU processes and RAM detail. Instead, they just give you a number of domains you can host in one shared hosting package, and then blame the slow-down on the number of domains you might have hosted.

What Now?

So, is unlimited hosting really that bad? Probably, but that does not mean you should fear it. My point behind this article is to explain to you that while deciding a web host, you should not really fall for marketing gimmicks that rely on over-using the word ‘Unlimited’. Instead, your focus should be on web hosts who offer good support, uptime stats, and other features.

Keeping all other features constant, a web host who promises you 1 GB of disk space with 10 GB of bandwidth in $5 per month is often better than a host who gives you Unlimited Bandwidth with Unlimited Disk Space for $3 per month.

However, if you are running a website with less traffic, you can still opt for unlimited hosting. There will not be too many risks, because owing to less traffic, your website will obviously adhere to the Fair Use Policy.

More

Here are a few more articles about web hosting that you might be interested in:

• Web Hosting Consumer Guide: 9 Tips You Should Know
• 5 Steps To Migrating Website Without (Or Minimal) Downtime
• 5 Essential CPanel Settings For Beginners

What do you think of Unlimited Web Hosting and oversold servers? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Since browsers have their own decision of what features to include, we web developers frequently have to identify if the browser supports particular features, then we fill in the gap using Polyfills (if required). The popular way of handling this kind of situation is by using Modernizr but do you know that we can also do this using only CSS?

There is a new rule being formulated in W3C Draft, called @supports. In this post, we will walk you through on how this rule works to let you detect browser features via CSS.

Recommended Reading: Getting Started with Modernizr

Using @support rule

Unlike Modernizr, the @supports rule requires property and the value specified. Let’s say we want to apply CSS3 grid only to the browser that supports it. We can write it this way.

 @support (display: grid;) { .selector { display: grid; grid-column: 3; grid-row: 1; grid-row-span: 2; } } 

The CSS rules under the @support will only be applied if the condition returns true. Given the above example, it will be applied if the browser supports display: grid. Or else, the browsers will apply other equivalent rules outside @support.

Mixing Conditions

Furthermore, we are allowed to combine multiple conditions using and, or, and not operator. For example, let’s say we want to apply rules only if the browser meets the following conditions:

• It supports either CSS3 Grid or CSS3 Flexbox.
• It supports CSS3 Columns.

In that case, we can write the conditional rules, as follows.

 @support ((display: grid;) or (display:flexbox;)) and (column-count:3;) { /* Your CSS rules here */ } 

Remember that if you include multiple operators in a single rule set, each operator should be grouped in parentheses as we have shown you above.

Writing it in the following way is invalid, and will confuse the browser.

 @support (display: grid;) or (display:flexbox;) and (column-count:3;) { /* Your CSS rules here */ } 

Final Thought

This feature is great and would be very useful on several occasions.

In order for the tests, however, the browsers have to support this rule; otherwise this method will fail. And at the time of this writing, Opera seems to be the only browser that has implemented this feature. So, until the spec is stable and has been covered by all other browsers, delay using this method to test during the production stages. For experiments though, go all out.

Further Resource

• CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 — W3C