Indoor Google Maps help you make your way through museums

With an expansion to Google Maps for indoor locations, users can now visit Museums with in house navigation. The new service accurately tracks a user’s location with a blue dot and guides visitors through exhibitions, to restrooms, and across various floors.

Checkout more the offical Google Blog shared below.

Official Google Blog: Indoor Google Maps help you make your way through museums

Website Owner’s Guide to Google’s 21st April Mobile Friendly Algorithm Update

Google launched a major update on April 21st which was about extending the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal throughout mobile search results. This change will affect worldwide mobile search results in all languages, and Google says it will have a “significant” impact.

To be precise, this update involves 2 things.

1. It basically separates Google search results for Mobile and Desktop where in Mobile search results, mobile friendly websites get significant advawill be ranked higher.
2. This is not as significant as 1st one but it is better to know that from now on, in google search results you will occasionally see content from installed app on your device.

As you can see out of the 2 updates launched, the one with mass impact is about considering mobile friendliness as a ranking signal. Let’s talk more about the important one then.

Will This Affect You?

Possibly Yes. The first thing to do is to use Google’s tool to determine whether you’re mobile friendly or not. It’s easy to use and gives you a quick “Yes” or “No” as to whether your page will pass the check.

Keep in mind is that this tool checks one page only. (Not a site-wide check) You may have several pages on your site that are responsive and mobile-friendly while the rest are not. If your design isn’t mobile responsive site-wide, I would suggest checking each of the most important pages on the site to make sure they pass.

The second thing to consider is how much of your website traffic today is coming via mobile? If this percentage is small (i.e. under 10%) and you’re not yet mobile ready, don’t fret too much. While you may see a significant change in the mobile search results, this should only affect rankings for searches on mobile – desktop results and rankings will likely remain unaffected. (For now). As Mobile local search is going to surpass PC in 2015, sooner is better to go mobile friendly in terms of getting organic search website traffic and better user experience for mobile visitors.

What Can I Do?

If your site did NOT pass the test, you have a few options:

1. Implement A Responsive Theme

Google has already stated that they prefer responsive web design and feel it’s the best option for users. Before exploring this option you should know that this option is suitable for you if you are using any Open source CMS or ecommerce platforms. For custom build websites the other options stated below makes more sense. If you are using any open source CMS platform like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla,  Check out the responsive CMS themes from Themeforest and in case of ecommerce websites check out few ecommerce responsive templates.

Advantages: Google/User preferred, applied across entire site, updated look/feel

Disadvantages: Time consuming, frontloaded work/costs, may lose conversions

2. Have A Designer/Developer Redesign Your Site

If switching themes is just not possible, you can look to hire a designer + developer to switch your current design into one that’s responsive. You’ll end up with a site that looks much like the one you have now with only a few tweaks/changes.

Advantages: Long term solution, Can continue to use current design, no conversion loss

Disadvantages: Most expensive, time consuming, may miss certain pages

3. Create A Mobile Site On A Subdomain

Rather than switching themes or hiring a designer/developer to redesign your current site into one that’s responsive, you can instead opt to create a mobile-specific site on a subdomain. You’ll have the advantage of leaving your current theme alone completely and still providing for a good user experience for those on mobile. i.e. m.YOURSITE.com. In this option too, you will need to hire the designer and developer to build a mobile friendly website from existing website.

Advantages: Can customize for mobile users, cheaper than a full redesign

Disadvantages: Costs and hassle of updating mobile and desktop sites, adjustments required with browser changes

4. Fix Issues That Are Keeping You From Passing The Test

We came across few clients whose  site was built on a responsive theme, but customizations done on theme to build the website restricts from passing the mobile friendly test. In such cases, we merely followed the quality standards and theme documentations to maintain the responsiveness of theme along with the customizations required.

Advantages: Quick/easy fix, least expensive

Disadvantages: Can’t always tell where the issues are, doesn’t always give surety to pass the test

Things To Keep In Mind

1. You should really be building mobile-friendly sites for your users, anyway.

We’ve crossed the tipping point – the majority of digital media consumption now comes through mobile. This may have hit you differently and at different times depending on your niche, but it’s clear where we’re headed. As more and more of your customers are looking for your website or business on their smartphone, it just makes good business sense to give them what they want.

2. This is not a penalty. It may feel that way, though, if you find yourself slipping down the page in mobile search results. The good news here is that because you haven’t been penalized or deindexed, you’re in a much better position to fix the problem and gain back your lost mobile traffic.

Conclusion:

It is quite evident that google’s mobile friendly update is going to affect some way or the other to the mass of website owners. Individually you can evaluate the impact and options shared above to deal with it. Even if google has not presented this, mobile friendly digital presence is anyway instrumental for providing uninterrupted user experience for larger chunk of users who are using mobile and as stated above that chunk is close to 50% now and growing on daily basis. If you already have mobile friendly digital presence, While choosing the right option for you to go mobile friendly, it would be best to go for a solution that is long term in nature.

Here are some more resources to review:

Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

Moz – 9 Things You Need To Know About The Mobile-Friendly Update

FAQs about the April 21st mobile-friendly update

Native Mobile App Vs. Hybrid Mobile App

If you are thinking of developing a mobile app, an important decision is to decide whether you want to a native app or a hybrid one. Choosing to use native or hybrid mobile application is always the pain for everyone who wants to make their mobile apps.

From our experience working with mobile app development we have narrated  following inputs which we feel will be useful for you make a decision.

Native apps are specific to a given mobile platform (iOS or Android) using the development tools and language that the respective platform supports (e.g., Xcode and Objective-C with iOS, Eclipse and Java with Android). With Native apps, you have complete control over features you want to implement in an app. In terms of overall performance which includes look and feel, using device features etc. Native app is best.

Hybrid apps makes it possible to embed HTML5 apps inside a thin native container, combining the elements of native and HTML5 apps. This write-once-run-anywhere approach to mobile development creates cross-platform mobile applications that work on multiple devices. While developers can create sophisticated apps with Hybridapp development platforms such as PhoneGap, some vital limitations remain at the time of this writing, specifically session management, secure offline storage, and access to native device functionality (camera, calendar, geolocation, etc.)

Each option has it's own pros and cons. Based on project requirement and matching the platform competencies you can take decision. Following are the detailed information about each option which will give you better ideas about what to expect from Native or Hybrid platforms for mobile app development.

NATIVE MOBILE APP :

In a nutshell, native apps provide the best usability, the best features, and the best overall mobile experience. Both, with iPhone App or Android App, There are some things you only get with native apps like;

Additional Device Accesses: There are common device features such as Multi touch, double taps, pinch-spread, and other compound UI gestures which are only available with native apps.

Fast graphics API: The native platform gives you the fastest graphics, which may not be a big deal if you're showing a static screen with only a few elements, or a very big deal if you're using a lot of data and require a fast refresh.

Fluid animation: related to the fast graphics API is the ability to have fluid animation. This is especially important in gaming, highly interactive reporting, or intensely computational algorithms for transforming photos and sounds.

Built-in components: The camera, address book, geolocation, and other features native to the device can be seamlessly integrated into mobile apps. Another important built-in components is encrypted storage, but more about that later.

Ease of use: The native platform is what people are accustomed to, and so when you add that familiarity with all of the native features they expect, you have an app that's just plain easier to use.

Documentations: There are over 2500 books alone for iOS and Android development, with many more articles, blog posts, and detailed technical threads on sites like StackOverflow.

Native apps are usually developed using an integrated development environment (IDE). IDEs provide tools for building debugging, project management, version control, and other tools professional developers need. While iOS and Android apps are developed using different IDEs and languages, there's a lot of parity in the development environments, and there's not much reason to delve into the differences. Simply, you use the tools required by the device.

You need these tools because native apps are more difficult to develop. Likewise, the level of experience required is higher than other development scenarios, you don't just cut and paste Objective-C and expect it to work. Indeed, the technological know-how of your development team is an important consideration. If you're a professional developer, you don't have to be sold on proven APIs and frameworks, painless special effects through established components, or the benefits of having your code all in one place. Let's face it, today a skilled native iOS or Android developer is a rock star, and can fulfill rock star demands.

While we've touched on native apps from a development perspective, there's also the more important perspective: the end user. When you're looking for an app, you'll find it in the store. When you start the app, it fires up immediately. When you use the app, you get fast performance, consistent platform look and feel. When your app needs an update, it tells you so. Native apps give you everything you'd expect from the company that built your device, as if it were simply meant to be.

HYBRID MOBILE APP :

We define hybrid a web app that is wrapped inside a thin native container that provides access to native platform features. PhoneGap is an example of the most popular container for creating hybrid mobile apps. Existing web developers that have become gurus at optimizing JavaScript, pushing CSS to create beautiful layouts, and writing compliant HTML code that works on any platform can now create sophisticated mobile applications that don't sacrifice the cool native capabilities. In certain circumstances, native developers can write plugins for tasks like image processing, but in cases like this, the devil is in the details.

On iOS, the embedded web browser or the UIWebView is not identical to the Safari browser. While the differences are minor, they can cause debugging headaches. That's why it pays off to invest in popular frameworks that have addressed all of the limitations.
You know that native apps are installed on the device and you might be wondering if hybrid apps store their files on the device or on a server? Yes. In fact there are two ways to implement a hybrid app.

Local - You can package HTML and JavaScript code inside the mobile application binary, in a manner similar to the structure of a native application. In this scenario you use REST APIs to move data back and forth between the device and the cloud.

Server - Alternatively you can implement the full web application from the server (with optional caching for better performance), simply using the container as a thin shell over the UIWebview.

Netflix has a really cool app that uses the same code base for running the UI on all devices: tablets, phones, smart TVs, DVD players, refrigerators, and cars. While most people have no idea, nor care, how the app is implemented, you'll be interested to know they can change the interface on the fly or conduct A/B testing to determine the optimal user interactions. The guts of decoding and streaming videos are delegated to the native layer for best performance, so it's a fast, seemingly native app, that really does provide the best of both worlds.

CONCLUSION:

Native app is definitely better if you need device features like camera, notification and gesture etc. Native app is better if you want your app to work when there is no connectivity. Although In-browser caching is available but it is limited. Speed: Native is better in speed. Maintenance: Multiple native code maintenance difficult more complex and expensive method while Hybrid is easier to manage.

If platform independence is important then you should go with Hybrid over native. If you want user experience to be consistent with the platform then native is better option. This does not mean that Hybrid cannot have good UI. But native app will make more like actual platform.

Code Quality = Save Processor + Save Memory + Optimize Storage

Is anyone having a justifiable definition of Code Quality? We don't think there is a good definition, and We see plenty of bad definitions. There are many definitions for Correctness. But don’t be nervous we have correct examples of code ethics.

Our definition of code ethics is term used to depict the speed and programming methodology used in developing codes for software. Code is directly linked with algorithmic efficiency and the speed of run-time execution for software.

Let’s make it simple, in simple words code must be Economical. No worries we will elaborate you more.

The code should make reasonable use of system resources: Storage, Memory and Processor. To run any software system must require Storage, Memory and Processor resources. What we mean by code ethics or code quality is code which use less resource of system. A code which less occupy system resource in order to Processor, Memory, Storage is a code of ethics.

Please have a look at simple two PHP conditions examples both conditions perform same operations and same result. But both conditions occupy different bundle of system resource. Let’s have a look.

•  Normal Case 

 $num = mysql_num_rows($qResult);  
 $i=0;  
 echo "<table>"  
 while($i < $num)  
 {  
 if ($i % 2 == 0){  
 echo "<tr class='style1'>";  
 }  
 else{  
 echo "<tr class='style2'>";  
 }  
 echo "<td>" . mysql_result($qResult,$i,"lastName") . "</td>";  
 echo "<td>" . mysql_result($qResult,$i,"firstName") . "</td>";  
 echo "</tr>";  
 $i++;  
 }  
 echo "</table>";  

This condition occupies more system resource in order to Processor, Memory, Storage so as structure and result wise code is been good while as a run-time execution speed of software is not well as second condition.

•  Quality Case 

 $nTotalRecord = mysql_num_rows($qResult);  
 $nCount=0;  
 $aRowClass = array('style1'=>'style2','style2'=>'style1')  
 $sRowClassName = 'style1';  
 echo "<table>"  
 while($nCount < $nTotalRecord)  
 {  
      echo "<tr class='$sRowClassName'>";  
      echo "<td>" . mysql_result($qResult,$nCount"lastName") . "</td>";  
      echo "<td>" . mysql_result($qResult,$nCount,"firstName") . "</td>";  
      echo "</tr>";  
      $nCount++;  
      $sRowClassName = $aRowClass[$sRowClassName];  
 }  
 echo "</table>";  

This condition occupies less system resources in order to Processor, Memory, and Storage so run-time execution speed of software will be faster than first condition. This is what we mean by Economical code.

Good quality code, especially in the final product, can sometimes mean the difference between success and failure. Simply "fast" is also a measure of quality

I hope that this post has given you an insight how to write conditions into your own projects.

Like it or not you are what you code!

Stepin Solutions is a community of people passionate about quality. We use our experience and ideas to make over work better.

To know more interesting things  and about Stepin Solutions please visit us.

 www.stepin-solutions.com

Stepin Family moves to NEW HOME!!!

It is altogether a different feeling when a family moves to new home. It brings new energy, motivation and a sense of satisfaction. Precisely the same thing happened with Stepin family when we moved to our new work place on 4th April, 2013, Thursday.  We are proud to own a work space which is nearby the city’s corporate base and within the vicinity of the spiritual and holy temple of Lord Krishna. 

After a month long effort by our team with enjoying all odds that came in between, we together have developed a floor into a premise with enhanced amenities, bigger occupancy and above all a place which we have cultivated with our love and affection. When we Stepped in, we could feel the love that team has poured in. It is nothing short then fun to work in a place which is filled with love. It is really a second home for us.

When we say our team as Family, it just cannot be completed without our parents. They are the ones who have brought each of us to the level where we are today and we needed their blessings before we move to our new workplace. Parents’ obviously have shared their blessings for Stepin family but on top of it, we have came up with a unique POST BOX where team and their parents can share the emotions they wanted to share with their each other since long but just couldn’t do so till now for some reason. And to everyone’s surprise, POST BOX letters literally brought tears of joy in everybody’s eyes. It was the time where everyone came closer to each other and got associated emotionally. Strange, but this is how Stepin Solutions operates and would love to operate.

Overall the inauguration event was lifelong memorable event for us. We hope and pray that our new workplace brings prosperity and happiness. If you happen to be near to S.G. highway, Ahmedabad at any time, just drop in. We would definitely like to host you.