We’ve updated the AMP Roadmap with the details on progress during the first quarter of 2017, and you can read below for some of the highlights.
Format
Interactivity is a major focus for us this quarter as we build out the AMP format’s capabilities. amp-bind is a binding protocol that introduces lower-level methods for building interactive experiences. We’ve also launched two new features that enhance interactivity in their own right. amp-selector makes it easy to use image thumbnails as form inputs, and the goToSlide method supports new interactivity for amp-carousel, including galleries linked with image previews.
Another large focus is AMP Start, a set of quick-start code snippets that developers can copy and paste to quickly create and customize valid AMPs.
Ads
We introduced usability features with ads served to AMP pages. This includes an improvement to the default ad loading experience where AMP will, by default, clearly indicate the location of ads and add a subtle indicator when the ad is loading. Through this launch, we hope to eliminate the experience of seeing large blank spaces before a slow loading ad has loaded. We’ve also made some UX improvements to sticky ads that are gradually rolling out.
We’ve worked with Cloudflare and TripleLift to create and deliver AMP ads (ad creatives made in AMP format) that are safe, beautiful and performant ads. This paves the path for any ad network wanting to serve their own AMP ads to the publisher directly.
Analytics
Soon you will be able to programmatically substitute values, including the Client ID, into links (anchor tags) and form inputs. We expect this to make it possible to build add-to-shopping cart flows, and to make scenarios involving multi-page flows and analytics data collection work better.
We’ve been thinking about ways to improve and extend amp-analytics infrastructure. We’re designing a way for extensions to take advantage of amp-analytics to report data to extension authors. This will provide extension authors with greater visibility into how their extensions are performing so they can spot issues and optimize behavior. We’re also close to completing an improvement to amp-analytics’s visibility features to use Intersection Observer.
Finally, in order to help AMP page developers understand the kinds of errors or issues that their users are encountering, we’re planning to introduce an analytics trigger that will send error events.
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Thanks to the AMP development community for your work and feedback. As always, please let us know if you have any issues or feature requests.
Posted by Eric Lindley, Product Manager, AMP Project