Mr Branding

Friday, July 10, 2020

Mobile Games Scored 14 Billion Downloads During Q2 Of This Year, Reveals New Report

According to App Annie, a mobile data and analytics firm, smartphone applications and gaming increased to the highest levels ever recorded during Q2 of 2020. Particularly, mobile games scored 14 billion downloads during the quarter. Studies after studies have revealed that the coronavirus pandemic...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

7 in 10 of companies hosting data in the public cloud experienced a security incident

A recent survey conducted by IT experts found that 70% of companies who used popular cloud storage companies like Amazon and Google were hacked or had important data leaked; usually because of basic security blunders by the storage companies. In one concerning and surprising data point, it was...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Websites Spreading Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Are Generating Millions In The Form Of Ad Revenue From Amazon and Google

According to a latest report, Amazon and Google are selling ad space on sites that are spreading conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus pandemic. The ad platforms of tech companies including Google and Amazon could help these sites that spread coronavirus conspiracy theories generate...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

TC39 needs your help with the future of time in JavaScript

#496 — July 10, 2020

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JavaScript Weekly

Temporal, a Future API for Dates and Times in JavaScript — TC39 seeks your help with the future of JavaScript! They’re working on a proposal for a modern date/time API for ECMAScript/JS. Check out these examples for a feel of what the API would give us. You’re encouraged to have a play and fill out this survey.

The Temporal Champions Group on TC39

Perf Track: Tracking the Performance of Sites Using Popular JS Frameworks — Aiming to ‘track framework performance at scale’, Perf Track lets you get answers to questions like how many Vue apps use compression (and what type), how big React apps tend to be, or how many Ember apps have a good first contentful paint time.

Google Chrome Labs

How to Communicate on a Remote Team: Tools and Templates — Learn how to overcome the two biggest challenges of remote communication: understanding tone and upholding a collaboration framework.

CircleCI sponsor

Creating Tiny Desktop Apps with Tauri and Vue.js — Tauri is a toolkit (built in Rust) for building cross platform, JavaScript and CSS powered desktop apps, and the eventual app size can be pretty small (under a megabyte).

Kelvin Omereshone

Malina.js: A Front-End Compiler Inspired by Svelte — A tool similar to Svelte that pre-compiles an app (think a compile-time framework, rather than a runtime one) for better performance. See examples on the REPL. One developer created the same app with Svelte and Malina and has things to say, too.

Oleg Nechaev

⚡️ Quick bytes:

ESLint 7.4.0 has been released.
Impressive to see a typewriting / typing effect done entirely without JavaScript.
There's a new release of VS Code out with a new JavaScript debugger.

💻 Jobs

Find a Job Through Vettery — Use Vettery to connect with growing tech teams at startups and Fortune 500 companies.

Vettery

JavaScript Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Join the most energizing community for developers and work on projects for Riot Games, FOX, Sony, Coinbase, and more.

X-Team

📚 Tutorials, Opinions and Stories

A Case Study of Moving a Three.js WebXR App Off the Main Thread — You can’t argue about Surma’s dedication to Web Workers and here we get a practical demonstration of how they can help to improve performance.

Surma

Moving from TypeScript to Rust and WebAssembly — There’s not a lot to this quick writeup, but it’s interesting that this sort of move is now at least possible and it may well suit your use case too.

Nicolo Davis

Four Ways to Fetch Data in React — It’s really three ways you perhaps don’t want to fetch data, building towards a solid case for the best approach. But we like the logical progression through the alternatives.

Cory House

Breakpoints and console.log Is the Past, Time Travel Is the Future — 15x faster JavaScript debugging than with breakpoints and console.log.

Wallaby.js sponsor

Debounce Explained: How to Make Your Code Wait For Your User To Finish Typing — Debounce functions are higher-order functions that limit the rate at which another function can be run.

Juan Vega

Flattening Arrays with Array.flat() — Knowing about flat() is useful enough, but did you know you can flatten an array of any depth with .flat(Infinity)?

Samantha Ming

Barebones WebGL in 75 Lines of Code — WebGL is pretty intimidating but this boils it down to the bare essentials. And if you want to go further, I still think this thorough guide is one of the best. Of course, you may see all of the boilerplate needed and just use Three.js instead, which is fine too! 😄

Avik Das

Automated Code Reviews for JavaScript, Directly from Your Git Workflow

Codacy sponsor

▶ Learn Next.js: A Video Course — A free video course on how to build both Jamstack and SSR sites using React and Next.js. No signing up needed either.

Lee Robinson

Khan Academy's Transition to React Native — The tale of the multi-year project to move both the iOS and Android apps of the popular education platform over to using React Native.

Khan Academy

🔧 Code & Tools

shareon: Simple and Stylish 'Share Buttons' — They also boast good ethics as there’s no tracking code involved.

Nikita Karamov

Financial: A Zero-Dependency Financial Calculations Library — Based on numpy-financial but aimed at Node, Deno, and browser alike, Financial gives you functions for calculating things like future values, repayments, interest rates, etc.

Luciano Mammino

Serverless Headless CMS - OpenSource, Powered by React and Node — Scale up and down in milliseconds with your demand. Stop paying for servers and resources you are not using.

Webiny sponsor

useWebAnimations: React Hook for Flexible Web Animations API Animations — While still badged an ‘experimental technology’ by MDN, the Web Animinations API provides an approach for describing animations on DOM elements.

Welly Shen

Puppeteer 5.0 Released: The Headless Chrome Control Library — Puppeteer 4.0 was only three weeks ago but there are breaking changes here and work on making Puppeteer environment agnostic is in full flow.

Puppeteer

N3.js: Fast, Spec-Compatible, Streaming RDF Library — If you need/use RDF you’ll know, but basically it’s a format for modeling and specifying Web resources and this library works in Node and browser alike.

RDF JavaScript Libraries

🎨 Creative Corner

jsplot: A Quick Way to Plot the Results of a Function — It’s really quick and minimal but this basic Web tool does a quick plot from the results of the JavaScript you supply.

Fredrik Norén

▶ The Easiest Flappy Bird Tutorial Ever? — A 13-minute YouTube video on how to create your own Flappy Bird clone using straight up HTML, JS, and CSS. No framework, no build tools, the code isn’t perfect, but that’s not the point :-)

Shawn Beaton

by via JavaScript Weekly

TikTok Rolls Out Its Self-serve Advertising Platform Globally, and the Company Will Provide $100 Million in Ad Credits

TikTok has experienced significant growth in its user base during the last year, and currently, the platform has over 800 million active users across the globe. It is one of the most used video applications in the United States. However, the platform has also struggled to monetize its expanding...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

SEO Guide: 10 easy tips to improve your search engine rankings

Organic search engine traffic is still an effective source of new website visitors in 2020. With some extra effort this channel can result in customers finding you versus you trying to find them!

Using the Squarespace platform (my favorite website builder) as context I’m going to share 10 SEO tips to help your Landing Page rank at the top of Google search results.

Squarespace truly is an all-in-one platform allowing you to register a domain, build a beautiful Ecommerce website, sell products and even send marketing emails to your customers. Let’s get going!

One Page Love Exclusive Coupon

OPL10

Yay! Squarespace has been kind enough to give One Page Love readers the exclusive coupon OPL10 for 10% Off your first website or domain purchase. (There is a free 14-day trial with no credit card needed, so you can try risk free.)

1 – Speed up your page load

Over the past few years Google has increased the influence webpage load time has on their ranking algorithm. Meaning the slower the Landing Page is to load, the less likely it is to rank high within search results.

Google Page Speed Insights is a great tool to analyze how fast your Landing Page is loading. The results also itemize areas to improve.

All images uploaded to the Squarespace platform are hosted with a global content delivery network (CDN) that reduce load times by utilizing hundreds of geographically distributed servers.

Google Page Speed Insights

2 – Optimize for mobile

With the increase of mobile browsing globally, Google has started penalizing webpages not optimized for small resolutions. Mobile phone Commerce has also come a long way, so optimizing for smaller screens is now a priority.

Squarespace websites are designed to ensure visitors can easily navigate on any device they choose, from desktops to tablets to smartphones. All Squarespace websites adjust on smaller browsers and fit the format of a device.

What’s great is their editor has functionality to test and adjust elements specifically for mobile. Here is a demo of their mobile view switcher:

3 – Align meta tags with targeted search terms

Meta tags define how your Landing Page looks within search results. Having your Title meta tag match the search term you are targeting can help improve your chances of ranking higher.

Example: if the title of your Landing Page is “New Orleans Dog Walker”, you would naturally be a strong contender against other websites if that exact phrase was searched.

Squarespace SEO options are brilliant and make optimizing meta tags on different webpages an easy task:

4 – Add a site map

A site map is simply a single text-only file that lists all your website pages. As simple as it sounds, it really helps Google index your webpages quicker.

Squarespace automatically generates and links a proper sitemap.xml file, which lists every URL and image on your site including webpage hierarchy for perfect indexing.

5 – Include image ALT text

Search engines also index image ALT text (the text set for visually impaired visitors) when they crawl pages. Spending time describing the image is very good practice (please don’t overlook this) but can also gain traffic from ranking within the Google Images search engine.

The Squarespace interface allows for easy editing of image ALT text in the filename option:

6 – Structure a page heading hierarchy

Headings that clearly segment content can make it easier for search engines to detect your website topics.

H1’s should only be used once within a webpage and are normally your page title, H2’s are your main content sections and H3’s are the subheadings within H2 sections.

Squarespace have useful heading options to switch between while editing:

Squarespace Heading Options

7 – Clean up your code

Your webpage source code is the glue that holds all your page elements together. This is what the Google bots crawl and index the results. So it is obvious badly coded webpages cannot be understood, resulting in poor search results.

Squarespace automatically produces webpages with clean HTML markup code that is easy to index by search engines. Example: when you add a <h2> heading in the content editor, Squarespace will ensure the heading tag is formatted properly by closing the tag when the heading has ended. Example: </h2>

8 – Set a relative page URL

Webpage URLs also add weight to your search ranking! So having dog-walking-service within your URL (eg. yourwebsite.com/dog-walking-service) would have a slight influence in the ranking for a “dog walking service” search term.

Squarespace have a neat Page Settings panel where changing the webpage URL is real simple:

9 – Integrate a SSL Certificate

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates are highly recommended, as websites not SSL-secured may be penalized in search engine rankings. SSL also adds a secure https:// prefix to your domain giving visitors the confidence they can interact with the webpage safely.

All Squarespace domains and third-party domains include free SSL certificates when connected and pointing to Squarespace sites.

10 – Start Blogging

Last but not least is to consider blogging to increase your search engine rankings. Simply put, blogs produce relative content to your niche. Google loves new content and often displays the fresh content high in the archives at first.

Blogs can interlink to your main website too, reminding Google crawling bots of your existing pages. Additionally new blog posts can be linked to by other websites, a healthy way to keep Google active around your brand.

All Squarespace templates allow the publishing of unlimited blog posts. Blogs can also be sorted into tags and categories including the option for your community to comment. I’d highly recommend blogging for SEO but it’s also a great way for your audience to engage in your content.

Bonus: SEO Resources

Here are a few resources by Squarespace to really optimize your site:

Resource: SEO Checklist
Guide: Increase your website visibility
Webinar: Attend a live, expert-led Growing your Audience webinar
Forum: Get advice from the community in the Squarespace Forum
Help: Hire a Squarespace Expert to build your site with SEO in mind
Help: Choose the Squarespace Select plan for premium account management with Squarespace, which includes SEO consultations

FAQ: What are the benefits of using Squarespace?

Squarespace is a leading online website builder. What sets them apart from the rest is their superior level of design and customer support. They have a huge support team and are available 24/7. Other main benefits are:

No Website Hosting Needed - their platform is fast and secure
Online Content Management - all edits are done within your browser, no software needed
Easily Drag and Drop Images - unlimited galleries with unlimited bandwidth
Free Domain Name - when registering for your first website, if you pay annually (renews at standard rate)
Beautifully Responsive - all templates work for all devices, so you only have to design your website once. Test and preview how your website will appear on a range of screen sizes.
Blog Sections - can easily be added to start sharing your journey
Commerce Solutions - are an upgrade away if you want to start selling products
Email Marketing - gather email addresses, send marketing emails and analyze the reader email activity

That’s a wrap! Don’t forget your 10% Off coupon: OPL10

OPL10

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to improve your Search Engine Rankings. Props to Squarespace for creating a platform where we can create beautiful Ecommerce websites, easily. In case you missed it, I recently wrote a tutorial how to build a long-scrolling Landing Page from scratch using Squarespace.

Full Review

by Rob Hope @robhope via One Page Love

Microsoft is ready to advance its Android strategy for the development of a more apt hardware system of its own

The Android operating system is becoming more and more essential to Microsoft and they are ready to change from relying on a mobile app and services company and operating on their terms to focusing on developing a hardware system more suited to their needs and wants. This decision by Microsoft...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World