Ecommerce: Social Logins May Help Reduce Cart Abandonment

Research indicates social logins significantly reduce ecommerce shopping cart abandonment.

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Google's (AMP) Accelerated Mobile Pages Project Starts Early 2016

Google's AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is due to appear early 2016.

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This week's sponsor: TeamGantt

Keep your projects on track and your clients up to date with intuitive project scheduling from our sponsor TeamGantt.

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Frameworks

Rolling Out Responsive

WordPress to Move Away From PHP, Launches New, Open Sourced Admin Interface

Project Calypso from Automattic, the makers of WordPress, is changing WordPress and the new, pure JavaScript platform will shake it up entirely.

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Google Android Studio 2.0 Preview Has Instant Run, Faster Emulator, New GPU Profiler

Android Studio 2.0 ought to make development much faster.

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Google Publishes 160-Page Search Quality Rater Guidelines

Google's Search Quality Rating Guidelines document is a 160-page PDF file, so get ready for some coffee-time reading.

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Evaluating Click-through Rate, Pageviews, and Time on Site

WebmasterWorld members discuss and help analyse the value of click through rate, page views and time on site from Google organic SERPs.

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YouTube Adds New Language Tools For Publishers

YouTube has added some new translation tools for video publishers which are devised to help get to the International audience, which it claims can be over 60pct of the total audience.

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Google Steps Up Tests For App Indexing and Content

According to Google, in some cases there's no need to download the app as the content discovery will be in search.

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This week's sponsor: Pantheon

Catch Jeffrey Zeldman talking web infrastructure with Josh Koenig, co-founder of sponsor Pantheon, on The Big Web Show and when you’re ready to learn more about building scalable web infrastructure, don’t miss Pantheon’s weekly webinar.

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Ask Dr. Web with Jeffrey Zeldman: Looking for Love: Standing Out from the Crowd of Web Job Seekers

Google+ Gets More Than Just a Facelift

Google has decided to give Google+ a redesign, and says it's more mobile friendly, and now focusing on Communities and Collections.

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Google Quality Rater Guidelines - October 2015 Mobile Edition

Google's latest Quality Rater's Guidelines published, now with great emphasis on mobile.

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Mixing Color for the Web with Sass

Ad Blocker Tracking Script for Analytics and AdSense

On sites where you employ both Google AdSense and Analytics, here's one simple method to find out how often ads are blocked.

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Post Google Panda Era, and Future Strategies

WebmasterWorld Members discuss future strategies in a post Panda world.

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Writing CSS on Growing Teams

This fall, my team started a new project and for the first time in a long while, I was working with another developer as I started to write the styles for the interface. In fact, I started the styles, and then went on vacation while they took over.

This project has been an exercise in writing modular CSS, which I love, when working in a team. Having been a solo front-end developer for quite some time, this was a new challenge to me. When you want your CSS to be reusable, how do you have several people working in git branches on different pages without writing completely separate styles?

Surprise: it’s not really about how we write CSS, it’s about the process.

Communication

Communication is the biggest piece of making this work. As we work throughout the day, we talk about the styles we’re writing and where they might be used across the application, so the other person knows how work in progress could impact the parts of the application they’re focused on.

For example, if I change a wrapper to meet the new design spec and want to be consistent across the entire application, I mention that it’s been changed, what’s changed about it, and the branch where I’ve done this. When my coworker normalizes buttons in one branch, they let everyone know that this will be taken care of for the whole team when that branch gets merged into the master branch.

Code review

I’ve worked on teams that did code reviews, but my current team didn’t always do them as we worked. As the team grew, we decided to incorporate code reviews into our process. The best part of a code review is learning from each other. Maybe the way I’ve done a layout works, but could it be better? Are there styles I’m not familiar with that would make it better?

When we review code, we discuss our modules to ensure everyone agrees they’re going to be the best way to move forward. When talking through how to use SVGs in our code, for instance, we discuss when it’s appropriate to use them as background images as opposed to images, or inlining them by putting the SVG code right into the template.

Documentation

Finally, we came up with what’s important to our team when writing CSS and we documented that. We use the ideas from Jonathan Snook’s SMACSS to guide us, along with explaining features of Sass we want to stay away from (such as nesting), so the entire team has an easy reference.

By making this explicit, we can refer back to it for reminders as we review code. In the near future, we also hope to build a style guide to further document our work. That way, we’ll have documented how we want the code written, and we’ll have a more visual documentation of the styles we’re using to retain consistency as we continue working on the application.

As a team grows there are always bumps along the way, but it’s been a great challenge to start documenting our process, thinking about how we write CSS in a more formal way, and reviewing it together to make sure we’re all on the same page. For me, the challenge of going from being the only person writing everything, to adding new team members and working together, has been fantastic.

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New Yahoo Product Ads For Mobile, Tablet and Desktop

Yahoo has announced new Product Ads for search and display across mobile, tablet and desktop.

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Major Windows 10 Update Released, With Additional Features

Microsoft has released its first major update for Windows 10 and it says it's got additional features for consumers and enterprise users.

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Career Consultation with Dr. Web—Live

Sometimes, you don’t even know what you don’t know.

A few years ago around the Thanksgiving table, a family member was proudly telling us about the achievements of the young people he’s mentored through the years. Someone asked if he felt he always succeeded in helping. I can still see the sadness on his face as he told us about one person, technically competent and smart as can be, who never seemed to pick up on the social and teamwork skills that would help them truly go far.

It just goes to show, there are people who want to pass on everything they know—who care about your growth and want you to succeed. You’re part of the web family now: a far-flung clan with many aunties, uncles, and older cousins ready to share their insights and experience. There’s even a doctor in the family.

Jeffrey Zeldman started “Ask Dr. Web” 20 years ago to help “every web author and site designer be their best.” A lot of the early advice was technical stuff: if you were the one person who knew how to make a gif loop or how to shrink graphic assets to under 30k per page, you might be the office web hero. Today, the stuff that makes you shine is more subtle, and it’s not stuff you can get out of a step-by-step tutorial or a classroom.

At first, it’s easy to think that strong design or development skills and a willingness to work is all you really need. What Dr. Web shows you is that making business contacts, learning how to set realistic freelance rates (hint: higher than you think; higher than you’re comfortable with right now), and judging your job by its challenges and growth opportunities rather than the base pay aren’t extras—they’re the foundation of a great career.

Being columns editor has a little perk I love: getting an early peek at Jeffrey’s Ask Dr. Web columns. What blows me away is that in every column, he takes on one of those mysterious career/life skills that can take you from working a job to having a career and wraps it in his personal stories and warmth to explain how you can get over the invisible obstacles you may not even realize are in your path.

That’s why I’m so excited to tell you about our upcoming event, a live version of Ask Dr. Web on December 2. I hope you can join in, submit a question of your own, and learn how to create the career you absolutely deserve to have.

December 2 event: Ask Dr. Web—Live

Join Jeffrey Zeldman and his co-host, designer and entrepreneur Sarah Parmenter, for a live version of Jeffrey’s must-read column. Together, they’ll tackle topics like:

• Presenting your skills with current and potential employers
• Raising your profile and your rates as a freelancer
• Selling your work
• Creating side projects that are satisfying and career-enhancing

Register now, and then submit your career conundrums on Twitter with the hashtag #askdrweb, or directly in the Hangout (you’ll get the link when you register).

This event is free and everyone is welcome—just sign up to receive instructions. Here are the details:

Wednesday, December 2
1–2 p.m. EST
via Google Hangout and YouTube livestream
Register or get more details

Once you register, we’ll send you everything you need to join the event, participate in the Q&A, and then get updates on accessing the video and transcript afterward.

Join our email list to get updates when new events are announced.

Featuring

• Jeffrey Zeldman: Founder, A List Apart and Happy Cog. Co-founder, A Book Apart and An Event Apart. Designer. Writer. The original Dr. Web.
• Sarah Parmenter: Designer, entrepreneur, and jet-setting speaker. Owner of You Know Who, Blushbar, and Lovely.

Drupal and WordPress guides from Pantheon

Hosting and site management platforms do more than impact development teams—they tie into the entire business. These two free guides from our sponsor Pantheon will help you choose an infrastructure that’s efficient, effective, and within budget. Learn how to:

• Explore platform options
• Pick something that grows with your goals
• Coordinate your resources, factor in total costs
• Assess your security and compliance needs

Download the Drupal Website Platform Buyer’s Guide or the WordPress Website Platform Buyer’s Guide now.

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This week's sponsor: DreamFactory

Build easy-to-use REST APIs with sponsor DreamFactory. Mash up multiple APIs and talk to different databases, all with solid API security.

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Matt Griffin on How We Work: Balancing the Scale

Google Releases Its Machine Learning System, TensorFlow, to Open Source

Google releases TensorFlow, its second generation machine learning system to open source.

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Google Updates and SERP Changes - Nov 2015

WebmasterWorld's monthly look at Google's SERPs changes.

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.keyword vs. keyword.com

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the new gTLD's.

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Facebook Launches New Local Business Ad Tools

Facebook's announces new ad tools for local business campaigns.

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Antoine Lefeuvre on The Web, Worldwide: Singapore, a Hub for Designers?

One of this column’s objectives is to take you traveling. Our destination today is the city-state of Singapore. During my voyages, I kept coming back to this small Asian nation, because Singapore is a hub for world travelers. But is it a hub for designers too? Here’s the answer from three Singapore designers—two expats and one local.

The Lion City

I first traveled to Singapore in 2010, my mind full of stereotypes: I expected to find a postage stamp-sized country—think Vatican—so aseptic that even chewing gum is illegal. But I quickly realized how wrong I was. Singapore is actually a 30-mile-wide island blessed with lush vegetation and home to a thriving city of 5 million inhabitants. Only 60 percent are Singaporean citizens, including Amalina Zakaria, a web designer “born and raised in Singapore” who represented her country at WorldSkills 2009.

The Lion City—Singapura in Malay—is also a hotspot for expatriates. Game designer Antoine Henry left the banks of the Seine for the shores of Malacca Strait in August 2014. In the growing expat community he met Perrine Lefeuvre, a creative director who has been working in Singapore since 2012 for luxury brands such as Guerlain and Hermés.

One of the notions I had about the city turned out to be true. Singapore is “Asia for dummies”—an easy city for first-time travelers to Asia: orderly, English-speaking, clean, well-connected. Easy doesn’t mean boring, though. The whole of Asia meets in the city-state.

A unique blend

“The cultural diversity here is one of my main sources of wonder. For a European like me, it is amazing to find yourself at the crossroads of Asian cultures like Chinese, Indian, Malay, and the whole diversity of South-East Asia in general,” says Antoine Henry. Perrine Lefeuvre also finds that the city-state is an exciting place to be a designer. “If you have experience, you will have access here to projects you will never work on in Europe.”

Even for those who are not new to this melting pot, like Amalina Zakaria, the diversity is mind-opening. “The different styles of each culture and how it is fused and integrated into modern design has always been an inspiration for me as a designer.”

With 75 percent of Singaporeans being ethnic Chinese, you might be tempted to imagine the Lion City as a microcosm of China, a tropical Hong Kong. “Don’t,” reply my three interlocutors as one. “Despite our large Chinese population,” says Amalina Zakaria, “we are ultimately a Singaporean audience, rather than a Chinese, Malay, or Indian audience.” Perrine Lefeuvre adds, “Singapore only feels like China during Chinese New Year, when everything is gold and red—the traditional colors.” She even believes there’s a Singaporean style of design: “Very preppy, gentle, clean—and a bit hipster.”

The right environment for creatives?

Many web, game, and design companies have chosen the city-state for their Asian headquarters, Perrine Lefeuvre told me. And startups are following suit. “With a growing entrepreneurial spirit among locals, this creates opportunities for creative professionals to work with startups on exciting new projects. There is a lot of financial support and backing in the form of grants if creative professionals want to start something,” says Amalina Zakaria. “Singapore is a booming industry for creatives,” she adds.

Singapore, a paradise for startups and web companies? Although Amalina Zakaria has found bureaucratic procedures stifling, Harvard Business Review calls Singapore “one of the easiest countries in the world in which to do business.”

But when it comes to recruiting creatives, most of the expats I met told me the process of fostering creative thinking needs more time. A tradition of putting the group in front of the individual has historically made local workers less comfortable displaying initiative and creativity. “After a few frustrating experiences, I had to hire a designer from the Philippines because I couldn’t find one from Singapore,” explains Perrine Lefeuvre. Antoine Henry, who leads a team of designers, also experienced the culture gap. “I was used to challenge and be challenged quite openly regardless of who’s managing who. This is happening a lot less here, and I had to change my work process to actively seek that kind of honest feedback.”

A genuine world city

Listening to Antoine Henry, I have the feeling Singapore is actually Asia’s biggest Western city. “From my colleagues’ gaming habits and the test sessions we conduct with Singaporeans, I tend to think that their video games consumption is closer to Western than Chinese.”

Singaporeans are “exposed to a lot of influences from the West right from the start,” explains Amalina Zakaria. “We may be struggling to inject more Eastern influences into our work!” she adds. Which means designers choosing the city-state for a deep dive into Asian cultures might be in for a disappointment. “It doesn’t have the hints of Asian tradition that you find elsewhere in South-East Asia, nor the eccentricity found in South Korea or Japan,” acknowledges Antoine Henry.

But Singapore is actively shaping its own culture. This could well be its best argument to attract foreign clients as well as creative workers. As Amalina Zakaria says, “designers in Singapore are so well-versed in Western media, culture and customs, that we’re able to communicate effectively with our global clients.”

Because it concentrates so much diversity, Singapore has always struck me as an “East meets West” kind of place. “It’s a more complex situation than just ‘East meets West’,” retorts Amalina Zakaria. “We do not have a long history that is unique to ourselves,” she says. “However, we are globally exposed with a lot of influences coming from outside, rather than inside—and that’s what makes us globally competitive.”

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vBulletin hacked: update your forums now

Administrators for any site that uses vBulletin should drop whatever they're doing and immediately install Monday's patch

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Firefox 42 Now With Tracking Protection, Blocks Ads, Analytics, and Social Share in Private Browsing Mode

Firefox 42 has raised the bar by adding Tracking Protection in Private browsing mode.

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Google: EU Antitrust Fine is "Inappropriate"

Google says that a fine, potentially as much as $6.6 billion, would be "inappropriate."

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Twitter Ditches "Favorites" And Introduces "Likes"

Rolling out today on most platforms, is the new heart symbol which replaces the "favorite" star and now becomes a "like."

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From Pages to Patterns: An Exercise for Everyone

How We Hold Our Gadgets