The Group That Rules the Web

A very well done short history of Web standards development and how HTML5 came to be. The history is much more accurate than what is usually found in the trade press, and the description of standards development is also right on target. This background will help inform your strategy decisions. Read more

Industry-Specific Apps by IBM MobileFirst / Apple iOS Partnership

Seriously enterprisey iOS apps. Analysis by Ray Wang. Read more

And the designs get the nod from John Gruber.

These don’t look like “enterprise” apps. They look like regular apps — really good ones, the sort of apps Apple would choose to feature in the App Store… Read more

Yes, A/B Testing Is Still Necessary

How to educate skeptical or disappointed execs

Executives quickly pick up on the headline benefit of testing: that A/B tests provide reliable answers to “why” questions. This comes as no surprise, as such testing has long been held up as the “gold standard” for learning cause-and-effect in scientific research, clinical studies and direct marketing. However, many executives eventually reach a mid-life crisis, developing doubts about the direction of the A/B testing program… Read more

New questions in mobile

Fundamental questions from Benedict Evans.

Seven years into the smartphone world, it seems like it’s time to change the questions. The questions that we asked and argued about for the last few years have now mostly been answered, become irrelevant, or both, and new problems and puzzles are emerging.

Hence, the first phase of the platform wars is over: Apple and Google both won … and both got what they wanted, more or less, and that’s not going to change imminently. Within that framework, what happens next?… Read more

Helping users find mobile-friendly pages

Will lack of the new Google “mobile-friendly” label discourage visitors? Why guess? Your site should already be mobile-friendly. Test your pages.

Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, we’re adding a “mobile-friendly” label to our mobile search results. … Check your pages with the Mobile-Friendly TestRead more

Nine reasons to embrace HTTPS

In light of a growing number of cyber security and data privacy concerns, replacing HTTP with its secure alternative, HTTPS, is becoming increasingly important.

That’s two, but then there’s search engine ranking, and more. This is not as technical as it sounds and the list alone makes it useful for business managers. Read more

Native Apps Are Part of the Web

The native versus web app debate is less gripping than it used to be, but developers and business strategists still need to make decisions that will impact resources and market risks. And a more connected world means more connected apps and content for an acceptable user experience. We need good user experiences and openness. Whether you agree with John Gruber’s assertion or not, he exposes some prevalent misconceptions.

… the only people who don’t love apps are pundits who don’t understand that apps aren’t really in opposition to the open Internet. They’re just superior clients to open Internet services. Read more

Can documentation practices make the world safe for CEM?

Technical writers finally get some serious cred. Saving the world in the 15th century, and now customer experience management.

Situated between the developers or engineers and the marketers – between the makers and the shakers, so to speak – technical writers are not fully at home in either realm. And yet it is precisely this threshold existence, their unique combination of coding and communication, that makes documentation professionals and their established practices the indispensable foundation for maturing CEM. Read more

About

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for our conference community of content, computing, and digital experience professionals throughout the year.