Nokia at 150
May 14, 2015, by tomwryan
Nokia hasn't always been a phone manufacturer. The company dabbled in paper products, footwear and tires before it became involved in the wireless industry. To celebrate their 150th birthday, the Finnish company, which began in 1865 as a rubber manufacturer, released a video detailing its long history... Read More
Google Mobile Friendly #Fail
May 13, 2015, by thecurmudgeon
Yes. I am a curmudgeonly old web dev. I remember when marquee tags were all the rage, but even back when I had hair, we paid attention to how heavy we made our web pages. Image optimization tools were invented to make sure we could shave as much off our web pages as we didn’t off our chins. The beeps and and pings of the dial up world did not a happy bedfellow make with heavy weight web pages... Read More
Measuring page weight
May 11, 2015, by ronan
It used to be so easy. Measuring the weight of a web page in the early days of the web was merely a matter of waiting for the page to finish loading and then counting up the size of its constituent resources... Read More
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test: can a Spruce Goose really fly?
May 5, 2015, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
There has been a lot written recently about Google's mobile-friendly search algorithm update, starting first with SEO expert blogs, and ending up being covered by mainstream media sites. The update promised to penalise sites for not being mobile-friendly... Read More
How to switch User Agents in desktop browsers
April 27, 2015, by Pawel Piejko
Looking to test mobile websites in your desktop browser? Or, maybe you need to test page weight and load times in the mobile environment? These tasks are easily done by changing the browser’s default User Agent header. This article describes a few simple methods of switching User Agents in desktop browsers... Read More
Understanding web page weight
April 16, 2015, by ronan
Page weight is the gravity of the web—a relentless downwards drag, ever present and utterly unavoidable. Understanding it is a critical aspect of a successful web strategy. We’ll be doing a series of articles on page weight covering background, measurement and reduction. In this article, part I of the series, we’ll talk about the importance of page weight... Read More
Webviews and User-Agent strings
April 13, 2015, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
Much is made of the comparative times spent browsing the web vs engaging with native apps in the apps vs web debate. An often overlooked part of the discussion is that when engaged with a native app some portion of this time is spent actually on the web, via a webview. We'll get to what a webview is in a minute, but for now, what this means is that although the user is in an app, he or she is effectively browsing the web... Read More
The mobile-friendly apocalypse is nigh
April 1, 2015, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
April 21st! Mark the date. Circle it. Set your alarms, and put your crash helmet on. If you're not mobile-friendly that is. Because April 21st is the day that your search engine rankings die. It's been called the mobile-friendly apocalypse, mobile-friendly meltdown,a there's even a hashtag, #mobilegeddon, for it, and indeed the world may end for your business. But bad things will only happen if you're not mobile-friendly... Read More
Where’s the !@££@$£ content? The scourge of the spandex web.
March 26, 2015, by thecurmudgeon
How has it come to this? The gentleman in the phone shop told me I was buying the latest and greatest phone, yet every site I visit loads at a glacial pace, speeds that make tectonic plate movements look positively spritely. It all feels like an act of pennance for some terrible act I committed a long time ago. The Guardian website new design is really and truly awful - I have 10 sections hidden and a sore finger from scrolling - where's the news?... Read More
Get ready for the mobile-friendly SEO update
March 24, 2015, by Pawel Piejko
As many of you may be aware, Google has announced on its Webmaster Central Blog that starting from April 21, websites offering below-par mobile optimization can expect a drop in search rankings. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages, in all countries. Google, as ever, do not give a huge amount of detail on what the change entails. Here’s what we definitely know about the approaching update... Read More
