Month: December 2016

What Does Mobile First Index Actually Mean?

Posted on by Mario

what-does-mobile-first-index-actually-mean

There are many things that a SEO analyst should master when it comes to SEO services. One of the examples is mobile first index, but first, let’s understands what indexing means. Indexing is described as the process of turning your webpage into something more useable and storing it in their database. You can find a lot of cool stuff that happens here. For instance, word vectors, and all kinds of other awesome computer science stuff. For our purposes though, Indexing is when they make a copy of your page in a format that’s useful to the ranking algorithm.

So What Is Mobile First Indexing?

Now, by creating signals based on Googlebot, you can figure out whether a site is mobile friendly or not. Therefore, a user searches Google the retrieval part of the algorithm looks at the desktop index created by the Googlebot desktop crawler. It finds relevant results based on the desktop index, then ranks them and even shows the searcher a snippet based on the desktop index. The ranker then looks at the mobile signals collected by mobile crawler and adjusts the rankings accordingly.

However, sometimes it can cause some problems. For example, in many cases where a user gets redirected and they realize that the content they saw in the search snippet isn’t available on the stripped down mobile version of the site.

Moreover, it is important to be remembered that “mobile index” and “mobile friendly” is a different thing. Mobile friendly is how you design your sites. So that it will be convenient enough to be displayed on your mobile. On the other hand, the categorization of mobile index includes three scenarios:

Responsive Site

Issues include things like changing the weights for tabbed content or drop-down menus which are probably less valued on desktop but shouldn’t (in theory) be devalued in mobile.

Separate Mobile and Desktop Sites

Here’s where things get tricky. If a site has device type redirects OR rel=alternate and canonical tags setup, then the mobile crawler will see the mobile site only, and not the desktop site. That means if some content is ONLY on the desktop site, the mobile Googlebot won’t see it and it won’t end up in the mobile first index. This is the issue Google is trying to solve, but it’s also an issue for many publishers.

No mobile site

The mobile Googlebot will still see these pages! The mobile crawler doesn’t just crawl “mobile friendly” pages. It crawls everything. These pages will still be seen – they just won’t get the “mobile friendly” designation – but that’s completely OK because it has absolutely nothing to do with mobile first indexing. Sure they won’t rank as well as mobile friendly sites – but they’re already not ranking as well as mobile friendly sites. That won’t change after mobile first indexing.

Easy Steps to Make Your Icon Design Better

Posted on by Mario

easy-steps-to-make-your-icon-design-better

In design world, small things can provide big differences to the whole design and value of the icon set. In the following article, we will give some steps that every web designers can follow to improve their icons.

Always Start with a Grid

The benefits of various grid sizes would best be handled in a separate article. For our purposes, we’ll work with a 32 x 32 pixel grid. Our grid also contains some basic guides to help us create the underlying form of each icon design. Part of the form of an icon is the general shape and orientation. You can choose a square circle, triangle, horizontal rectangle, vertical rectangle or diagonal rectangle when you want to draw a line around the outside edges of an icon. The outer 2 pixels of the grid are what we call the “no-go zone.” So, avoid putting any part of the icon in this space unless absolutely necessary. With no go zone icon, an icon can have a breathing room around.

Bear in mind that grid is there to help you make the icons consistent. But, you can unfollow the rules whenever you want.

Simple Geometric Shapes

Begin your icon designs by roughly outlining the major shapes with simple circles, rectangles and triangles. Start with the shape tools in Adobe Illustrator, although icon is going to end up being most organic in nature. The slight variations in edges that result from hand drawing will make an icon look less refined. However, this causes smaller sizes icons on screen. To make the edges look more precise and, you can start with basic geometric shapes. Moreover, this allows you to adjust the relative scale of elements within a design quickly. On the other hand, it also ensures you still follow the grid and form.

Use Consistent Design Elements and Accents Across Icons

Using consistent kind of accent across an icon set can really tie the set together. In the example below, the designers employed a common stylistic element with the heart-shaped nose. The heart nose, not only ties the icons together, but it also adds a whimsical element. Furthermore, it also communicates affection for our four-legged friends.

papblog

Use Details and Decorations Sparingly

Good Icons should be able to communicate an object, idea or action quickly. In fact, you need to avoid making complex icons with so many small details. This will make the icon or set of icons is also an important aspect of aesthetic unity and recognizability. To determine the right level of detail in an icon or set is to include the bare minimum of details. It is needed to make the meaning clear.

Make it Unique

There are number of talented designers, so how can you stand among all of those crowds? The answer is by being creative. Only by producing creative result, one can survive in this creative industry. As creative professionals, we should be looking outside of the icon industry. For example, to architecture, typography, industrial design, psychology, nature and any other area in which we can find inspiration.

The Easiest Ways to Generate API Documentation

Posted on by Mario

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As a developer whether you are a web developer or app developer, you may be familiar enough with API documentation. API documentation is an important part of the product offering affordances to the developer community to help them understand exactly what an API offers and how to use it. Below are several hints that you can use to create API documentation easily:

What API Documentation Should Contain

You can create your own API Documentation as you like, since there are no standards on what API documentation should encompass. The important thing is makes it easy for them to understand an API is a good starting point. However, you can follow the list below from established providers in the API economy:

  • A list of the resources with an explanation of the purpose of each in the context of the product or service being offered via the API;
  • Examples of API calls in a variety of languages and tools (cURL, Postman Collections, etc.);
  • Do something meaningful in the context of the product or service the API offers, guides that detail the workflows implicit in using the API i.e. the sequence of API calls. For example, Dwolla offers several guides on how to send or receive money, with branches into different contexts throughout that explain the different aspects of their product offering;
  • An overview of the design principles adopted by the API provider and what that means for aspects adherence to REST (especially hypermedia), HTTP codes, etc.;
  • Information on authentication, including schemes that may be implemented such as OAuth or OpenID Connect;
  • General information on error handling with information on the HTTP return codes that will be returned;
  • User-specific contexts that help developers get to grips with the subject matter more easily. For example, Stripe automatically tailors their API documentation with your API key and secret (when you are logged in) so any code samples are immediately ready to use;
  • An interactive API explorer that allows the developer to readily bring all this information to life.

Interactive Explorers

It is a common thing to have an Interactive Explorers in API specification formats generated from the specification document itself, creating a means for consumers to both learn about and test API calls at the same time. With the help of interactive explorer in understanding a provider’s API, publishing API will be easier. The options are therefore largely dictated by the choice of API specification format, for example:

  • The OpenAPI Specification (aka Swagger) offers Swagger UI, which allows you to generate an interactive explorer with virtually no coding (depending on the completeness of your Swagger specification);
  • Apiary offers an explorer that is generated from API Blueprint and Swagger specifications. It mixes the features of an interactive explorer with a documentation suite as it renders the Markdown documentation in API Blueprint side-by-side with an interactive tool for making sample API calls;
  • Finally, an open-source explorer is offered for the RAML specification format that implements many of the same features as Swagger UI and Apiary.

By using these tools, we hope you can create an easy-to –use reference point for their developer community. However, static documentation may be required to accompany an interactive explorer, if the subject matter of the API is complex or requires high-level explanation not necessarily associated with a resource.