May 4, 2016 — If you’ve ever written an iOS app beyond a trivial “Hello world” app with just one screen and a few views, then you might have noticed that a lot of code seems to “naturally” go into view controllers. Because view controllers in iOS carry many responsibilities and are closely related to the app screens, a lot of code ends up being written in them because it’s just easier and faster that way. Read more…

May 4, 2016 — In this piece, Cosima Mielke wants to indulge in the aesthetic of past times. She’ll dive into wanderlust-awaking travel posters, design manuals that wrote history, and, last but not least, Cosima will bridge the gap to today by looking at how a mid-century design movement still influences designers. Buckle up… and off we are to a journey through pre-Photoshop, pre-Sketch and -Illustrator times! Read more…

May 3, 2016 — Understanding how to use similarity and proximity to affect the relationships between elements in your work will help you create designs that enable easier organization and improve the usability of your work. In this first article, Jon Hensley will take a look at how the principles of similarity and proximity work, and look at real-world examples to illustrate them in use so that you can begin to use similarity and proximity to create both relationships and differences between elements in your designs. Read more…

May 3, 2016 — CSS pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements can certainly be a handful. They provide so many possibilities that one can easily feel overwhelmed, but that’s the life of a web designer and developer! In this guide, Ricardo Zea will teach you all the things you need to keep in mind so that your pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements are well implemented. If you’re an experienced web designer or developer, you must know and have used most of the pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements discussed here. However, you might not have heard of one or two of them before. Read more…

May 2, 2016 — Robots only succeed in making customers feel like another number, a dubious accomplishment for your team. They’re the opposite of the personal touch that effective support is supposed to be all about. It’s not that robots are useless. They’re great at repetitive tasks, perfect for finding data and remembering anything you’ve ever written down. You just have to give them the right job. In this article, Matthew Guay will show you how to find the perfect job for your robots, so that you can automate support and offer more personalized, hands-on support at the same time. Read more…

April 30, 2016 — We discovered the best source for inspiration: desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. The wallpapers all come in versions with and without a calendar for May 2016 and can be downloaded for free. This creativity mission has been going on for eight years now and artists and designers from across the globe got their creative juices flowing to produce desktop wallpapers for you to indulge in. A big thank-you to everyone who contributed their works! Read more…

April 29, 2016 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. Read more…

April 28, 2016 — Imagine how great it would be to write your tests only once and run them on different platforms. Writing tests to guarantee bug-free software is not straightforward. However, the underlying technology to build a testing infrastructure should not be an impediment. Appium is a solution that protects you from the heterogeneity of mobile platforms and helps you focus on writing functional tests that can be run independent of platform. In this article, Antonio J. Roa-Valverde will show you how to build your own test automation environment for Android by relying on Appium. Hopefully, this guide will lower the barrier for you to build your own mobile test automation solution. Read more…

April 28, 2016 — This wonderful hotel and spa icon set can help you to design a visually delightful holiday experience for the customers of your tourism clients. Designed by the team behind IconCrafts, this icons come in five styles different styles. Feel free to modify the size, color or shape of the icons. We kindly ask you to provide credits to the creator and link to this article if you would like to spread the word. A big thank you to IconsCraft for designing this wonderful icon set — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts! Keep up the great work! Read more…

April 27, 2016 — In this article, Charles Hannon will show you how to wave the structure of jokes into the structure of an interaction, so that the feeling of delight one gets from a joke is re-expressed as a more lasting form of understanding and competence through the interaction. Specifically how the very moment one does or does not get a joke, does or does not understand an interaction. Read more…