Google’s ‘Polymer Project’ could replace PHP templates with their ‘lit’ library and web components
PHP templating engines like Twig are popular among web developers but Google is working on JavaScript solutions that have the potential to replace them. Google's Polymer Project created the JavaScript-based 'lit-html' templating library and more recently released LitElement, a solution for creating fast and lightweight web components.
JMAP open standard for email gets closer to replacing IMAP and SMTP
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recently published the specifications for JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP), a modern open standard replacement for IMAP and SMTP, that makes communicating with email servers faster and more secure.
AMP adds support for custom JavaScript
Web developers can now add custom JavaScript, including frameworks like React, to AMP pages using the new amp-script component.
FAQPage Schema may be driving more traffic to sites, not decreasing it
A common concern by search engine optimizers is losing search visits after adding FAQPage or HowTo Schema.org structured data to their pages. Distilled is reporting that they saw more traffic after implementing it on several sites.
Study correlates highest star review rating with lower revenue
Research conducted by Womply, a SaaS that provides reputation management tools, studied over 200,000 small businesses to determine how reviews affect their revenue. They found that small businesses with the highest average rating were reported as having lower revenue.
Chrome web browser now supports native lazy-loading
Lazy-loading is a common practice used to defer the display of images below the fold of a browser window and has always required JavaScript. The latest version of Chrome removes the requirement to use JavaScript.
Google updates its webmaster tools with evergreen Chromium
Three months after Google switched to using evergreen Chromium for their Googlebot crawler, they are now updating their search tools to also use evergreen Chromium to render pages.
Researchers use AI to identify content that’s been written by AI
OpenAI created a language model that can write copy so well that it's indistinguishable from a human-written text. Now researchers from Harvard and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab have created a method to identify AI-generated copy that also uses AI.
Google leveraging AMP to help its visitors from accidentally leaving Google and using the Back button
Google announced the launch of a new feature in its Image Search that helps publishers help Google visitors not leave Google by using AMP.
CSS getting additional line style options for text, including spelling and grammar errors
The W3C has proposed new ways to decorate lines that will allow web developers and designers to control the thickness and offset of lines. They are also introducing spelling and grammar error line properties.