Firefox Releases Developer Edition and Privacy Tools on its 10th Birthday

Monday marks the 10th anniversary of Firefox 1.0 and to celebrate Mozilla is rolling out new features, as well as a developer-centric version of its web browser.

The earliest release of the web browser that would become Firefox actually launched in Sept. 2002. It would be two more years before Firefox 1.0 became public, but within a month, more than 10 million downloads of the browser would be registered and its arrival would be celebrated with a full-page ad in the New York Times.
 
It's funny to think about how different the web browser landscape was just a decade ago. Apple's Safari was in its infancy and Internet Explorer was the dominant browser on the market.

And then came Firefox. Rising from the ashes of the original Netscape project (which itself celebrated its 20th anniversary last month), Firefox was a revelation, a breath of fresh air.

Firefox had extensions. It was fast. It felt modern. I first used the precursor to Firefox in 2002 or 2003 and by the time Firefox 1.0 was released in Nov. 2004, it was hard to think about using any other type of browser (at least in Windows on Linux).

As a response to Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.0 was truly revolutionary. Finally, it felt like the web was able to move forward with new technologies and techniques.

Ten years later, Internet Explorer isn't Firefox's biggest competition — that honor belongs to Google Chrome — and much of the web has shifted to mobile devices.
Still, Firefox carries on.

New features and a developer edition

As part of the 10th anniversary of Firefox 1.0, Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox to the public with a few key features

First, DuckDuckGod is now pre-installed as a search option for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.

Firefox has also added a new "Forget" feature to the browser that makes it easy to clear out recent history, cookies, tabs and open websites. Users love the private browsing features built-into modern web browsers and the "Forget" feature makes it easy to "retroactively" invoke that feature.

Firefox has also released a new browser version just for developers. Firefox Developer Edition can sit along regular versions of Firefox, but it is designed with tools specifically for web developers.

This means that new features get rolled out at least 12 weeks before they hit the main Firefox release, there are new developer tools and experiments and it has built-in options to make it easy to test web apps and do remote debugging from mobile devices.

Developers were some of Firefox's first major adopters — thanks to its support for extensions, add-ons and more modern web standards.

In recent years, the developer community has largely shifted to Google Chrome and/or WebKit (which powers Apple's Safari and most mobile web browsers), but Firefox really helped set the standard for how to engage with the web development community.

Ten years later, Firefox is still fighting the good fight. Happy Birthday.

Top 8 Ecommerce Marketing Trends for 2015

 

The Less You “Sell,” The More You Make
The more information we’re bombarded with on a daily basis, via the Internet, TV, even our smartphones and tablets, the better we have to become at sifting through the junk to find what speaks to us most honestly.
Therefore, the more often a company tries to push a sale and the less time they spend showing passion for both their product and customers, the less likely that potential consumers will spend with that business. Below are a few ways that new technology will change how companies can find champions and customers alike, while avoiding wasted ad dollars and pushy sales.

1. Screen Shifting

According to Forbes, as we increase the number of screens we use each day, for example, we can watch a movie while texting from our phones and tweeting from our laptops all at the same time, so will marketers adapt their advertising for each screen. Advertisements for wearable technology, such as Google Glass or the Smartwatch, will need to become more customized for smaller screens and heads up display (HUD).

2. Streamlined Shopping

In 2015 more people will be doing their online shopping on their phones and more retail locations will be using online/offline POS systems. Marketers will be attempting to take advantage of the swiping and tapping motions we all know so well, while making an in-store transaction may no longer require a cash register, much less a keyboard.

3. Marrying Copywriting & Coding

Being able to write, and write well and in many tones, will be a key factor in the success of digital marketing for 2015. The best writers will need to understand interaction design and responsive content development to create messaging that resonates across different platforms and screen dimenesions. Conversely developers will need to include content developers earlier and work more closely with the content marketing side.

4. Mobile Marketing Attribution

Marketers will begin to find that they can gain more credit and attribution from an ad that is clicked via a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. According to Tom Webster, Vice President of Edison Research,  potential customers no longer have to run back home and look up an advertised product, they can simply tap on the ad on their phones. More marketers will start to realize that using mobile as a hub for ads will give them an edge.

5. Multi-Dimensional Sharing Networks

 We will see a drop in usage for sites that only allow its users to share certain files. For example, Twitter may see a decline in popularity because it is merely a supplement to a more in-depth online personality as opposed to Google+ which lets its users group chat, post thoughts, images, documents, and much more. Social media platforms will become more competitive in creating the most comprehensive, integrated, and aesthetically pleasing format for its users to present themselves to the online world.

6. Corporations Getting Personal

In an effort to seem like your best friend or someone you know close to home, marketing campaigns will incorporate more and more home-video-like advertising. Copy will start to seem a little less professional, and a lot more in-your-face honest. Transparency, or the illusion of transparency, as well as simplicity, will become major facets of major marketing strategies.

 7. The Golden Age of Storytelling

 Related to the above, marketing, public relations, and advertising categories will  continue to converge as the main agenda becomes getting future customers to be moved by the message. Anyone with talent for storytelling in diverse or emerging formats, whether it’s through comics, street art or filming, will have a highly valued role in the marketing field.

8. Finer Content Targeting for Niche Audiences

As Facebook and tools like Google Analytics provide more powerful audience insight such as gender and age, marketers will be challenged to apply that new granular demographic data. Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing and Pam Didner, Intel’s Global MKT Strategist, predict that in 2015 marketing teams will have to take a step back and completely reevaluate their target audiences and figure out how to speak to reach specific users in more meaningful ways.

Intro to Open Web Apps

Open Web Apps are essentially no different than standard websites or Web pages. They are built using standard open Web technologies — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. — and can be accessed using a Web browser. The main differences lie in their ability to be installed on a device and work offline, and access to advanced APIs that allow interaction with device features such as the camera, address book, and other such things. In addition, they are built on open technologies as much as is possible. Where differences lie in technology implementation between platforms, efforts should be made to ensure that both are supported, through a combination of feature detection and appropriate code for different platforms, and graceful degradation.

Advantages of Open Web Apps

Let's look at the advantages of Open Web Apps in a little more detail:

• Local installation and offline storage: Open Web Apps can be installed on the device, and leverage APIs such as local storage and IndexedDB to provide local data storage capabilities. In addition, open Web technologies tend to have a much smaller footprint than native apps and can generally be updated automically rather than having to install a complete new package each time there's an update. (an exception to this is packaged apps, which require a whole new package when updating.) Apps are therefore less dependent on an always-on Web connection, and more useful when networks are patchy.
• Hardware access: The metadata provided with Open Web Apps can be used to grant the application permission to privileged APIs that enable usage of device hardware features, something the Web platform has not traditionally enjoyed.
• Breaking the walled gardens: The norm for mobile platforms tends to be be walled gardens written with proprietary technologies, so apps are locked inside their platforms. And smartphones tend to be expensive, and require credit cards for app purchases. Open Web Apps tend to be able to run on much cheaper hardware, especially in the case of Firefox OS devices where you've literally just got Firefox running on top of a lightweight Linux kernel. And they are written using open Web technologies, which is the most distributed platform around. In addition, Firefox OS devices feature payment systems where you can simply prepay for apps, or add the cost to your phone bill.
• Open Web App stores: Following on from the previous point, you can choose to host your apps in an existing marketplace (such as the Firefox Marketplace), or host them somewhere else entirely. It's up to you. Mozilla aims to put the developer back in control of every aspect of the app experience — from easy development to distribution to direct customer relationship management. And the apps can be searched for just like any other Web-based experience.

The Web is the platform

An open web app as it exists as installed on a platform like Firefox OS is not a bookmark — it’s a proper part of the system. Open Web Apps hold that great promise. They are an opportunity that we should not miss, otherwise the Web might become fragmented once more. With this in mind it should be made clear that Open Web Apps (OWA in short) are intended to be standardized and to become part of "the Web". If successful, OWA should eventually work on all browsers, operating systems and devices.
At Mozilla we are working hard to create this apps platform that is backed entirely by the open Web. It’s not intended to be a “Mozilla platform” or a “Firefox platform”. The Web is the platform. We’re creating a set of open APIs and implementations to show how portable apps can exist on the Web without vendor lock-in. Other groups like Facebook and Google Chrome are also working on apps platforms backed by the Web. Facebook apps are meant to hook into Facebook and Chrome apps are designed for Chrome OS devices and Google servers. Chrome apps are the most similar to Open Web Apps. We continue to collaborate with the Google Chrome team as app standards evolve and we definitely share a lot of the same vision. There is tremendous potential for all Web based app platforms to converge and we invite all vendors to help us build the right Open Web App APIs.
Even though currently you must have a Mozilla Firefox-based engine ("Web runtime") to use Open Web Apps, it is not intended that this always will be the case. Many parts of the Open Web Apps project are still being worked out and it isn't possible to implement everything in all browsers at once. Although many parts of Open Web Apps are already standardized, many other parts are still in flux. It is intended and hoped that Open Web Apps will be a standard capability that is available in all major browsers.
Therefore, when you read the MDN pages that deal with Open Web Apps, please keep in mind that even though much of the information is specific to Firefox right now, it will hopefully enable you to develop Open Web Apps for all browsers in the future.
For more info visit Mozilla Open Web Apps

Modern Web Designing Trends in E commerce Development

Splashy, extravagance, and promising, these are the terms that have become the next big things in the world of eCommerce. In this uncertain world of the internet marketing, almost every online business owner wishes to give his website a buoyant mood, where garnering the customer’s attention becomes easy and revenue generation becomes an obvious process. While, the desire to move in tune with “what's trending worldwide” is good, at times, business can face some serious issues if they don't pay adequate attention to basic things of their website and that is its “design”.

            
The world of web designing is expanding unimaginably and it’s constantly evolving itself with so many opportunities and possibilities. The users of eCommerce are searching for the websites that are truly unique, interesting, and adds value to their money. By having simple UI and fast loading speed can give lot of potential to your website. Neither too glossy nor too dull- businesses should adopt for ideal combinations of designing patterns which go well with their brand and audience.

So, the best web designing techniques that can give your business an upper edge are discussed here in details:

1. Effective Image Sliders- How Much Does it Matter

Image sliders are lively scripts which make your website absolutely unique and pleasing to the eyes. Filled with eye-catching animated effects, the use of image slider will fill your customer with a feeling that he/she is browsing a modern website. To experiment with something more innovative, you can use big pictures and videos in the header. This trend is highly popular among web designers and online retailers now a days. 

The pictures and videos can be either in the form of blurred or simple photo located at the background with a header text for added depth. The slider provides designers with the freedom to explore their creativity by producing something which is simple yet effective way to convey your brand to a wider audience.

2. Warm and Soothing Colors to Create a Visual Appeal

Colors which you choose for your website can tell a lot about your online store. It is important for both online firm and website designers understand that the type of colors they use on a particular website can have significant impact on the psychology of their customers. So, getting the ideal mix of different colors can mean a lot to differentiate between repeat and one-time visitors. 

A few years back, we witnessed that most of the E-commerce websites were experimenting with white and black palate as they saw it as a depiction of strength and professionalism. But in 2014, the website trend has come to the cusp of another change. Using warmer colors against the backdrop of black/white has become much prevailing phenomena as they breathe life to boring and dull websites. For an online business, it's important to understand the color psychology as it can be a tricky part of the design process; and if not done well, it can lead to discrepancies and failures.

3. Don't Ignore the Importance of Adding Interesting Grids

Customers are embracing technology in every way and they expect businesses to give them maximum technical benefits in all facets of online shopping experience. Using grids in your layout has become a necessity as it works as a core differentiato for the companies to give them a competitive advantage. With popular CSS grids such as Bootstrap, Gridism etc., you can easily revamp the look of your website and make it attractive for the user. 

But you want to be little bit innovative right? By experimenting with the grid concepts, you can make your website look contemporary, all you need is just to put your imagination. You can work on it until you are fully satisfied. While doing so, make sure you do not sacrifice user's experience. Keep the things simple and subtle as much as you can. You are not here to puzzle your customer to navigate through the entire shop to search for the things. Keep things easy and original.

4. Flat Design

Yes you heard me right..it's flat design 

Flat design is still a trend no matter how many eyebrows it has raised in the e-commerce world as some people might take it as dull and boring. The use of flat colors, buttons and a lot of space, these are the things that define a flat design.

A website based on this type of design looks trendy and professional at the same time. Creating a flat design based website is not at all a Herculean task. All you have to do is to find out the right combinations of patterns and color styles. Use simple CSS buttons without gradients and shadows and an optimum usage space. There is only thing that is of big consideration- are you ready to create a website that touches the boundaries of simplicity? If yes, then go ahead!

Conclusion:

Using any of these modern web designing trends can make your website look absolutely trendy and pleasing. However, they do not guarantee how much success you'll get but one thing that I can surely say is that they show to your customers how much serious you are for your business and at what extent you can go to experiment with your E-commerce platform.

Author Bio - Sarah Parker is a certified PSD to Wordpress theme conversion expert who has a passion for sharing information about Wordpress web design and development. Currently, she is employed with Designs2HTML Ltd.a renowned firm offering 100% hand-coded, W3C validated and cross-browser compatible markup conversion services. 
G+ - https://plus.google.com/+Designs2html Twitter- https://twitter.com/Designs2html - See more at: http://www.webdesignerpad.com/2014/07/how-modern-web-designing-techniques-are-fuelling-new-dimensions-to-ecommerce-websites.html#sthash.eJY69zMS.dpuf

This post was originally published on the SumAll Blog. SumAll is a teammate for digital marketers helping them do what they love, better. Get started with a free account at SumAll.com.

In this article, the SumAll team shares tips and tricks that should help shed some light on how SEO may differ depending on if you want to optimize your blog versus website.

What You Should Know as a Blogger

Knowing the basics of SEO is an obvious prerequisite before we can understand how strategy may differ when it comes to optimize your blog. Blogging is a part of the entire SEO process in general so I would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with these basics before you read on. Here’s a useful guide if you want to dig deeper.

In general, it’s difficult to differentiate between blog SEO strategy versus regular SEO strategy since blogs are a component of the overall strategy. But regardless, blogging technology in tandem with search engine capabilities have great potential to provide the most useful and meaningful information in the most efficient way possible.

They say “content is king” in the SEO world, and it’s for this reason why blogs actually have a nice advantage over your average website. After all, creating a blog for your brand is at the heart of every good SEO plan to begin with.

1. Familiarize yourself with your master keyword list.

Your master keyword list is pretty much your own personal marketing thesaurus. Understanding your audience and how keyword phrases interact with search engines and your users is the most important part of creating a solid keyword list. Group relevant phrases together that you think a user may search for and put more of an emphasis on thinking like a human (really). And remember, search bots can’t read the content of images so take advantage of the images alt tags by making sure you add any relevant keywords here…only if it makes sense of course.

2. Post content on a regular basis to maintain “freshness”.

Website and blogs that generate new pages on a regular basis have the potential to create higher freshness scores, which will inevitably contribute to positive results. By “freshness” I mean new and relevant content that is up to date and useful. Search engines take this into consideration. The rate at which a blog increases in pages can also make search gods happy.

On the contrary, content that does become stale doesn’t necessarily lose value since search engines realize new content isn’t always better. Many factors are taken into account when deeming a page’s relevance with average amount of queries playing a large role. Take a look at this article if you’re interested in more information on freshness scores.

3. URL’s, Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, Categories, H1 tags

Search engines cache all of this information and return relevant queries based on the keyword entered. Ensuring all of these elements are well polished is important, takes a low amount of effort, and ultimately necessary for a strong showing in search engine results. Tying this all together with your master keyword plan makes it easy to drive organic traffic to your blog. If you want to increase unique visits and build organic traffic, understanding how keyword frequency works here is very important.

4. Add a rel=publisher tag if you have a google+ page to help optimize your blog.

As the name doesn’t suggest, this is for all branded websites, not just publishers. What rel=publisher does is allow the webmaster to form a verified connection between their site and google+. To get started with google authorship and publisher, check out this guide.

5. To paginate or not to paginate?

There is much debate in this area, but we here at SumAll planted our flag firmly in the pagination camp. For one, it provides smaller chunks to the viewer allowing for an easier read, and two, it places more attention on important call to actions. More siginificantly are the affects it has on page crawling. Your blog may be much more difficult for a search engine to crawl if it can’t define any logical site structure. This is also where maintaining clean URL rewriting comes into play.

6. Sharing buttons

Yes, we all are very familiar with overused sharing button that seems to exist on every webpage out there. The reason they (literally) stick around? They just work…but especially on blogs. My advice to to make it easy and engaging for the viewer to be inclined to use these buttons. You may as well design a new and engaging functionality here to stand out from the crowd since so many social media sharing plugins out there all look the same and soon become nothing more than graphic “noise” to the viewer.

Basic Web Design Tips and Techniques

Today, there are a lot of websites owned by many different businesses. There are also some which are used for personal blogs. This only means that those new websites, on top of existing websites, are competing for user attention. And unless your website has the market cornered on one unique product or service, you could be losing out on some very valuable traffic. What you need is a killer website, one that's designed and programmed to maximise the opportunities presented by the Web.
It can't just look pretty. It also has to be easily found, by your target market (and by other prospects), and act as a formidable sales tool for your business. In order to achieve these, you need to get proper Web design. Most businesses would do well to consider the following things when developing websites.
           

First, take your time. Designing a good website takes time and careful consideration. Although there are online tools that might help you speed the process along, nothing produces a finely crafted website more than time and care. If you have little time to complete a new website for your company, then work with a professional team of designers who can deliver your site efficiently and within your budget.
Next, think of a simple and uncluttered design. There is no need to cram every bit of element into your website just so it retains attention from visitors. Simplicity is appealing, even called for in a digital generation that has consumers choking on a glut of information. Introduce visual zen to your users and you'll find them staying and exploring more and more.
You must also know that responsive design is not just a trend. With multi-screen behaviour becoming a critical component of Web marketing, you can't afford to have your website just be viewed on a desktop alone. Responsive websites have more and better opportunities for reaching consumers, for increasing engagement and conversions, and for improving traffic.
Consider an architecture that makes SEO campaigns and analytics easier. SEO (search engine optimization) marketing is still a pretty strong strategy for improving your online presence, while having access to analytics allows you to make sound decisions about what additions or changes to improve website performance.
And lastly, always remember that load time is critical. Page loading time can affect your bottom line. Every second counts, especially when you've got an e-commerce site. You need to make sure that your website and pages load as quickly (in two seconds or less) as possible to prevent page abandonment and reduction of conversions.

Visit this site to know more about Web design and development.