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A few large bulletins are making the rounds this week, each of them thrilling for these of us who make websites:
Google advises progressive enhancement
In a weblog publish explaining updates to its indexing system, Google makes it clear that they’re now parsing internet pages of their entirety — not simply HTML, but in addition CSS and JavaScript. Their indexer used to disregard format and behave as if it had been a text-only browser, however now it’s scanning totally rendered pages.
This implies a couple of issues. First, be sure to’re not denying Googlebot entry to directories that maintain your CSS and JavaScript. Test your `robots.txt` file to ensure.
Second, from Google’s publish:
Similar to trendy browsers, our rendering engine won’t assist the entire applied sciences a web page makes use of. Ensure that your internet design adheres to the rules of progressive enhancement as this helps our programs (and a wider vary of browsers) see usable content material and fundamental performance when sure internet design options will not be but supported.
(Emphasis mine. By the best way, this assist for progressive enhancement performs very properly with their robust advice for responsive internet design.)
And third: Velocity issues. We’ve recognized for some time {that a} fast-loading web site makes for a greater person expertise, however with this replace it additionally means Google’s indexing system now explicitly favors faster-loading websites over slower ones.
How do your websites stack up?
HTML5 is now an official customary
After initially taunting us with a launch date nicely into the subsequent decade, W3C has revealed their official advice for HTML5, ending years of of often-frustrating, however productive growth.
Most of us have been utilizing HTML5 for years already (Jeremy Keith revealed HTML5 For Net Designers in 2010), so this will seem to be a small factor to rejoice. However now we will use components with full confidence they received’t change, we may even see faster adoption by browser makers of all of the thrilling issues HTML5 brings to the desk, and any XHTML holdouts might lastly be satisfied that HTML5 is sweet to go.
Let’s get on the market.
