More than half this country apparently uses Facebook’s Messenger

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Messenger sure is popular Down Under.

Facebook revealed its first country-specific stats for the instant messaging platform, claiming 13 million Australians use Messenger each month. 

That’s more than half the country’s population, and 80 percent of smartphone users, according to data from Statista.

The popularity of Messenger in Australia is why Facebook has identified it as a key market. It’s why it’ll be one of the first countries outside of the U.S. to launch the Discover tab on Messenger, which puts bots from businesses and publishers within reach on the app. Read more…

More about Tech, Australia, Social Media, Instant Messaging, and Facebook Messenger

Popular Design News of the Week: October 23, 2017 – October 29, 2017

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Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. 

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

Is the Static Logo Dead?

 

Bootstrap 4: Everything You Need to Know

 

UX for the Next Billion Users

 

Coda — It’s a New Day for Docs

 

Yet Another Logo Generator

 

Stripe Atlas Guides to Running an Internet Business

 

This Light Bulb Confuses Smartphone Cameras to Protect your Privacy

 

A/B Testing – You’re Doing it Wrong

 

The Bastard Child of UX: Microcopy

 

Old eBay, We Bid You Adieu

 

How to Create your own Local Premium URL Shortener Service

 

Sketching Interfaces

 

Alphabet Inc. Plans a Beta City

 

Designers Solve Problems, They Don’t Push Pixels

 

Behind Simoncini’s Glasses

 

The Battle Between Design-centered and User Centered

 

How Our New Design Principles Have Shaped the Way We Work

 

Google Calendar Gets a Fresh New Look

 

Revue, an Insight into my Process

 

Confessions of an Impostor

 

Designing Glue: How to Mind the Gap

 

Designed by Engineer

 

While Apple is Taking Away Buttons, We Found a Way to Add One

 

The Anatomy of a Thousand Typefaces

 

Interviewing Design Interns at Facebook

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Why Snapchat Spectacles failed

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 How come only 0.08% of Snapchat’s users bought its camera sunglasses? Hundreds of thousands of pairs of Spectacles sit rotting in warehouses after the company bungled the launch. Initial hype and lines for its roving, limited time only Snapbot vending machines led Snap to overestimate demand but underdeliver on quality and content. Massive piles of assembled and unassembled… Read More

How I cured my tech fatigue by ditching feeds

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 On paper, smartphones are amazing pieces of glass. They have magically cured boredom as we always have something to do — those endless feeds of content are a perpetual source of inspiration, information and amusement. And yet, feeds need to die because they distort our views and disconnect us from other human beings around us. Many people have deleted the Facebook app from their phone… Read More

Senator Feinstein makes broad request for all ‘Russia-connected’ Twitter and Facebook user data

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 The nature and extent of Russia or Russian-linked actors interfering with the election is yet to be determined, but it’s not for want of inquiries. Half of D.C. is looking into it in one way or another, and Senator Diane Feinstein is no exception. Today she sent letters to several parties involved, including Facebook and Twitter, asking for a variety of documents relating to her… Read More

WhatsApp finally lets you recall messages you’ve sent by mistake

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 WhatsApp has finally got your back when you send a message to the wrong person or group. The Facebook-owned messaging app is rolling out a feature that will finally let its 1 billion-plus users delete a message for all people within a conversation. Right now, the app’s delete feature is fairly useless as it only removes a message for the person who sent it. Read More

Facebook says its ad transparency features will go live next month

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 In response to concerns that Russia used Facebook ads in an attempt to influence last year’s presidential election, the social network has said it will increase transparency by allowing anyone to see any ad run by any organization. Now it’s releasing a few more details about its plans, like the fact that the new transparency features are expected to go live next month. Once they… Read More

5 Ways to Design With Accelerated Mobile Pages

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The mobile web keeps growing at a rapid pace.

Smartphones continue to sell strongly, with Apple alone forecasting to bring in $180 billion from its smartphones by 2021. There are over 224 million smartphone users in the United States, making the mobile web an essential focus for any website owner.

The continued growth of mobile web users makes it important for designers and front-end developers to grasp proper design for accelerated mobile pages.

The practice of accelerated mobile pages emphasizes design choices that align with what search engines perceive as friendly, including a defined audience, high-quality content, proper formatting and seamless mobile compatibility. You will notice a variety of accelerated mobile pages when browsing Google in mobile by the abbreviation AMP in search results.

Accelerated mobile pages still use HTML, though they incorporate special elements that prioritize speed on mobile devices. AMP technical requirements are established by the AMP Project, with the standards worked on alongside major traffic influencers like Google. The project was created in response to clunky user interfaces and slow load times when browsing sites on a mobile device.

AMP emphasizes instant speed and a familiarized appearance, giving creators the ability to style their pages within the AMP framework. The boilerplate-centric design on most AMP pages gives a similar feel of navigation, despite differences in content presentation and color schemes.

The result is a faster, more cohesive browsing experience that improves drop rates, increases reader engagement and ushers in mobile web browsing as a mainstay.

With the power and potential of AMP so evident, it’s practical for designers to regard the tips below to help optimize the AMP experience, so their clients will benefit in a variety of ways.

1. Consider AMP-Carousel for the Homepage

Make an impression on the page most of your visitors will begin with. Static content can be displayed on AMP to showcase available products, piquing interest for e-commerce sites as well as those displaying general content.

The AMP-carousel feature enables designers to display multiple similar pieces of content on a horizontal axis. After importing the carousel component in the header, you can utilize type=”carousel” to show up a list of images, appearing as a continuous strip. It’s an eye-catching feature that’s ideal for the front page when you’re trying to hook visitors into seeing something beyond the homepage.

2. Show Related Posts and Products

Encourage site visitors to dig deep into your content. You can accomplish this by showing a list of related products or posts to the one they’re presently viewing. You can statically publish a list of relevant content, accomplishing it instantaneously by using <amp-list>, which populates a CORS request into an amp-mustache template to result in dynamically generated content relevance you can personalize to your specific preference.

If visitors enter a landing page that doesn’t align with their requests, they will either leave the site or look further for what they’re seeking. The suggestion of product alternatives is an excellent method to accommodate the user’s search process, at the very least drawing them more into the site. Even if they do not find what they are searching for exactly, they may find an alternative that does the job just as well.

3. Use AMP-Analytics to Find Areas to Improve

It’s important for any website owner to know how visitors are interacting with the content. The <amp-analytics> component can be used either directly or integrated with a third-party analytics platform, including Google Analytics. Within the <amp-analytics> tag, add the “type” attribute and set the value to your vendor of choice, of which there are many options. The <amp-analytics> component will help website owners have a clearer picture of what pages and design elements are resulting in conversions and which components are experiencing low user engagement.

It’s important to keep in mind when analyzing analytics that, with AMP, smart caching is naturally embedded. The result is that you may view less traffic than usual. Just keep the caching element in mind when analyzing your numbers initially.

4. Use the Built-In Validator

Ideally, designers will never get something wrong, but it can happen. To ensure everything is working properly on a page, use AMP’s built-in validator by adding #development=1 to the end of the page URL. If you open Chrome dev-tools and see the message “AMP validation successful,” then everything is working. If not, you can dig in deeper until the issue resolves. You can also use Chrome dev-tools to verify that all external resources, ranging from images and videos to custom fonts and iframes, are loaded properly.

Additionally, you can validate metadata by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, either by fetching a URL or inserting a code snippet. These tools can help ensure everything is validated, so search engine crawling is enabled. On the note of search engine crawling, also double-check your robots.txt file, to verify that “Disallow: /amp/” is not present in any line. If it’s there, crawlers will not be able to access your AMP files.

5. Implement Ads Within AMP

Another benefit of AMP is a preexisting framework for implementing ads. The amp-ad, or amp-embed, component is a container to display an ad. The ads load alongside all the other resources, with the <amp-ad> custom element.

JavaScript is nonexistent inside the AMP document. Instead, AMP load an iframe from an iframe sandbox. You can set width and height values within <amp-ad>, with the “type” argument specifying the ad network displayed. The “src” attribute loads a script tag for the specified ad network, with various data attributes available to accommodate further configuration from ad networks.

You can also set a placeholder or option for no available ad, via the placeholder attribute. Video ads are also possible with native support, with thorough media component support.

Accelerated mobile pages help increase search engine visibility among mobile users, especially now that Google is embracing AMP pages in its search results.

Additionally, quicker loading times, flexible personalization and visual components that seek to improve bounce rate make for a better mobile user experience than ever.

Accelerated mobile pages provide a fantastic framework for the continuing growth of mobile web users.

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Facebook rolls out new tools for group admins, plus badges and profiles for members

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 Facebook today introduced a good handful of new features for groups on Facebook, with a focus on helping admins better manage and grow their online communities, and helping members better connect with one another. The additions, inspired by user feedback, include support for welcome posts, badges, member profiles, and other admin-level controls. The company met this June with hundreds of… Read More

Instagram’s “Superzoom” auto-records dramatic close-up videos

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 Instagram’s newest feature lets you make your own “Dramatic Chipmunk”-style video by shooting a stuttered zoom-in including cinematic sound effects with a single tap. Superzoom is coming to Instagram Stories on iOS and Android today, alongside an array of spooky Halloween stickers and augmented reality masks.
Superzoom joins Instagram’s Boomerang GIFs, Hyperlapse… Read More