Our industry thrives on constant, aggressive development, and new technologies emerge on a regular basis that change the way we do things in fundamental ways. Much of what we know of the possibilities, limitations and best practices surrounding web layouts is effectively rendered obsolete by the CSS Grid Layout module. In this article, Morten Rand-Hendriksen will bring you some concepts into practical use. What you’ll get is a starting point for exploring what new layout opportunities and challenges CSS grid brings, what old problems it solves and how to start using the module in production websites today.
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All professionals should frequently question their methodologies and see what other options exist. If one approach was previously the best, that does not mean it remains the best. This analysis is often more difficult in software development because new frameworks and technologies emerge almost as quickly as they die off. In this article, Paul Frances will apply this analysis to hybrid mobile apps and present why he believes that React Native is in many ways a superior solution for apps developed in 2017. To do this, he will revisit why hybrid apps were created initially and explore how we got to this point.
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HTTPS is a must for every website nowadays: Users are looking for the padlock when providing their details; Chrome and Firefox explicitly mark websites that provide forms on pages without HTTPS as being non-secure; it is an SEO ranking factor; and it has a serious impact on privacy in general.
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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.
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Vision is perhaps the strongest human sense, a hero image is one of the fastest ways to grab the user’s attention. As long as it is high quality, interesting to look at and works well with the content, a hero image is a great option and a powerful communication tool. Design with sufficient contrast and a clear call to action to make the most of this technique. In this article, give you a few tips on using hero images. Also, if you’d like to get started and take a go at prototyping and wireframing your own designs a bit more differently, you can download and test Adobe XD for free.
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So, should companies use Advanced website builders? At some point, will they replace custom development? In short, yes. Advanced website builders produce websites that look and feel like they were designed and coded by humans. They’re also software as a service, which is a different business model than traditional, custom-developed websites. Self-serve website-builder platforms are quietly becoming very powerful. A lot of us write them off without much thought, but it’s time for agencies and custom development shops to pay attention. It won’t be hard to stay ahead of the builders… once we acknowledge they’re coming for us.
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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.
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Users can be reluctant to fill out forms, so make the process as easy as possible. Minor changes can significantly increase usability. Forms remain one of the most important types of interactions for users on the web and in apps. In this article, Nick Babich will show you practical techniques that have been gleaned from usability testing, field testing, eye-tracking studies and actual complaints from disgruntled users. These techniques enable designers to produce faster, easier and more productive form experiences. All you need to do is to download Adobe XD and get started right away. At the end of the article, you’ll also find new ways to design forms.
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In this article, Owais Afaq gives you hands-on access to his journey of creating a digital assistant capable of connecting with any system via a RESTful API to perform various tasks. He will create a chatbot using Node.js and Microsoft’s Bot Framework SDK; send the data collected from the user to an API; set up both local and server environments; and deploy it live on dev.botframework.com. In part 2 of this series, you’ll learn how to add natural language processing using LUIS to make our chatbot intelligent enough to understand human language and to extract information from a user’s utterances.
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Imagine that you get up to get a glass of water, but the exact reason why you did that at that particular time isn’t easy to explain. It was “too hot” and you were “somewhat thirsty,” but also maybe “a little bored.” Each of these qualities isn’t either/or, but instead fall on a spectrum of values. In contrast, software is usually built on Boolean values. You set isHot to true and if isHot && isThirsty && isBored, then you call getWater(). If you use code like this to control your game characters, then they will appear jerky and less natural. In this article, Lou Franco will show you how to add intelligent behavior to the non-player characters of a game using an alternative to conventional Boolean logic.
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