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26 Exciting New Tools For Designers, May 2021

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From dev tools to productivity to a little bit of fun with sudoku, this month’s collection of new tools is packed with something for everyone.

Here’s what new for designers this month.

May’s Top Picks

Am I FLoCed?

Am I FLoCed? Is a tool to see if you are part of a Google Chrome origin trial. It tests a new tracking feature called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). According to Google, the trial currently affects 0.5% of users in selected regions, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States. The page will try to detect whether you’ve been made a guinea pig in Google’s ad-tech experiment.

According to the designers of Am I FloCed: “FLoC runs in your browser. It uses your browsing history from the past week to assign you to a group with other ‘similar’ people around the world. Each group receives a label, called a FLoC ID, which is supposed to capture meaningful information about your habits and interests. FLoC then displays this label to everyone you interact with on the web. This makes it easier to identify you with browser fingerprinting, and it gives trackers a head start on profiling you.”

Uncut

Uncut is a Libre typeface catalog that just got started in April. It features contemporary typefaces and styles and is set to be updated regularly. Sort by sans serif, serif, monospace, or display typefaces. Plus, you can submit a typeface for inclusion.

Dashblock

Dashblock allows you to build automations without coding. Use it to create visual automations, or turn blocks into use-cases. (It is a premium tool, but comes with a 14-day free trial to test it out.)

Instant

Instant is a fast and secure one-click checkout tool that works with WooCommerce. Users fill out a short form the first time they shop and then join the network to enable instant, frictionless, 1-click checkouts without passwords. It makes shopping easier and cuts abandoned carts.

5 Image Tools

Triangula

Triangula uses a modified genetic algorithm to triangulate images. It works best with images smaller than 3000px and with fewer than 3000 points, typically producing an optimal result within a couple of minutes. The result is a nifty-looking image.

Content-Aware Image Resizing in Javascript

Content-Aware Image Resizing in Javascript solves that problem with images where you have a photo but it just doesn’t quite fit. A crop doesn’t work because you lose important information. The carver slices and cuts photos to give you the image elements you want in the size you want them. It’s probably a good idea to read through the tutorial before jumping into the open-source code on GitHub.

Globs Design

Globs Design uses toggles and drag and drop to help you create funky shapes and fills that you can save in SVG format for projects.

Root Illustrations

Root Illustrations is a stylish set of people-based illustrations that you can customize to create scenes for your projects. Construct a scene and then snag your set of vector graphics that also work with Sketch and Figma. The set includes 24 characters, more than 100 details, and the ability to change colors and styles.

Make Your Photo 16×9

Make Your Photo 16×9 is as simple as it sounds. It is a cropping tool that allows you to upload any shape of photo – even vertical – and pick options to fill the space to make it fit the standard 16×9 aspect ratio.

6 Dev Tools

Devbook

Devbook is a search engine for developers that helps them to find the resources they need and answer their questions faster. Fast, accessible right from a code editor, and fully controllable with just a keyboard.

Madosel

Madosel is a fast, advanced responsive HTML front-end framework that’s in an alpha version. The open-source tool is made to create websites and apps that look great on any device. Plus, it is semantic, readable, flexible, and customizable.

Say Hello to CSS Container Queries

Say Hello to CSS Container Queries helps solve a problem with media queries and smart stacking of elements. CSS Container Queries allow you to make a fluid component that adjusts based on the parent element and everything is independent of viewport width. This post takes you through everything you need to do to implement this yourself.

Frontend Toolkit

Frontend Toolkit is a customizable dashboard that you can use to keep up with recurring tasks. It’s one of those little tools that can speed up workflows.

Flatfile

Flatfile is a production-ready importer for SaaS applications. It allows you to auto-format customer spreadsheets without manual cleaning of data and you can do it all without a CSV parser. The tool also includes an elegant UI component to guide users through the process.

Plasmic

Plasmic is a visual website builder that works with your codebase. It’s designed to speed up development with developers focusing on code (not pixel pushing) and allows non-developers to publish pages and content. The premium tool works with any hosting, CMS, or framework and you can adapt it by the component, section, or page.

2 Productivity Tools

Calendso

Calendso is an open-source calendar scheduling tool. It’s flexible with the ability to host it yourself or with the makers of the calendar. It is API-driven and allows you to control events and information. The interface is simple and sleek and can integrate into your website.

Slidev

Slidev is a set of presentation slides for developers. What’s different about this presentation deck is that you can write slides in a single markdown file with themes, code blocks, and interactive components.

4 Icons and UI Kits

Iconic

Iconic is a set of pixel-perfect icons that gets updated each week. The collection of 24×24 px elements in SVG format contains 160 icons and counting. The simple style is easy to implement and you can search for just what you need by category.

5 Dashboard Templates for Figma

5 Dashboard Templates for Figma is a set of free ready-made screens with light and dark modes for each that you can use with components such as calendars, charts, tables, and more. The free elements are a preview of a larger premium Figma set if you like how they look and work.

Free Mobile Chat UI Kit

Free Mobile Chat UI Kit is a tool of components for Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD that includes more than 50 messaging screens with light and dark modes.

Stratum UI Design Kit

Stratum UI Design Kit is a collection of more than 9,000 consistent elements for Figma. It’s packed with elements and tools that make this premium UI kit a tool that gets projects moving quickly.

4 Type Tools and Fresh Fonts

Fluid Typography

Fluid Typography is a nifty tool that allows you to test headings in any size at different viewports to ensure it looks great everywhere. Then you can copy the CSS and use it in your projects.

Eighty-Eight

Eighty-Eight is a funky block-style typeface for display use.

Harmonique

Harmonique is a robust typeface family with lovely serifs and alternates. It’s a type family of two styles that work in harmony together to add distinction and personality to your own typographic compositions. Harmonique’s low contrast forms have the appeal of a humanist sans serif typeface.

Sketchup

Sketchup is a charming display typeface that has a nice pen style. The free version has a limited character set.

Just for Fun

Generating and Solving Sudokus in CSS

Generating and Solving Sudokus in CSS by Lee Meyer for CSS-Tricks is a fun deep dive into using CSS for something you might not expect. It’s a complicated – but fun – look at some of the things CSS can do with plenty of code snippets. The final result is a solvable puzzle with 16 squares.

Source

The post 26 Exciting New Tools For Designers, May 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


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Create Beautiful WordPress Pages with Optimized Images Using Elementor and ImageEngine

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WordPress powers nearly 40% of all websites, thanks to its commitment to making publication possible for everyone, for free. Combined with premium plugins and themes, it’s possibly the ultimate tool for building attractive, unique, and feature-rich websites without any coding or design experience.

However, you do pay the price for this experience, with WordPress and its third-party products not always being built for performance – whether it’s page loading times or SEO.

Image optimization is a particularly big concern. Images are one, if not the largest, contributors to page weight, and it’s growing significantly by the year. So, while images are crucial for beautifying your website pages, they are also one of the biggest factors slowing it down.

In terms of image optimization, WordPress+Elementor brings very little to the table. WordPress core now comes with both responsive syntax and lazy-loading. Elementor itself also only comes with responsive syntax out-of-the-box. However, these are baseline techniques for image optimization that will deliver the bare minimum of improvements.

This means that, while Elementor makes it easy to design sweet-looking WordPress pages (with tonnes of creatively utilized images), you will probably pay the price when it comes to performance. But don’t worry. We will show you how to dramatically improve web performance by over 30 points on scoring tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insight. 

Why Optimize Your Elementor Images with ImageEngine?

In general, image CDNs use various techniques to get image payloads as small as possible and deliver image content faster, all while minimizing the visual impact. ImageEngine is no different in that regard.

Firstly, ImageEngine, when used in auto mode, will apply all of the following optimizations that web performance tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insight recommend. For example:

  • Properly size images – ImageEngine automatically resizes images for optimal size-to-quality ratios depending on the screen size of the user device. ImageEngine supports Retina devices.
  • Efficiently encode images – Applies different rates of compression depending on the PPI of the user devices. For example, ImageEngine adapts and more aggressively compresses on higher PPI devices without losing visual quality.
  • Next-gen format conversion – Automatically converts images to the optimal next-gen format according to the browser, device, or OS. ImageEngine can convert images to WebP or JPEG-2000 as well as GIFs to MP4 or WebP.  AVIF is also available in a manual directive mode.
  • Strip unnecessary metadata

While these features are standard for most image CDNs, ImageEngine is unique for its use of WURFL device detection. This gives ImageEngine much deeper insight into the user device accessing a website page and, by extension, its images. Using the screen size, resolution, PPI, etc., ImageEngine can make more intelligent decisions regarding how to reduce image payloads while maintaining visual quality.

This is why ImageEngine brands itself as an “intelligent, device-aware” image CDN and why it can reduce image payloads by as much as 80% (if not more).

ImageEngine also provides a proprietary CDN service to accelerate image delivery. The CDN consists of 20 globally positioned PoPs with the device-aware logic built-in. This allows you to deliver image content faster in different regions while also serving images straight from the cache with a ~98% hit ratio.

ImageEngine also supports Chrome’s save data setting. If someone has a slow connection or has activated this setting, ImageEngine will automatically compress image payloads even more, to provide a better user experience on slower connections.

How to Use ImageEngine with WordPress and Elementor

If you’re using WordPress and Elementor, then chances are you want to spend as little time on development and other technicalities as possible. Luckily, ImageEngine is a highly streamlined tool that requires little to no effort to integrate or maintain with a WordPress site.

Assuming you already have a WordPress website with Elementor, here are the step-by-step instructions to use ImageEngine:

  1. Go to ImageEngine.io and sign up for a 30-day free trial.
  2. Provide ImageEngine with the URL of the website you want to optimize.
  3. Create an account (or sign up with your existing Google, GitHub, or ScientiaMobile account).
  4. Provide ImageEngine with the current origin where your images are served from. If you upload images to your WordPress website as usual, then that means providing your WordPress website address again.
  5. Finally, ImageEngine will generate an ImageEngine delivery address for you from where your optimized images will be served. This typically takes the form of: {randomstring}.cdn.imgeng.in. You can change the delivery address to something more meaningful from the dashboard, such as myimages.cdn.imgeng.in.

Now, to set up ImageEngine on your WordPress website:

  1. Go to the WordPress dashboard and head to Plugins -> Add New.
  2. Search for the “Image CDN” plugin by ImageEngine. When you find it, install and activate the plugin.

  1. Go to Settings -> Image CDN. OK, so this is the ImageEngine plugin dashboard. To configure it, all you need to do is:

a. Copy the delivery address you got from ImageEngine above and paste it in the “Delivery Address” field.

b. Tick the “Enable ImageEngine” box.

That’s literally it. All images that you use on your WordPress/Elementor pages should now be served via the ImageEngine CDN already optimized. 

ImageEngine is largely a “set-it-and-forget-it” tool. It will provide the best results in auto mode with no user input. However, you can override some of ImageEngine’s settings from the dashboard or by using URL directives to manipulate images.

For example, you can resize an image to 300 px width and convert it to WebP by changing the src attribute like this:

<img src="https://myimages.cdn.imgeng.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/banner-logo.png?imgeng=/w_300/f_webp">

However, use this only when necessary, as doing so will limit ImageEngine’s adaptability under different conditions.

What Improvement Can You Expect?

Let’s see what results you can expect from using an image CDN to improve your page loading times.

For this, I created two identical WordPress pages using the Elementor theme. The one page purely relied on WordPress and Elementor, while I installed and set up ImageEngine for the other. The page had some galleries as well as full-size images:

The pages used many high-quality images, as you might expect to find on a professional photography gallery, photography blog, stock photo website, large e-commerce site, etc. I then ran page performance tests using Chrome’s built-in Lighthouse audit tool, choosing scores representing the average results I got for each page.

For thoroughness, I tested both the mobile and desktop performance. However, I focused on the mobile results as these showcase more of the image CDN’s responsive capabilities. Mobile traffic also accounts for the majority share of internet traffic and seems to be the focus for search engines going forward.

So, first of all, let’s see the mobile score for the page without ImageEngine:

As you can see, there was definitely a struggle to deliver the huge amount of image content. Google has shown that 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes more than 3s to load. So, clearly, this page has major concerns when it comes to user experience and retaining traffic.

The desktop version fared much better, although it still left much to be desired:

When digging into the reasons behind the slowdown, we can identify the following problems:

Most of the issues related somehow to the size and weight of the images. As you can see, Lighthouse identified a 3.8 MB payload while the total image payload of the entire page was close to 40 MB.

Now, let’s see what kind of improvement ImageEngine can make to these issues by looking at the mobile score first:

So, as you can see, a major improvement of 30 points over the standard WordPress/Elementor page. The time to load images was cut down by roughly 80% across the key core web vital metrics, such as FCP, LCP, and the overall Speed Index.

In fact, we just reached that critical 3s milestone for the FCP (the largest element on the visible area of the page when it initially loads), which creates the impression that the page has finished loading and will help you retain a lot of mobile traffic.

The desktop score was also much higher, and there was further improvement across the key performance metrics.

If we look at the performance problems still present, we see that images are almost completely removed as a concern. We also managed to bring down the initial 3.8 MB payload to around 1.46 MB, which is a ~62% reduction:

An unfortunate side effect of using WordPress and WordPress plugins is that you will almost inevitably face a performance hit due to all the additional JavaScript and CSS. This is part of the reason why we didn’t see even larger improvements. That’s the price you pay for the convenience of using these tools.

That being said, the more images you have on your pages, and the larger their sizes, the more significant the improvement will be.

It’s also worth noting that lazy-loaded images were loaded markedly faster with ImageEngine if you quickly scroll down the page, again making for an improved user experience.

Thanks to its intelligent image compression, there was also no visible loss in image quality, as you can see from this comparison:

Conclusion

So, as you can see, we can achieve significant performance improvements on image-heavy websites by using the ImageEngine image CDN, despite inherent performance issues using a CMS. This will translate to happier users, better search engine rankings, and an overall more successful website.

The best part is that ImageEngine stays true to the key principles of WordPress. You don’t have to worry about any of the nuts and bolts on the inside. And, ImageEngine will automatically adjust automation strategies as needed, future-proofing you against having to occasionally rework images for optimization.

Source

The post Create Beautiful WordPress Pages with Optimized Images Using Elementor and ImageEngine first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


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Flutter 2.0 State Management Introduction With Provider 5.0

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With Flutter 2.0, you can build apps on mobile, web and desktop.  Graphics performance is fantastic and the development tools are great. The main barrier to learning Flutter is an understanding of state management.  This tutorial covers the Provider package, one of the most popular and easiest tools to manage state in Flutter.

A video version of this tutorial is available. Code and image files are on GitHub. 

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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An Analysis of Near-Field Communication

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Introduction

From telegraphs to online video calls and from fax machines to emails, the communication means have evolved exceptionally. Now the world has shifted from wired networks to wireless transmission, the internet being the most significant model. 

Nowadays people do not want to wait for replies; messages are sent and received in milliseconds. Modern messaging apps are an example of it. Transferring large files was a problem for businesses in the past, as it could take hours to load. Currently, centralized cloud storage is giving easy access to data anywhere in no time. 

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SAP.iO Foundry Paris dévoile les 8 startups AgTech de son sixième programme d’accélération

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8 startups françaises et internationales, spécialisées dans l’innovation autour de l’agriculture et de l’agroalimentaire, rejoignent cette sixième édition. Leur but ? Aider ces deux secteurs à se transformer, via des nouvelles technologies, pour avoir un impact positif et durable.

SAP.iO Foundry Paris annonce aujourd’hui le lancement de son nouveau programme d’accélération autour de l’Agribusiness. Suite à son appel à candidature en janvier dernier, le jury de SAP.iO composé de collaborateurs SAP, de partenaires (Deloitte, Accenture), et de fonds d’investissements (CapAgro et Astanor Venture) et de nombreux clients a retenu 8 startups spécialisées en procurement, supply chain, en plateformes de suivi de production et en outils d’aide à la décision. Pendant 10 semaines, SAP.iO va accompagner ces jeunes pousses dans leur croissance autant sur l’aspect business que technologique.

SAP.iO Foundry Paris ouvre ses portes à des startups du monde entier

Cette sixième promotion dépasse les frontières habituelles de SAP.iO Foundry Paris avec 3 startups françaises, 2 américaines 1 israélienne, 1 allemande et 1 canadienne.

Partant du constat que la France est l’une des plus grandes puissances agricoles, SAP.iO Foundry Paris lance le 1er programme d’accélération startups de SAP entièrement dédié à cette industrie. Les 8 jeunes pousses ont été retenues pour leurs technologies et leurs approches innovantes en matière de transition écologique. Grâce à l’expertise de SAP sur le sujet, notamment en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, l’accélérateur de startups offre à ces jeunes pousses l’opportunité de se positionner sur l’ensemble du globe.

Ce nouveau programme d’accélération sera articulé autour de 3 problématiques :

  • Digital Farming & Data-Driven Agriculture : comment intégrer dans l’Agribusiness de la donnée, de l’intelligence artificielle, de l’analytique, de la plateforme d’aide à la décision ?
  • Next-gen Agricultural Origination Processes : comment combiner conformité et traçabilité dans l’ensemble du processus de production et de transformation ?
  • Sustainable AgriBusiness Supply Chains : comment faire de l’agriculture plus responsable et respectueuse de l’environnement tout au long de la chaine de valeur ?

8 startups à forte valeur ajoutée orientées AgTech sélectionnées

  • Agrora permet aux transformateurs et aux négociants de produits agricoles de gagner du temps sur les processus d’approvisionnement et de distribution en offrant un logiciel d’approvisionnement pour les produits agricoles.
  • Clarifruit est une startup israélienne spécialisée dans le contrôle qualité des produits frais et notamment des fruits, qui grâce à l’intelligence artificielle et à des caméras, permet d’identifier si les fruits sont de bonne qualité et propres à la consommation.
  • Connecting Food est la première plateforme collaborative française utilisant la technologie blockchain et des modules intelligents pour apporter de la transparence, une traçabilité de bout en bout et un audit numérique complet des produits alimentaires avant de les mettre dans les mains des consommateurs.
  • Grain Chain Inc, startup américaine, a développé une plateforme révolutionnaire qui uniformise les règles du jeu pour les producteurs, les acheteurs, les opérateurs de stockage, les prêteurs et tous les autres participants de la chaîne d’approvisionnement agricole mondiale. Sa solution combine la blockchain et la technologie axée sur l’IoT pour vérifier et exécuter automatiquement les contrats intelligents, créant ainsi des flux de travail entièrement automatisés et numérisés à chaque étape.
  • Heavy Connect est une plateforme mobile américaine spécialisée dans le respect de réglementations, répondant aux difficultés que peuvent rencontrer les agriculteurs, souvent confrontés à de nombreux contrôles sanitaires et réglementaires.
  • Milk Moovement est une startup canadienne déjà bien établie et qui se développe sur toute la chaîne d’approvisionnement du lait, de la récolte à la livraison. Milk Moovement agit comme un outil de communication entre toutes les entreprises impliquées dans la chaîne d’approvisionnement des produits laitiers.
  • Procsea France SAS – En dotant l’industrie des produits de la mer des dernières technologies, en structurant et en standardisant les données, et en améliorant la traçabilité et la durabilité de la filière, ProcSea, startup française basée à Rennes, apporte de la valeur à chacun de ces acteurs et transforme également le commerce des produits de la mer dans son ensemble.
  • Sencrop est une plateforme française d’aide à la décision avec la particularité de pouvoir gérer et animer une communauté autour de sa plateforme pouvant connecter ensemble des capteurs IoT et différentes sources d’informations qui vont permettre d’aider l’agriculteur à prendre la bonne décision.

« L’industrie agroalimentaire est un secteur d’activité majeur pour la France. Au niveau européen, elle se situe au deuxième rang derrière l’Allemagne et on compte aujourd’hui beaucoup de grands groupes français d’envergure internationale. L’innovation est un facteur clé de la compétitivité du secteur, c’est également un moyen de réduire les inégalités et problématiques alimentaires mondiales. C’est dans ce contexte que nous avons décidé d’accompagner des startups dans le domaine Agtech. C’est avec beaucoup d’enthousiasme, que nous lançons notre 1er programme d’accélération startups de SAP entièrement dédié à l’agriculture et à l’agroalimentaire. D’envergure internationale, cette nouvelle promotion vise à apporter au secteur de l’agribusiness différents axes d’améliorations : plus d’efficacité, de transparence et de sécurité. C’est dans ce sens que nous avons sélectionné ces huit jeunes pousses françaises et étrangères dont la mission est de créer des solutions innovantes et complémentaires à celles de SAP pour apporter ensemble plus de valeur à nos clients », explique Sébastien Gibier, directeur de l’accélérateur SAP.iO Foundry Paris.

Avec ce programme et celui de ses autres accélérateurs dans le monde, SAP.iO confirme son ambition d’aller plus loin en 2021 et de vouloir devenir le One Stop Shop de SAP pour les startups à l’échelle mondiale grâce à ses différents programmes complémentaires.

Retrouvez tous les programmes startups proposés par SAP.iO sur leur site internet

Plus d’informations sur SAP.iO Foundry Paris, Agribusiness Industry Accelerator

À propos de SAP

La stratégie de SAP vise à aider chaque organisation à fonctionner en “entreprise intelligente”. En tant que leader du marché des logiciels d’application d’entreprise, nous aidons les entreprises de toutes tailles et de tous secteurs à opérer au mieux : 77 % des transactions commerciales mondiales entrent en contact avec un système SAP®. Nos technologies de Machine Learning, d’Internet des objets (IoT) et d’analytique avancées aident nos clients à transformer leurs activités en “entreprises intelligentes”. SAP permet aux personnes et aux organisations d’avoir une vision approfondie de leur business et favorise la collaboration afin qu’elles puissent garder une longueur d’avance sur leurs concurrents. Nous simplifions la technologie afin que les entreprises puissent utiliser nos logiciels comme elles le souhaitent – sans interruption. Notre suite d’applications et de services de bout en bout permet aux clients privés et publics de 25 secteurs d’activité dans le monde de fonctionner de manière rentable, de s’adapter en permanence et de faire la différence. Avec son réseau mondial de clients, partenaires, employés et leaders d’opinion, SAP aide le monde à mieux fonctionner et à améliorer la vie de chacun. Pour plus d’informations, visitez le site www.sap.com .

Contacts presse

Daniel Margato, Directeur Communication : 06 64 25 38 08 – daniel.margato@sap.com
Pauline Barriere : 06.13.73.93.11– presse-sap@publicisconsultants.com
SAP News Center. Suivez SAP sur Twitter : @SAPNews.

 

The post SAP.iO Foundry Paris dévoile les 8 startups AgTech de son sixième programme d’accélération appeared first on SAP France News.

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Get Ready For Next Month’s Google Shakeup

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Google has been talking about the Core Web Vitals tool and the Page Experience Update for about a year now.

With the update scheduled to roll out in May 2021, now is the time to make sure your websites are prepared for it. It’s taking a lot of the best practices Google has recommended over the years and making them an official part of the search algorithm, so not taking this seriously could negatively impact your sites’ rankings.

Today, we’re going to look at everything Google has told us about the update and how to use the Core Web Vitals tool to ensure your site rankings don’t drop once it rolls out.

What We Know About the Google Page Experience Update

Google first told us about the page experience update back in May 2020. Here’s what we know about the upcoming update:

Google’s Search Algorithm Will Change in May 2021

Although there’s no specific day given, we do know that the page experience update will go live sometime in May 2021.

The Goal is to Reduce Friction on the Web

It’s not as though user experience is something that designers and developers overlook when building websites. Heck, there’s an entire disciple of UX design dedicated to it.

That said, Google hasn’t taken too hard line of an approach in enforcing its page experience suggestions, like mobile-first design, removing intrusive pop-ups, or improving page speed. With this update, though, Google is now telling every site owner that performance, accessibility, technical best practices, and SEO must be built into their websites.

Of course, the goal isn’t to create more work on your side of things. Google believes that by encouraging developers to build better web experiences that consumers will experience less friction and businesses will be more profitable as a result.

The Update Will Include Older Signals

According to Google, the page experience update is going to combine a bunch of older signals with the new Core Web Vitals:

The Core Web Vitals tool will now merge all of that data we once had to gather from various Google apps. That’ll make it more convenient for designers and developers to improve the on-page experience across a variety of areas.

The Page Experience Algorithm Will Change Over Time

Per Google:

Because we continue to work on identifying and measuring aspects of page experience, we plan to incorporate more page experience signals on a yearly basis to both further align with evolving user expectations and increase the aspects of user experience that we can measure.

So, don’t expect this to be a one-and-done thing. You’ll have to rely on the Core Web Vitals tool, and pay close attention to updates out of Google, to ensure your sites are keeping up with Google’s page experience standards.

Your Other Google Apps Have Already Been Updated with Core Web Vitals

If you hadn’t noticed, Google has already updated its other apps in anticipation of the page experience update.

Google PageSpeed Insights, Search Console, and Lighthouse all have Core Web Vitals data in them.

Here’s an example of how Lighthouse’s report on the Amazon website now looks:

By including these metrics within the tools you’re already using, you don’t necessarily have to add the Core Web Vitals tool to your growing toolbox. That said, there are some really valuable reports in there, so I’ll show you why you may want to add it anyway.

Google’s Top Stories Will Be Affected

In the past when someone did a news-related search on Google, they’d see “Top Stories” results like this one:

Until now, the only pages shown here were AMP-enabled ones. 

Once the page experience update goes live, though, the AMP requirement is going away. So long as a page meets the page experience criteria along with Google News content policies, it can now rank in this section.

Google Search Results May Show a Page Experience Indicator

In the Top Stories example above, notice the AMP indicator I highlighted in yellow. Google is thinking about adding something similar to any search result that fulfills its page experience criteria.

While I think a small, eye-catching icon might draw a little more attention from Google users, I’m not sure if it’ll be that big of a deal to them. People working in this industry certainly know what that lightning bolt means, and we’ll also be the ones who recognize the page experience indicator, but I’m not convinced it’ll matter to users. 

That said, this is something Google is thinking about rolling about, so it’s something to be aware of. At the very least, you can consider it a badge of honor when showing your websites to clients and prospects who want to see what you can do for them.

Content Is Still More Important Than Page Experience

Even if a website checks off all the page experience boxes, there’s no guarantee that it’ll start to rank better than websites that haven’t. The quality and value of the content on the page still matters greatly.

Using Core Web Vitals to Measure Page Experience

Alright, so let’s take a look at this Core Web Vitals tool. Here’s what the tool looks like when you enter the “Measure” tab:

It’s like most other Google analyzer tools. You enter the URL you want to audit and let the tool run. The results then spit out something that looks like this:

Core Web Vitals are graded on four categories:

  1. Performance measures the loading speed, interactivity, and stability of the page.
  2. Best Practices focus on the technical aspects of the page, including things like having an SSL certificate and making sure images fit within the parameters of the mobile screen.
  3. SEO checks on the typical SEO signals like metadata, structured data, and so on.
  4. Accessibility reports any issues with visitors not being able to see or access parts of the page.

If you scroll down just a little bit on the page, there’s more data available. It mainly has to deal with the technical stuff, like page speeds and unoptimized code:

Now, this isn’t really anything new. We can get this data about load time, interactivity, and content stability from Google’s other apps.

The real value is in the report, which you can access up top next to the date of your audit.

Open the report and you’ll find specific suggestions and pro tips to optimize each part of the page experience, like this SEO report:

Just like other Google tools, this one can teach you a lot about what makes one site more rankable than another. So, make sure you update your web design strategy going forward to integrate all of these ranking signals.

While you’ll have to do annual audits on your sites to see how much Google has changed the page experience signals, you’ll create less work for yourself if this baseline set of criteria are met with every site you build.

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Faurecia choisit SAP SuccessFactors pour développer une nouvelle expérience collaborateur

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SAP annonce ce jour que l’équipementier automobile Faurecia a choisi SAP et SuccessFactors pour l’accompagner dans la digitalisation de ses processus RH afin de valoriser le potentiel de ses employés tout en leur permettant d’évoluer dans leur carrière de manière proactive.

Avec ses 266 sites industriels, 39 centres de R&D et ses 114 000 employés présents dans 35 pays, Faurecia est l’un des dix premiers équipementiers automobiles mondiaux proposant des solutions pour la Mobilité Durable et le Cockpit du Futur.

Simplifier les processus RH et développer les talents

Le SIRH de Faurecia s’est construit sur la base du développement de l’entreprise et des acquisitions externes, comptant jusqu’à 65 systèmes de paie différents.

Pour offrir un nouvelle expérience collaborateur, Faurecia a décidé de centraliser toutes ses données RH et la gestion de la paie en un unique endroit et une seule interface. L’objectif : promouvoir le développement individuel et profiter d’un panorama complet des processus RH qu’il s’agisse de la formation, la définition des objectifs et l’évaluation des performances des collaborateurs, la gestion des salaires et du personnel.

En choisissant SAP SuccessFactors, Faurecia a fait le choix d’un système collaboratif et accessible qui accompagne le développement du potentiel des collaborateurs par la formation, le management direct et les ressources humaines.

Des collaborateurs acteurs de leur carrière

Grâce à l’implémentation de la solution SAP SuccessFactors, Faurecia dispose d’un accès aux évaluations de performance et aux modèles de compétences de ses employés dans le monde entier, afin de leur proposer des formations adaptées à leurs objectifs et parcours professionnel. Cela offre aux managers la possibilité de mieux accompagner les salariés dans leur développement et leurs évolutions de carrière.

La mise en place de SAP SuccessFactors a permis à l’entreprise de profiter d’une source de donnée unique et d’une solution de paie intégrée facilitant de suivi des processus RH et la gestion de l’architecture du SIRH. Les informations RH sont dorénavant centralisées en un même endroit et accessibles en temps réel. Avec SAP SuccessFactors Mobile App, les managers peuvent organiser des entretiens à tout moment, depuis leur téléphone, avec tous les renseignements nécessaires sur le candidat. Grâce à l’intégration de SAP On-Prem Payroll et de Employees Central, le Groupe bénéficie de données de meilleure qualité et de l’enregistrement automatisé des informations RH.

Très bien accueillie par l’ensemble des collaborateurs grâce à une communication régulière, la solution est aujourd’hui pleinement adoptée par l’ensemble des acteurs de l’entreprise.

« SAP SuccessFactors a complètement changé la manière de promouvoir la formation en interne. Aujourd’hui, les employés peuvent d’eux-mêmes avoir accès au catalogue de formations et être pleinement acteur de leur développement professionnel. Nous profitons également de données plus qualitatives grâce à un système unique pour la paie et pour tous les processus RH facilitant ainsi notre visibilité sur le parcours des collaborateurs », explique Laurent Villemagne, Vice President, Group HR Information Systems & Controlling.

À propos de Faurecia

Fondé en 1997, Faurecia est devenu un acteur majeur de l’industrie automobile mondiale. Avec 266 sites industriels, 39 centres de R&D et 114 000 collaborateurs répartis dans 35 pays, Faurecia est un leader mondial dans ses quatre domaines d’activités : Seating, Interiors, Clarion Electronics et Clean Mobility. Son offre technologique forte fournit aux constructeurs automobiles des solutions pour le Cockpit du futur et la Mobilité durable. En 2020, le Groupe a réalisé un chiffre d’affaires de 14,7 milliards d’euros.

À propos de SAP

La stratégie de SAP vise à aider chaque organisation à fonctionner en “entreprise intelligente”. En tant que leader du marché des logiciels d’application d’entreprise, nous aidons les entreprises de toutes tailles et de tous secteurs à opérer au mieux : 77 % des transactions commerciales mondiales entrent en contact avec un système SAP®. Nos technologies de Machine Learning, d’Internet des objets (IoT) et d’analytique avancées aident nos clients à transformer leurs activités en “entreprises intelligentes”. SAP permet aux personnes et aux organisations d’avoir une vision approfondie de leur business et favorise la collaboration afin qu’elles puissent garder une longueur d’avance sur leurs concurrents. Nous simplifions la technologie afin que les entreprises puissent utiliser nos logiciels comme elles le souhaitent – sans interruption. Notre suite d’applications et de services de bout en bout permet aux clients privés et publics de 25 secteurs d’activité dans le monde de fonctionner de manière rentable, de s’adapter en permanence et de faire la différence. Avec son réseau mondial de clients, partenaires, employés et leaders d’opinion, SAP aide le monde à mieux fonctionner et à améliorer la vie de chacun. Pour plus d’informations, visitez le site www.sap.com .

Contacts presse :

Daniel Margato, Directeur Communication : 06 64 25 38 08 – daniel.margato@sap.com
Pauline Barriere : 06.13.73.93.11– presse-sap@publicisconsultants.com
SAP News Center. Suivez SAP sur Twitter : @SAPNews.

The post Faurecia choisit SAP SuccessFactors pour développer une nouvelle expérience collaborateur appeared first on SAP France News.

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Popular Design News of the Week: April 5, 2021 – April 11, 2021

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Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.

The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!

Designing SaaS Products in 2021

Sticky Headers: 5 Ways to Make Them Better

3 Essential Design Trends, April 2021

15 Best Firefox Extensions for Web Designers

7 Skills You Need To Thrive As A Web Designer In 2021

The Current State of Mobile UX (18 Common Pitfalls)

What Is UX Design?

Stop Asking For UI Design Feedback, Do This Instead

skruv: No-Dependency, No-Build, Small JS Framework

2021 Redesign or: How I Learned to Stop Art Directing and Love the Blog

15 Best CSS Auditing Tools for Developers

Top 14 Skills Every Web Designer Needs To Be Successful In 2021

The Era Of Cookie-Cutter Web Design Is Ending

Reduce Bounce Rate by Fixing These 7 Web Design Mistakes

Guide To Building A UI Design System

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Key and Surface Tracking Comes to Chrome

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This week Google announced further details of its plan to remove cookies from ad tracking. The strategy, which the ad giant expects to be fully implemented by 2022, has come about due to increasingly stringent privacy laws in a growing number of territories around the globe.

Google’s first step was the announcement in January of FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). Google itself is still testing and fine-tuning the system, but in essence, Google will replace 3rd-party cookies in Chrome with groups of anonymized users.

Critics of the plan have questioned whether users will be genuinely anonymous or whether Google will be tracking individuals to group them properly. The answer came earlier this week in a low-key announcement of KaST.

What is KaST?

KaST (Key and Surface Tracking) is the first iteration of Google’s new tracking technology. It works entirely without cookies and is fully device-agnostic.

The technology behind KaST is surprisingly old. It was first trialed in 1987 as a simple process for auditing the input of stenographers. Although the latest version of the technology draws heavily on voice recognition software algorithms, the original version of KaST — software named TAAA (Typist Account Accuracy Audit) — predates modern voice recognition by at least two years.

KaST uses…biomechanical and cognitive patterns, identifying individual users based on their keystrokes.

Just as your voice has a unique, identifiable modulation — anyone who uses telephone banking will be familiar with speaking their password — so too does your biomechanical input.

When you type on a keyboard or a touchscreen, the force, speed, and accuracy with which you hit characters are dependent on two things: your cognitive process and the unique biomechanics of your hands (the bones, ligaments, and muscles).

For example, when I type WordPress, I almost always type it as WordPRess (with a capitalized R). That is one facet of my combined biomechanical and cognitive process.

KaST uses keyboards and touch screens to track combined biomechanical and cognitive patterns, identifying individual users based on their keystrokes.

Mobile Approaches to KaST

KaST is heavily reliant on BMaC (Bio-Mechanical and Cognitive) input. Although Google hasn’t released any data to support the accuracy of KaST, BMaC is known to be surprisingly accurate.

Reports suggest that the KaST algorithm is 89.7% effective for character strings of 12 characters or more, leaping to 97.6% for 19 characters or more on a single device. That makes it too inaccurate for high-end processes like security but well within the necessary margin of error for a non-critical process like serving ads.

Google will be able to identify you on any machine, on any device, in any context, as soon as you type 19 characters or more

When switching to a touch-screen device, the accuracy plummets to just 87.8%. This may be one reason Google has been low-key in its trumpeting of the new technology so far.

According to TechBeat, initial trials of the tri-axis position of a device (X, Y, and Z rotation) were abandoned as inaccurate. Still, even without those additional tracking signals, Google claims KaST on mobile will achieve ~94% accuracy by the 1st quarter of 2022.

What Does KaST Mean for Users?

Much like many of the algorithms that govern our daily lives, KaST will be largely invisible to most of us. Unlike cookies that can be legislated for and removed from a local machine, your BMaC is as inescapable as your DNA.

Where privacy concerns really grow is that your BMaC follows you from device to device. How you type at home is identical to how you type at work. Your personal and professional profiles are now instantly connectable; Google will be able to identify you on any machine, on any device, in any context, as soon as you type 19 characters or more.

KaST Prompts Pre-M1 MacBook Rush

Within 24 hours of KaST’s announcement, Apple stores were reporting rush orders of pre-M1 MacBook Pros. With some stores reportedly selling out late on Wednesday.

The rush came in the wake of a Reddit post — that has since been removed — that claimed that the notoriously bad butterfly keyboard on pre-M1 MacBook Pros circumvented KaST because the inaccuracy of the keystrokes, and the tendency of the keys to stick introduced a random element that disguised the end-user from the KaST algorithm.

Although the Reddit post is unsubstantiated, it transpires that M1 Mac owners may not be the lucky ones after all.

Should You Worry About KaST?

Advocates maintain that KaST — and Google’s wider FLoC strategy — are beneficial to users and the web as a whole. They claim that identifying users without 3rd party cookies does more to protect privacy than hinder it.

Opponents argue that in a digital world rife with user tracking, privacy compromises of this magnitude cannot be contemplated simply to enable more sophisticated ad-serving.

Despite KaST’s early stages of development, privacy concerns are mounting, and a campaign has been launched to regulate Google’s use of the technology.

Source

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