Author Archives: Sara

Firefox starts rapid releases! (Surprise Firefox 5.0 is Here!)

Firefox 5.0 Android Do Not Track Feature Today I got Firefox 5.0! You may remember about 2 and a half months ago every one got excited about Firefox 4.0, well now Mozilla has decided instead of having small updates (Firefox 3 reached version 3.6.18) they’re going to have rapid releases of whole new versions.

This may seem like a strange move, but it is probably so their browser appears new and fresh, Chrome’s newest stable release is version 12 and it’s only been around for 3 years! Some users may be led to believe that the version number dictates the usability and level of functionality that a browser provides (that would mean IE6 is better than FF3, 4, and 5 *shudder*). So Firefox is just trying to look cool compared to all the big number browsers out there.

According to their blog Firefox 5 “ includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements”.One of the main new feature Mozilla is bragging about is built in “Do not Track” feature that is now available on their new Android release. They are now the only browser that offers a “Do not Track” feature across multiple platforms.

Simply FF5 is nothing more than another chapter in “BROWSER WARS” EPISODE 2011

The Chromebook is Finally here!

Ok so it’s not here right now, but if you live in the 7 selected countries you could get your very own shiny new Chromebook on the dates listed below.

  • US 23rd June
  • Germany 24th June
  • France 24th June
  • Netherlands 24th June
  • Spain 22nd July
  • Italy 25th July
  • UK 1st July

There are two Chromebooks being released, one by Samsung and one by Acer, check out the specs below:

Samsumg Acer
OS Chrome OS Chrome OS
Display 12.1 (1280×800) 300 nit Display 11.6 HD Widescreen CineCrystalTM LED-backlit LCD
Weight 3.26 lbs/1.48 kg 3.19 lbs | 1.45 kg
Memory 2 GB RAM, 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD) 2 GB RAM, 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD)
Battery 8.5 hours of continuous usage* 6 hours of continuous usage*
Processor Intel® AtomTM Dual-Core Processor Intel® AtomTM Dual-Core Processor
Connectivity Built in dual-band Wi-Fi and World-mode 3G (optional) Built in dual-band Wi-Fi and World-mode 3G (optional)
Webcam HD Webcam (1-megapixel) HD Webcam
Audio Built-in stereo speakers, combo headphone/microphone jack High-Definition Audio Support
Peripherals 2 USB 2.0 ports, 4-in-1 memory card slot, Mini-VGA port 2 USB 2.0 ports, 4-in-1 memory card slot, HDMI port
Input Full-sized Chrome keyboard, Oversized, fully clickable track pad Full-sized Chrome keyboard, Oversized, fully clickable track pad

*Engineering specs can change without prior notice. Battery times are estimates, depend on lots of different factors and may decline over time.

The Chromebook is Google’s newest product for those who live only on the internet. Take a look at the video below explaining how the Chromebook works.

You would think that since it’s practically a netbook (with less features) it would cost the same, or less than your average netbook… Think again! The Samsung version with 3G will set you back £399 (£349 without 3G) from PC World or Amazon.

It comes with no programs installed you can only use online apps, which may be fine for some, but what happens when you don’t have any 3G or wifi. The chromebook becomes a very fancy (and expensive) paper weight!

How to add the +1 button to your site!

Today I received an email from Google webmaster central letting me know the +1 button code is now available!

You only need to add two lines of code to get the shiny new +1 button on your site.

In the head tag, or just before the end of the body tag put this line of code in:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Place this line of code on the page where you want the +1 button to appear:

<g:plusone href="http://modularinternetmarketing.com/"></g:plusone>

Place the site that you want to +1 in the href attribute.

In a wordpress site if you want each post to be +1′d page the code would be:

<g:plusone href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></g:plusone>
Size Button With Count Button Without Count
Small

 

 

Standard

 

 

Medium

 

 

Tall

 

N/A

If you want to use a size other than the standard 24px high you need to add a size attribute, which can have one of 3 values: small (15px), medium (20px) and tall (65px).

To stop the count from displaying put count=”false” into the code. Note that this doesn’t work for the tall size button.


Instant Previews in Webmaster Tools

After checking out webmaster tools blog today I saw they’d announced a new tool in the labs section.

It’s an Instant Preview Troubleshooter. It send a request to the specified page of your site to create a small screenshot of it and crawls the page to create a preview that will appear in the SERP. You may need to request pages several times so all images can be cached and presented in the instant preview.

Webmaster Tools instant preview troubleshooter

In conjunction with the Fetch as Googlebot tool you are able to see your site the way Google sees it in real time rather than waiting for it to be crawled, indexed and updated in the SERP.

One thing to bear in mind when using this tool is that each request you make using this will be considered a page view in Google Analytics.

Google inc site visits in analytics

So don’t be too surprised when you request every page on your site and end up with a huge spike in traffic!

Google Introducing Social Search Worldwide Next Week

Do you want your friend’s opinions clogging up the SERP? In the coming week this could be a reality with Google’s newest feature, Social Search!

If you’re signed into your Google account while searching Google guesses whose public content you may want to see from Google chat buddy list, your Google Contacts, people you follow in Google Reader and Buzz, and the networks you’ve linked from your Google profile or Google Account as well as your friends on networks like Twitter or flickr.

It will look something like this:

Google social search result from Twitter

Any search result with a social association to you will have the name of your friend, the network used and the date which the link was shared, by clicking on it you can see what they said.

Whether or not this is a new ranking factor is unclear, it wouldn’t be a very useful one as a friend could tweet about how much they hated the site, unless Google algorithmically decides whether the social link to the site is good or bad it shouldn’t be used as a ranking factor.

Chrome Showing HTTPS Errors on Secure Sites

I’m sure everyone reading this who uses Chrome has had this issue at least once.

Chrome thinks the site you are accessing is insecure when it isn’t, unless Google is slipping up on their AdWords and Gmail security!

Chrome https security alerts adwords

I’ve spent hours trying to fond solutions to fix the HTTPS red line of death to no avail, the only response Google employees gave was a link to the SSL Secirity indicators help page which isn’t helpful!

Some suggestions that worked for others are;

  • Disabling adons (disable each one individually until you find the culprit).
  • Ensure all adons and browser is up to date, fixes are released all the time, so make sure it isn’t an old bug.
  • Restarting the browser.
  • Updating the time on your computer, this seems a bit odd but some claimed it worked for them, check out the thread about it on the Chrome Support Forum.

If you’re trying to debug your site, and an Error is showing up it could be caused by on of the following;

  • Any single element is not being served via SSL (eg. one image on the page isn’t served via SSL).
  • A domain mismatch (eg. SSL certificate is issued for www.example.com but is sitting on shop.example.com).
  • If you have a self signed certificate users will generally need to manually choose to trust it.

Have you had the same issues? Could you fix it? Let us know in the comments.

Analytics now Tracking Site Speed

On Wenesday Google announces on their Analytics Blog that you can now view a report of your sites’ speed.

This could become one of the most useful reports for optimisation especially since Google announced they are now considering site speed a ranking factor. However the results received must be taken with a pinch of salt, as only a small sample of page views are used to create an average which is displayed in the report.

As long as outliers or any type of extreme page views (eg. dial up internet) aren’t chosen for the report the results will be extremely informative and useful.

The report is only available in the new version of analytics, probably to create more incentive for users to convert.

To use this new feature you need to add the bold text into the currently existing Google Analytics tracking code;

For Asynchronous Code (This is usually the default) :

<script type="text/javascript">
 var _gaq = _gaq || [];
 _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

 (function() {
   var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
   ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') +
'.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

For Traditional Snippet:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'
type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
try{
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
pageTracker._trackPageLoadTime();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

If installed correctly site speed data should start showing up a few hours after the new code is uploaded.

More information about Installing the Site Speed Report.