Modern payment card issuing processes can deliver many different types of cards in a fast, efficient, and secure way. Using open API platforms, card issuers can create customized card products and easily process hundreds of thousands of transactions.
By integrating with major card processing networks around the world, modern card issuing systems allow businesses to create payment solutions that:
Since school is back in session, this month’s roundup has a learning focus. In addition to tools, many of the resources include guides, tutorials, and cheat sheets to help make design work easier.
Here’s what’s new for designers this month.
ScrollingMockup.io generates high-definition, animated scrolling mockups in minutes. All you have to do is paste your website URL, select from the expanding template gallery, add some music and post. You can create three mockups for free, and then this tool comes with a subscription model. The paid model allows for custom branding for mockups and more.
FilterSS is a curated collection of CSS image filters for use in projects. Upload an image, sort through the list, and then copy the code for the filter you want to use. It’s that easy!
Buttons Generator is a fun tool with so many button options in one place. Choose from three-dimensional, gradient, shadow borders, neumorphic, retro, animated, ghost, with arrows, and more all in one place. Click the one you like, and the code is copied right to your clipboard and ready to use in projects.
UI Cheat Sheet: Spacing Friendships is a fun – and memorable approach to figuring out spacing. This guide shows how close or far away elements should be based on “friend” circles with a couple of relatable instances. It’s one of the most relatable examples of this concept out there while emphasizing the importance of spacing in design.
PrettyMaps is a minimal Python library that allows you to draw customized maps from OpenStreetMap data. This tool can help you take online map design to the next level with cool, unique map visuals. It’s based on osmnx, matplotlib, shapely, and vsketch libraries.
Card.UX/UI is a card-style generator with more than 20 templates and elements to create custom cards. Use the on-screen tools to design it the way you want and then copy the code for easy use.
Couleur.io is a simple color palette builder tool that lets you pick a starting color and build a scheme around it. One of the best elements of the tool might be the quick preview, which shows your choices using the palette in context and in dark mode. Get it looking the way you want, and then snag the CSS to use in your projects.
CSS Accent-Color can help you tint elements with one line of CSS. It’s a time-saving trick that allows for greater customization for your brand in website design projects. Plus, it works equally well in dark or light color schemes. It supports checkboxes, radio, range, and progress bars.
Vytal shows what traces your browser leaves behind while surfing the web. This scan lets you understand how easy it is to identify and track your browser even while using private mode. In addition, it scans for digital fingerprints, connections, and system info.
Imba is a programming language for the web that’s made to be fast. It’s packed with time-saving syntax tags and a memorized DOM. Everything compiles to JavaScript, works with Node and npm, and has amazing performance. While the language is still in active development, the community around it is pretty active and growing.
SVG Shape Dividers Creator is a tool that allows you to create interesting shapes with SVG so that your colors and backgrounds aren’t always rectangles. You can adjust and side, change the color, axis, and flip or animate it. Then snag the CSS, and you are ready to go.
Image Cropper is a tool that allows you to crop and rotate images using the flutter plugin. It works for Android and IOS.
Noteli is a CLI-based notes application that uses TypeScript, MongoDB, and Auth0. The tool is just out of beta.
Yofte is a set of components for Tailwind CSS that help you create great e-commerce stores. The UI Kit is packed with components with clean and colorful designs that are customizable. The code is easy to export and clean. This premium kit comes with a lifetime license or a monthly plan.
UI Deck is a collection of free and premium landing page templates, themes, and UI kits for various projects. This is a premium resource with paid access to all of the tools. It includes access to more than 80 templates.
Star Rating: An SVG Solution is a tutorial that solves a common design dilemma: How to create great star rating icons for pages. This code takes you through creating an imageless element that’s resizable, accessible, includes partial stars, and is easy to maintain with CSS. It’s a great solution to a common design need.
Designing Accessible WCAG-Compliant Focus Indicators is another convenient guide/tutorial for an everyday application. Here’s why it is important: “By designing and implementing accessible focus indicators, we can make our products accessible to keyboard users, as well as users of assistive technology that works through a keyboard or emulates keyboard functionality, such as voice control, switch controls, mouth sticks, and head wands, to mention a few.”
Blockchain Grants is a tool for anyone developing blockchain applications and in need of funding. It’s a database of grants from a variety of organizations for different applications. Start looking through this free resource to help secure additional funding for your projects.
Basement Grotesque is a beautiful slab with a great heavy weight and plenty of character. There are 413 characters in the set with plenty of accents, numbers, and variable capitals.
Gadimon is a fun, almost comic book-style layered script. The font package includes a regular and extrude style.
Lagom is a sleek and functional serif typeface with 16 styles in the robust family from ultralight to extra bold italic. It’s readable and has a lot of personality.
Striped Campus fits our back-to-school theme with a fun, scholastic look and feel. The block letters have a thick outline stroke and some fun inline texture.
The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, September 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
It’s almost time for another season of change. Although the temperatures might not reflect it, this is the time of year where most of us start thinking about what’s next.
This collection of tools and resources for designers is just the spark to propel you forward with work as you think ahead. Here’s what’s new for designers this month.
Gradient.Art is a CSS-based gradient generator that’s packed with functionality and customization options. It’s more than just a color selector and is an actual gradient editor that allows you to work with a variety of controls to get just the color variations you want for projects. Create illustrations, patterns, icons, and more with this layer-based tool that’s still in beta.
Wicked Backgrounds takes some of the headaches out of creating just the right background for website design projects. It’s another easy and customizable generator designed to help create backgrounds with great color, depth, and balance for various project types. The makers promise more features in the future as well.
Typedream is not what you might expect from the name; it’s actually a website-building tool. It’s designed to help put the focus on the words of a design with a simple interface that most people can figure out. You can connect your own domain and then optimize for search with built-in SEO tags. It’s a zippy tool for simple sites.
Orbital is a zero-friction, super-interactive, customizable place to gather online. Pop in for meetings, quick chats, open-door office hours, or cowork together through the day – all using the same link. This premium tool has super fun backgrounds and meeting spaces.
Access Guide is your one-stop guide to accessibility information for the web. It’s packed with articles and information to help you understand parts and all of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines, the official standard for accessibility online. (Plus, content is sorted into neat cards that make things easy to search and find.)
InLine is a free JavaScript library built to create a simple text editor for web applications and mobile apps. The tool claims to be the smallest WYSIWYG editor designed to fit into any layout. The plugin allows you to edit and customize text elements practically anywhere.
3D Bay is a collection of free three-dimensional stock images that you can use for various projects. Collections are searchable. Most of the images are actually 3D scene illustrations, a popular design element with many SaaS website designs.
MeisterNote is a writing tool for teams. (It’s perfect for the new remote working world.) The interface is sleek and intuitive, and you can create customer workspaces for notes and teams to collaborate. One of the best functions might be the search feature, allowing you to find information in notes easily.
Shapecatcher solves an interesting problem. Have you ever visualized an element but don’t know what it is called or how to find it? This tool has a “drawbox” where you can sketch the element, and then it visually searches a database of 11,000-plus Unicode characters in multiple languages to find a close match that you can use online.
Batch Image Processing allows you to edit, crop, and style or add watermarks groups of images all at once. It’s a web-based tool that does everything in a flash and allows you to redownloaded processed images for quick use. (It’s great if you need multiple photos with the same crop or size!)
Integrately is an integration automation tool designed to help your apps, tools, and web elements talk back and forth. Connect apps to make tasks run on their own in ways that native software might not do alone. (Pro tip: Use it to connect with your email to send notifications or reports automatically.)
Vechai UI is a set of high-quality, accessible React UI components with built-in dark mode using Tailwind CSS. Components include pre-designed headless UI and Radix UI.
Style Free HTML Bootstrap 4 Template is a simple and minimally styled website template for a variety of project types. It’s a great website starter if you need to get a site up and running quickly.
Glass UI CSS Generator helps you create trending neumorphism/soft UI/glass UI style elements. The tool is a CSS generator that allows you to add some of your own elements and then pick styling options while outputting CSS and HTML.
Lineicons is a collection of more than 5,000 line icons that you can use for various projects. Every icon comes with free CDN, regular and light variations, an editor, and more to make it browsable and easy to use. The set has high legibility, and the free set of icons includes more than 500 options.
Carrd is a simple, free, and responsive one-page website builder that you can do pretty much anything with. It’s perfect for personal profiles, landing pages, or one-page websites. All it takes is a little imagination.
AdonisJS includes everything you need to create a fully functional web app or an API server. So stop wasting hours in downloading and assembling hundreds of packages and do it all with this framework for Node.js.
Eastman Condensed is a beautiful and functional sans serif that’s easy to read. The demo version is free for personal use, but a commercial license for the full family is available.
Peachy Rose Font is a fun novelty option that is fun and light. Plus, it is free for any use, even commercial. The set is fairly large for a free option, with 233 characters.
Selga is an expressive and complex display font with a retro feel. The swashes and tails are especially nice on this typeface, which is free for personal use.
The post Exciting New Tools For Designers, August 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
One of the most challenging stages of a design project is laboriously producing all those assets that bring it to life.
Whether you’re a web designer in need of icons, or a brand designer looking for mockups, it’s a smart move to fall back on stock assets to speed up your turnaround, reduce costs, and enliven your designs.
With so many stock sites to choose from, which should you opt for? Today we’re going to take a look at DesignBundles.net and ask if it’s the right choice for your project.
Design Bundles is exactly what it sounds like: sets of design assets that you can download for free or at huge reductions on RRP.
Launched five years ago, Design Bundles is brought to you by the same team that delivers Font Bundles.
Over two million customers are already enjoying the benefits of Design Bundles’ weekly updates.
There are currently over 800,000 products listed on Design Bundles, and the collection is growing all the time.
The files have been produced by 6,500 of the world’s leading independent designs. Because the products are top-quality, you can really make them work: scale them, flip them, distort them, recolor them; just about anything is possible when you’re using high-quality raw ingredients.
What’s really impressive is the range of products that are in the collection. You’ll find backgrounds, logos, icons, textures, patterns, and clip art. For product designers, there are mockups and web elements. Print designers will love the huge range of cards, invites, flyers, posters, and brochures. And if you’re looking for standard stock images, you’ll find a gargantuan range under popular themes such as technology, architecture, travel, and business.
Because Design Bundles is relatively new, you won’t find its collection padded out with out-of-date Gifs. In fact, Design Bundles is one of our favorite places for free SVGs, the best format for graphics on the web.
All the products are royalty-free and licensed for personal and commercial use, so you can relax knowing that you’re fully covered.
There are a lot of design bundles services online, so what makes Design Bundles different? Well, firstly, the quality; Design Bundles has a consistently high level of designs. We love the freebies. They make a huge difference and are great for trying out ideas you might not be ready to invest in.
Design Bundles differs from other stock sites because it offers curated bundles of complementary assets — you don’t just download a vector file; you download a set of vector files. This innovative approach means you don’t have to go hunting for matching images; once you’ve found the right download for your project, you have a whole range to enjoy.
The whole process of using Design Bundles is simple, from browsing through the available assets to choosing a design and through to the fast, simple checkout process. It’s all designed to make including design assets into your projects as simple as possible.
The website is user-friendly, and in the unlikely event that you’ll need them, the support team is friendly, helpful, and prompt to handle queries.
We’d be lying if we said that cost wasn’t a big bonus of using Design Bundles. Design Bundles offer up to 96% discounts on regular prices, meaning that you can get the same incredible assets that top design agencies use at a fraction of the price.
In terms of time-saved, inspiration-delivered, and graphics-acquired, your Design Bundles subscription will more than pay for itself.
Alongside the daily and weekly deals, you’ll find products you can try for free. For example, design Bundles provide a whole heap of free SVGs. And not just sample files. There are thousands of files to download and use in projects. You can’t get better value than free!
There are new freebies every week, so it’s worth subscribing just to ensure you don’t miss anything.
For freelancers, the licensing model is particularly attractive. Because there’s no limit on the places you can download design resources once you’ve bought them, you can download files at home, in the office, or at a client’s workspace — whatever is convenient. Meaning you carry a huge library of resources with you wherever you go.
Oh, and if you want to make the most of your new Design Bundles assets, don’t forget to check out its YouTube channel, where you can learn tons about how to create effects, edit images, and complete creative projects.
When you’re designing a project, whether you’re a digital artist, a web developer, or a crafter, the result relies on the quality of its component parts.
Design Bundles offers you the chance to work with high-quality assets from some of the web’s top designers at a fraction of the price of creating them yourself.
We’re confident that if you give Design Bundles a go, you’ll quickly see the benefits for yourself. But if you’re still not sure, why not sign up for its newsletter and check out some of the daily and weekly deals and the freebies that are available to you.
Design Bundles is a recipe for success that you’ll be happy you discovered.
[— This is a sponsored post on behalf of Design Bundles —]
The post Review: Should Designers Use Design Bundles? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
You have been looking for a theme for your website. You haven’t yet settled on all the design details or come across a specialty theme that appears to have what you might need. Then, a multipurpose theme would be a wise choice.
Multipurpose WordPress themes have become extremely popular because of the flexibility they offer. Also, because of their relative ease of use and the powerful tools, you will usually find built into them.
With a good multipurpose theme at your fingertips, you are usually in a position to build anything. You can build a simple personal blogging site or a complex multifunctional site for a client. To make life a little easier, most multipurpose WordPress themes have features to help you get started quickly and in the right direction.
Here is a superb collection of 7 of the top multipurpose WordPress themes on the market today. These themes can help you build virtually any kind of website.
BeTheme has long been one of the most popular multipurpose WordPress themes. Not content to rest on their laurels, BeTheme’s authors took suggestions from their customers and created a better builder.
The Live Builder is 60% faster. Its UI is so intuitive that you won’t waste time learning how to use it. It features exciting new and powerful capabilities and performs familiar page-building features better than ever.
With the Live Builder, you can –
Click on the banner to learn more.
The introduction emphasized the ease of use and flexibility most multipurpose themes provide. Total has both in abundance thanks to its drag and drop frontend page builder and hundreds of built-in styling options.
Highlights include –
Even though Total was designed with perfection in mind, or perhaps because of it, it is the right choice if you need to get a high-quality website up and running in a short period of time. Total’s 47,000+ customers seem to agree.
Click on the banner to learn more.
The fact that Avada is the all-time best-selling WordPress theme with more than 450,000 sales to date might be all the reason you need to choose it, but there are plenty of other good reasons for doing so as well.
For example –
Click on the banner to find out more about this fast, responsive, and WooCommerce-compatible theme.
Uncode will be an ideal choice for building creative, magazine, and blogging websites and for building agency sites as well. This fast, sleek, pixel-perfect multipurpose theme has sold more than 80,000 copies to date.
Uncode’s impressive features include –
TheGem is literally a Swiss Army knife of website building tools that make it ideal for creating business, portfolio, shop, and magazine websites.
Among the many gems included in the package are these –
With Impeka, flexibility is almost an understatement. This intuitive, easy-to-work-with multipurpose theme gives beginners and advanced users alike complete freedom to dream up their ideal website and then make it happen – and fast.
You can –
Impeka is perfect for building every website type, from blogging and online stores to commercial businesses and corporations.
Blocksy is a blazing fast and lightweight WordPress theme that was built with the Gutenberg editor in mind and is seamlessly integrated with WooCommerce.
This popular multipurpose WordPress theme can be used to create any type of website in no time.
Of all the design choices a WordPress user needs to make, choosing a WordPress theme for the task at hand is perhaps the most important.
That choice, more often than not, involves a multipurpose theme. Most multipurpose WordPress themes are extremely flexible. So, you can avoid the tedious and time-consuming task of trying to find exactly the right one for your niche and for the job.
Multipurpose themes work for any website niche and offer whatever an admin might need.
Choose one from these 7 Best Multipurpose WordPress Themes, and you should be able to create your website with relative ease.
The post 7 Top Multipurpose WordPress Themes You Should Check Out first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Craft CMS is increasing in popularity, and as it does, the previously relatively scant range of plugins is growing rapidly.
There are plugins for Craft ranging from simple field utilities to the full ecommerce solution provided by Pixel & Tonic — the makers of Craft.
An early decision that has borne fruit for Craft has been the plugin licensing model. Paid plugins for Craft charge an initial license fee and then a reduced annual renewal price for updates. This ongoing payment structure ensures plugin maintenance is economically viable for developers, and as a result, Craft plugins tend to be updated more often and are abandoned less.
The best plugins depend very much on the site you’re developing and what you’re trying to achieve. However, some are so universally useful that I install them on virtually every site I build; here’s a list.
Installing Redactor is a no-brainer when it comes to picking your plugins. Maintained by Pixel & Tonic, it’s a rich text field that extends Craft‘s basic text input. It’s so useful it may as well be part of the core Craft code.
One of the best features is the ease with which Redactor can be customized. Just duplicate the settings file inside the config directory and edit its contents to alter what editing options are available; it’s simple to create anything from a field with a bold option to a full rich text editor. In addition, each Redactor field can be set to use any of the settings files.
Free
When you’re outputting code from a rich text field like Redactor, you’ll get clean HTML output — which most of the time is what you want. However, if you’re using something like Tailwind, those classes are non-negotiable. I’m not a fan of Tailwind, but I am a fan of using classes in my CSS selectors instead of element names.
Retcon is an invaluable plugin that extends Twig filters to supply a host of options when you’re outputting content. It can add classes to elements, insert attributes, modify the element type, and tons more.
Free
During the life of a site, there’s a good chance that you’re going to have to alter fields and sections after the content is in. It’s a common problem if you’re importing data from another platform using FeedMe, or if you have an indecisive client, or even if the site is simply growing.
Venveo Bulk Edit is a plugin that integrates closely with the Craft UI and allows you to edit the contents of multiple entries at once. This plugin has saved me hundreds of hours that would otherwise have been spent painstakingly editing entries one at a time.
Free
At some point, you’re going to need a configurable list of inputs. Maybe you’re creating a list of documents to download, building a directory, or even your site navigation. You could create a new channel and then add the entries as an entry field, or even set it up with a matrix field, but this is awkward to edit even with Craft 3.7’s new editing experience.
I’m a big fan of opting for the simplest solution, and in this case, the simplest option is a table field. Unfortunately, Craft’s built-in table field has limited field type support. Super Table, on the other hand, supports almost anything, giving you a powerful, orderable set of fields.
Free
Craft has a really powerful caching system. It allows you to cache whole or partial templates, and it‘s intelligent enough to know when you’ve edited content that has been cached so that it can be re-cached.
Understanding Craft’s caching is vital; as a very general guide, dynamic content benefits from caching, but static content does not.
However, you will regularly encounter situations where you want to opt out of the caching. A blog post, for example, could be cached, but the time since it was posted must not be, or every post would appear to have been published “today” until the cache is refreshed.
The No-Cache plugin adds a couple of Twig tags that allow you to temporarily opt-out of the cache. This means that you can cache larger sections of your templates, simplifying your caching decisions considerably while still being able to fine-tune what is cached.
Free
Sooner or later, you’re going to have users hitting 404 errors. If you’re restructuring a site and changing the architecture, it will be sooner. To avoid breaking the UX and SEO, you need to add redirects.
Retour is a helpful plugin that sits in your dashboard side menu. Anytime a user triggers a 404, Retour will flag it up, so you can decide how to redirect the URL in the future.
$59 for the first year; $29/year for updates after that
One of Craft’s big strengths is its security. A lot of attention has gone into making sure that the core installation uses best practices. However, as with any CMS, potential security vulnerabilities start to creep in as soon as you introduce 3rd-party code (WordPress’ biggest vulnerability by far is its plugins).
You only need to look at the size of the vendor directory in your installation to see how many 3rd-party dependencies your site has. Even a small site is a house of cards.
Sherlock is a security scanner that performs a number of different tasks to help you stay secure, from checking on security threats in 3rd-party scripts to checking directory permissions. The paid version will even let you limit IP addresses if your site comes under attack — although your hosting company may well do this for you.
Lite: Free
Plus: $199 for the first year; $99/year for updates after that
Pro: $299 for the first year; $149/year for updates after that
Craft’s built-in image transforms are a little limited. For example, they only work with actual assets, not remote images.
Imager X is an excellent plugin that, among many benefits, allows you to transform remote images. In addition, its refined syntax is perfect for coding complex art direction.
Imager X isn’t cheap, but considering the enormous importance of image optimization, unless you have a straightforward set of images to manipulate, it’s an investment you’ll be glad you made.
Lite: $49 for the first year; $29/year for updates after that
Pro: $99 for the first year; $59/year for updates after that
SEOMatic is the SEO solution most Craft developers default to, including Pixel & Tonic themselves.
You’ll need to define the basics in its settings, and you may find yourself creating extra fields specifically for it to pull data from, but the handy progress bars on its dashboard page will give you an overview of what’s set and what needs to be done.
SEOMatic is another premium plugin, but implementing it is far simpler and cost-effective than digging through all those meta tags and XML files yourself.
$99 for the first year; $49/year for updates after that
The Craft ecosystem is rapidly growing, and the diversity of the plugins available increases as Craft is utilized for more and more sites.
But despite the lure of shiny new plugins, there are some tools that I return to again and again either because they elegantly fill a gap in the core Craft feature set or because I’ve tried them, and I trust them to be robust.
These are the plugins that I have found most useful in the last couple of years, and installing them is the first thing I do when I set up a new Craft installation.
The post 9 Must-Install Craft CMS Plugins first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
A new design trend has emerged in the last year: Soft UI or Neumorphism is everywhere.
Even Apple is in on the trend; the company introduced a host of changes in both its mobile and desktop operating systems that use the style. The elements of Soft UI introduced by Apple reflect various aspects of the Microsoft Fluent UI design too.
So, if soft UI is such a huge concept, what do we need to know about it? How does soft UI work, and what are the pros and cons of using it?
Soft UI involves using highlights and shadows in design elements to make them look as though they’re layered on the page.
The term neumorphism is derived from a previous design style — skeuomorphism, where designers create something as close to its real-life counterpart as possible. If you remember the shift between iOS 6 and 7, you’ll remember the switch between skeuomorphic and flat designs. However, neumorphic design isn’t quite as dramatic.
Neumorphism doesn’t focus excessively on things like contrast or similarities between real and digital elements. Instead, this “soft UI” practice creates a smoother experience for users.
With neumorphism, you get the sense that buttons and cards are actually part of the background they’re on. This trend removes the flashier aspects of a typical interface and focuses on a softer style that stays consistent throughout the design.
Soft UI is all about smoothing out the experience by making everything feel more connected. There’s nothing overly harsh in the aesthetic, hence the term “soft.”
So, what kind of features can you expect?
Rounded Corners: Soft UI removes some of the sharper parts of the interface, like the corners on modules and segments. This allows for a more gentle appearance overall. In this experimentation from Iqonic Design, we can see how the round corners tie everything together.
Transparency and Background Blur: Background blur and transparency are more popular today since the infamous iOS 7 solution emerged. Most people hated the appearance of ultra-minimalism, combined with thin fonts. However, the background blur effect was more popular. The blur in soft UI shows that part of the window is connected to the rest of the OS. It seems like parts of the background in the app are pushing through to the surface.
Unified Symbols: Everything needs to fit perfectly in a soft UI design. Anything that doesn’t look like it’s part of the same entity throws off the experience. In this design experiment by Surja Sen Das Raj, you can see how all the colors, shadows, and gradients tie together consistently. Because everything is more uniform, the experience flows perfectly for the end-user.
So, what does neumorphism look like in your UI design process?
Ultimately, it’s all about subtle contrast and aligned colors. Every part of your interface needs to look like it’s part of the same form. Your element and background need to be the same color so that you can create a feeling of objects protruding from the background.
With Soft UI, the keys to success are shadows and highlights.
Let’s take a look at some key steps.
When you’re designing your interface, remember that sharp edges make the interface more serious and formal. Rounded corners are more playful and friendly.
What also makes the design look lightweight and delicate is plenty of deep shadows and highlights. When you add shadows to elements, you create a visual hierarchy. The items that cast a larger, deeper shadow are the ones closest to you. That’s why only a few elements need to cast an intense shadow. Everything else should work in the background.
Take a look at this design by Alexander Plyuto, for instance.
Gradients are part of the shadow and highlighting process in Soft UI design. Ideally, you’ll need to choose colors from the same palette, just toned down or brightened, depending on your needs. The gradient needs to be barely visible, but just enough to make the elements stand out.
For white gradients, like highlights, use a very delicate color somewhere between white and your background shade. For instance, consider this design from Marina Tericheva.
Finally, remember that the neumorphism design principle is all about little details.
Choosing a font that visually matches the background is an excellent choice. However, you can also choose something more contrasting, as this will help information stand out.
Adding a little bit of the background into your fonts might be suitable too. For instance, if you have a green font and a grey background, add a little grey into the mix.
Extra elements in your design, like allowing a button to shift into a more recessed state after being clicked, are a great way to make the soft UI more engaging. Everything your end-user interacts with needs to feel smooth and perfectly unified.
Just because a design process is trending – doesn’t mean it won’t have its issues.
Neumorphism is a fun way to make apps, operating systems, and websites feel more friendly and informal. However, this softer approach has a weak spot too.
When you’re dealing with a small margin of contrast and color where neumorphism works well, it’s hard to get the effect right every time. For instance, this all-yellow design for Dtail Studio may be overwhelming for some.
A slight deviation in saturation or a problem with your shadowing could render the entire effect of Neumorphism completely pointless.
Another major issue is accessibility. The soft UI design looks great for people who have a full visual range. However, visually impaired users might not see the same benefits. Anyone without perfect vision may see crucial objects disappearing into the background.
Your users don’t necessarily need significant vision problems to struggle with neumorphism, either. The design is all about softness that causes elements to almost blend together. People with low-quality screens that don’t have as many pixels to work with won’t see these elements.
Another major issue of neumorphism is that its subtlety can lead to problems with attracting clicks and conversions. Usability is the most important consideration of any UI design.
Unfortunately, when you focus on subtle elements throughout your entire interface, usability sometimes takes a hit.
Let’s consider buttons, for instance – they’re essential to any interface. To simplify the customer journey, these buttons need to be noticeable, and they need to shift into different states when your customers interact with them.
For the button experience to be excellent, users need to notice the design instantly. However, the heart of neumorphism revolves around the idea that nothing stands out too much.
This isn’t just an accessibility issue; it’s a problem for conversions too.
Neumorphism is soft on the eyes, with minimal color contrast and few color pops. This means that CTA buttons don’t stand out as much as they should. Buttons almost blend into the background, and the website struggles to pull attention to the areas that demand it most.
The key to unlocking the benefits of soft UI interfaces without getting lost in the negative points – is proper experimentation. Like any new design trends, professionals and artists will need to learn how to merge the elements of soft UI together in a way that doesn’t compromise usability.
Trends in UI design can’t focus exclusively on aesthetics, as a customer’s comfort will always be an essential part of the process.
If you want to start exploring, here are some of the best kits and freebies to get you started:
The world of design and the trends that we use are constantly changing. Companies are always searching for the best ways to connect with their users. Often, this means focusing on an interface that really connects with your target audience and delivers the best possible results.
The soft UI design trend has its benefits and its downsides. On the one hand, the smooth appearance of every element on a combined screen can deliver a delightful aesthetic. Buttons feel less imposing, and elements are friendlier and easier to interact with.
On the other hand, neumorphism also makes it difficult to truly capture your audience’s attention in the places where it matters most. It suffers from accessibility issues and requires plenty of care and practice.
The post Soft UI: Making Sense of the Latest Design Trend first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Spring and fresh designs are in the air. This month, it’s obvious that designers are feeling creative with new and interesting concepts that range from a new style for cards, homepage experimentation with multiple entry points or calls to action, and risky typography options.
Here’s what’s trending in design this month.
Card-style design elements that allow users to click through to other content aren’t new, but the design of these cards is fresh and interesting.
Rather than more heavily designed cards with shadows and layers of content, flat styles are trending. Expect this trend to explode thanks to usage by Google for a shopping experience page.
The Google example below is interesting because Google’s Material Design guidelines are what helped card-style elements grow in popularity previously. However, those cards did include more layers, color options, buttons inside the cards, and shadows.
Today’s trending cards are completely flat. And beautiful.
Each of these websites does it in a slightly different way.
Heartcore, a consumer technology VC company, uses a series of flat cards as a navigation element to help users find their way through the website. Each features a bright color background with an illustration and a simple text block.
Each card has a nice hover state where only the illustration zooms inside the card frame. This is an interesting effect because it is exactly the opposite of the previous iteration of cards, which zoomed the entire card as a hover state.
Google Shopping uses that whole card bounce hover state (plus a not-so-flat shadow) for each card. The initial design is sleek with the pairing of white and image cards with simple text in each. You are enticed to click around to see what happens.
Click on Greece is a travel website design that uses simple cards with a minimal color and text overlay. The consistency of these cards makes the design pop and the beauty of the images draw you in. Each card also has a hover state with a darker color mask to guide navigation and make text elements easier to read.
For a long time, designers have been working off the philosophy that the homepage should have one direct entry point, creating a direct funnel for the user experience.
These designs throw that idea out the window, with multiple entry points and click elements.
You can think of it as the “create your own adventure” option for these designs.
It can be a risky concept if you are diving into analytics to pay attention to user paths. You want to make sure you know what choices users are making so that you can help them on the journey to the content and information that you want them to get from the visit.
But this type of design scheme does feel somewhat personalized, putting the user in more control.
Parcouse Epicuriens uses three flat card-style elements to help users pick what they want to see from the home page. There’s no other button or direct call to action, which is somewhat uncommon in today’s website design landscape. Users have to pick from one of the cards, scroll, or enter using the hamburger menu icon.
Tasty Find uses search options to help users start their journey. What’s interesting here are the choices – search for the food you want, pick something random, or (in the small print) find even more options. Users get three choices to begin their journey with the website.
What’s interesting is how simple this complex user journey looks. The design is easy to digest, but so many options could overwhelm users. This is one of those situations where you have to watch return search data and information and weigh the risk versus the reward of so much choice. It’ll be interesting to watch this design over time and see if the options decrease in number.
Accord also has several levels of user engagement opportunity. Option 1: Every block contains a click element. Option 2: Use the search at the top to narrow choices. This is an interesting configuration as the homepage for an e-commerce website because they get right to product selection and shopping without a softer sell or introduction.
Typographic risk has been an ongoing theme for a little while. Designers are embracing experimental and novelty typefaces to stand out in the cluttered website space. Sometimes it works beautifully, and other times, it can fall short.
Here, each of these trending website designs uses a risky typography treatment. The risks are a little different for each design, from readability to comprehension to font delivery.
How Many Plants has duel typography risks: A funky typeface paired with odd word breaks. Interestingly enough, readability isn’t as big of a concern as you might think. This is likely because there aren’t many words, and they are short. Plus, the imagery ties in nicely.
Do you notice a similarity between How Many Plants and The Great Lake? The typography has the same style with a blocky, slab, sans serif with alternating thick and thin strokes. (It’s the same font.)
The risk in the typography design for The Great Lake isn’t in the homepage display, although you might wonder what the design is about. It is carrying this font throughout the design. While it looks great large and with only a few words, it gets a little more difficult the more you see it. This type of mental reading weight can be difficult for visitors over time, creating an element of risk.
Zmaslo uses an interesting typeface with a liquid effect on top of an unusual word. That combination of text elements makes you think hard to read the homepage, despite its neat looks. The risk here is weighing visual interest against comprehension. Depending on the audience, this risk can be worth the chance.
Spring always seems to be that time of year where designers start thinking about new, fresh design elements. That might explain some of the “riskier” design choices and experimentation here.
Regardless of the motivation, it is always fun to see the creative stretch happen. It can be even more interesting to see what elements from these trends continue to grow in the coming months.
The post 3 Essential Design Trends, May 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Who is Grammarly for? Can a grammar checking tool like Grammarly replace a human editor and proofreader? Is the Grammarly checker worth it? Are the Grammarly free checks sufficient for me, or should I upgrade to Grammarly Premium? Should I install Grammarly on Chrome? How effective is Grammarly for Word? Is downloading the Grammarly desktop app worth it? You have questions…all of which we’re going to answer.
I have been using Grammarly regularly for proofreading my documents and emails since 2015 and have witnessed its evolution as a product firsthand. After checking over three million words during this period, I can confidently say that Grammarly has come a long way. Raising $200M in total funding at a valuation of $1B+ so far, and with more than a million downloads per month, Grammarly is now a top-1000 website by traffic worldwide.
I write a lot, so Grammarly has been my go-to writing assistant for correcting passages and enhancing my writing. I first tried the Free version, and in May 2020, I upgraded to the Premium version, finally! Grammarly Premium is a great tool that takes care of most of your writing, proofreading, and plagiarism-checking needs for intensive work.
In this article, I’ll explain what Grammarly is, its features, what it does (functions of all versions and products), the pros and cons of using Grammarly, my rating of Grammarly, who should use the Free version, and who should use the Premium version and the difference between the two. I’ll also explain how to use Grammarly properly. I’ll then compare it with other popular tools and suggest which ones suit your needs. In the end, I’ll leave you with my final assessment and FAQs.
Grammarly is an online digital writing assistant that checks for a range of English grammar and spelling mistakes. It also helps enhance the writing through its excellent context-based clarity suggestions (Premium version).
Grammarly is a writing aid that checks not only for spelling slights, grammar rules, and clarity issues but also identifies the tone of the writing to provide relevant instructions through its Error Cards. It also has a plagiarism checking tool, which is available with the Premium version.
Grammarly employs AI (Artificial Intelligence) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to check the content for all possible syntactic and semantic issues. Although it has an extensive database, it is still incomparable to human proofreading and professional editing, especially when it comes to understanding the context of the writing.
Grammarly is astonishingly easy to use, primarily due to its compatibility via the Browser Extension/Add-on, from which you can use it on millions of websites. Moreover, its other product forms, i.e., the Online Editor (Web App), Desktop Application, MS Word/Outlook Add-in, and the Grammarly Keyboard for iOS/Android, make it accessible everywhere.
It automatically detects issues in the content in the Desktop App, the Online Editor, and the browser (even in Google Docs, which is in Beta at this time) via its add-on. Yet, for the MS Word Add-in, you have to click the Grammarly button to activate the app. Grammarly explains all detected issues via an Error Card that contains relevant information for each item. You can implement it by clicking the suggestion, ‘Ignore’ the problem, or ‘Add to Dictionary’ (in case of a spelling issue). You can also provide feedback (if you think that the suggestion is wrong). The Free version checks only for spelling and critical grammar mistakes. The Premium version also reveals a ton of advanced ‘Clarity Issues.’
The Tone Detector helps you estimate the entire document’s tone, which can be valuable for many writers who target a particular audience, e.g., formal writing for the business audience.
Grammarly, overall, excels at almost all the things it does, and therefore the free version is recommended for everyone. Grammarly provides a generic readability score. Advanced grammar checks like the clarity checker, the plagiarism checker, and many other features are not available for the free version.
Grammarly is dominant amongst its competition, but it doesn’t solve all English language problems. It is useful at picking syntactic mistakes but still misses significant semantic errors, which can be a problem for people who are not particularly adept at English — as they won’t notice these slips.
| The Good | The Bad | & The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use – simple, intuitive, and efficient interface | English language only | Tad expensive (notably the monthly subscription at $29.95 per month) |
| Context-based grammar checking | Not 100% accurate (primarily misses linguistic bloopers) | No free trial for the premium version. |
| Fantastic grammar checker | Business account starts at three users and charges per number of users (can be a bit expensive for small businesses) | Only one account (license) for the premium version. You can use it on up to five devices. |
| Convenient tone detector | Insufficient as a standalone tool (doesn’t do everything) | Incomplete sentences can sometimes go undetected |
| The insightful error cards are instructional and productive (they help you to improve your writing) | Unlike ProWritingAid and Hemmingway Editor, it doesn’t provide much information about the whole passage, Grammarly’s scoring is generic right now | No substitutes are suggested in many cases. Example: synonyms, rephrasing suggestions for the intricate text, etc. |
| Integrates well with MS Word, Outlook, WordPress, emails, social media, and millions of websites | The free version is limited to fundamental grammar and spelling mistakes | Cannot determine contextually incorrect sentences (it cannot perceive the meaning of the written document) |
| Knowledge-base | The premium version identifies repeated words but sometimes doesn’t provide a suitable alternative to use | Short on vocabulary suggestions (not as competent as the free thesaurus writing tool) |
| The Grammarly keyboard is available for Android & iOS for FREE | Free version shows the number of advanced clarity mistakes but doesn’t tell you what those mistakes are and where they are | The formatting tool is rudimentary. You have to write in another text editor and then import it to the Grammarly Editor to format your writing accurately |
| Personal dictionary | Google Docs is not supported yet (in Beta). | Restricted to English only, and it also doesn’t translate other languages as Ginger does. |
| The adjust goal option allows you to customize Grammarly’s feedback. | It can miss simple semantic issues, which sometimes can be caught by text editors like Google Docs and MS Word. | |
| Formatting remains the same if you import/upload a document, but it changes if you copy/paste. | Plagiarism Detector is not available for the free version. | |
| Weekly writing stats (sent to user email) can help you identify your problem areas | The browser extension can malfunction, i.e., opening and closing the Grammarly editor within a website (sometimes) duplicates the content | |
| Option to download the detailed performance statistics as a PDF | Sometimes Grammarly doesn’t catch all mistakes on the first try. You have to refresh or scroll to let it run again and see if it finds new issues | |
| Grammarly blog teaches English grammar rules, writing techniques, and more | ||
| Context-based checker is more accurate than competitors | ||
| Provides rephrasing suggestions for complicated sentences | ||
| The premium version excels at catching inconsistencies |
Everyone
Despite being limited, Grammarly (free version) is a phenomenal tool. Therefore, I would heartily recommend it to everyone. It’s free, and it’s convenient.
The free version should be everyone’s go-to tool for proofreading social media statuses, tweets, and comments. It is also crucial for editing all sorts of short-form writing, such as emails. Professional writers can also use the free version to catch typos and basic grammar mistakes.
Apart from all the necessary features offered in the Grammarly free version, Grammarly Premium provides several other valuable elements such as an advanced clarity checker and a robust plagiarism checker. All these help you enhance your writing effectively.
Grammarly Premium is a helpful tool for people who are already adept at English as it still requires plenty of work on catching semantic errors. Businesses and Professional writers who do intensive writing should give the Premium version a go. From writing, editing, and proofreading to plagiarism checking, it is almost an All-in-One solution (though not a substitute for a human proofreader – at least yet).
People, especially students who cannot learn from their mistakes, should avoid relying on Grammarly as it can hinder their learning process.
Granted, Instructional Error Cards and Weekly Writing Stats (emailed to the user) can pinpoint your weak points, but educating yourself from there on is entirely up to you.
Just like ‘Auto-correct’ hinders people’s ability to learn proper spellings, Grammarly can do that for learning grammar rules.
Grammarly is an excellent tool, but it still makes slips, which can be misleading for amateurs who don’t have a solid grip on the English language. Therefore, if you are not proficient enough in English, you should only subscribe to Grammarly Premium if you can remember that it is not a replacement for a human teacher or a proofreader. Or, you can continue using the Free version, which is competent enough to check fundamental grammar and spelling oversights.
Furthermore, businesses and professionals who are infrequent users can stick to the Free version if they feel they will not be making the most of the Premium version.
A comparison with basic text editors will illustrate Grammarly’s true potential:
Microsoft Word is the most popular and feature-packed text editor. It includes a basic grammar and spelling checker that catches typos in real-time. However, MS Word is very limited in its grammar checking capabilities.
I’ve written many articles using Microsoft Word, which were considered error-free by the text editor. However, when I put the same documents in Grammarly’s Editor, there’d always be some critical mistakes caught by the Free version and some clarity or consistency mistakes pointed out by the Premium version.
Grammarly finds inconsistent punctuation that MS Word missed.
Google Docs is another mighty text editor, which is free to use. It also has numerous features, including spelling and grammar checking. Google Docs’ grammar and spelling check software only flag issues with an alternative in its database; otherwise, it ignores them. It auto-corrects the obvious spelling blunders. It can also pick missing determiners (articles) better than Microsoft Word. However, once again, when compared to Grammarly, Google Docs falls far behind in exposing slip-ups.
Grammarly in Google Docs.
Google Docs performs a little better than MS Word when it comes to punctuation, yet it is incomparable to Grammarly, which is in Beta for Google Docs.
Grammarly proofreads content written in English (American, British, Australian, and Canadian) and gives detailed performance statistics. Weekly Writing Statistics are emailed to the user account, and you can download a complete PDF that extensively illustrates your performance.
From scoring to pointing out all mistakes and amendments, Grammarly doles out a comprehensive document that you can use to improve your weak areas. Grammarly can function as your teacher in this regard if you learn from these mistakes and try to improve your performance, especially in areas pointed out by the software.
Grammarly is available in the following product versions:
All these versions are usable in the following product forms:
Grammarly’s web application acts as an online editor to upload a document, copy/paste content, or write directly. It has a 4MB size-limit and a 100,000 characters-limit (about 60 pages). When you upload a file, a pop-up tells you that your document formatting will restore when downloaded.
Grammarly’s interface for the online version and the desktop app is identical, and it is outstandingly intuitive and accessible. A dedicated writing assistant panel on the right side contains valuable information and choosable options. It also lists and categorizes all the errors found.
A bar at the bottom contains a few formatting options and some length-related info about the passage.
Typing in any online text editor activates the ’Grammar and Spelling Checker’ when the extension is on. It underlines (in red) all the issues in real-time. Hovering over the problem pops up an Error Card that contains corrections and more information about the mistake.
You can use the Grammarly icon at the bottom-right of online text editors to activate or deactivate the tool. This option is beneficial because sometimes you want to check your content but don’t want distractions while writing. I recommend turning on the extension after you have completed your draft and now want to begin the editing phase. You can also open the Grammarly editor within a website for added convenience.
The Grammarly add-on is available on all popular browsers – Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge Chromium, etc. And it is compatible with millions of websites and the web versions of many desktop applications, including WordPress, emails, social media, work platforms, and many more. Grammarly for Google Docs is in Beta right now. The Grammarly extension also gives you the option to ’Show Definitions and Synonyms via Double Click,’ which works like a dictionary within any website.
The Grammarly icon within your text editors tells you the total number of issues found on the Grammarly pop-up. However, you have to scroll through the document and find those problems yourself. It is not as efficient as the online Editor. The extension only shows the critical issues inside your online editor. It gives you the option to open the online Grammarly Editor to see the errors pointed out by the Premium version. The browser extension also works slower for lengthy content. It is convenient but only for short-form writing.
The desktop application, like all other products, is online only and doesn’t work offline. An internet connection is necessary as Grammarly uses its database to process the document. The desktop app is identical to the online editor.
You can integrate Grammarly into Microsoft Word and Outlook through their Add-in. Unlike other Grammarly product forms, the MS Word Add-in activates when clicked — otherwise, it stays dormant. When enabled, a right panel appears with suggestions, Error Cards, and statistics, just like the Online Editor and the Desktop App. Grammarly has no character limit for the MS Word Add-in.
You can download Grammarly Keyboard for both Android and iOS through their respective stores. Now available for iPad as well, it is easy to use as it works like the auto-correct feature available in the smart devices. It gives suggestions when Grammarly encounters any grammar or spelling lapses.
Grammarly is a tad expensive when purchased as a monthly subscription, which costs $29.95 per month. The quarterly ($59.95) and annual ($139.95) subscriptions offer better value for money. Through its weekly newsletter and other channels, Grammarly presents discount offers to its free users from time to time, which you can avail yourself of to get an even cheaper deal for the Grammarly Premium subscription.
Grammarly Pricing Plans for Premium Version – Monthly, Quarterly, Annual
Grammarly Free is limited but still adequate for many as it gives you critical grammar and spelling checking capabilities. It is usable in all product forms.
Grammarly Premium, along with Spelling and Grammar Checker, offers an advanced Clarity Checker, Plagiarism Checker, and experimental Tone Detector. All Grammarly features are available for the Premium version.
Grammarly for Business offers all the Premium features for three or more users. It also gives you an admin panel to customize your experience. You can add a personal dictionary, among other things, which will be accessible to all users. Grammarly for Business includes:
Grammarly Business Pricing Example
Grammarly @Edu is also an available option, of which educational institutes and organizations can avail themselves. It caters to a large number of accounts, as it targets students.
Grammarly has hands-down the best interface among all the writing assistants. It is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly.
Grammarly integrates with millions of sites and text editors. It is also compatible with MS Word (both for Windows and Mac) and Outlook via an Add-in. It is still in Beta for Google Docs.
Grammarly is incompatible with some desktop apps, but you can use Grammarly in their web versions.
For products where you can upload text documents, the supported document formats are: .docx, .rtf, .odt, .txt.
Grammarly is restricted to English only, including American, British, Canadian, and Australian English. Grammarly doesn’t support foreign language phrases, translation, etc., at the moment.
Grammarly checks for spelling mistakes based on context. It is excellent at differentiating between commonly misspelled words. It can also tell Common and Proper Nouns apart (in most cases).
All Grammarly products on all plans help you check for grammatical errors and syntax issues in the provided document in real-time.
The Plagiarism Checker is not available for the free version. When I inquired about plagiarism in hard copy, patch plagiarism, and ProQuest, here’s what Grammarly Support had to say:
“We teamed up with ProQuest to provide even more accurate plagiarism checks: currently, Grammarly’s plagiarism checker searches major proprietary databases along with over 16 billion web pages. You can check ProQuest libraries here http://www.proquest.com/libraries/academic/databases/.
Please note that Grammarly catches verbatim plagiarism and slightly modified text that can be classified as unoriginal. As comprehensive as our algorithms are, significantly rephrased text oftentimes can’t be traced back to its source.”
Note: I checked this document with both; Grammarly Plagiarism Checker is not as robust as Copyscape, but it’s catching up fast.
It detects a variety of tones based on the context of the given passage.
Grammarly Tone Detector
Grammarly checks for advanced issues for the Premium, Education, and Business versions. The Free version checks for limited conciseness; the rest is available on the Premium version only.
Grammarly offers support via its extensive, well-written, and user-oriented knowledge-base. Grammarly also provides support via email (24/7 for the Business version) if you can’t find a relevant answer in the knowledge-base.
Moreover, the Grammarly Blog teaches, among other useful things, the proper use of grammar in English.
The Grammarly Blog teaches the rules of English grammar and gives tips on writing. It also specializes in teaching about the most common blunders, which are also a strong suit of the application.
You can view the ‘Statistics Summary Card’ by clicking the ‘See Performance’ button. Or you can download the detailed statistics via the Download PDF Report option. These statistics are in-depth and contain exhaustive information regarding the whole document, including your score, errors, reading time, speaking time, and more.
Grammarly Performance Stats
You can customize Grammarly’s feedback according to your needs. This option gives you an adjustable chart where you can set your preferences according to your needs. It helps with the document’s tone, the difficulty level depending on the target audience, and more.
Grammarly Adjust Goals
Grammarly gives you the option to get your work checked by experts. It’s a particularly convenient option for those who cannot or do not want to rely on their proofreading skills better than finding and hiring someone yourself.
Grammarly Expert Writing Help
Grammarly has a free version with a powerful-enough spelling and grammar checker. It is available in all product forms – Online Editor, Browser Extension, Desktop Application, and Word Add-in. The Free version checks for up to 150 grammar rules.
It is superb at uncovering elementary grammar fallacies due to its context-based checking, powered by its robust AI and NLP software.
The Free version doesn’t show clarity issues. It reveals the number of clarity issues in the content, but it doesn’t tell you what and where those issues are.
The Premium version shows advanced grammar issues such as clarity, conciseness, dangling modifiers, squinting modifiers, monotonous sentences, intricate text, split infinitives, and many more. It checks for over 400 rules of English grammar, far more than the Free version. Grammarly Premium also has a plagiarism checker within the interface, which is mighty-enough for online plagiarism checking.
When you run some text through any version and product form of the app, Grammarly will process the document for the following:
However, Grammarly will not point out many of these mistakes for the Free version. It will only tell you the number of such problems in your content.
Grammarly Checklist
Let’s see some examples.
Grammarly detecting the wrong form of a verb.
Grammarly Context-Based Checking
Grammarly detects unknown words, and if you capitalize them, it considers them proper nouns. It can also miss the incorrect use of a term if you spell it correctly and put it within commas.
Grammarly while dealing with proper nouns, capitalization, and unknown words
Grammarly can differentiate between phrases and sentences. Therefore, you can write headings and subheadings in the form of expression.
Grammarly differentiating between sentences and phrases
Grammarly catching multiple mistakes in one sentence
Grammarly pointing out the wrong determiner-article use
The Grammarly algorithm is not good enough yet at recognizing incomplete sentences. Grammarly is far from perfect, as evident from these examples. Google Docs suggested ’was because’ for the last line instead of ’is because,’ but Grammarly missed that.
Grammarly can miss incomplete sentences.
Grammarly is only making one suggestion that the article use may be incorrect here in the below image.
Cannot detect incomplete sentences (sometimes) if other issues exist
Grammarly suggests you change the first line in the below image because it believes it’s caught a sentence fragment. You accept the suggestion, and it becomes the second line, which is, again, a sentence fragment, according to Grammarly.
Grammarly ‘sentence fragment’ suggestions
Sometimes, the suggestions are right as well.
Grammarly recognizes sentence fragments in some cases
Comma
Grammarly is a sniffing-hound-on-steroids when it comes to commas — both missing and wrong ones. It pinpoints the exact location where you should place a comma in a sentence. Whether it is between clauses, a list of items, or something else, Grammarly knows if you have missed a comma or placed a wrong one. It also exposes the famous “Oxford Comma.” Grammarly now points out any inconsistent punctuation (curly vs. straight commas, for example) in your articles.
Grammarly pointing out the missing Oxford Comma
Hyphen
First, it points out the missing hyphen. Once you rectify the error, it points out the wrong capitalization. Grammarly works in steps for multiple errors in a sentence.
Grammarly catching a missing hyphen.
Semi-colon & Colon
Grammarly catches the incorrect use of the semi-colon & colon.
Period
Grammarly points out a missing period
Missing Apostrophes
Grammarly can catch missing apostrophes
Apart from correctness that checks for critical grammar mistakes, the Premium version has options to check for clarity, delivery, and engagement, along with many more correctness checks.
Clarity check is not available for the Free version; all other versions of the app have it. It catches linguistic issues that a fundamental grammar checker cannot reveal. These include dangling modifiers, split infinitives, misuse of passive voice, intricate text, inappropriate colloquialisms, etc.
Grammarly Premium can detect inconsistencies and gives you the option to select one form if a word has been used inconsistently in the same document. It can also detect inconsistent punctuation, for example, curly and straight commas.
Grammarly Premium identifies text inconsistencies.
For unclear or complicated sentences where there might be an issue of a dangling modifier or something else, Grammarly suggests an alternative way to write the same sentence.
Grammarly Premium giving rephrasing suggestions
Grammarly can also note if you have used many unnecessary words in a sentence. If there are more words and less content in a sentence, then it suggests you rephrase it. This option can help you make your content non-fluff.
Grammarly is so-so at deciphering when the passive voice is right to use and when you should avoid it in a sentence. My experience is that, more often than not, it will recommend that you rewrite a sentence if it detects passive voice use anywhere.
Grammarly – always – detects passive voice use.
Grammarly exposes unclear and hard-to-follow sentences in the written piece. Sometimes it gives alternatives (if one is available in its database), but usually, it only tells you to rephrase the sentence to make it more understandable.
If you continuously write similar sentences in a passage, Grammarly will detect these sentences’ monotonous nature and advise you to rephrase them.
Grammarly detecting a monotonous passage
Grammarly suggesting alternatives to sound confident
Sound more diplomatic with Grammarly!
Grammarly Premium catches informal sentence structure like a preposition at the end of a sentence. Some other informalities include inappropriate colloquialisms, split infinitives, etc.
Grammarly points out informality.
Grammarly Premium points out overused words and suggests using an alternative here, but sometimes it doesn’t provide suitable options like the Thesaurus Writing Tool.
Grammarly suggesting engaging alternatives
Most of the time, the suggestions are worth considering, though.
Grammarly is suggesting more engaging alternatives
The Grammarly Free version catches all critical issues as it checks for 150 Grammar Rules to determine errors in a document. The Premium version looks for over 400 Grammar Rules and detects far more problems than the Free version.
I wrote an article and checked it through both the Free and the Premium versions. Here is the difference between how the stats of both look like before making the suggested changes:
Original Stats (before checking with Grammarly Free)
Original Stats (before checking with Grammarly Premium)
After editing another article and making the suggested changes, here’s how the Free version stats look like:
Grammarly Free Stats
After editing the same article using the Premium version, the stats look like the following:
Grammarly Premium Stats
Grammarly is a marvelous tool, but it is incomparable to human proofreading. Grammarly cannot detect the sense and meaning of the written text. It catches blunders using English language and grammar rules as efficiently as a machine can. However, some mistakes can slip through Grammarly if there is no syntax error, but just a linguistic or semantic misuse.
Grammarly didn’t suggest anything for a nonsense sentence
Grammarly is not an alternative to human proofreading
Grammarly is evolving with time and has gotten pretty accurate in identifying common mistakes. Its extensive database helps Grammarly recognize errors based on the context.
Grammarly scours the whole text for errors when you provide it a written document. Thankfully, it also checks for blunders as you write or edit your text in any product form – Chrome Extension, Online Editor, Word Add-in, Desktop App (Windows and Mac), and the Grammarly Keyboard for iOS and Android.
With Grammarly, you get a highly-efficient software, which is not only a phenomenal editor but also incredibly easy to use.
You can customize your Set Goals and your Personal Dictionary with the ‘Add to Dictionary’ feature in the Error Cards. This element is convenient for proper nouns and personal vocabulary (even words from a different language).
Based on your Goals, Grammarly, through its tone detector emojis, cautions you of your tone – the vocabulary and phrasing you are using. You can adjust goals keeping in mind your target audience and choose the most appropriate words to use.
Apart from basic grammatical mistakes, Grammarly helps you fix linguistic oversights. It tracks down a wide range of slip-ups, including dangling modifiers, intricate text, split infinitives, passive voice misuse, redundancies, and many other slips. In essence, the Clarity Checker elevates the level of your writing.
It is a bonus in all senses of the word. It might not be essential to the app, but it certainly assists users. Grammarly plagiarism checker is not the absolute best in the industry, but it does the job swiftly. It checks plagiarism across 16 billion pages on the internet and ProQuest’s database.
Error cards are compact, simple, and instructional. They serve their purpose elegantly. Any shortcoming that you experience in Grammarly’s usage so far is due to its still-not-so-extensive database. Error cards also fall short when it comes to giving suggestions due to this very reason. Otherwise, they are usually handy.
You can proofread, remove typos, and analyze the content quickly via the app’s free version. You can also use it before buying the Grammarly Premium subscription.
Supported on both Android and iOS, The Grammarly Keyboard App functions like the auto-correct feature. It gives real-time suggestions about the proper use of grammar and spellings in the written text. Grammarly is now available for iPad and supports hardware keyboards as well.
Grammarly provides customer support via its extensive database and email. By now, almost all popular queries have a database entry. Furthermore, the Grammarly Blog assists with learning English grammar rules.
Grammarly has amassed a plethora of information in its database, which helps run the application smoothly. This knowledge allows the app to identify problems based on the context. You will find accurate solutions for most common issues, thanks to its extensive database growing with time.
The Grammarly Blog focuses on teaching people English grammar rules and common mistakes in their writing. There are dedicated articles for each item; separate sections cover different punctuation like Commas, Hyphens, etc.
The weekly writing stats sent via email and the downloadable detailed performance stats PDF give you comprehensive feedback on your writing. This feature helps you pinpoint your mistakes better than anything else available in the market.
Grammarly Insights are the real-time feedback that the application provides regarding your writing. It bases it on your Set Goals. You can customize this feedback according to your needs, which can be amazingly valuable if you cover different audiences. Insights also include the reading time and speaking time, which is particularly useful to Vloggers, YouTubers, etc., who can quickly determine how much time their script will take on the video.
Grammarly is the most popular and best-in-class digital writing assistant tool, growing exponentially both in features and number of users, indicating that it will provide the best services to its customer base.
Grammarly is notably popular among professional writers, bloggers, publishers, marketers, and businesses, showing that Grammarly has a demanding clientele to please. Therefore, their standards are supposed to be (and they are) higher than the competition.
Having more than a million downloads per month and being a top-1000 website by traffic globally, Grammarly has raised $200M in total funding at a valuation of $1B+ so far, which speaks volumes of its success, investors’ trust in the product, and its projections.
The Free version identifies only critical grammatical errors, typos, and limited ‘conciseness.’ Moreover, it only lists the number of total advanced clarity issues in the text with an ‘Ad’ that keeps asking you to buy a Premium subscription for these issues. It also doesn’t support plagiarism checking.
The biggest drawback of Grammarly is that it is a tad expensive for many. Grammarly Premium can be a costly subscription at $30 per month if you don’t have much writing to proofread.
Grammarly is good at picking fundamental grammar mistakes – even context-based grammar issues, but it still cannot understand what you have written. If you write a nonsense sentence with no grammatical fault, Grammarly will consider it a correct sentence. It can also happen with incomplete sentences.
Grammarly is a mighty grammar checker but lags behind when it comes to rating the whole document. Its scoring is based on mistakes and length of words and sentences only, unlike some other tools that provide a more comprehensive text scoring. Grammarly is also not an alternative to human proofreading as it can’t understand the meaning of the written content.
Grammarly has a limited vocabulary in its database so far, which leads to inaccurate synonym suggestions at times. The Thesaurus Writing Tool, another free digital writing assistant, has an extensive vocabulary due to its vast Thesaurus.com database and offers far more vocabulary suggestions and alternatives.
For many suggestions like Intricate Text, Split Infinitives, etc., Grammarly doesn’t provide an alternative. You have to rephrase the sentence yourself. Grammarly only points out bloopers sometimes, which can be a little frustrating for amateur writers.
Grammarly is not supported everywhere yet. The most prominent places are Google Docs (in Beta at the moment – which doesn’t include Grammarly Premium corrections and the Pop-up Grammarly Editor) and desktop applications. However, it works on the web versions of these desktop applications via its browser extension.
Grammarly Editor is imperfect for writing purposes. It is incomparable to authoritative text editors like Microsoft Word and Google Docs. So you have to write your text in another editor and import it in Grammarly for proofreading if you want proper formatting of your document.
Grammarly wants you to upgrade all the time. When using the Free version, you’ll get constant notifications to upgrade to Premium to check for issues that are not available in the Free version.
Grammarly doesn’t offer support for languages other than English. There is also no option available for translation like Ginger.
The Grammarly Premium account gives you only one license for use on up to five devices. It is an obstacle for people with multiple accounts for different purposes. Grammarly Premium is already expensive, so buying two licenses is not feasible for the majority.
Grammarly stands out as the most prominent and well-received tool when you compare all popular digital writing assistants. It has been endorsed and appreciated by countless publishers and writers. Grammarly has become a top product in the digital writing industry with its robust marketing and significant NLP and AI improvements.
Grammarly Inc. has secured enough funding as of late 2019 to improve its natural language learning database to enhance its AI-based application further. Keeping all this in mind, it is evident that Grammarly is dominating the market. Still, there are a few products that come close for one reason or the other. Here are the top 5 Grammarly alternatives in 2021:
Pros: Long-Form Writing (Books, etc.), Writing Insights, Separate Checking of Issues, MS Word Add-in, Efficient Browser Extension
Cons: Short-Form Writing, Fewer Errors Detected, Not for Amateurs, No Free Version
ProWritingAid is considered a worthy alternative to Grammarly (notably for long-form writing – books, etc.), but it falls far behind Grammarly for short-form writing.
ProWritingAid is accurate, feature-rich, and integrates well with apps and websites, but the interface is not as user-friendly as Grammarly’s. It also reveals fewer issues as Grammarly has advanced context-based grammar checking capabilities.
ProWritingAid offers better pricing and value for money (Premium is $60 per year, $70 with Plagiarism Checker), and it also has a Lifetime Plan. However, it doesn’t have a free plan like Grammarly. The Online Editor has no word limit, unlike Grammarly’s 60-pages or 100,000 character limit.
ProWritingAid provides many options/tabs to check for each issue separately, handy for longer articles or books. However, it is not as user-friendly for short writing pieces.
It also presents a better analysis of the whole document and provides a lot of information regarding your writing, which you can use to improve your writing style.
ProWritingAid has an easy-to-scroll-through panel at the right-side that contains corrections and suggestions, which you can use to see all issues without scrolling the entire document.
ProWritingAid has the following tabs to check for each issue separately:
Pros: Keeps Formatting, 60 Languages & Translation, Built-in Dictionary, Browser Extension, Free Version
Cons: Fewer Issues Detected, Fewer Insights, Interface is just OK, no MS Word plugin
Ginger is also a notable competitor of Grammarly. It has a free version, and it integrates well with different websites. However, it doesn’t have an MS Word plugin. It is also not as accessible due to its clunky interface.
Ginger is not as powerful as Grammarly, but it is still a decent alternative. Ginger’s annual subscription is $89.88 (cheaper than Grammarly’s).
Ginger keeps the original formatting of the text document, which is pleasant. It also has a Translator within the app that supports 60 languages. Also, there’s a built-in dictionary, which you can use to find alternatives to overused words.
Pros: Cheap, Integrates with Platforms, Gimmicks – i.e., Templates, etc.
Cons: Interface is awful, Fewer Mistakes Caught
WhiteSmoke is cheap to use, but it has a horrible interface. It integrates with many platforms, but it is incomparable to an advanced tool like Grammarly. It has some useful gimmicks like templates for specific writing purposes, i.e., Sorry, Thank You, Condolences, etc.
The annual subscription of WhiteSmoke costs $79.99. However, it is not advanced enough to be considered better value for money.
Pros: Free, Vocabulary suggestions on hovering the cursor over a word, Blog
Cons: Editor is dreadful to use, Ruins Formatting
Thesaurus Writing Tool is a free-to-use online text editor powered by Thesaurus.com. You can copy/paste or write directly in the Editor. It doesn’t retain the original formatting, which makes it a bit uncomfortable to use. Just click on the ‘Check for Grammar’ button, and it will work its magic. It also has a dedicated blog that teaches you how to write better.
The Thesaurus Writing Tool is unimpressive when checking grammatical errors, but it is highly potent in vocabulary suggestions. Its interface is simple but insufficient. Hover over any word, and it will show you a vocabulary card with a lot of synonyms. Clicking on any suggestion will replace the original term with the selected item. The replaced word gets a yellow underline. An undo option is available if you are not happy with your word selection.
Pros: Free, Information about Text, Text Readability Score
Cons: Ruins Formatting, Fewer Mistakes Caught
Hemingway App is yet another incredible tool that is quite capable and straight-forward. It is convenient for analyzing your document as it scores the content based on its readability. It has a free web app and a paid desktop app. You can copy/paste into the online Editor or write directly, but it messes up the formatting.
Hemingway App identifies the use of passive voice, adverbs, and difficulty of reading. It recognizes long sentences – even the easy-to-read ones – as complex, which affects the document’s grade.
Using advanced NLP and AI, Grammarly free is hands-down the best and must-have writing, editing, and proofreading tool for everyone that checks for spelling and critical grammar mistakes. Easy to use, compatible with most popular products, and trusted by millions of users, Grammarly instantly elevates your writing everywhere; statuses, comments, emails, documents, tweets, you name it! Trying out the free version before upgrading to a premium plan also makes sense.
Grammarly Premium is a more robust and advanced tool with numerous amazing features like an advanced clarity checker, tone detector, and plagiarism checker. The Premium version is unparalleled when complemented with knowledge of the English language and some other tools. However, it is insufficient as a standalone tool because it can make slips (especially semantic ones).
I highly recommend Grammarly Premium to professionals (freelancers, writers, bloggers, authors, publishers, and editors) who require intensive use of the app. Similarly, Grammarly for Business is a good investment if your team does intensive writing. Non-intensive users should stick to the Free version as it suffices.
Aa one user said, “Grammarly Premium helps you sound like a pro, or at least helps you avoid looking like a fool!”
Is Grammarly a good app?
Yes, Grammarly stands out among its competitors as it has advanced context-based grammar checking capabilities, thanks to its up-to-date natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
Is Grammarly Premium worth it?
Yes, for the most part. However, it is a tad expensive for many. It is suitable for professionals and businesses that have lots of writing needs. It identifies several advanced grammar issues that the Free version only counts. However, it is not a substitute for human proofreading as it can make linguistic mistakes that a human can easily find.
Is Grammarly supported in Google Docs?
It is in Beta at the moment. So, it should be available shortly. At the moment, it is imperfect as it only specifies the number of errors. You have to scroll the document to find those mistakes (underlined red) on your own. It has already started working in the comments, though.
Is Grammarly supported in Quora?
Yes, Grammarly works with Quora.
Is Grammarly supported in Medium?
Yes, Grammarly is available for Medium.
Can Grammarly replace a professional editor?
No, it can’t. Grammarly can make simple semantic mistakes because it doesn’t know the meaning of the written text, so it cannot replace a professional editor. It is only suitable for catching syntactic issues.
Is Grammarly supported in Microsoft Word?
Yes, a plugin is available. It is an efficient plugin as it gives similar options in Microsoft Word as it does in its online editor and desktop application. Grammarly is now available for both Windows and macOS versions of MS Word.
Is Grammarly available for Mac?
Yes, Grammarly’s desktop app is available for macOS. Grammarly is available for both Windows and macOS. Grammarly for MS Word is also available for Mac now.
Is Grammarly supported in WordPress?
Yes, it is supported. You can use Grammarly in WordPress via its browser extension.
Is Grammarly supported in Gmail?
Yes, it is. You can edit your email using the Grammarly browser extension within Gmail. However, it is not the best solution for lengthy content. For extended text, the Online Editor, the Desktop App, and the MS Word Add-in are better options.
Does Grammarly work offline?
No, it doesn’t. Grammarly uses its database to run the app, so an internet connection is necessary.
Does Grammarly help you improve your writing?
Yes. If you read the weekly stats, detailed performance stats PDF, and Grammarly Blog for grammar rules and writing tips and try to implement them in your writing, Grammarly can significantly improve your writing capabilities.
Is Grammarly Safe and Secure?
Yes, Grammarly is quite safe, as Google verifies it. Moreover, Grammarly is as secure as any other site that uses SSL/TLS encryption. It is also reliable for plagiarism checking as it doesn’t violate your privacy.
What is the Grammarly cancellation refund policy?
You can get your money back if you are not satisfied with the Premium subscription by contacting Grammarly support within ten days.
Is Grammarly a reliable checker?
Yes, Grammarly outperforms its competitors. Yet, it cannot surpass a professional human editor.
Is Grammarly available for Android/iOS?
Yes, it is. You can use the Grammarly Keyboard to edit your text for grammar and spelling errors by installing the Grammarly Keyboard app from the Play Store or the App Store. It works like the auto-correct feature. Grammarly is now available on iPad as well.
Check out Grammarly for yourself.
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The post The Most Comprehensive Grammarly Review Ever first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
If you already have a good idea of what you want a new website to look like, the next step would be to decide on the tools you’ll need to put into play to turn that vision into a reality.
That is why choosing the right WordPress theme to get the job done is so important. You want a theme that features the page building tools and design aids that make your task far easier than anticipated.
The following 12 top WordPress themes and plugins have been selected with those purposes in mind. They will not only get the job done for you but do it better than most of the other website-building tools in the marketplace are capable of doing.
The choice is up to you. Whatever that choice may be, it should prove to be a winner.
A website-building toolkit that can boast of 40+ core features sounds like a pretty good-sized toolkit, and BeTheme is just that. In fact, this popular (200,000 sales) theme is the biggest WordPress theme of them all.
It’s unlikely you will need to put every one of these core features to use for your next project, but some will be essential, such as –
Click on the banner to learn more.
Designed with excellence in mind, Total features an exceptional selection of tools and design aids to work with. Total is also well-known for its speed, ease of use, and the flexibility it offers its users.
Click on the banner to learn more.
When a WordPress theme has the distinction of being the #1 best seller of all time, you can safely assume that those who created it got it right. Avada’s 450,000+ sales can’t easily be ignored.
Look closer, and you’ll see some of the many reasons behind Avada’s popularity.
Click on the banner to learn more.
MaxCoach is a specialty tool that enables web designers to create an online distance learning and/or tutoring platform. This LearnPress theme was last year’s #1 coaching theme, and it will most likely be so in 2021 as well.
Visit the site to see for yourself why this specialty theme has generated so much interest.
TheGem, WordPress’s ultimate multiuse toolbox, gives its users:
The GemBlocks with its 300+ pre-designed section templates to speed up your workflow, plus WooCommerce layouts and design aids
The Uncode multi-use WordPress theme is ideal for entrepreneurs, creative individuals, agencies, and small businesses.
Viewing Uncode’s showcase of user-built websites is a must. Click on the banner to visit the site and prepare to be impressed.
This highly modular popular theme is definitely worth a close look. It is simply one of the most innovative website building tools you’re likely to find on the market today,
Rey has built-in SVG support and is user and developer-friendly.
With this multiuse minimalist WordPress theme at your fingertips, you’ll be able to create an online store that will give shoppers a fully satisfying shopping experience.
Click on the banner and check it out.
Its trendy selections of creative design elements and ready-to-go store demos make Hongo an ideal choice for company, blogging, and eCommerce websites.
You can expect and receive exceptional user support.
With its $39 price tag, XStore gives you more value for your money than you’ll find in any other WooCommerce theme.
Check XStore out if you’re looking for a way to create an awesome online store in no time at all.
Have you ever come across a FAQ page you really liked? It doesn’t happen often.
Visitors that can’t find a good answer might decide to make a phone call (and be placed on hold). That answer is OK, but additional information would be more helpful.
With AI-based KnowAll, customers get answers 24/7, and they can search for other relevant information. They will be happier customers, which is obviously good for business.
Bloggers, creatives, agencies, and those looking to create an eCommerce site should give Pofo a good, hard look.
Pofo is fast, flexible, SEO optimized, and packed with useful features that include:
Detailed online documentation is provided, and you’ll be more than pleased with this theme’s customer support.
A modern, fast-loading, and smoothly performing theme is what you need. It will help you create a website that will have a significantly positive impact on your business’ growth.
Themes like those presented here can do just that by enabling you to give your website the professional touch you’re looking for. You can do it without having to rely on a single line of code.
These 12 top WordPress themes are modern, trendy, and easy to work with. Trying to find the “best” of the bunch could admittedly be somewhat daunting. But, you can take comfort in the fact that you really can’t make a wrong or bad choice.
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