Google's Q1 2019 AMP Update: What's New

Google has rolled out the first round of major AMP updates for 2019. With a few master features and a bunch of small improvements, the mobile browsing experience has just been pushed that much closer to perfection.

Ishaan Govardhan

Last Updated: Mar 30, 2019

Minimize Videos

This major feature enables multi-tasking mobile-users to keep watching a video even as they scroll down. The video will dock to a corner and get minimized, while still playing. The user will be free to move around the AMP Page, with an eye on the video.

With this latest addition to the dock attribute of the amp-video component, developers can even decide how and where the video docks.

Customized Video Player

Using the new amp-video-iframe component, developers can now include their own unique video player on their AMP Pages. This video player will retain all of the features of AMP Video Interface, but with the freedom to customize.

For example, developers can customize their player to loop videos within predefined Start and End times. Such customizations will open up new possibilities and empower developers to deliver uniquely tailor-made experiences.

Optimized Video Monetization

The amp-ima-video component allows for monetization of the publisher's videos using video advertisements. Ads can be inserted from any video advertisement network that supports the Google Interactive Media Ads (IMA) Software Developer Kit (SDK).
This feature has now been enhanced further.

Infinite Scrolling in Lists

By popular demand, the infinite scroll has been introduced to AMP Pages. It delivers an uninterrupted browsing experience to the user, by eliminating the need to keep visiting the “next” page.

This experimental feature enables the user to keep on scrolling, after tapping the “See More” button at the end of every list, as more list items appear below. It's more convenient for the mobile-users, as they can access all the content from one page. So naturally, infinite lists are quickly becoming the new standard of the modern User Experience (UX).

Easier Third Party Integration

Most websites are integrating CMPs (Consent Management Platforms), to comply with European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which has restricted collection of user data and private info.

Now - with the new amp-consent component - AMP Pages are smoothly compatible with such third party CMPs (across vendors). Managed by the CMP, consent prompts will pop up on your AMP Pages. Publishers can even inline the configuration to display their own custom UI inside the consent prompt.

Forms: Input Masking

Without a way to set formatting templates for form fields, the process of filling out online forms on AMP Pages used to be less than efficient. But now – with input masking – developers can add interstitial characters, spaces or character limits to each field. This will ensure data integrity and reduce errors.

Whether they're fillling out dates, payment details or phone numbers, mobile-users can register their sensitive information much faster now.

Better Container Resizing

With this new addition to the amp-list tag, developers will be able to decide and specify exactly when to resize the list container upon user interaction. The container can be resized to fit different types of content. A simple touch like this can positively affect the user’s experience by making it more responsive.

Lightbox Mode

With amp-lightbox-gallery, lightbox mode was introduced to AMP Pages in a previous update. It had vastly improved the viewability of every image on an AMP Page.

Now, the AMP UI Working Group has polished the lightbox component to include smooth transitional animations for each image, as it enters and exits this mode.

Minor Updates

AMP Stories have been updated to allow for more precise ad requests, with the addition of more targeting information. Stories now support Real Time Config (when used with Google Ad Manager).

A new amp-date-display component can now be used to display dates as per localized time settings. It also allows for different date formats. So basically, users will be able to see the publishing date for an article in terms of their local time.

The Road Ahead

With the popularity of AMP Pages still on the rise, these latest updates are a sign of things to come. The ongoing development efforts are geared toward taking the AMP Project to the next level. A new AMP carousel, a typehead autocomplete feature in AMP, and an easy-to-deploy AMP Service Worker Library are currently in the works at Google.

And one of the most exciting applications of AMP - AMP Stories - will soon undergo some major changes like link support for the top 80%, a new desktop UI, a hamburger menu and several attachments.

Google is focusing on increasing the average mobile-user's ease-of-access through a series of improvements in the UI and UX of AMP Pages. The AMP Project keeps getting better with each quarterly update, so all eyes are now trained on the next quarter.