Accelerated Mobile Pages (Google AMP) Explained
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
944 words · ~4 min read
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Click the subscribe button, then enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any
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future videos.
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So mobile internet sure has come a long way since the days of downloading sick ringtones
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to our flip phones.
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But using a browser on the latest smartphone still presents some challenges.
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Clunky advertisements that take up the whole screen right as you're about to scroll down,
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poor responsiveness caused by too much page clutter, and spotty connections in some areas
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that can all be incredibly frustrating.
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And all of these issues were the inspiration for Google's AMP project, something you've
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probably taken advantage of without even realizing it.
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You see, whenever you run a Google search on a mobile device, you might notice a small
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lightning bolt icon beside a given search result to let you know that if you click on
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it, you'll be served an AMP version of that page.
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Now this page won't come to you directly from the site you're trying to view.
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Instead, after the administrator of the site creates an AMP version of the page, it'll
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be automatically pushed to a CDN or console.
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You'll see that the AMP version of the page will be pushed to a CDN or console, and the
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CDN will be pushed to a CDN or console.
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These AMP caches then push the page to your phone, with the goal of improving loading
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times.
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But this isn't the only difference between an AMP and a regular page.
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If one of your favorite sites often takes a long time to load, the culprit may not be
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a server with a slow connection.
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Instead, there might be complicated HTML elements that take a long time for your browser to
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render, poorly written CSS that makes the page look like a mess, or scripts that ask
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for more resources than you need.
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So instead of allowing website owners to design their pages however they want, AMP uses its
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own customized and stripped-down versions of HTML and JavaScript.
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These prevent the implementation of layouts that are slow, clunky, or disruptive to the
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user, like the dreadful full-screen ads I mentioned before.
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In fact, one of AMP's built-in restrictions is that ads can only take up a certain amount
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of space on the screen.
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You'll still see them, of course.
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But an AMP page should mostly be the actual content.
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It should be the content you want to see, rather than the scammers screaming at you
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about a fat-busting juice cleanse.
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And AMP is also smart enough to judge the relative importance of each element of the
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web page.
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So if you're trying to read an article about the latest big scandal, it'll try to load
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things like the article text and an unflattering picture of your local politician before, say,
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an ad that you won't see until you scroll to the end of the page.
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Combine all of this with limiting other resource-hogging effects like animations, and it's going to
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end up doing a pretty decent job of making the mobile browsing experience less rage-inspiring
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overall.
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Now, it does have its limitations.
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The restrictions on page elements and style mean that it works best for news articles
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consisting of mostly text and a few still images, rather than highly interactive websites
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more suited to a desktop browser.
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But if you are doing lots of your browsing on mobile, see if you notice a difference
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the next time you load up an AMP page.
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After all, this new world of constant connectivity has gotten us all into a situation where we're
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not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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We're not able to read and write.
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