Archive for category: Random Stories

Original Source: https://inspiredm.com/security-essentials-for-site-developers-and-admins/

Of all tech topics, security is possibly the most complex, and certainly the most important. This is because security is always evolving. It is a forced evolution, as we must adapt to constantly emerging threats.

There are various levels of security that we’ll have responsibility for. The first level is ourselves or the organization we work for. The second level is our clients. And the third level is the users of the websites or applications we develop for our clients.

Despite our best efforts, clients will always find ways to undermine the protections we provide for them. They rely on us as IT professionals to help them stay safe, but paradoxically also rarely follow the safety advice we provide them with. Most users really are their own worst enemies.

What we need to do, then, is make it as difficult as possible for clients to compromise their own security, while also making it as easy as we can for them to do the tasks they need to do. Achieving both goals to perfection may be impossible, but in this article we’ll cover some things you can do to cut down the risks of a security breach occurring.

gif by Patswerk

Protecting your own devices and data

You are the first line of defense for yourself and your clients. If your systems are compromised, then everyone you work for could be at risk. Here are some recommendations for the minimums you can do to avoid operating in an increased risk environment:

Use a secure desktop operating system. This is the single most basic upgrade you could make, if you’re not already using a secure operating system. The most secure operating systems are Linux, Unix, and BSD. You should be using one of these operating systems as your primary desktop operating system.
The bonus for both developers and administrators is you get access to a much larger library of free development and security tools, and most of them work better than their Windows or OSX equivalents. To really operate in paranoid mode, choose the more secure Linux distros such as Parrot, Qubes, and Tails.
Maintain separation between the operating system and your data. If you’re running Linux or Unix, this is easy. You simply make sure that you have created a partition or separate hard disk to host your home partition on. Then all user files will survive any number of operating system installations, and as a bonus can be accessed from multiple operating systems on multi-boot systems.
Use a journaling file system to help prevent data loss if your system crashes or is halted unexpectedly.
Mirror your home partition. Regularly back up important files and use file versioning to avoid unintentional overwrites.
Consider using cloud backup (not to be confused with cloud sync, which is nowhere near as safe and secure as a genuine backup). Sensitive data should be encrypted before being uploaded.
Keep your system up to date, never ignoring security patches. Systems that use rolling updates have the advantage that you’ll always know when patches are available, what needs patching, and why.
Train people within your organization to be alert to social engineering methods that may be used against them to gain access to your systems.
Avoid running software from unverified sources. When downloading software from trusted sources, verify file signatures to be certain you have an authentic copy.
Maintain the physical security of your computers, especially when traveling. Carrying your laptop everywhere may not be practical, but it’s better than letting some evil maid corrupt your BIOS. If it’s really not an option to carry your computer, lock it up in a lockable case and secure that case in a safe or otherwise as best you can.
Always remember it’s better to be paranoid than to be an idiot who got hacked.

illustration by Phantom Points Creative

Protecting clients

Keeping clients safe from IT threats is difficult, because they don’t all understand the scale of the threat they face. Many will also have the view that if their site is compromised, then it’s your problem to sort out, not theirs.

Many sites have been exploited for years without the site owners being aware of it, because most malicious attacks against sites are not supposed to let their presence be known. You therefore can’t rely on the clients to inform you of problems. You’ll need to take a proactive approach.

Try to educate your clients about the risks. Most of the problem is due to ignorance that there is any risk to be on guard against.
Inform corporate clients that the greatest threat they will face is insider threats created by their own employees and contractors (often inadvertant, but not always so). Also make sure they’re aware of problems like social engineering, shoulder surfing, and dumpster diving.
Keep servers patched. Perform regular backups.
Scan for evidence of back door exploits or other malicious activity. Designing the file and folder structure for the site to be as simple as possible will help make detection easier. Know which files should be in each folder. If you see new files that are not familiar or seem to have computer generated names, that’s a serious red flag.
Know what files should be in the cgi-bin folder (for most sites, that will be no files), because this is a favorite location for stashing malicious programs.
Periodically check the htaccess file to make sure it hasn’t been tampered with.
Code that you write is unlikely to make extensive use of encoding and decoding strings, or to contain heavily encrypted content. If PHP files contain unusual code, it’s not very likely that those are legitimate files. Unusual character encoding instructions are also a giveaway. It’s not likely that your legitimate files will be encoded in Windows-1251 encoding, for example.
After confirming a breach, change your passwords. Check file permissions are set correctly for all files and folders. Monitor signs the intruder has returned. Even after changing your password, the attackers may have a way in. You’ll need to be sure they don’t. Set your server to inform you by email when any changes are made to the server.
Help your users choose passwords appropriately by explaining the rules to them in a way they can understand. This is how most people like to set their passwords: 

jenny23This is how system administrators usually advise them to set their passwords:

 

n@^2z`jGAnd the problem is the first password can be cracked in seconds, while the second password can be cracked in a few hours. Also there is no hope whatsoever that the user will remember the more complex password. Here’s an example of a password that would take several lifetimes to crack and could never be forgotten:

 

Ialwaysfly@40,000feetCharacteristics of the above password include: Over 20 characters in length, mix of upper and lowercase characters, includes both numbers and letters, includes non-alphanumeric characters, easily memorable. A similar example might be:

 

fishingeverySunday@10amOr:

 

asImove^inlife,Iwillnever4getwhereIstartedThere’s really no limit to how creative you can get with passwords, and there is so much more advantage with

asImove^inlife,Iwillnever4getwhereIstarted compared to n@^2z`jG. The first example (41 mixed characters) would take until the end of time to crack and is easy to remember, while the second example (8 mixed characters) can be cracked in under six hours and is almost impossible to remember.Don’t think you can just string words together and everything will be fine, because the hackers are onto that. You still need to mix cases and use non-alphanumeric characters, but certainly length is more important than complexity as things stand now. Combining both gives you an edge over those who use only one or the other.

Most dictionary based attacks focus on English because it’s the most widely used language and most of the best sites to target (in terms of the value of what they can yield) are sites managed by people who speak English. If you know another language, use it when creating your passwords.

As excellent as 

asImove^inlife,Iwillnever4getwhereIstarted is, it’s still not as perfect as aMedidaQue^enLaVida,nuncaolivdarededondecomence because this adds yet another layer of complexity, forcing the cracker to resort to brute force.Learning another language just to create better passwords may be a bit much, so the other thing you could do is just become (or stay) really bad at English when you design a passphrase. For example:

 

asImoov^inlyfIwillnevar4getwhereIstarted 

For the ultimate, you could use badly spelled foreign language words and replace all the vowels with Leet vowels: 

4M3d1d4Qu3^3nL4V1d3,nunc40l1vd4r3d3dond3c0m3nc3 

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have the patience to type that. Still, it is a very secure password, and forces the cracker to do an insane amount of work (to hopefully then discover that all they’ve accessed is a collection of cat pictures).
Make sure clients understand the dangers inherent in sending sensitive information by email, Skype, etc.

gif by Hoang Nguyen

A special note for developers

A quick and easy cultural shift for developers to adopt that would prevent countless security breaches each year is simply to minimize the external dependency chain of their sites. We are needlessly connecting to third party hosted scripts. Many of these scripts may have their own external dependencies. All for the sake of saving a few bytes.

Whenever possible, we should try to host all our scripts ourselves. A popular third party hosted script is a tempting target for an attacker, because by gaining control over the script, it is possible to run exploits on thousands of computers.

Concluding remarks

Computer security is a never ending challenge, and there is big money to be made on both sides of the challenge. The stakes are very high, and no one is completely safe, even those who believe they have nothing to hide. Winning is mostly a matter of using common sense and staying alert, never allowing yourself to become complacent.

header image courtesy of Josh Warren

The post Security Essentials for Site Developers and Admins appeared first on Inspired Magazine.

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/easy-responsive-modern-css-grid-layout/

In this article, I’ll show how to create a responsive modern CSS Grid layout, demonstrating how to use fallback code for old browsers, how to add CSS Grid progressively, and how to restructure the layout in small devices and center elements using the alignment properties.

In a previous article we explored four different techniques for easily building responsive grid layouts. That article was written back in 2014 — before CSS Grid was available — so in this tutorial, we’ll be using a similar HTML structure but with modern CSS Grid layout.

Throughout this tutorial, we’ll create a demo with a basic layout using floats and then enhance it with CSS Grid. We’ll demonstrate many useful utilities such as centering elements, spanning items, and easily changing the layout on small devices by redefining grid areas and using media queries. You can find the code in this pen:

See the Pen css-grid-example4 by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.

Before we dive into creating our responsive grid demo, let’s first introduce CSS Grid.

CSS Grid is a powerful 2-dimensional system that was added to most modern browsers in 2017. It has dramatically changed the way we’re creating HTML layouts. Grid Layout allows us to create grid structures in CSS and not HTML.

CSS Grid is supported in most modern browsers except for IE11, which supports an older version of the standard that could give a few issues. You can use caniuse.com to check for support.

A Grid Layout has a parent container with the display property set to grid or inline-grid. The child elements of the container are grid items which are implicitly positioned thanks to a powerful Grid algorithm. You can also apply different classes to control the placement, dimensions, position and other aspects of the items.

Let’s start with a basic HTML page. Create an HTML file and add the following content:

<header>
<h2>CSS Grid Layout Example</h2>
</header>
<aside>
.sidebar
</aside>

<main>
<article>
<span>1</span>
</article>
<article>
<span>2</span>
</article>
<!–… –>
<article>
<span>11</span>
</article>
</main>

<footer>
Copyright 2018
</footer>

We use HTML semantics to define the header, sidebar, main and footer sections of our page. In the main section, we add a set of items using the <article> tag. <article> is an HTML5 semantic tag that could be used for wrapping independent and self-contained content. A single page could have any number of <article> tags.

This is a screen shot of the page at this stage:

Next, let’s add basic CSS styling. Add a <style> tag in the head of the document and add the following styles:

body {
background: #12458c;
margin: 0rem;
padding: 0px;
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont,
“Segoe UI”, “Roboto”, “Oxygen”, “Ubuntu”, “Cantarell”,
“Fira Sans”, “Droid Sans”, “Helvetica Neue”,
sans-serif;
}

header {
text-transform: uppercase;
padding-top: 1px;
padding-bottom: 1px;
color: #fff;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 2px;
}

aside {
color: #fff;
border-width:2px;
border-style: solid;
float: left;
width: 6.3rem;
}

footer {
color: #fff;
border-width:2px;
border-style: solid;
clear: both;
}

main {
float: right;
width: calc(100% – 7.2rem);
padding: 5px;
background: hsl(240, 100%, 50%);
}

main > article {
background: hsl(240, 100%, 50%);
background-image: url(‘https://source.unsplash.com/daily’);
color: hsl(240, 0%, 100%);
border-width: 5px;
}

This is a small demonstration page, so we’ll style tags directly to aid readability rather than applying class naming systems.

We use floats to position the sidebar to the left and the main section to the right and we set the width of the sidebar to a fixed 6.3rem width. Then we calculate and set the remaining width for the main section using the CSS calc() function. The main section contains a gallery of items organized as vertical blocks.

The layout is not perfect. For example, the sidebar does not have the same height as the main content section. There are various CSS techniques to solve the problems but most are hacks or workarounds. Since this layout is a fallback for Grid, it will be seen by a rapidly diminishing number of users. The fallback is usable and good enough.

The latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and Safari have support for CSS Grid, so that means if your visitors are using these browsers you don’t need to worry about providing a fallback. Also you need to account for evergreen browsers. The latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari are evergreen browsers. That is, they automatically update themselves silently without prompting the user. To ensure your layout works in every browser, you can start with a default float-based fallback then use progressive enhancement techniques to apply a modern Grid layout. Those with older browsers will not receive an identical experience but it will be good enough.

The post Easy and Responsive Modern CSS Grid Layout appeared first on SitePoint.

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/08/designing-for-micro-moments/

Designing For Micro-Moments

Designing For Micro-Moments

Suzanna Scacca

2018-08-17T13:50:09+02:00
2018-08-17T11:59:10+00:00

A couple of years ago, Google announced a new mobile-first initiative it wanted web designers and marketers to pick up on. This was our introduction to micro-moments.

These are not to be confused with micro-interactions, which are miniscule engagements websites have with visitors when they “touch” key points of the interface. A mouse changes its appearance when a user hovers over a clickable element. A display error appears after a field is incorrectly populated. A checkbox briefly enlarges and changes color after it’s been ticked off. These are micro-interactions.

A micro-moment, however, originates with your visitor. In Myriam Jessier’s “Things Designers Should Know About SEO In 2018”, she sums up Google’s four micro-moments:

“I want to know.”
“I want to go.”
“I want to do.”
“I want to buy.”

Basically, these are four key moments in every consumer’s life when they decide to pick up their mobile device for a specific purpose. As such, it’s your job to know how to specifically design for these micro-moments.

Recommended reading: What You Need To Know To Increase Mobile Checkout Conversions

How You Should Be Designing For Micro-Moments

When a visitor arrives at a mobile website (or app), they’ve come with a clear motivation:

“I want to know.”
“I want to go.”
“I want to do.”
“I want to buy.”

Seems pretty simple, right? However, as Google launched this initiative a couple of years ago, its had time to quietly observe users in these micro-moments as well as the websites that have most aptly responded to them. As you will soon see, consumers have incredibly high expectations for what the mobile web can do for them. Basically, they want you to be a mind reader and anticipate their every need (and even their location) without them having to say a word.

Is your pattern library up to date today? Alla Kholmatova has just finished a fully fledged book on Design Systems and how to get them right. With common traps, gotchas and the lessons she learned. Hardcover, eBook. Just sayin’.

Table of Contents →

Is that intimidating? It shouldn’t be. You already have all the information you’d ever need to answer that question.

Here is how you should be designing your mobile website to respond to and draw in consumers as they experience these micro-moments:

1. Start With The Data

Google Analytics will help you decipher where they’re spending the most time productively on your website.

An example of Google Analytics’ visitor behavior breakdowns. (Source: Google Analytics) (Large preview)

Google Search Console will tell you which keywords are most effective in driving high-quality leads to the site.

An example listing of keywords and associated clicks and impressions for a website. (Source: Google Search Console) (Large preview)

Once you know where exactly visitors see the greatest value in your product, you can then turn to third-party tools like Answer the Public to give you some insights into what relevant questions your users may be asking about you.

An example of how Answer the Public provides micro-moment answers. (Source: Answer the Public) (Large preview)

Ultimately, this data needs to tell you all about your customers’ journey before they ever reach you. What exactly was the question that triggered them to pick up their smartphone and do that search? If you can identify those micro-moments, you can start using various design elements to respond to these questions.

2. Respond With Immediacy

According to Google:

People are searching at the exact moment they need something and are looking for places that can meet their immediate need. In other words, when making these on-the-spot decisions, they are more loyal to their need than to any particular place.

Although we’ve heard a lot about customer loyalty to brands in the past, it’s interesting to get Google’s take on this matter.

While consumers may indeed still remain loyal to brands that take very good care of them and produce a high-quality product nearly 100% of the time, this opportunity to steal attention from those customers in one of their micro-moments is real. Do that enough times and your brand and website could realistically win that customer over so long as you are there every time they go searching to fill that need.

One of the ways you can do this is by providing users with instant solutions. Is your business open now? Can you mail out that new product same-day? Will there be an open table at your restaurant tonight? Answer that immediately and you could find conversions increase dramatically.

Take the Delaware State Fair website, for example.

The top of the Delaware State Fair home page gives users easy access to everything they want to know and do. (Source: Delaware State Fair) (Large preview)

Look at the top of the homepage. There are the dates of the fair, which probably answer one of the most commonly searched questions. There is a link to the concert lineup as well as calendar, which answers anything people would want to know about special events they might want to go to. And then there’s a button to buy tickets right away. It’s all right there.

Office Depot is a company that also explicitly addresses immediate needs:

The Office Depot mobile site uses a variety of time-driven design elements to satisfy visitors’ needs. (Source: Office Depot) (Large preview)

As you can see in the example above, Office Depot uses a number of design tactics and elements to play into this need for immediacy.

There is a search bar at the very top. Consumers don’t have to even bother with navigation or scrolling through pages if they don’t want to/have the time to.
You’ll also see that the closest store’s hours are posted and boldly tell me how quickly I can have any products available in store.
Finally, you have the promotional categories for upcoming needs for parents that are about to send kids back to school.

Another website is Universal Studios Orlando; it does a great job sparing mobile users the trouble of sifting through irrelevant information and instead gets them to exactly what they need:

Universal Studios includes immediate options for research and booking on the home page and navigation. (Source: Universal Studios) (Large preview)

Aside from a single banner at the top of the home page, the Universal Studios website design gives visitors exactly what they want right away. The navigation includes only the most pertinent links to information and booking as does this succinct section on the home page. There’s really no time to waste when the options are so clear.

And here is one final example of a website that deals in immediacy, albeit with a more subtle design technique: Nordstrom:

Nordstrom appeals to immediacy with this one subtle trick. (Source: Nordstrom) (Large preview)

As you can see, this is a pretty typical e-commerce product page. However, there’s one key difference: Nordstrom is subtly calling attention to its Anniversary Sale and the main reason why there is a significant price drop for this purchase. Rather than use an obtrusive pop-up to announce the sale and pester users to shop, it’s made the price change directly on the page and drawn attention to it with the highlighted text.

3. Respond With Relevant Content

According to Google:

Not only have mobile searches for ‘best’ grown over 80% in the past two years, but searches for ‘best’ have shown higher growth among ‘low-consideration’ products than ‘high-consideration’ products. In other words, we’re all becoming research-obsessed, even about the small stuff.

We understand that the opinions of family, friends, and colleagues matter greatly in the minds of consumers. But as more and more of them to turn the web to make their purchases, it means being open to trusting other opinions online as well — ones that may be more conveniently expressed from a company’s website, from an influencer’s blog, or from social media.

Wherever those words of wisdom happen to come from, it’s important to take Google’s research to heart. With so many consumers now obsessed with this idea of having the best of everything and being able to get it in a pinch, your website needs to be the answer to that question.

But that’s the tricky part. According to Google, it’s not as simple as being a dog food manufacturer and configuring your site to be the answer to:

“Best Dog Food”

Consumers experience these micro-moments at a granular level. Sure, there may be some who think, “What is the best dog food?” But isn’t it more likely that question would be more specific in nature? For instance:

Best puppy food?
Best grain-free dog food?
Best vegan dog food?

Let’s take a look at Google, for example. Here’s a variety of searches for a singular “best of” concept:

Example of the variety in “Best” searches in Google. (Source: Google) (Large preview)

As you can see, it goes beyond the basic questions. Through your design and your content, you must be ready to answer the most relevant questions your users have about your product or service.

With content, you’ll be able to answer many of the “I want to know” questions that are related to the brand with things like:

Informational pages regarding services and products.
Whitepapers, ebooks, case studies, reports, and other long-form content that provide heavily researched answers on related matters.
Blog posts, vlogs, podcasts, and other shorter content that can dabble more in appealing to the emotions of consumers.
Tutorials and guides that directly answer questions that consumers are asking.

As far as the design piece is concerned, it’s your responsibility to highlight these pages, so visitors don’t have to dig through various parts or layers of the site (like the footer or secondary navigation) to find their answers.

Google told them it was here, so it’s your job to get them right to it.

The navigation will play a big part in this, as evidenced by Globus Journeys:

Globus Journeys provides answers to micro-moments in the navigation. (Source: Globus Journeys) (Large preview)

As you can see in this example, Globus Journeys answers many of those micro-moments right within the navigation: tips on touring (Touring 101), tips on travel best practices (Travel Tips), deals available for travel (Deals & Offers), etc.

Another way to use navigational design to inform visitors on what they’ll learn/know from this experience can take place on the blog. Salesforce has an interesting example of this:

Salesforce includes a navigation menu for the blog. (Source: Salesforce) (Large preview)

There is the standard navigation for the Salesforce website, and then there is the navigation that’s specific to the Salesforce blog. This gives you — as the designer and planner of the site’s layout — a chance to better and more clearly organize content found within it. So, when visitors show up and want to know tips specific to one of those categories, it doesn’t require random searches or (even worse) endless scrolling through a full blog feed.

Another way you can more quickly and thoroughly inform visitors on topics of interest to them is by using strategically placed sections within blog posts.

While you likely won’t have anything to do with the writing of a website’s blog content, you will have control over its layout and formatting. The first thing you can do to expedite the knowledge acquisition process is by using callouts to detail and link to the various sections covered on the page as Be Brain Fit does:

Be Brain Fit calls out a linkable index of topics from the blog post. (Source: Be Brain Fit) (Large preview)

Of course, the post itself is easy to scan, so readers could guide themselves to the most relevant parts. However, by placing this towards the top of the piece, you’re enabling them to get right to the information they seek.

I’m also going to suggest that pop-ups would be helpful in this matter.

I know, I know. Mobile pop-ups can be annoying, but not when they’re used properly as Fit Small Business has done here.

Fit Small Business not only provides all the information needed, but also offers an alternative solution to what they seek. (Source: Fit Small Business) (Large preview)

I encountered this blog post after doing a search for the best way to create a Facebook page. This was one of the links on the first SERP. I was actually quite pleased with the post as a whole. It broke it up into easy-to-follow steps, attractive and informative visuals, and got me the answer I needed.

However, I was especially pleased to see the bottom banner pop-up after I finished getting through the post. Not only has Fit Small Business attempted to reach its audience by providing helpful content, but it’s also providing an alternative solution to anyone who got here and realized, “Eh, I really don’t want to bother with this on my own.”

4. Respond With Geotargeting

According to Google:

Looking for something nearby — a coffee shop, noodle restaurant, shoe store — is one of the most common searches we do. In fact, nearly one-third of all mobile searches are related to location.

Here’s the thing though: users aren’t using “near me” qualifiers as much anymore.

Google demonstrates how location qualifiers are decreasing in use. (Source: Google) (Large preview)

According to Google, this is because many consumers now assume that search engines, websites, and mobile apps are tracking this sort of information already. They expect that if they search for something like “dog food,” Google will automatically serve them the most relevant results — and that includes taking into account location proximity.

In Google’s research, it found that about two-thirds of mobile consumers are more likely to buy something from a website or app if information is geographically personalized. There are a plethora of ways to communicate this local-friendliness to visitors — through the copy, through various design elements, and even photos.

Google is a pioneer in this space and so I want to give it a special shout-out in this section for what it does with search results:

Google’s auto-populated search results aren’t just for Google. (Source: Google) (Large preview)

The biggest thing to take away from here is the fact that Google provides its users with auto-populated search recommendations. These are based on the users’ geography, behavior, history, as well as what Google knows about the query itself. As you can see here, it expands on Baltimore to provide more specific results based on the area of the city in which the user wants to drink.

With AI-assisted search functionality, any website can offer this same level of smart search for its users.

Of course, you first need to get access to visitors’ geographic data before you can provide them with these kinds of smart and geographically relevant results. One way to do this is to require them to sign in and fill out a profile with these details. Another way, however, is by serving them with this geotargeting request as Best Buy has done:

Best Buy requests for access to users’ geographic location. (Source: Best Buy) (Large preview)

Once you have access to a visitors’ current location, however, you can start providing them with information that helps them with the “I want to go”, “I want to do”, and the “I want to buy” micro-moments that caused them to reach for the phone in the first place.

Here is what the Best Buy website shows me after I granted it permission:

Best Buy uses its visitors’ location to provide helpful in-store visit details. (Source: Best Buy) (Large preview)

The top of the page now displays the nearest location to me as well as opening hours. As I peruse the rest of the site, I will receive relevant information regarding in-store product availability, buy-online-pick-up-in-store options, and so on. This is a really great option for businesses with a sales website and brick-and-mortar location that want to merge the two experiences.

You could also benefit from using this on websites that offer services, appointments, and reservations. Here is an example of what The Palm Restaurant does with my information:

The Palm Restaurant streamlines the reservation process with geotargeting. (Source: The Palm Restaurant) (Large preview)

To start, it uses my information to let me know right away if there even is a location close to me. Philadelphia isn’t too far, but it’s still nice to have the address fully displayed so I can make up my mind about whether I want to dine there. And, if I do, I can choose the “Reservations” button above it.

What’s especially nice about this is that the reservation form is pre-populated:

The Palm pre-populates its reservation form based on user information. (Source: The Palm Restaurant) (Large preview)

As you can see, it’s used a mixture of my geographic location along with the most popular reservation types (i.e. two people at 7 p.m.) to pre-populate the form. This saves me, as the user, time in filling it out and making my reservation.

5. Respond With Convenience

According to Google:

Every day, people are becoming more reliant on their smartphones to help make last-minute purchases or spur-of-the-moment decisions. In fact, smartphone users are 50% more likely to expect to purchase something immediately while using their smartphone compared to a year ago.

Recently, I wrote a post about what you need to know to increase mobile checkout conversions. The underlying message was that mobile consumers have certain expectations that need to be met if you intend on converting them there (as opposed to switching back to desktop).

Convenience in getting the information they want is one of them.
Speed in getting to and through checkout is another.
Handling their contact and payment information securely is the final piece.

Clearly, web designers are doing something right as over half of smartphone users reach for their phone to buy something and subsequently do. But it can’t stop with the 10 tips offered in that article. You need to be able to predict what they’re going to purchase and what exactly they want to do when you catch them in those exact micro-moments.

Let’s use UPack as one example.

UPack includes a price quote form at the very top of the website. (Source: UPack) (Large preview)

At the very top of every page is a short price quote form that asks only the most pertinent details they need in order to provide a quote to interested customers. By anticipating that’s what they’re looking to do when they visit a moving company’s website, UPack likely experiences very high conversion rates.

However, if someone should arrive at this form and wonder, “Should I even bother with a quote from UPack?”, they’ve provided an answer to that on the next step down on the home page:

UPack uses an explainer graphic to sell the value of its service right away. (Source: UPack) (Large preview)

This explainer graphic is simple. It includes four points and shows how exactly someone uses the UPack service to move their home from one destination to another. When someone arrives there with the intention of getting help with their move, UPack has already made it all the more simple in just one scroll and two panels of the home page.

Then, you have a company like HostGator that doesn’t waste any time at all:

HostGator’s home page includes smart design callouts that sum up its services. (Source: HostGator) (Large preview)

If someone shows up on a web hosting company’s website — especially one that is well known as they are — of course they know what they want to do. Now, they could hop into the navigation and dig deeper into the various hosting plans (which some may do). However, HostGator is probably hoping to appeal to two specific audiences with these “Buy Now!” callouts on the home page:

The web developer who knows exactly which plan he or she needs, and doesn’t need a full page to explain the benefits to him.
The small business owner who doesn’t know a thing about web hosting, but trusts HostGator’s good name and just wants to get their web hosting purchases ASAP.

This is a really good choice of design techniques if you know that a good portion of your audience will be immediately ready to buy upon entering the site. If they don’t have to click through to another site, don’t make them do it.

And, of course, CTAs, in general, are an important element to use when designing for micro-moments. When they’re designed well — colorful, large, well-labeled — you’re essentially giving your users a shortcut to conversion.

BarkBox uses a number of these right on its home page:

BarkBox has a number of CTA shortcuts available on its website. (Source: BarkBox) (Large preview)

Since the brand is particularly well-known among dog owners, this is a good move. While there are some people who enjoy scrolling through the site to see the funny dog pictures and find out more about what’s in this month’s BarkBox, if they’ve arrived here on mobile, they shouldn’t have to wait to subscribe. BarkBox provides those shortcuts in a number of locations, ensuring there’s no friction between its customers and their goals.

Wrapping Up

It’s pretty amazing to watch the web change so quickly as consumers become more trusting of their mobile devices. Now, nearly two years after Google first began recommending that we design with micro-moments in mind, it appears that these suggestions have really paid off.

Designing for micro-moments gives us the opportunity to more effectively reach consumers in their moment of need. This, consequently, means reaching consumers who are in a more purchase-intent mindset as opposed to ones casually browsing the web. If you can use your data and design to actively reach consumers in their micro-moments, you can effectively increase your mobile site’s conversion rate in the years to come.

(lf, ra, yk, il)

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/ZR-OPtrj2FI/macbook-pro-13-inch-mid-2018-and-blackmagic-egpu-review

Portability or power? For decades, we’ve been wrestling with the same problem: portable computers can’t be powerful, and powerful computers can’t be portable. Well, the MacBook Pro (13-inch, mid 2018) is one attempt at squaring that circle: a small, light, slim computer for use on the road or in ‘third spaces’ such as coffee shops, which you can pair with an external graphics card (eGPU) to dramatically boost its power when you’re at your desk.

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And as you’ll discover as you read this review, the new MacBook Pro and Blackmagic eGPU broadly deliver on that promise: it’s okay to be excited about this, even though there are caveats.

First, to be clear, these are two separate new products from two different companies (even if Apple did collaborate with Blackmagic Design on the eGPU), and you can buy one without the other. We’re reviewing them together here, because we think the pairing is interesting and compelling.

Blackmagic eGPU review

The Blackmagic Design eGPU is engineered around a powerful Radeon Pro 580 graphics card

The 13-inch MacBook Pro, we’ll get to, but it’s worth starting with a quick bit of background on eGPUs in general. Historically, the graphics card inside your computer simply drove the display; it worked out what to show, and passed that to the monitor. 

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Broadly, there are two types of graphics card: ‘discrete’, which are their own self-contained mini-computers, and tend to be both powerful and power-hungry (impacting battery life in laptops); and ‘integrated’, which draw less power (and so are better for battery life in laptops) but are less powerful.

You might quickly surmise, then, that a good solution would be to use an integrated graphics card on a laptop and plug in a discrete graphics card when you need more power. But while this has been possible on Windows for years, it was only with a recent update to macOS High Sierra that Apple supported it.

eGPUs are great, then, because since they’re not constrained by the same power and temperature restrictions as inside a laptop, they can be hulking great monsters. This can be inelegant, though; traditionally, you got an eGPU setup by buying an empty case, then buying a graphics card to fit inside it. Because the chassis doesn’t know what you’ll put in it, it has to default to the ‘worst-case scenario’ in terms of heat, power and size, which can lead to needless noise and power draw as it tries to vent.

The Blackmagic Design eGPU, by contrast, is engineered around a specific card, a powerful Radeon Pro 580, so it can be smaller, quieter and more elegantly engineered. There are downsides, though: the card is fixed, and can’t be upgraded; it’s basically the Mac vs PC argument writ small.

There’s one other major thing you need to know about eGPUs, too. While the operating system now supports it, this doesn’t mean apps can actually access its power. Currently, the state of support for eGPUs is messy and ad-hoc. More on this later, but let’s start on familiar ground with the MacBook Pro…

MacBook Pro 13-inch (2018) review

Apple’s laptop line had languished for longer than many were happy with, and while the older versions that don’t have the dynamic Touch Bar above the keyboard remain un-updated, both the 13- and 15-inch Touch Bar models are updated to be more powerful now. We’re focussing on the 13-inch here, but it’s worth saying that the 15-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2018) models get 6-core processors, a doubling of the max SSD size to 4TB, and, thanks to a switch to DDR4 RAM, a higher RAM ceiling of 32GB.  

With the 13-inch, though, we’re talking a 2.3GHz eighth-gen Intel Core i5 (with Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz), or a 2.7GHz eighth-gen Intel Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz. We’re reviewing the latter; the £270 upgrade is worth it for creative pros. The base config is 8GB RAM, though our review model is maxed out to 16GB (£180+); 256GB SSD is standard, though ours has had a whopping £1,400 extra spent on it to take the capacity to its max of 2TB. Graphics card is a Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655, and this can’t be changed.

MacBook Pro 13-inch (2018): power

The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro Touch Bar models are more powerful now

Performance is generally very strong, even if you don’t make allowances for this being the ‘baby’ laptop. It’s responsive (in part thanks to the ridiculously fast, circa-3GB/sec SSD), and with eight virtual cores, it didn’t creak with anything we threw at it. 

Of course, where the performance trade-off is most obvious is with exports and renders, but even there, it actually has nothing to be ashamed of; a 4:10 4K project in Final Cut Pro with effects, colour grading, titles and more exported using the Apple Devices 4K preset in 4:44, a little over real time. 

It gets hot and noisy when under load, though, and, compared to the iMac Pro, its thermal recovery – how quickly the fans can die down after heat has been generated – is much poorer. This is part of that power/portability trade-off.

There are other improvements away from raw specs too. New to Apple’s laptop line is the T2 chip, its custom silicon controlling the system. This might sound esoteric, but it’s in part responsible for that SSD speed, and it dramatically improves the security of the system, with, for example, hardware-level encryption and tougher barriers to circumventing security policies.

MacBook Pro 2018: features

We also welcome True Tone to the Mac for the first time, a system that debuted on iOS for reading the ambient light around you and adjusting the display’s temperature to blend in. While this might strike you as the last thing creative pros working in colour-critical applications might want, note first that it can be turned off, and second that, actually, you probably don’t want to. 

Unless you have a proper process of regularly calibrating your display and creating/sharing profiles – and that’s part of a chain all the way from clients to output – then colour is always going to be a bit of a crapshoot. And honestly, allowing the display to blend with the ambient light temperature in your broader field of vision throughout the day instead of forcing it to stay fixed is likely to deliver an overall truer colour into your brain. 

Your mind does constant adjustments itself, analogous to True Tone in a way, and it’s probably wise to go with the flow. In short: True Tone looks natural, and you should try it. (It won’t affect external displays, except for the Apple Thunderbolt Display and LG UltraFine 4K and 5K Displays.)

The Touch Bar puts all the controls at your fingertips

Some folks hate the Touch Bar – a dynamic, long touch screen that replaces the function keys – and in particular the absence of a physical escape key, but try it before you swallow this received wisdom. Apps need to support it – most significant developers do, by now – but the constantly changing, context-sensitive way it puts controls at your fingertips can be, if you rewire your muscle memory, a significant productivity boost. The Touch ID button sits to the right, allowing for Apple Pay and unlocking – though if you have an Apple Watch and let it unlock the MacBook Pro, it’s done pretty much by the time the lid is open.

The keyboard has been tweaked. It’s still the ultra low-travel butterfly mechanism, which takes a little getting used to, but there’s now a thin membrane under each key. Officially, Apple tells us this is to make it quieter – it feels like it succeeded in that – but it’s as likely to be related to widespread reports of failures with the previous generation keyboard, thought to be caused by debris getting under the keys.

There are four USB-C-style Thunderbolt 3 ports, two on each side. And while you might take umbrage at having to dongle-up to do something as simple as plugging in a USB stick, they do offer some welcome flexibility (being able to plug power into either side, say), not least because unlike the previous generation MacBook Pro, all four ports are full speed.

MacBook Pro with Blackmagic ePU

Besides, one of the handy thing about the Blackmagic Design eGPU is that it doesn’t just house a graphics card – it also acts as a dock. There is one additional Thunderbolt 3 port (supporting the LG UltraFine 5K, and likely Apple’s upcoming display), an HDMI 2.0 port for UHD and 4K DCI at 60fps and four USB 3.1 port. 

The Blackmagic eGPU doesn’t just house a graphics card, it also acts as a dock

Plug it in, therefore, and you could be hooking up storage, peripherals, displays and more with one cable, and it also charges your MacBook Pro. The only significant omission is networking; it would be nice to have had a Gigabit or faster Ethernet jack there too. As it is, you’ll have to buy a USB to Ethernet adapter if you want a wired connection.

It’s big, too, though designed with some flair; it looks good on a desk, and though it makes an impact visually, there’s little aural impact. Even left running overnight at 80%-plus load, the fan was nothing more than a soft hum, and would be inaudible in a working studio. It also barely got warm; impressive.

But the eGPU computational boost is key, and it’s not a simple answer. While some power gains can come free, apps really have to be adapted to be able to tap into the full power of the eGPU, and in any case, a graphics card is only used for certain types of task, with the main CPU doing most of the grunt work. We need to remember, too, that though Thunderbolt 3 is fast, at 40Gb/sec, it’s slower than internal interconnects.

Faster framerate

One area where it’s easy to see gains is in the traditional job of GPUs: displaying stuff on a screen. If, for example, we run Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration at 1920×1200 on the internal display using the Iris Plus integrated graphics, we get a frame rate of 6.76fps on the Very High preset. 

These numbers are emblematic of the dramatic improvements an eGPU can add, say, for previewing VR content hooked up to the HDMI port.

If we plug a 1080p display into the HDMI port on the eGPU and use the same quality preset (albeit driving 10 per cent fewer pixels), this jumps to over 50fps. Indeed, if we turn everything to the maximum we can, we only drop a little below 47fps.

Few people will buy an eGPU just to run games – especially since this Tomb Raider title is one of the few that explicitly supports it – but these numbers are emblematic of the dramatic improvements an eGPU can add, say, for previewing VR content hooked up to the HDMI port. However, its more general effect on pro apps is harder to measure. 

Benchmarking

eGPUs on the Mac can accelerate apps that use Metal, OpenGL, and OpenCL, and we can get a sense of this using synthetic benchmarking apps such as LuxMark and Cinebench. For LuxMark, which tests OpenCL performance, rendering the LuxBall with the MacBook’s own internal GPU scored 2,693, and that score more than quintupled to 13,685 with the eGPU.

The gains were much less dramatic in Cinebench, which is measuring OpenGL. The internal GPU scored 33.7, and the external seemed to give different result depending on whether the window was on the internal display or a display connected to the HDMI port on the eGPU; 60.2 and 75.4 respectively.

Unigine’s benchmarking tool – especially useful for getting an idea of performance in VR authoring environments – gave 8.6fps (scoring 358) on the internal GPU/screen, rising dramatically to 35.1fps (1468 score) on an external display connected to the eGPU’s HDMI port.

Even when maxed out, the Blackmagic eGPU still runs Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration at just under 50fps

Going further, and trying to get genuine benchmarks for real world use in pro apps, it gets messier. You might think Apple’s flagship pro app, Final Cut Pro, would take good advantage. But even though we can see in Activity Monitor that both the internal and external Blackmagic eGPU are being used in exporting, albeit not at full capacity, the difference in our test export wasn’t dramatic; 4:38 versus 4:44 without the eGPU.

There is a little script that can force apps to use the eGPU even if they don’t officially support it, called set-eGPU; but it made no appreciable difference to the final FCP export time. These exports, though, were all running from clips that have been pre-rendered, and actually, we did see a speed-up in the time to generate these background render files in this scenario; 9:24 with the eGPU forced, down from 15:36 without it. 

It’s worth saying that, of course, this eGPU solution from Blackmagic works very well with its own colour grading, FX and editing tool, DaVinci Resolve. We weren’t able to test it, but Blackmagic claims speedups of 4× to 7× depending on task, and indeed you could likely boost any improvements further, since in theory you could connect up to three of these eGPUs to the MacBook Pro at once. Note, mind you, that they’re not supported at all in Boot Camp.

MacBook Pro and Blackmagic eGPU: verdict

Ultimately, we love this pairing, at least in theory. The Mac is decently powerful in its own right, and small, slim and light enough to get work done in awkward spaces; sometimes it’s not practical to work on a desktop, though that will still give you the absolutely best power possible if you need it. The addition of a meaty external graphics card is wonderful here, so long as the apps you’re using support it, but at the moment, that picture is just too fuzzy. 

If you’re thinking of buying, look at the bottlenecks in your workflow, and try to ascertain if they can be sped up with an eGPU. Talk to whoever makes the tools you rely on to find out their roadmaps before you commit, and remember that an eGPU on the Mac can accelerate apps that use Metal, OpenGL, and OpenCL. Badger folks till you get an answer, because the potential here is huge.

Also read: 8 must-have products for a smarter studio

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/VV1-42EoQ-E/

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Collective #441 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.