The Floating Frog
FrogsThemes.com
Google has taken important steps forward in the mobile SEO debate by firmly backing the use of responsive web design over other methods. In a recent SMX panel, Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced clear guidelines and recommendations on …
This week saw Google’s Chrome browser overtake Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the global browser share. May 20th 2012 saw Chrome take 32.76% of the market, compared to IE’s 31.94%, with Firefox trailing behind …
Over the coming weeks The Floating Frog is going to be rebranded and relaunched into a new site, repositioned to sell digital design and development services. Currently, and for the last 4 or so years, it has served proudly as …
Here’s a really useful tool in our ‘really useful tools to share’ series of posts… you like that? Good, I’ll continue… If you’ve just finished collecting the Dr Who 2010 Merlin sticker collection and you’re frantically looking for another random collection to occupy your time then why not start a social usernames collection? Just imagine, owning your chosen username account on every social site on the web! Am I selling it to you yet? No? That’s good, you’ve passed the ‘I’ve got a life’ test. On the other hand if you have a legitimate reason for owning or checking the availability of a username on social sites, domain names and trademarks then this online tool is exactly what you’re after. Do it all in one search, type in a query and see which ones are available and which ones you can secure. They’re quite literally up for grabs.
Tweasier, the brand new Twitter management tool, went into open beta while I was on holiday. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this application (created by PR and social media guru Chris Norton), so I thought I’d join up see just what Tweasier offers.
Today Google has released something very interesting, a Font API and directory that offers high quality open source web fonts for web developers. At first glance these fonts are extremely easy to integrate with just a few lines of code needed.
The Google Font API provides a simple, cross-browser method for using any font in the Google Font Directory on your web page. The fonts have all the advantages of normal text: in addition to being richer visually, text styled in web fonts is still searchable, scales crisply when zoomed, and is accessible to users using screen readers.
The interesting part of the subject of baking fonts into images and using font replacement scripts is actually how ‘searchable’ they are. Now with Google Font API you should be more comfortable in the fact that if Google have developed this, they ‘must’ be search engine friendly… right?
How to integrate the Google Font API
Getting started using the Google Font API is easy. Just add a couple lines of HTML:
<link href=’http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine’
rel=’stylesheet’ type=’text/css’>
body { font-family: ‘Tangerine’, serif; }
It seems the domain Google.com has been UNLOCKED for transfer. I wonder where it’s going? Maybe if nobody else wants it it can come and pay my account a visit. Hmmm, to request transfer or not to request transfer, that …
Today all of the UK’s major airports grounded flights in and out due to a volcanic ash cloud from the Icelandic erupting volcano Eyjafjallajökull. The impact of this can be seen visually on the Live Air Traffic website flightradar24.com. What would have been frenzied airway activity over England and Scotland has now been replaced my an eerie silence and clearance of planes. The yellow plane icons represent planes currently in flight, the blue crosses represent closed airports.
Impact of Icelandic Volcano seen on live air traffic
Opera Mini Web browser for the iPhone, iPod and iPad has only just launched yesterday but has already dominated globally Apple’s App Store in the Top 10 Free apps section. Below is a screen grab of the App Store which shows the free browser at position 1 in every country Apple currently serves.
Web design for the world
The second you launch your brand new, painstakingly thought-out and designed website onto the World Wide Web, you’re instantly global – anyone in the world (with a web connection) can and may stumble upon your site. It’s worth considering, then, that 78% of the 1.8 billion current web users do not speak English as a first language (Internetworldstats.com).
So if your website is designed solely with an English-speaking, western audience in mind, that’s less than a quarter of your potential online audience who’ll be interested in visiting your site. Crucially, for those sites with business in mind, research also shows that 85% of consumers will not buy from a website if they can’t read about the product in their own first language (Common Sense Advisory, 2006).
The embargo is over and I can finally announce that I have not had an iPad to play with or review for the past week (not like that Andy Ihnatko fellow). Yes, I signed an embargo to not say that I didn’t have an iPad before the release. I’m terrible about contracts (I have 8 time shares, 4 adopted children, 2 wives, and an endorsement deal from Rita’s Water Ice). Now that I can finally talk about the fact that I have nothing to talk about, I thought I’d share my (completely made up) review of Apple’s new iPad.
Yesterday, Microsoft made a first developer preview of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 available for download from www.IETestDrive.com.
The IE 9 Platform Preview doesn’t include the IE 9 user interface; instead, it is the plumbing, specifically the new Microsoft JavaScript engine (which is codenamed “Chakra”) and the new graphics subsystem, coupled with a home page full of test sites. There’s no back button and no built-in security. It’s basically the IE 9 rendering engine and early developer tools.
When I talk to people about getting the iPad, it’s pretty common for them to dismiss my enthusiasm for fanboyism (a word that gives me a headache, just trying to spell it “correctly”). I see this little device as the …
