Articles

Chaîner des requêtes API avec API Gateway

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Avec API Gateway, vous pouvez facilement chaîner des requêtes API pour créer des solutions plus complexes et plus riches.

Pourquoi avons-nous besoin d’une demande API enchaînée?

La demande API enchaînée (ou demande de pipeline, ou appels API séquentiels) est une technique utilisée dans le développement logiciel pour gérer la complexité des interactions API lorsque le logiciel nécessite plusieurs appels API pour accomplir une tâche. Il est similaire au traitement des demandes par lots, où vous regroupez plusieurs demandes API en une seule demande et les envoyez au serveur en tant que lot. Bien qu’ils puissent sembler similaires, une demande de pipeline implique l’envoi d’une seule demande au serveur qui déclenche une séquence d’appels API à exécuter dans un ordre défini. Chaque demande API dans la séquence peut modifier les données de demande et de réponse, et la réponse d’une demande API est transmise en entrée à la prochaine demande API dans la séquence. Les demandes de pipeline peuvent être utiles lorsqu’un client doit exécuter une séquence de demandes API dépendantes qui doivent être exécutées dans un ordre spécifique.

Comment Apache APISIX API Gateway peut-il nous aider?

Apache APISIX est un moteur de routage et de mise en cache open source pour les services Web modernes. Il fournit une solution complète pour gérer les demandes API enchaînées. En utilisant Apache APISIX, vous pouvez créer des plugins personnalisés pour gérer les demandes client qui doivent être appelées en séquence. Par exemple, vous pouvez créer un plugin qui envoie une requête à l’API de recherche de produits, puis une requête à l’API de détails de produits pour récupérer des informations supplémentaires sur les produits. Apache APISIX fournit également des outils pour surveiller et analyser les performances des API, ce qui permet aux développeurs de mieux comprendre le comportement des API et d’améliorer leurs performances. Enfin, Apache APISIX fournit des fonctionnalités de sécurité pour protéger les données et les services contre les attaques malveillantes.

En conclusion, l’utilisation d’une demande API enchaînée peut aider à gérer la complexité des interactions API et à améliorer la qualité des services Web. Apache APISIX offre une solution complète pour gérer les demandes API enchaînées, y compris des outils pour surveiller et analyser les performances des API, ainsi que des fonctionnalités de sécurité pour protéger les données et les services contre les attaques malveillantes.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

30 mai 2023/par Service comm.

Guide de conception de tests pour votre pipeline CI/CD

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Découvrez comment optimiser votre pipeline CI/CD grâce à notre guide de conception de tests complet et facile à suivre !

Lors de la livraison plus rapide du logiciel sur le marché, il est essentiel d’intégrer des tests automatisés dans votre pipeline de livraison continue pour vérifier que le logiciel respecte les normes attendues par vos clients. Votre pipeline de livraison continue peut également comporter de nombreuses étapes qui doivent déclencher ces tests automatisés pour vérifier les portes de qualité définies avant que le logiciel ne puisse passer à la prochaine étape et finalement être mis en production (voir la figure 1). Selon l’étape de votre pipeline, vos tests automatisés peuvent varier en complexité, allant des tests unitaires, d’intégration, fonctionnels et de performances. En tenant compte de la quantité et de la complexité des tests, ainsi que de la possibilité d’avoir plusieurs étapes dans votre pipeline, il peut y avoir de nombreux défis lors de l’intégration, de l’exécution et de l’évaluation de la qualité de votre logiciel avant sa sortie.

Comment intégrer des tests automatisés pour accélérer la livraison du logiciel sur le marché tout en maintenant la qualité ?

En tant qu’informaticien enthousiaste, je sais que pour livrer plus rapidement des logiciels sur le marché, il est essentiel d’intégrer des tests automatisés dans votre pipeline de livraison continue afin de vérifier que le logiciel répond aux normes attendues par vos clients. Votre pipeline de livraison continue peut également comporter de nombreuses étapes qui doivent déclencher ces tests automatisés pour vérifier les portes de qualité définies avant que le logiciel ne puisse passer à l’étape suivante et finalement être mis en production (voir la figure 1). Selon l’étape de votre pipeline, vos tests automatisés peuvent aller de la simplicité des tests unitaires, d’intégration, d’extrémité à extrémité et de performances. En tenant compte de la quantité et de la complexité des tests, ainsi que de la possibilité d’avoir plusieurs étapes dans votre pipeline, il peut y avoir de nombreux défis à relever lors de l’intégration, de l’exécution et de l’évaluation de la qualité de votre logiciel avant sa mise en production.

Cet article décrira certains de ces défis. Je fournirai également des lignes directrices sur les meilleures pratiques à suivre pour que vos tests automatisés respectent un contrat afin d’accroître la livraison de votre logiciel sur le marché tout en maintenant la qualité. Suivre un contrat aide à intégrer vos tests de manière opportune et plus efficace. Cela aide également lorsque d’autres personnes de votre organisation doivent résoudre des problèmes dans le pipeline.

En tant qu’informaticien passionné, je sais que le codage est un élément essentiel pour intégrer des tests automatisés dans un pipeline de livraison continue. Les tests automatisés peuvent être codés pour vérifier que le logiciel répond aux normes attendues par les clients et que les portes de qualité sont respectées avant que le logiciel ne puisse passer à l’étape suivante et être mis en production. Cependant, lorsque vous codifiez des tests automatisés, il est important de tenir compte des problèmes liés à la qualité et à la fiabilité des tests. Par exemple, les tests peuvent être codés pour s’exécuter plus rapidement, mais cela peut entraîner une baisse de la qualité des résultats. Il est donc important de trouver un équilibre entre la vitesse et la qualité des tests pour garantir que le logiciel répond aux normes attendues par les clients. De plus, il est important de s’assurer que les tests automatisés sont suffisamment robustes pour pouvoir être exécutés sur différents systèmes et environnements. Cela garantit que les tests sont fiables et peuvent être utilisés pour vérifier la qualité du logiciel avant sa mise en production.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

6 mars 2023/par Service comm.

11 Best Video Editing Apps

Actualités

We’re living in a world where video content is everywhere. So if you’re not creating videos, you’re probably consuming them. It’s a massive part of our online lives.

Video is also more popular than ever before. According to statistics, 78% of people watch online video content weekly, while about 55% of internet users view videos daily. And that number is only increasing as time goes on.

That means that if you want to be successful, it’s essential that you learn how to use video editing software and create compelling visual content for your business or personal brand.

When you’re ready to start editing your videos, you’ll want to consider a platform that’s easy to use, has plenty of features, and makes it easy to share and collaborate with others.

There are many video editing programs, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Some are free, and others cost money, but they all have something to offer.

Here are some of the best video editing tools on the market today:

1. Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most popular video editing software packages, and for a good reason. It’s an excellent tool for both beginners and professionals alike.

With Adobe Premiere Pro, you can create professional-quality videos, add motion graphics and effects, create titles, and much more. The software is easy to use, but there is a steep learning curve. If you’ve used Adobe Creative Cloud applications before, Premiere Pro will seem more familiar. That said, Creative Cloud Learning Center offers many materials for users at every level.

To start, open a project and import your video and audio files using the media browser. You can also use dynamic linking to bring in Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects files. Then create or edit the sequence, add titles to your video, and add transitions and effects. You can edit colors, mix audio, change speed, and export your video file.

The user interface isn’t too complex, considering it’s a video editing platform with many editing options. The UI consists of panels, a workspace, and a blue highlight. After using Photoshop and Illustrator for so long, the panels were easy to understand.

The best part? Premiere Pro’s customizable workspace!

You can arrange the panels however you want and save different setups for different projects or tasks. For example, you could have one workspace with your video and audio files open and another workspace with only your timeline open.

As you resize one panel, the other gets resized to adjust automatically—this makes it a cinch to move around the interface to find what you’re looking for.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the workspace:

On top, you will see a menu including assembly, editing, color, effects, audio, graphics, and library.
Assembly is where you import your files. You cannot simply drag & drop your files here.
Editing is where you can mix your audio and video and drag & drop them into your timeline.
The color area will give you outstanding control over your video colors.
On the right side, you will see color balance details; on the left, you will see the Lumetri Scopes of your video clip.

Key Features:

You can import single or multiple images from other Adobe applications such as Illustrator and Photoshop.
You can add animated graphics and edit them.
With Fram.io, you can get time-stamped feedback from the reviewers.
It offers stunning video and audio transition effects and lighting effects.
Version 23.0 offers the best titling toolsets, with the ability to bulk-edit your clip titles in the timeline and flexible alignment controls.

Pros:

It offers a 7-day trial period, where you can try out all of its features to see if it is the right fit for your business.
It has a flexible and customizable workspace.
The site’s learning center is packed with valuable resources.

Cons:

It takes some time to get used to it.
It doesn’t offer a freemium version.
The program has a lot of effects you may never use.

Pricing:

It starts at $20.99 for 100 GB of cloud storage.

2. Pinnacle Studio 26 Ultimate

Pinnacle Studio 26 Ultimate is one of Pinnacle’s more powerful video editing software. It lets you create stunning videos with accurate keyframing, high-level performance, and professional-level editing.

Pinnacle Studio’s interface looks like a mini version of Adobe Premiere Pro, but some crucial differences exist. For example, Pinnacle Studio doesn’t have as many effects or color correction tools as Premiere Pro.

The first thing I noticed when I started using the editor was its color grading controls. The toolkit lets you adjust your clip’s tone, brightness, hue, and other color levels.

You can also create animated video overlays to direct viewers’ attention to a specific part of the screen. These overlays can contain any image, logo, graphic, or text with a transition.

In addition to these features, you can also create video masks and edit YouTube videos, drone videos, 360 videos, and other types of videos.

Key Features:

It lets you make targeted edits with motion tracking.
You can create two types of video masks: shape masks & panel masks. You can use them to add creative effects to your video, censor a part of the video, overlay some elements of the video, and even use it to hide objects.
Smart object tracking lets you create shape-aware masks in the video, and smart technology means you don’t have to recreate masks for each frame.
Have you seen those popular gaming videos on YouTube? You can make them with MultiCam Capture 2.0 Lite, which allows you to record your screen and add audio overlays. This product is also suitable for making tutorial videos.

Pros:

It offers MultiCam editing.
Its UI is clean and easy to navigate.
In addition, they have plenty of helpful information and learning material on their website.

Cons:

It’s costly.
With so many effects and detailed masking features, it can confuse some users.

Pricing:

It starts at $129.99 for the complete version.

3. Apple Final Cut Pro

Apple Final Cut Pro is a powerful video editing tool for Mac users. It’s been around for years, but it’s still one of the most popular options for video editing. The software has many features, from basic video editing to advanced compositing.

From editing, mixing, audio, motion graphics, object tracking, and color grading to plugins, cinematic mode, and effects, it offers everything a professional video editor would want.

There are many built-in effects and transitions which you can use to enhance your videos. For example, you can add titles and text to your footage by dragging the product onto your footage or clicking on it directly from the library window. This is much faster than using hundreds of effects individually, which takes much more time than this method!

In addition, the newest version of the Final Cut Pro 10.6.2 makes it easier to track down duplicate clips in the timeline and timeline index, as they’ll be highlighted automatically. It also improves speech clarity by using machine learning to minimize or adjust background noise levels. And it’s easier to move, rotate, and resize clips.

Final Cut Pro is also optimized for Apple Silicon, Mac Studio, and Macbook Pro, which means you can work with high frame rates with high performance. Let’s take a look at some of its key features.

Key Features:

Apple Final Cut Pro lets you move and trim your clips seamlessly. It also enables you to pack multiple video and audio clips into one bundle with its compound clips feature.
You can add metadata tags to your clips, which will help you find them quickly. You can create custom column views and sort your clips by proxy or media types.
The Duplicate Detection feature highlights duplicate clips in the timeline.
With its Multicam editing feature, you can automatically sync up to 64 angles of videos with different frame sizes, frame rates, and formats.

Pros:

UI is easy to understand and navigate.
It offers magnetic timelines.
It provides a free trial.

Cons:

Available for Mac OS systems only.
Very expensive. If you need it for a shorter period, you cannot get a monthly or yearly subscription.

Pricing:

It costs $299.99 for a one-time purchase.

4. CyberLink PowerDirector

CyberLink PowerDirector 365 is a powerful video editing program that is especially easy for beginners.

What’s appealing about it is that you don’t need to have any experience working with editing software—PowerDirector provides amazing customizable templates. The templates save plenty of time, as they are organized into proper categories such as Beauty, Business, Design, Education, and more.

Focused on making video editing easier for people without technical know-how, PowerDirector offers essential editing tools with advanced features – such as Mask Designer for creating images, text, and custom masks.

It also has a Title Designer that lets you add animated stickers, shapes, and call-outs to your video. Choose from a drag-and-drop menu for motion graphics, sound effects, and special effects. You can also add animated stickers, shapes, and call-outs to your video using its PIP Designer.

Key Features:

It offers AI Motion Tracking, which means you can add text and graphics that will directly follow the object’s motion in your video.
It offers automatic AI Object Detection.
You can use its Chroma Key feature to use the green screen effect.
It lets you correct the colors in your video in one click.
You can also use its preset lens correction feature to remove distortion in your video and change video speed.

Pros:

You can add multiple trackers and apply different effects to each for motion trackers.
A free trial is available.

Cons:

If you apply reverse, it gets applied to the entire video.
Expensive monthly subscription.

Pricing:

It starts at $99.99.

5. Apple iMovie

Apple iMovie is the best free video editing app that comes with all Macs and iOS devices. It’s also an excellent choice for beginners.

You can use iMovie to edit videos, add music and effects, and create slideshows. It’s also great if you need to make simple edits, such as trimming clips or adding transitions.

It allows you to create/edit your videos in 4 simple steps:

To start a trailer using iMovie, first select a theme from Apple’s pre-designed themes. Then add visual effects to your video. Next, add the music of your choice, choose one of Apple’s pre-designed templates, and your video is ready to export.

To make a movie, select a project and photos and videos to add from the library. You can record directly in iMovie before editing. Like other phone apps, you can add text, effects, and music to your video.

Next, trim and arrange your clips and images in the timeline. When you’re done with that, click the Add Media button to add a soundtrack to your project. Your track will be automatically placed in the beginning and will fit your clip length. You can also add sound effects by browsing and selecting from their built-in sound effects.

Next, add your titles and text. You can make title screens, end credits, or other text elements with this feature. In your timeline, click the clip and then click Titles in the toolbar and choose from the title styles to add your titles.

You can now add filters to your videos to give them a complete makeover. Click the Filter button and choose from the built-in filters, and then preview your video as you choose the effect.

Now, you’re ready to export your video file. To do so, click on the Share button in the project browser and then choose Email or Text Message.

Yes—it’s that simple. So simple that even a complete newbie can get started right away.

However, note that iMovie is suitable only if you want to create basic videos, such as slideshows, short clips, and home movies. If you’re looking for more advanced features like motion graphics or adding filters to your videos, then Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro might be better suited for you.

Key Features:

The Magic Movie feature allows you to create videos with pre-styled templates and added titles, music, and transitions.
Storyboards: You can select from 20 storyboards with different genres, such as cooking or science experiment, and more.
Cinematic Mode: You can edit clips shooted in Cinematic Mode on iPhone 13.
Extra Special Effects: Add special effects such as slow-motion, speed it up, and use picture-in-picture and split-screen effects.
High-Fidelity Filters: It comes with 13 video filters to help you add a professional and cinematic look to your video.

Pros:

It’s free! If you have an iPad, Macbook, (or iPhone), then you already have access to iMovie.
The app lets you crop, trim, and adjust the brightness of your footage before you start editing it, making it easier to start creating a movie right away.
Lots of different templates are available for creating different types of videos (like slideshows with music)

Cons:

Not available for Android, Windows, or Linux systems.
It’s a basic video editing software – with limited editing options for professional video editors.

Pricing:

It’s free for all users.

6. Adobe Premiere Elements

Adobe Premiere Elements is a video editing program that offers the best of both worlds: it’s simple enough for beginners to use yet has enough advanced video editing features for professional editors to create stunning content.

The software also uses artificial intelligence to help you add cinematic effects to your movies.

Starting with the specifications, Premiere Elements offers a range of tools to help you resize and trim clips, add effects or overlays, and much more. In addition, its 2023 version comes with Adobe Sensei, which means you can add effects to your videos with one click. You can also use its newly-added audio tracks and slideshow templates to change the look and feel of your entire video.

You can also arrange your photos and videos in any way you want in the element organizer. It brings together all the photos from different locations on your computer and saves them there, so you don’t have to find them separately in different folders.

You can also import files from your camera or card reader by selecting the import option ‘From Camera or Card Reader.’

Adobe Premiere Elements offers a user-friendly workspace that groups its features into Quick, Guided, and Exper views. You can choose any of these depending on your level of expertise.

If you choose Quick, you can trim video clips, create a movie by putting photos and videos together, and also choose never to see this option again.

In Guided view, you can get a step-by-step guide throughout the creation.

Expert view offers more advanced tools and features – for example, an audio mixer or time-stretches abilities.

In addition, video tools let you mark and extract favorite moments, freeze a frame as an image, track moving objects, and smart-trim low-quality parts of the clip. You can adjust the audio balance with the audio mixer and narrate clips.

However, most of its features are designed for beginners rather than for professional videographers.

Key Features:

AI & Automation: Premiere Elements uses Adobe Sensei AI technology to automate common video editing tasks. You can add effects used in some popular artworks, and the program will automatically adjust them to match the aspect ratio you choose.
Guided Edits: It offers 26 different guided edits that you can customize to suit your needs.
Templates: It offers plenty of slideshow templates, backgrounds, and patterns.
Organization: It automatically organizes your files according to date, subject, people, and places.

Pros:

It offers three views based on complexity.
It provides in-depth guides for users.
Guided edits are available.
It offers a free trial.

Cons:

It has limited features for professional filmmakers.

Pricing:

7. Clipchamp

Clipchamp is another easy-to-use video software for beginners on this list – and it’s ideal for small businesses looking to create videos for marketing purposes. It’s a template-based video editing program, so each stage of the process is faster.

The app comes with pre-shot videos that you can use in your projects. These videos are in a 16:9 aspect ratio, and they are royalty-free. Click on the stock video tab to add these videos to your project.

There will be multiple categories to choose from, and once you find your video, drag it and drop it into the timeline. Now you can start editing them!

You can also use its beginner-friendly video templates from the video editor homepage. Once you add a video to your timeline, it will automatically fit into the aspect ratio. But if you want to edit the video size, just click on the aspect ratio on the right side and choose from the options.

Now, you can make changes to the text and title. On the right side of your screen, click the text box and edit the text in the window that opens. You can also change other aspects of your project this way, such as the font, alignment, color, or transparency.

With its branding features, you can add logos or brand colors to your videos, which you can use in all of your videos.

Now, you can either use templates audio or add your own. If you want to upload your audio, upload it to the editor and drag and drop it into the timeline.

After that, you’re all set to export your video. Again, you can choose from three video resolutions: 480p, 720p, or 1080p.

Key Features:

Video Editor: It comes with customizable templates, which you can trim, cut, rotate, crop, and add images and audio to. You can also balance color and do much more.
Stock Library: Its stock library has free stock videos and audio tracks – you just have to add your own titles and other minor changes. It also comes with a free camera recorder which lets you add filters, balance colors, and adjust contrast in your footage.
Text-to-speech: With its AI voice generator, you can choose from 170 voices to add a voiceover to your video.
Green Screen: Remove unwanted elements while shooting using the green screen, then remove them while editing with the background removal feature.
Video Overlay: You can spice up your videos with animated graphics, stock videos, transitions, and more using its built-in styles.

Pros:

There Are so many templates to choose from.
It’s very affordable and also offers a free version.

Cons:

It offers limited options for professional filmmakers.
Rendering takes more time than it should.

Pricing:

It starts at $11.99 per month or $119.99/per year (if you pay yearly).

8. Coral VideoStudio Ultimate

Coral VideoStudio Ultimate is one of the powerful video editors that starts you with basics and takes you through very advanced editing features.

To get started, you have to import your media into the library folders. Then, you can simply drag and drop your files or click on the import button and choose your file from the media browser.

Just like any other video editing software, you can drag and drop your media files to your timeline to start editing them.

Choosing an instant project template will help you get the result quickly. Now you can trim your clips, adding transitions, effects, and more.

To add a title to the video, click the title button [T] and add text. In addition, you can add transitions between your clips by dragging the transition thumbnail to your timeline.

Once you have added your video, you can add filters, effects, and music. Just click the respective button and follow the instructions. Once everything is done, you can save it and share it on blogs or websites, email or social media channels, YouTube, and more.

Key Features:

Drag and Drop: Drag and drop elements in your timelines, such as a text box, an effect, or a transition.
Color Grading: Using color grading, you can enhance your video by boosting the colors and correcting their balance.
Premium Effects: Use animated AR stickers, Face Effects, blend overlays, and more.
Advanced Tools: Make your videos stand out with cinema-grade effects using masking, facial recognition technology, dynamic split screen templates, and more.

Pros:

Online reviews hint at its fast rendering speed.
Screen Recording is available.
One-time fee structure.

Cons:

There aren’t enough effects and transitions available.

Pricing:

It costs $99.99 / one-time payment.

9. Movavi Video Editor

If you’ve been in the industry for a considerable time, you must have heard of Movavi Video Editor.

It’s a powerful video editing software that allows you to edit videos, create slideshows and convert videos from one format to another. It is an award-winning video editor with readymade intros, keyframe animations, and many special effects.

Let’s see how to edit a 4K video in Movavi. As you see in the screenshot below, the user interface is spotless and straightforward. You just have to click on the “Add file” option to start importing your 4K video into the library and then add it to your timeline to begin editing it.

You’ll see icons for transitions, filters, and more on the left panel. From there, you can add different effects to your video. To cut your video into multiple parts, look above the timeline — you’ll see an icon for “Split Clip.” Select the clip and move the red marker to where you want to cut. Then click on the split icon.

You can also add titles to your video by clicking on the title tag in the left pan. Simply select the one that you want to use and drag it to the timeline. Now double-click on the title in the timeline and start editing the text.

After adding titles and special effects or transitions, save your file. Make sure you save in ultra-high definition.

Key Features:

AI background removal: Change your video background without using a green screen – with the power of AI.
AI noise removal: Its AI-based noise removal tool will help you remove car sounds, wind sounds, or other unwanted sounds.
Special effects for Youtube: It offers five frames and an exclusive pack of effects for YouTube.

Pros:

You can directly upload your finished video on TikTok.
Clean user interface.
Free version available.
The video editing app has sound-accompanying transitions.

Cons:

Slow rendering.
It does not offer more advanced features for filmmakers.

Pricing:

It costs $74.95 for a one-time license.

10. DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is an excellent video editing program – with a free version with many high-level features that you would expect from a much more expensive product. DaVinci Resolve also makes other products specifically for editors, including keyboards, color grading panels, and more.

In its latest release, they have included support for Blackmagic Cloud and Blackmagic Proxy Generator. You can host your media library on this cloud and share your work with other collaborators and editors.

To start editing in DaVinci Resolve, you must import your video by dragging and dropping your videos from the hard drive to the media pool on the top of the screen.

Many professional video and audio file formats are supported, including H.264, H.265, DNX, Blackmagic RAW, and more. You can mark the part of the clip that you want to use by specifying a start and endpoint for it.

Once you’re done adding clips to the timeline on the right side of the screen, you can edit them further using options from the editing overlay. This tool can replace, insert and overwrite clips in your movie project.

DaVinci Resolve has a library of 30 different transition effects, including wipes, dissolves, warps, flares, and more. All you have to do is select the effect you want and drag it into your timeline on top of a clip.

You can also add 2D and 3D titles to your project from the title library. Drag Fusion Titles from the library onto the timeline to add a title. You can then customize the text, font, color, etc.

You can do much more with videos, such as making animations, creating soundtracks, controlling the speed of your video, and adding picture-in-picture effects, dynamic zoom effects, and timeline curves.

Key Features:

Multi-User Collaboration: It’s possible to work with editors, visual effects artists, colorists, and sound engineers who are also online at the same time.
Fairlight: It features tools to produce audio. You can use up to 2K tracks at a time.
Media and Delivery Page: It offers a fullscreen workspace to prepare clips, sync audio, and organize media files into bins.
Resolve FX: You can add advanced effects such as blur, noise, light effects, beauty enhancement, image restoration, and more.
Color Collector: DaVinci’s 32-bit image processing enhances your photos, making them look their best.

Pros:

It offers a free version with various editing options.
The paid version is also affordable, considering the features you get.
Clean and easy-to-use UI.

Cons:

Steep learning curve.

Pricing:

It costs $295 for features like stereoscopic tools, Resolve FX filters, more Fairlight FX audio plugins, and advanced HDR grading.

11. Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora is an easy and simple video editing software that frequently updates with new features and advancements.

Using the software is incredibly easy. You can create a new project for every video or start working on an existing project from the file menu.

Then you can import video, audio, or image by clicking on Import Media from the drop-down menu. You can either drag and drop your files in the library area, click on import media in the library, and select from the media browser.

Now add this video file from the library to your timeline to start editing.

This can be done in two ways: drag and drop it to the timeline or right-click on the clip and choose the action from the insert, add to a new track, overwrite and append options.

This UI is straightforward, you don’t have to go back and forth, and mostly all options are on a single page. You can start adding titles, effects, animations, etc., by dropping them in the timeline. Then, select the option from the top of the window.

That’s it. Your first video in Wondershare Filmora is ready to be saved and exported. Click on the Export link on the topmost menu, choose the location, enter the video name, choose format, and click the Export button.

Filmora has the edge over other video editors, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, in its price point. Its rendering speed and performance are comparable to those of Creative Cloud products, but it lacks more advanced features, such as motion tracking and speed remapping. If you don’t require those features at all, though, it’s a good choice.

Key Features:

Split Screen: It offers a split-screen template where you can add multiple videos in one to make it more fun. It has more than 30 split-screen templates.
Keyframing: Enlarge, narrow, or rotate your clips with its Keyframig feature and create many more visual animations.
Motion tracking: It automatically tracks the object movement and lets you pin the graphic or other elements to move in the same motion.
Screen Recorder: It allows you to record your screen with system and microphone audio.
Video effects: It offers over 900 video effects, including titles, filters, transitions, motion, and more.
Green Screen: You can change your video backgrounds or elements with the green screen.

Pros:

Great selection of features
Easy-to-use interface
Fast rendering.
A free version is available.

Cons:

So many features might be overwhelming for new users.
Users have reported that the software sometimes crashes.

Pricing:

It starts at $19.99 per month.

12. FlexClip

With FlexClip It’s very easily to create and edit videos for the brand, marketing, social media, family, and any other purpose.

You can make a Video in 3 Steps :

Add videos or photos from computer or stock libraries,
Add text, music, elements, and more to customize your video,
Export your video, then share it via a link or post to social media platforms.

FlexClip is a simple yet powerful video maker and editor for everyone. It help users easily create compelling video content for personal or business purposes without any learning curve.

Key Features:

AI auto subtitle generator, GIF maker, image background remover, screen recorder and video converter supported.
Millions of Royalty-free Stock Media including photos, videos, and music.
4000+ exquisitely-designed templates in diverse categories.
Cloud-stored function for trans-devices editing, anywhere and anytime.
Storyboard and timeline mode for both beginners and professionals.

Pros:

Great selection of features
A free version is available.

Cons:

Pricing:

It starts with a free licence and go at $19.99 per month for the business licence.

Frequently Asked Questions about Video Editing Platforms

What is a video editing platform?

A video editing platform is a software platform that allows you to edit your videos, photos, and other media files.

How do I choose the right video editing platform?

The first thing you should do when choosing a video editing platform is to find out whether it supports the features you need for your project. Then check if it supports multiple file types and if it has tools for basic editing.

How much does a professional video editing platform cost?

You can find affordable professional-grade video editing software for less than $100 per year. The more advanced platforms with additional features cost more, but they also offer more capabilities than basic ones like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker that come free with your operating system.

How do I edit a video?

Editing a video can be done on any video editing platform. The process of editing varies from platform to platform, but the basic steps are the same:

Import your media (photos and videos) into the program
Arrange your media into a sequence for your video
Add transitions between scenes or clips
Add titles and other text elements to enhance visual storytelling
Save the project file

What features do video editing platforms have?

Video editing platforms provide many features to help users create their own videos. Some of these features include:

Video creation and editing tools
Audio mixing capabilities
The ability to add titles, images, and animations

Over to You!

The choice of a video editing platform can be one of the most important decisions you make when creating your video. First, you must choose a platform that will allow you to create high-quality videos suitable to your requirements. And if you’re looking for a basic and free video editor, there are options for that too.

If you’re a professional, use advanced video editing software tools like Adobe Premiere Pro, Pinnacle Studio 26 Ultimate, and Apple Final Cut Pro. They will take time to get used to, and you’d have to shell out a considerable budget, but it will be well worth it.

If you’re an amateur or a beginner, I recommend using Movavi Video Editor Wondershare Filmora or Clipchamp. They are easy to use and the best bang for the buck.

And if your purpose is just to create personal videos for your family and acquaintances on social media, then you can use a free video editing software like Apple iMovie.

Source

The post 11 Best Video Editing Apps first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

7 décembre 2022/par Service comm.

Manage Microservices With Docker Compose

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

As microservices systems expand beyond a handful of services, we often need some way to coordinate everything and ensure consistent communication (avoid human error). Tools such as Kubernetes or Docker Compose have quickly become commonplace for these types of workloads. Today’s example will use Docker Compose.

Docker Compose is an orchestration tool that manages containerized applications, and while I have heard many lament the complexity of Kubernetes, I found Docker Compose to have some complexities as well. We will work through these along the way and explain how I solved them.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

26 octobre 2022/par Service comm.

10 Best Website Builders for 2023

Actualités, Actualités

When you need a website, you have two options, you can hire someone who’s an expert in website building to design it for you, or you can make it yourself.

Hiring someone with experience building a website means you’ll get a more professional result, and you should achieve a good return on your investment. However, hiring a freelancer or a design agency has plenty of pitfalls. Budgets can spiral, timescales get stretched, and the end result might not meet your expectations.

The answer might be to build your own website using a website builder. And the best site builders are designed to help you do just that — most don’t require any design or coding knowledge.

Creating a website with a website builder is usually cheaper than outsourcing the job, and the results can be almost as good as a bespoke website. There are even some free website builders out there.

The key is to choose the right website builder that ticks all your boxes and delivers what you want without paying through the nose for bells and whistles you don’t need.

We’ve tested the best website builders on the market. We’ve quizzed professionals and first-time users. We’ve poked around in the dark corners of UIs. All to bring you this guide to the top website builders on the web. This comprehensive guide to the best website builders for 2023 contains everything you need to know when selecting a site builder.

What To Look For in a Website Builder

The most significant obstacle people face when using website builders is you don’t know what you don’t know. There’s so much information online that it’s hard to know where to start.

That’s why we put together this guide to the best website builders, so small businesses everywhere can make an informed decision about website building.

Choose a Site Builder With High-Quality Code

The first thing you need to look for is production-ready code. That means source code that is modern, robust, and hack-free. (All of the website builders on this list meet those criteria.)

Identify What A Successful Website Looks Like To You

Professional designers start by identifying a website’s purpose. Websites perform best when they have a clear purpose.

If you’re a wedding photographer, you will want to showcase your portfolio and generate new leads. You’ll want to sell products online if you own a clothing store. If you’re a community group, you want to raise awareness and encourage public interest.

Whatever your goal, a website builder listed below will help you achieve it. And choosing the best option for you will be a more straightforward process if you’re clear about that goal to start with.

Think About Design Flexibility

One of the defining characteristics of any website builder is how flexible its designs are. Some of the best website builders give you complete control over every detail of your design. Other website builders limit you to choosing from a selection of pre-designed blocks.

If you’re prepared to compromise on your design, you will have more options. On the other hand, if you want to achieve a specific look, you may need to opt for a more flexible website builder.

Be Honest With Yourself

Next, consider your own level of experience and the amount of time you have to invest in learning to use a tool and build a website. Some website builders will get you online fast, but even some of the best website builders take a little time to learn.

Some people can spare 3–4 hours every weeknight to learn how to leverage a complex website builder — that helps a lot when building a complex site like an online store. Other people have family commitments or social engagements and just need to get something done fast.

There’s no right or wrong answer. You don’t need prior experience, and you don’t need to commit to an evening course to get online. If you want to put a website online in 15 minutes and then forget about it, that’s fine. Make sure you choose a website builder that can help you do that.

Check Out the Support Options

Speaking of your experience, we don’t want to put a damper on things, but what will you do if something goes wrong?

Websites experience problems from which website builders are not exempt. Most of the best website builders use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for web hosting. But CDNs aren’t infallible.

Some site builders offer a free domain, and all of the best website builders allow you to use a custom domain name and free SSL certificate. What happens if there’s a problem with it? Does the site builder’s support extend to domains?

Happily, most website builders offer an excellent level of customer support. So before you start, check what help you’re entitled to and how to get assistance should a problem arise.

Make Full Use of Any Free Trial

Most of the best website builders offer a free trial or even a free-forever package. The free trial is your opportunity to try out the UI (User Interface) and get a feel for the product.

All the website builders we’ve listed below specialize in a particular type of site. Most cater to small business owners. Each has pros and cons and can help you achieve your online goals. However, in the end, the success of your site comes down to you; you can use a free web builder and still succeed if you’re willing to put in the work.

Trust your instincts: if you find a particular site builder intuitive, then the chances are you’ll be able to create a great website with it.

Wix: Best Website Builder for Small Business Owners

Wix is widely considered to be one of the best website builders of 2022, and a quick glance at its extensive list of features will tell you why we expect it to still be the top website builder platform in 2023.

First up is a vast number of templates giving you more selection than almost any rival. There’s so much choice that you’ll probably spend longer choosing your template than actually building your site!

Wix’s editor uses an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that enables anyone to create just about any design. It’s not the most straightforward editor on the market. Still, Wix has extensive documentation, so if you have the time to tackle a modest learning curve, you should quickly get to grips with the UI.

Of course, Wix also includes core features like custom domain names and free SSL certificates.

On top of these features, Wix provides various marketing tools to help your site grow toward profitability.

Finally, for freelancers and web design agencies, Wix provides Editor X, a professional solution for creating multiple websites for clients. Editor X is an excellent addition to Wix’s lineup. However, it’s not the best option for design agencies (keep reading to find out which tool we think tops Editor X).

Wix Features

Wix is the biggest website builder in the world and includes hundreds of features that make building a website simple. Here are just some of the highlights.

Huge Range of Templates

Wix boasts a huge range of 800+ customizable templates for every kind of business, from online stores to simple marketing sites.

Intuitive Drag and Drop Editor

Wix’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor makes it a simple task to achieve almost any design with little to no design experience.

There are a couple of downsides to this approach. Firstly, many small business owners opt for a website builder because they need a guided design process — unlimited options can actually make things harder. Secondly, the highly flexible design system Wix offers can introduce unexpected bugs at different device sizes.

Editor X

Editor X is Wix’s solution for freelance designers and web design agencies. It allows you to build client sites with dedicated tools for professionals.

App Market

Wix’s AppMarket is a dedicated app store with hundreds of plugins that enable you to expand your website’s capabilities quickly and easily. You’ll find everything from table reservation apps for restaurants to social media integrations.

Velo

Velo is Wix’s open development platform for building web applications. This is an ambitious project that aims to move web builders into areas in which they typically cannot compete: complex web apps.

For most businesses, Velo is far beyond what you need; for most app developers, it isn’t enough yet. But it’s great to know this opportunity is on the horizon.

Ecommerce

Wix has a range of tools to help your ecommerce business grow. There are coupons, discounts, bookings, and shipping tools.

Ascend

Ascend is Wix’s built-in marketing suite. It includes a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) which is excellent for fostering long-term business relationships and eliminates the need for a third-party app.

Email Marketing Tools

Email is still the most effective way of staying in touch with your customers. Wix’s built-in email marketing tools make it easier to manage email campaigns, all from your Wix dashboard.

Free Domain

Wix will even give you a free domain for a year on everything except its basic package.

Pros

Relatively intuitive design process
Excellent documentation and quick-start guides
Reliable and secure system
Huge range of tools
Extensive plugin market

Cons

Sites are less responsive than some rivals
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) options are limited
Difficult to change templates once you’ve selected one
Image and video-heavy sites perform poorly on mobile devices
Design flexibility can introduce unexpected bugs

Pricing

Wix has multiple tiers of pricing depending on the features you require.

Note that the availability of some Wix plans varies depending on your location.

Website Plans

Website Plans are aimed at those users creating an individual site.

Combo: $16 per month — 2 Gb bandwidth and 3 Gb of storage, plus 30 minutes of video streaming.

Unlimited: $22 per month — Unlimited bandwidth, 5Gb storage, 1 hour of video streaming, and access to marketing tools.

Pro: $27 per month — Unlimited bandwidth, 50Gb storage, 2 hours of video, marketing tools, social media tools and priority support,

VIP: $45 per month — Unlimited bandwidth, 100Gb storage, 5 hours of video, marketing tools, social media tools, and priority support.

Business & Ecommerce Plans

If you want to accept payments online with Wix, you’ll need a business plan.

Business Basic: $27 per month — 20Gb storage space, 5 hours of video, online payments

Business Unlimited: $32 per month — 35 Gb of storage, 10 hours of video, multiple currencies, multi-channel selling, dropshipping, product reviews

Business VIP: $59 per month — 50Gb of storage, unlimited video, marketing, and sales tools, dropshipping, product reviews, and a loyalty program

Enterprise Plans

Wix provides custom solutions for enterprise customers. If you have a large site with complex needs, then Wix can design a complete solution for your brand. Contact Wix directly for pricing.

Bottom Line

Wix is one of the best website builders available for creating your own website. Its flexibility, massive range of features, and ability to scale are ideal for many new and established businesses. But, if anything, Wix’s vast range of options can be a hindrance and make its learning curve a little steeper than necessary.

Wix is a great allrounder, but it’s not the easiest, cheapest, or fastest website builder. So keep reading to discover the best alternatives to Wix.

Squarespace: Best Website Builder for Creatives

Squarespace is the ideal website builder for anyone for whom aesthetics are a primary concern; it boasts the most beautiful templates of any website builder.

On its higher tier packages, Squarespace allows ecommerce sites to host their own checkout. This is radically different from some website builders further down this list and ensures a consistent customer experience while maintaining a secure checkout.

For professional designers, Squarespace offers Circle, an invite-only program for professionals creating multiple sites in Squarespace. To qualify, you must build at least three websites on the Squarespace platform.

Squarespace Features

Beautiful Templates

Squarespace has hundreds of templates, widely considered to be amongst the most beautiful designs of any website builder.

Additionally, you can purchase Squarespace templates at a number of different design marketplaces, giving you even more options.

Powerful Ecommerce Features

Squarespace has everything you need to power an online store, from selling an individual item to a huge product range. You can even sell online classes.

Integrated Marketing Tools

Squarespace includes integrated marketing tools like email campaigns that carry your branding from your site to your customers’ inboxes.

Squarespace also includes a very capable blogging app with all the features you need to start publishing content that will engage your users and boost your position on SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages).

Circle

Circle is Squarespace’s partner program for professional web designers. You will need to build at least three Squarespace websites to qualify.

Members of Circle get free educational content to keep their skills up to date and access to product betas.

Pros

Award-winning templates
Incredible customer support
Seamless integrations
Simple but powerful ecommerce features
Create a stunning site in 15 minutes

Cons

Steeper learning curve
Limitations on navigation
Slower than average page speed
Premium-priced plugins
No free domain
Custom CSS restricted to the business plans

Pricing

Squarespace offers four simple pricing plans. Additionally, you can save up to 30% by opting to pay annually instead of monthly.

Personal: $23 per month — 2 contributors, curated templates, simple analytics, mobile version of sites

Business: $33 per month — unlimited contributors, business tools, advanced analytics, ecommerce with 3% transaction fees

Basic Commerce: $36 per month — unlimited contributors, business tools, ecommerce analytics, merchandising tools, 0% transaction fees.

Advanced Commerce: $65 per month — Everything in the basic commerce package plus abandoned cart recovery, subscriptions, advanced shipping options, and discounts, as well as APIs for third-party integrations.

Bottom Line

Squarespace offers undeniably beautiful sites. Its editing experience takes a little getting used to but is far from complex. Its simple, transparent pricing means your costs are predictable, and there is genuine value in its 30% discount for paying annually.

Due to its shallower navigation, it’s best suited to smaller online stores with dozens rather than hundreds of products. However, artists and craftspeople will love selling their work on Squarespace.

Shopify: Best Website Builder for Online Stores

Shopify is the best-known website builder for creating an online store, and for a good reason. Few website builders manage to handle online sales with the grace of Shopify’s ecommerce features.

That does not mean it’s without its failings. The biggest issue for most Shopify users is the restriction on the number of product variants, which is capped at 100, and always seems to be reached too quickly. Another common gripe is the styling restrictions placed on the cart in the name of security, which prevent anything but basic styling from being applied to your checkout process.

Shopify is one of the best online website builders, but it eschews the usual drag-and-drop interface approach and instead uses templates and editable code.

Templates typically come with styling options, and there is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) style editor for adding content. However, you’ll need to hire a developer or learn basic coding to customize your template significantly.

The upside of this approach is that there’s a vast Shopify ecosystem, with thousands of templates and plugins available in the dedicated store and on third-party marketplaces.

Shopify Features

Vast Number of Templates to Choose From

Shopify has a huge number of templates, there are hundreds of native templates, and there are thousands more available from third-party marketplaces.

Extensive Plugin Store

Shopify has an extensive plugin store with 6500+ add-ons, from apps to improve your UX to helpers to simplify third-party integrations with SaaS (Software as a Service) like Mailchimp and AliExpress.

Social Media Integration

Shopify isn’t just an online store; it makes selling products across multiple channels, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even email, a simple process.

Industry-Leading Education

Shopify has a plethora of resources to help you create an online store and maximize your sales. It provides online courses and community resources and a dedicated and knowledgeable customer support team.

Pros

Highly optimized checkout
Recognized and trusted platform
Sell across multiple channels like Etsy and Facebook
Huge app store
Manage large inventories easily
Fast customer support

Cons

Checkout has limited styling options
Coding knowledge is needed to fully extend Shopify
No simple drag-and-drop editor
Additional costs if buying a template or plugins
Steep learning curve compared to other website builders
Limits on the number of variations per product

Pricing

Shopify offers three website plans. You can save 50% if you pay annually instead of monthly.

Note: in addition to your plan, Shopify charges a per-sale percentage plus $0.30 for online transactions.

Basic: $29 per month — Basic reports, 2 staff accounts, 4 inventory locations, up to 77% shipping discount, 2.9% + $0.30 fee per transaction

Shopify: $79 per month — Professional reports, 5 staff accounts, 5 inventory locations, up to 88% shipping discount, 2.6% + $0.30 fee per transaction

Advanced: $299 per month — Custom reports, 15 staff accounts, 8 inventory locations, up to 88% shipping discount, 2.4% + $0.30 fee per transaction

Shopify is aimed at small businesses but also provides ShopifyPlus, an enterprise-grade solution for high-volume businesses that starts at $2,000 per month.

Bottom Line

Shopify sets the bar for ecommerce solutions. When it comes to selling online, it’s the first choice for many businesses.

Shopify occupies the middle ground between website builders and custom solutions. As such, making changes is difficult. Once you’ve chosen your template and exhausted the built-in features of the template, your only recourse for further changes is to hire a developer (or learn to code).

Shopify is laser-focused on ecommerce, so it’s a poor choice for anything but ecommerce. However, if you’re aiming to quickly establish an online store with scope to grow, Shopify is impossible to beat.

Webflow: Best Website Builder for Design Agencies

Webflow is a website builder geared solidly towards freelancers and design agencies concerned with building a website for their clients.

For professional website designers who possess at least a passing understanding of HTML & CSS, Webflow is an ideal way to create a website.

With its white labeling and a complete CMS (Content Management System), Webflow allows you to serve sites to clients as custom builds. Clients can then edit content in a simplified dashboard called Editor; this lessens the learning curve for clients and avoids the risk of them fiddling with site-breaking settings.

Webflow Features

Full CMS

Webflow employs a full CMS (Content Management System) to separate design and content and allow you to use data to create a website rapidly. In this respect it’s like a the best elements of Wix and WordPress combined.

Powerful Design Process

With Webflow you have the option to fully customize almost every aspect of your design, without code.

Start with a blank canvas, or a template, then use the drag-and-drop editor to add HTML elements onto your page. Create reusable symbols to speed up your site creation.

White Labeling

White labeling means teams can create client sites in Webflow without the client knowing how the site is built — design agencies don’t have to worry about clients cutting out the middleman and going straight to Webflow to save money.

Webflow Enterprise

Most website builders are out of their depth when it comes to enterprise-grade sites with high volumes of traffic. Not so Webflow, which delivers advanced security, traffic scaling, and guaranteed uptime for its enterprise customers.

Pros

Comprehensive SEO tools
Extensive customization options
Industry-leading documentation
Excellent for client work
Fast customer support
Awesome free plan

Cons

Not beginner-friendly
No plugin store
HTML & CSS knowledge advisable
Membership sites are only in beta
Complicated pricing
Eye-wateringly expensive

Pricing

Webflow offers a multitude of pricing options depending on whether you’re an individual, a reseller, or an online store.

If you’re running an individual site you’ll need either a website plan or an ecommerce plan. If you’re an agency planning to resell Webflow to your clients you’ll need a workspace plan for your team in addition to a website or ecommerce plan for every client site you publish.

Website Plans

If you’re an individual, Webflow provides three plans to choose from. You can save up to 22% by opting to pay annually instead of monthly.

Basic: $18 per month — 0 CMS items, 500 form submissions per month, 50Gb bandwidth.

CMS: $29 per month — 2,000 CMS items, 1,000 for submissions per month, 200Gb bandwidth, and up to 3 guest editors

Business: $49 per month — 10,000 CMS items, 2,500 form submissions per month, 400Gb bandwidth, up to 10 guest editors

Ecommerce Plans

To unlock features specifically designed for online selling, you need to opt for one of Webflow’s ecommerce plans. You can save up to 30% by opting to pay annually instead of monthly.

Standard: $42 per month — includes everything in the individual CMS plan, plus 500 products, 2% transaction fee, and a maximum of $50,000 in annual sales

Plus: $84 per month — includes everything in the individual business plan, plus 1,000 products, 0% transaction fee and a maximum of $200,000 in annual sales

Advanced: $235 per month — includes everything in the individual business plan, plus 3,000 products, 0% transaction fee, and unlimited annual sales

Team Plans

For teams, Webflow offers workspace plans in addition to website and ecommerce plans. There is a free plan while you learn Webflow, and you can save up to 33% by paying annually.

Note that team plans are charged per seat, so for example, the cost for four designers of the Growth package is $240 per month (not $60 per month).

Core: $28 / seat per month — for small in-house teams, up to 3 seats, a maximum of 10 unhosted sites, custom code and code export.

Growth: $60 / seat per month — for growing in-house teams, up to 9 seats, unlimited hosted sites, custom code, custom export.

Freelancer: $24 / seat per month — for freelancers or small agencies, up to 3 seats, full CMS access on unhosted sites

Agency: $42 / seat per month — for agencies, up to 9 seats, full CMS access on unhosted sites

Large teams with more than 9 team members will need to contact Webflow for its enterprise plan, which promises unlimited seats.

Bottom Line

Webflow is aimed at design agencies and freelancers who need a web host for client work and is one of the best website builders for managing multiple sites.

Due to its advanced feature set, Webflow is relatively complex to use. However, it is far simpler than a bespoke site, and anyone with a cursory understanding of web technologies should master it in a short space of time. Additionally, its Editor feature simplifies it for clients.

Unfortunately, Webflow’s ecommerce plans are expensive and ecommerce features are limited. Anyone looking to sell online might want to consider other site builders instead.

If you’re a design agency building multiple client sites, Webflow is an excellent platform to adopt…if you can afford the team plans.

Duda: Best Website Builder for SEO

Duda website builder has been outperforming its rivals since 2021, when Google introduced Core Web Vitals and, in the process, made SEO all about speed.

Duda produces blazing-fast, reliable sites and, in doing so, ticks all of Google’s boxes for a quality site that it wants to rank highly.

On top of this, Duda provides a white-label option, allowing design agencies to build sites for clients on the platform. In fact, this is what Duda was initially created for.

Duda offers beautiful design in a simple-to-use package. As such, it produces some of the best no-code websites.

Duda Features

Simple Editor

Duda offers a Simple Editor option that allows you to provide your clients with a simple website builder of their own. Predesign elements that work together, then let your clients combine them in whatever way they please.

Clients will feel empowered, and you get a website project out the door with less work and fewer revisions.

White Labeling

Duda is aimed squarely at freelancers and design agencies that want to foster an ongoing relationship with their clients.

Team Libraries

Build your own library of widgets, templates, and sections. Share across your entire team, so client projects are created with your in-house approach.

Omni-Channel Ecommerce

Duda enables ecommerce sales across the web and social media, with your inventory synced everywhere you sell, from Facebook to eBay and Amazon.

Managing a store is simple with store management apps for iOS and Android.

Pros

Extremely fast page speed
Beautiful templates
Award-winning customer support
Intuitive drag-n-drop interface

Cons

Relatively expensive
Limited plugin store

Pricing

Website Plans

Duda offers three pricing plans for websites, and you can save up to 33% by paying annually instead of monthly.

Basic: $19 per month — 1 website, email customer support only, no team or client collaboration

Team: $29 per month — 1 website, email chat and phone customer support, up to four team members, white label client access

Agency: $59 per month — 4 websites, priority email chat and phone customer support, up to ten team members, white label client access, widget builder, export control

Duda also offers custom plans for clients with enterprise-grade sites; contact them directly for pricing.

Ecommerce Plans

Duda provides ecommerce features as an add-on, which means if you want to use Duda to create an online store, you need to sign up for one of their website plans as well as one of their ecommerce plans.

Note: you can pair any of the ecommerce plans with any of the website plans; they don’t need to scale together.

You can save up to 25% on Duda’s ecommerce plans by paying annually instead of monthly.

Standard: $8 per month — Up to 100 products

Advanced: $22 per month — Up to 2,500 products, sell subscriptions

Unlimited: $49 per month — Unlimited products, sell subscriptions, Square PoS integration

Bottom Line

SEO is a complex subject, and many factors feed your ranking on Google, Bing, and other search engines.

What is universally accepted is that fast pages translate into a better ranking.

If you’re looking for a blazing-fast website builder to help you establish a strong online presence, Duda must be near the top of your shortlist.

WordPress.com: Best WordPress Website Builder

WordPress is a juggernaut of an app; its rise has been unstoppable, and 43% of the web is made up of WordPress sites. Furthermore, WordPress.com — not to be confused with WordPress.org — is a WordPress site builder. That means all you need to do is log in and have all the power and flexibility of WordPress at your fingertips.

The downside to all this power is that WordPress.com is a big step up in complexity from most of the site builders on this list. It’s not as complex as its self-hosted sibling, but you’ll still need to spend some time getting acquainted with the advanced features.

You’ve probably heard that WordPress is insecure. We’re sorry to say that’s true. WordPress’ main vulnerability is its third-party themes and plugins — the commonality of a WordPress site means criminals consider it worth exploiting. WordPress.com web hosting is considerably more secure than self-hosted WordPress.org, but hey, it’s still WordPress.

But if you decide the security risk is acceptable, WordPress.com offers an ecosystem of themes and plugins unparalleled for its range and variety.

WordPress.com Features

Huge Ecosystem

WordPress has a vast ecosystem, perhaps the largest of any design software. There are thousands of professionally designed themes, and over 50,000 plugins, providing enormous scope for customization.

When vulnerabilities are found, more often than not, it’s the result of a flaw in a plugin update. So if you install a lot of plugins, you are exposing yourself to increasing security risks.

Unfortunately, in order to take advantage of the WordPress ecosystem, you need to be on one of WordPress.com’s higher-priced plans.

Secure Web Hosting Service

WordPress sites are notoriously insecure, but WordPress.com solves most of the issues thanks to a dedicated security team.

Drag-and-Drop Editor

The whole WordPress community has been working on evolving the design process from coded templates to a drag-and-drop editor called Gutenberg. Gutenberg started out small, but it gets better all the time and now offers a good level of design control without overwhelming beginners with too many options.

Pros

Generous free plan
Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
No installation required
Great live chat support
Ideal for blogging
50,000+ plugins
Vast number of templates
Secure web hosting service

Cons

Unintuitive
Slow page-load times
Persistent security concerns
Premium templates and plugins are restricted to more expensive plans.
SEO locked behind more expensive plans

Pricing

There is a generous free plan that is ideal for getting started. Beyond that WordPress.com offer four price tiers. You can save up to 50% by paying annually instead of monthly.

Note: many of WordPress.com’s best plugins are not free; make sure you budget for the cost of any plugins you intend to use.

Personal: $4 per month — Remove WordPress.com ads, collect payments

Premium: $8 per month — Remove WordPress.com ads, collect payments, earn ad revenue, install premium themes, Google Analytics integration

Business: $25 per month — Remove WordPress.com ads, collect payments, earn ad revenue, Google Analytics integration, install plugins, automated site backups.

eCommerce: $45 per month — Remove WordPress.com ads, collect payments, earn ad revenue, Google Analytics integration, install plugins, automated site backups, accept payments in 60+ countries, top shipping carrier integration, premium design options.

WordPress.com also provides WordPress VIP, an enterprise-grade package that starts at $25,000 per year.

Bottom Line

Opting to use WordPress.com boils down to one thing: building a website with the WordPress ecosystem. That means you must select at least the Premium price tier (to install premium themes) or the Business price tier (to install plugins). As a result, WordPress.com, on the lower packages, has limited appeal.

WordPress.com is one of the better choices on this list for blogging. If you hope to attract a lot of organic traffic from search engines, then WordPress.com’s blogging heritage will serve you well.

GoDaddy: Best Website Builder for Marketing

GoDaddy is best known for website hosting but does not have the best reputation regarding reliable software; however, its web builder dispels that myth by producing good quality code and decent page speed.

Unfortunately, it achieves its performance by limiting your design options. For example, you can’t add individual elements to your site; you must add whole sections and customize them. However, suppose you don’t feel particularly confident with design. In that case, having someone else make those decisions for you can be a real bonus.

A big flaw with GoDaddy’s ecommerce features is that the checkout isn’t hosted under your domain name; it’s hosted on a third-party website. Consumers are increasingly concerned about scams, and the site URL changing this way can feel like a real red flag.

GoDaddy website builder has a version control system built in. This helpful feature allows you to revert back to an older version of your site. So if you make a change, undoing it is just a couple of clicks. That’s great for websites that want to make temporary, seasonal changes to their website and then revert back to the everyday design.

GoDaddy Features

AI-Powered Advice

GoDaddy uses a surprisingly effective AI to offer advice, helping you to establish an online presence and boost your business.

Integrated Marketing Features

GoDaddy has some of the most comprehensive marketing tools of any website builder. SEO, social media, and email marketing can all be employed to connect with and retain customers.

Hundreds of Themes

GoDaddy offers hundreds of customizable themes that you can edit with no technical skill or experience.

Free Image Library

Lots of businesses struggle with images when they first start out. GoDaddy has a built-in library of professional images that you can use until you have your own.

Pros

Award-winning 24/7 support
Very simple to use
Quick build process
Add-on tools

Cons

No plugin store
Limited SEO, especially on lower plans
Limited styling options
Ecommerce checkout hosted elsewhere

Pricing

GoDaddy offers four simple pricing tiers. You can save up to 37% by paying annually instead of monthly.

Note: The availability of GoDaddy Plans varies depending on your territory.

Basic: $9.99 per month — 1 social media platform, 5 social posts per month, 100 email marketing sends per month

Premium: $14.99 per month — Unlimited social media, 25,000 email marketing sends per month, SEO tools, group events, paid appointments

Ecommerce: $16.99 per month — Unlimited social media, 25,000 email marketing sends per month, SEO tools, group events, paid appointments, product listings, flexible payments, promotional features

Bottom Line

GoDaddy isn’t the best overall website builder, and neither is it the cheapest website builder. But it is a good, solid, middle-of-the-road choice for small businesses.

Where GoDaddy website builder does excel is in the business tools that come with its site builder platform. Its marketing tools are excellent, and its new AI-powered hints are a great way of guiding you toward a profitable site.

Wrap all of this up at a competitive price, and GoDaddy is worth a look if you want to do all your web design and promotion in one place.

Carrd: Best Website Builder for One-Pagers

Carrd is website builder software for anyone building a one-page site. One-page sites are ideal for product microsites, event sites, small companies, time-limited promotions, contact forms, and many other websites.

One of the most complicated tasks when a software company sets out to create a website builder is navigation. Carrd circumvents that problem by eliminating the need for navigation, which results in a more straightforward UI, compact code, and faster page speeds.

There is a bit of a learning curve with Carrd. For example, it helps if you understand the basic principles of CSS. But if you don’t, the documentation will help. And getting to the nuts and bolts under the hood of your site can give you a real sense of ownership.

Carrd allows you to build and publish three sites for free. But if you want to publish more than three and use pro features like custom domains, it will charge you $19 per year — that’s just $1.58 per month.

Carrd Features

Sensational Value

Carrd is one of the cheapest website builders around. At just $19 for an entire year, you normally struggle to find plain web hosting this cheaply.

The price reflects the limited feature set — Carrd lacks the marketing and SEO tools that the top website builders have — but for many small businesses who just want to establish an online presence quickly, a one-page site is exactly what they need.

Custom Code

Unlike many of the premium website builders on this list, Carrd allows you to use custom code on its sites.

Custom code requires a little more knowledge than the average site builder, and many people prefer a drag-and-drop interface. However, adding custom code to Carrd is far easier than adding it to Shopify, for example.

Widgets

Carrd refers to its plugins as widgets. It doesn’t have a full app market or ecommerce features, but you can add widgets from services like Stripe and PayPal to expand the capabilities of your Carrd site.

Pros

Very low cost
Perfect for one-page sites

Cons

Steeper than expected learning curve
Limited to one-page sites
No free domain or free SSL certificate

Pricing

Carrd allows you to publish three branded sites for free. It only has one paid plan, which is billed per year. Carrd also provides a free seven-day trial.

Note: Carrd’s Pro plan allows you to build multiple sites.

Carrd Pro: $1.58 per month (billed annually at $19) — build more than three sites, custom domains, signup forms, payment forms, Google Analytics, widgets, custom code

Bottom Line

Carrd is an excellent website builder that outputs solid production code. If you need to get a one-page site online fast, then Carrd is a perfect choice.

At just $19 for a whole year, Carrd is one of the best-value website builders on this list.

Unfortunately, one-page sites typically have a limited lifespan, and sooner or later, you’ll want to expand. At this point, Carrd will cease to be a viable option and you’ll have to look at other website builders.

But at this price, you could have a one-pager up in the next 15 minutes. That’s hard to knock.

Square Online: Best Website Builder for IRL Businesses

Square Online is part of the Square product range that includes one of the most popular PoS (Point of Sale) solutions. Square Online is an excellent option for brick-and-mortar businesses that exist IRL (In Real Life). It’s also one of the few entries on this list that qualifies as a free website builder.

Square acquired the Weebly website builder in 2018 and redeployed staff to develop Square Online. Although Weebly continues to exist, all development seems channeled into making Square Online’s ecommerce features the best option for building an online store.

Square Online is more straightforward than Shopify for building an online store and offers a range of tools to integrate online and offline business.

Square Online is perfect for businesses that need an online store but feel website building is too technical. Its broader ecosystem of business tools means you can do everything digital in one place, with a consistent set of UIs and workflows, which makes things easier.

Square Online Features

POS Migration

If you’re already a customer of Square’s PoS (Point of Sale) products, then you can export your inventory from your PoS device and import it into your online store, saving yourself hours while ensuring that your products are synced.

Multichannel Sales

Square Online is just part of the Square group of products. Consequently, your sales aren’t limited to your website. As well as the obvious PoS option, Google, Instagram, and Facebook integrations are available.

Restaurant Tools

Square is particularly well-suited to restaurants, bars, and cafes. It provides scheduling software, team management, and loyalty cards, all of which make running a service business online a cinch.

Pros

Simple e-commerce features
Intuitive UI
Integration with the Square ecosystem
Generous free plan

Cons

Limited design options
Lengthy website building process

Pricing

Square Online offers three price plans, all of which are priced monthly but billed annually. Its lowest-priced tier is free, except for card processing fees.

Note: different pricing plans are available in different territories.

Free: $0 per month — Unlimited products, sell on social media, SEO tools

Plus: $?? per month (billed annually) — Free tier features, Advanced item settings, Accept PayPal

Premium: $?? per month (billed annually) — Plus tier features, reduced processing rate, real-time shipping rates

In addition, Square Online offers an enterprise solution for high-volume, multi-location businesses. Contact Square directly for pricing.

Bottom Line

With the financial backing of its parent company Square Online has the resources to evolve into a world-leading website builder; it just hasn’t gotten there yet.

Like a couple of other website builders on this list, Square Online is aimed directly at anyone who wants to build an online store — or, in fact, commerce in general. So you should look elsewhere if selling online isn’t central to your site.

But suppose you’re already invested in the Square ecosystem with PoS devices in physical locations. In that case, using Square Online is a no-brainer.

And if you’re willing to look past some of the design restrictions in favor of good customer service and the potential of a growing platform, then Square Online is a solid choice too.

Zyro: Best Budget Website Builder

Zyro is exceptionally cheap, especially for building an online store. But don’t let that fool you into thinking Zyro website builder is low on quality. On the contrary, hidden behind the low-ball sales pitch is a competent website builder with many features.

Zyro gives you complete control over the placement of your content, something that only Wix can rival.

Zyro offers an outstanding balance of powerful customization but not too many tools, so you won’t be overwhelmed by all the options.

Zyro doesn’t have a built-in app store like some rivals, which means you have limited options to expand the functionality of your site. However, it does offer some third-party integrations to services, so you’re not entirely without options.

Zyro Features

Intuitive Editor

Zyro does a tremendous job of getting new businesses online because you don’t need any experience to use this very simple site builder.

Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth

Many website builders usually scrimp on the extras and claw back a little money by charging extra for hosting. Not so Zyro, which provides unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Branding Tools

Zyro includes a logo maker, so if you’re starting from scratch, you can get give yourself some professional gloss with a shiny new logo.

Pros

Affordable
Great value ecommerce
Responsive templates
High-level control of design elements
Live chat support
Drag-and-drop editor

Cons

Basic blog options
Only basic SEO tools
No built-in app market

Pricing

Zyro offers two price plans, one for simple small business websites and one for ecommerce.

Note: Zyro offers regular discounts of up to 75% off its packages. These discounts are time-limited, but once they expire, they reset. So you won’t miss out if you decide to think it over.

Website: $2.99 / month — free domain, free email for 3 months, marketing integration, logo maker

Business: $3.99 / month — All of the features of the Website tier, plus sell up to 500 products

Bottom Line

With its AI-powered logo maker, fast build times, and simple options, Zyro is committed to getting you online fast.

We really didn’t like the deception of placing a fake countdown on the price discount. And hiding the increased renewal price in small print isn’t a good look for Zyro either. That type of blackhat UX doesn’t have a place on the modern web.

However, the prices beat almost everything except free website builder plans. In addition, Zyro’s ecommerce package is one of the most affordable options on the market, with an equally generous 1% transaction processing fee.

If you want to set up a side business over a weekend or even over your lunch hour, then Zyro is an excellent choice.

Website Builder FAQs

What is a website builder?

A website builder, or site builder, is a service for creating a website without any design or coding skills. The most popular website builders are designed to democratize the web by helping anyone build a website quickly and easily.

It sometimes helps to have some design ideas, and some website builders will allow you to add custom code if you want to, but neither is required.

With a website builder, all you need is the desire to create a website.

Are websites built with website builders as good as professionally built bespoke websites?

Because website builders are created with many potential uses in mind, they use generic source code. Unfortunately, this means that their code is typically less streamlined than a bespoke site.

However, over the past few years, the code quality that website builders generate has improved enormously. Now, many professional design agencies use website builders instead of coding their own websites.

If you have a very specialized site in mind, like a SaaS (Software as a Service, then even the best website builder won’t be able to create it. But for marketing websites and online stores, website builders are an ideal way to build a website.

How much do website builders cost?

The cost of a website builder varies from product to product. There are free website builders available, but many of the top website builders charge a monthly fee.

For one of the best website builders, you can expect to pay a subscription based on the features you require. Expect to pay more for e-commerce features, marketing features, and a flexible drag-and-drop interface.

There are sometimes hidden costs, such as a card processing fee for online sales.

If you opt for a website builder that uses templates or plugins, you may need to pay for those in addition to the subscription.

You don’t need to pay for web hosting services; web hosting should be included.

Most website builders offer a limited free plan or a free trial, so you can test out features before opening your wallet.

Is a website builder suitable for a small business?

It depends on the nature of your business. For example, suppose you’re setting up an online store or a professional service like plumbing or landscaping. In that case, a website builder or perhaps a specialist e-commerce website builder could be ideal for you.

On the other hand, if you’re running a business like a car dealership or a travel agency — where you need lots of individual listings — that is a little beyond what website builders can do. In that case, you’ll probably need a complete CMS (Content Management System).

If you are building a complex app or SaaS, then sorry, but website builders can’t manage that; you’ll need to hire a professional developer or improve your coding knowledge.

How hard is it to use a website builder?

You don’t need web design experience to use a website builder; they are designed to get new businesses online without professional assistance.

Some website builders are more complicated than others. Typically, the more features there are, the more time you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the user interface. A website can be created quickly with a drag-and-drop editor, but you may find you need to put in a little more work if you’re creating an online store.

As a guide, if you can use email, a web browser, or a document processor like Word or Pages, you’ll be able to use a website builder to build a website.

Can you use a custom domain name with a website builder?

Custom domains, like myawesomewebsite.com, can usually be used with website builders.

Be aware that some website builders charge more for this option. But equally, you may be offered free domain name registration, at least for the first year.

Do I need web hosting services to use a website builder?

You don’t need to worry about a web host; that’s part of what you’re paying the website builder to provide.

Many website builders even host your site on CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), making your site faster for a global audience.

Depending on your package, most website builders restrict the storage space you can use (the total size of all of your files combined). Some website builders also limit the bandwidth you can use (the total size of all the files users access on your site combined).

Do website builders perform well on search engines?

Getting your site to page one on Google is the primary aim for most businesses.

Many professional techniques boost your site up search engine rankings, but they all boil down to publishing good content and fast page load times.

You’ll find plenty of blog posts online claiming that website builders output low-quality and slow code. This used to be true, but in recent years the code website builders’ output has improved significantly.

A good website builder (like the ones on this list) won’t guarantee good search engine ranking, but the top website builders include marketing features that will help.

How long does it take to build a website with a website builder?

Some website builders can get you online in under five minutes. Others require hours of build time.

Typically, the more complex a site is, the longer it will take. Ecommerce, for example, will take longer than a simple résumé webpage.

Additionally, websites are not a once-and-done task. You will need to update your site, change information, and add features throughout its life.

But you’ll find that most website builders make this easy by taking away the hard work. As a result, most first-time website builders discover that they enjoy making websites, and some even decide to become professional website designers!

What is a drag-and-drop editor?

A drag-and-drop editor is exactly what it sounds like. You drag an element into position by clicking on it, and you drop it into place by releasing the mouse button when it’s positioned as you want it.

A drag-and-drop editor is considered a premium feature of the best website builders, but some people do prefer to make changes with code or via a simple form interface.

Which is the best website builder?

There isn’t a catch-all approach to building a website. The right website builder for you might not be the right website builder for someone else.

As you can see from the list above, Wix is a solid all-rounder, whereas Shopify is excellent for creating an online store. However, there are many occasions when other website builders would be a better choice.

Sometimes it comes down to something as simple as feeling an affinity with the website builder’s philosophy. If you find a website builder intuitive and it provides all the features you need, it’s the right website builder for you.

Featured image by upklyak on Freepik

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24 octobre 2022/par Service comm.

3 Essential Design Trends, October 2022

Actualités, Actualités

This month, it’s all about the images. Each of the design trends we spotted has to do with the images you select – or don’t select – for a project and how you use them.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Floating Images

Sometimes you design off the grid intentionally. Other times you are designing on a grid that’s maybe not-so-obvious. One of these things is happening with the floating images website design trend.

Here, you’ll see images and image containers that don’t seem to have any direction with their placements. They may or may not include animation, that further emphasizes the floating effect.

Floating images can include:

Cutouts that aren’t anchored to anything or any container
Images that are scattered on the canvas
Images in oddball placements that don’t seem to serve a purpose
Any image or element with an obvious off-the-grid location or spacing
Images that use different orientations or lack depth for perception

The challenge with this style is that it can look cohesive and organized or can turn into a jumble of parts rather quickly. It can take a lot of user testing to find the right balance.

Repeat uses animated, outline-style images in the background that have seemingly random placements. The floating effect is further emphasized by animation and the overlapping of images and other elements.

HummingYard uses images in a container in the design but the placements don’t have obvious meaning. There’s also a floating leaf on the right side of the canvas and a call to action button that appears to be off the grid as well. Each of the elements seems almost haphazardly placed, creating a floating effect for the entire design.

Wealthsimple uses a bunch of smaller different images to create a floating cascade of elements. The three-dimensional icons almost look like they are falling down the screen. Some overlap text elements, but most do not. It all feels a little random, but the images do frame and help bring the eyes toward the center-screen text elements and call to action.

2. No Images

If floating images aren’t your thing when considering a trendy design element, maybe no images is the answer.

In this design trend, the aesthetic comes together without any true imagery. The design uses mostly text with maybe an icon, logo, or small divot. The result can be a fairly stark design, but there’s a distinct focus on the words.

This trend is not so difficult to design, but storytelling and language are vital if you want users to interact with the design. No images can sometimes be off-putting to users who are looking for something visual.

Fandes Consulting uses a super simple black and white design with a simple call to action on the homepage. The scroll cue has a nice animation that helps you get a little deeper into the design quickly. (There are also more interactive elements and images after the scroll.)

Diego also uses a simple and stark aesthetic for his website. Again, there’s a simple animation for engagement and there’s more color and some imagery beyond the scroll.

Ashfield MedComms has the most color of these no-image website examples. With a navy background and a green icon, you can feel your eyes moving more on the screen here. There’s also more to read and a scroll animation to further the engagement.

3. Merged Text and Images

The merged text and images trend is the most complex of these design examples. Here, designers are creating overlapping layers for text and image (or animated) elements on the screen so that there’s a lot to consume visually. This can be a highly engaging concept, but also one that’s difficult to develop.

This design trend can be immensely beautiful when done well. Layered elements are exciting and have a “designed” feeling to them.

The visual challenge is this: Maintaining the readability of words and letters, especially when you are thinking about the responsiveness of the website. Animation or motion can add another level of complication.

If you are planning a design like this, it is important to plan for breakpoints and even have a fallback for what to do when readability becomes a concern. The desktop and mobile aesthetics might have different feels here to ensure that you have an easy-to-understand visual theme for both.

The Most Dangerous Places for Sailors includes text and an image element (the ship) that are tucked behind an animated water layer. What’s especially nice about this design is how the water looks just as dangerous as the words convey thanks to motion and the shape and color of the graphics.

Meow overlaps text and an image in a way that almost obscured readability, but the word has enough context that it’s generally understood. If you click through, there’s a fun little animation with the cat as well.

Champoleon the Valley of Dreams tucks part of the text into the mountains for a foreground to text to background layer set that’s beautiful and unified. There are a lot of layers in this design, making it much more complex than it appears on the surface. On the scroll, the rest of the site continues this layered theme with text and images that overlap and share space.

Conclusion

Which of these image trends is most appealing to you? They are vastly different approaches to website design and can work for different projects in different ways. They also range in development complexity, from super easy to manage – no images at all – to potentially challenging – merged text and images.

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10 octobre 2022/par Service comm.

Value Stream Management Meets Engineering Analytics

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Value Stream Management (VSM) is about empowering delivery organizations to measure, mitigate, and monitor complexity. Simply put, it aims at improving the flow of value in your organization. The VSM Consortium recently released their highly anticipated report on The State of Value Stream Management Report 2022.

In this article, we recap some of the findings and look at it specifically from a software engineering and DevOps point of view. Can we capture some key lessons that lead to healthier and more productive engineering teams? What has worked and what has not? Can we simplify and adapt ideas of organizational change to create a thriving engineering organization?

Source de l’article sur DZONE

4 octobre 2022/par Service comm.

Automatically Creating Microservices Architecture Diagrams

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

In application development, microservices is an architectural style where larger applications are structured as a collection of smaller, independent, yet interconnected services. While this allows for highly maintainable and testable applications (as each service can be maintained independent of the larger application), the problem with this method is the inherent complexity of interactions between microservices. It can be difficult for developers and team members to visualize how these microservices are connected to each other. We have been looking for ways to produce architectural diagrams that illustrate these interactions. We found that GraphViz helped us to solve part of this problem, as it can take the microservices structure of an application in the DOT language and convert it into a PNG format. However, we wanted this process to be even more user-friendly and more automatic, so that the user would not have to manually generate a DOT file of their microservices architecture.

In-Browser Tool

As we could not find such a tool, we decided to create one ourselves. We decided that the most user-friendly interface would be to create an in-browser tool that allows the user to upload a jar file containing a packaged service, and to have an image automatically rendered. This article discusses how we went about creating this tool and includes an example of what happens « behind the scenes » of this interface.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

4 août 2022/par Service comm.

7 UX Laws You’Re Probably Getting Wrong

Actualités, Actualités

UX laws are an invaluable tool, providing guidelines for designers that ensure we don’t have to continually reinvent the wheel when crafting experiences for the web.

However, UX laws tend to be devised by scientists and psychologists — people who are more than comfortable with the exceptions and allowances of academic language. By the time they filter down to us in the trenches, the language has invariably been over-simplified, and the wisdom behind the idea diluted.

Today we’re going to look at seven well-known and commonly cited rules of UX design that too many designers get wrong.

1. Jakob’s Law

Jakob’s Law, named for the UX researcher Jakob Nielsen, states that users spend most of their time on other sites and as a result prefer sites that work the same way as the sites they already know.

Jakob’s Law has often been used to limit experimentation and encourage the adoption of common design patterns in the name of usability.

However, the word ‘prefer’ is hugely loaded. While it’s true that a user will more easily understand a familiar design pattern, they do not necessarily prefer familiar experiences.

It has been widely proved that new experiences boost our mood and that new experiences improve our memory. If your goal is a memorable site that leaves users with a positive impression, introducing novelty is a sound decision.

2. Goal Gradient Hypothesis

The Goal Gradient Hypothesis assumes that the closer users are to their goal, the more likely they are to complete it.

It’s an attractive theory, especially in e-commerce, where it is often used to justify simplifying the initial purchase process and postponing complexity to move users along the funnel — a typical example is leaving shipping charges until the final step.

However, anyone who has studied e-commerce analytics will know that cart abandonment is a huge issue. In North America, shopping cart abandonment is as high as 74%.

We don’t always know what the user’s goals are, and they may not match ours. It may be that users are treating your shopping cart as a bookmark feature, it may be that they have a last-minute change of heart, or they may be horrified by the shipping charges.

While providing a user with an indication of their progress is demonstrably helpful, artificially inflating their proximity to your preferred goal may actually hinder conversions.

3. Miller’s Law

Never in the whole of human history has any scientific statement been as misunderstood as Miller’s Law.

Miller’s Law states that an average person can only hold seven, plus or minus two (i.e., 5–9) items in their working memory. This has frequently been used to restrict UI navigation to no more than five items.

However, Miller’s Law does not apply to items being displayed. While it’s true that too many options can lead to choice paralysis, a human being is capable of considering more than nine different items.

Miller’s Law only applies to UI elements like carousels, which have been widely discredited for other reasons.

4. Aesthetic-Usability Effect

Edmund Burke once said, “Beauty is the promise of happiness.” That belief is central to the Aesthetic-Usability Effect, which posits that users expect aesthetically pleasing designs to be more usable.

Designers often use this as a justification for grey-on-grey text, slick animations, and minimal navigation.

Critical to understanding this is that just because users expect a design to be usable does not mean that it is or that they will find it so. Expectations can quickly be dashed, and disappointment often compounds negative experiences.

5. Peak-End Rule

The Peak-End Rule states that users judge an experience based on how they felt at the peak and the end, rather than an average of the experience.

Designers commonly use the Peak-End Rule to focus design resources on the primary goal of each experience (e.g. adding an item to a cart) and the closing experience (e.g. paying for the item).

However, while the Peak-End Law is perfectly valid, it cannot apply to open experiences like websites when it is impossible to identify a user’s starting or ending point.

Additionally, it is easy to see every interaction on a website as a peak and even easier to make assumptions as to which peak is most important. As such, while designing for peaks is attractive, it’s more important to design for exceptions.

6. Fitts’ Law

In the 1950s, Paul Fitts demonstrated that the distance to, and size of a target, affect the error rate of selecting that target. In other words, it’s harder to tap a small button and exponentially harder to tap a small button that is further away.

UX designers commonly apply this law when considering mobile breakpoints due to the relatively small viewport. However, mobile viewports tend not to be large enough for any distance to affect tap accuracy.

Fitts’ Law can be applied to desktop breakpoints, as the distances on a large monitor can be enough to have an impact. However, the majority of large viewports use a mouse, which allows for positional corrections before tapping.

Tappable targets should be large enough to be easily selected, spaced sufficiently, and tab-selection should be enabled. But distance has minimal impact on web design.

7. Occam’s Razor

No collection of UX laws would be complete without Occam’s Razor; unfortunately, this is another law that is commonly misapplied.

Occam’s Razor states that given any choice, the option with the least assumptions (note: not necessarily the simplest, as it is often misquoted) is the correct choice.

In an industry in which we have numerous options to test, measure, and analyze our user interfaces, you shouldn’t need to make assumptions. Even when we don’t need extensive UX testing, we can make decisions based on other designers’ findings.

Occam’s Razor is a classic design trap: the key to avoiding it is to recognize that it’s not your assumptions that matter, it’s the users’. As such, Occam’s Razor applies to a user’s experience, not a design process.

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20 juin 2022/par Service comm.

Case Study: Redesigning Todoist for Android

Actualités, Actualités

Todoist is a to-do list app that 25 million people rely on every day to keep their lives organized. As part of the Doist design team’s goals for 2021, we aimed to redesign the Todoist Android app to take advantage of the latest Google Material Design guidelines.

In this post, we cover the design decisions and processes behind redesigning the Todoist Android app for Material Design. We explore the Design and Android team’s collaboration practices that brought the app update to life, which resulted in winning the Material Design Award 2021 in the large screen category. Let’s get started!

Opportunity

When we started the project, our design implementation on Android was ready for a major overhaul. The last milestone redesign on Android was initiated after the release of the first Material Design guidelines in 2016. Since then the team successfully worked on continuous improvements to the Android app, but we saw the opportunity to improve Todoist on Android on a more holistic level.

We set out to clean up instances of older UI components, colors, and text styles and update them with the latest Material Design components. We observed that some interactions and navigational patterns had become inconsistent with what users were expecting on newer Android devices and were eager to modernize this experience. With new hardware and software changes in mind, we set out to make the experience on larger phones and tablets even better, so Todoist could take full advantage of the latest generation of devices. Material 2 and 3 provided an incredible new framework to rethink the current app experience. With this in mind, we set out to challenge what a modern Android app should look like and innovate on top of the default user experience.

Solution

The team set itself the goal of redesigning our Todoist Android app and aspiring to make it the best-designed productivity app on Android. The project was ambitious and scheduled to take several months to complete. We set ourselves the following targets while working on the project:

Review the current implementation and older design specs.
Study the latest Material Design Guidelines and assess what is relevant for our project.
Research great Material Design apps and case studies and learn from their execution.
Define the new Todoist Android app design language and document the changes.
Design and development work together to assess the proposed solution and implementation.
Test an early version of the new app internally to gather feedback and make adjustments.
Invite beta testers to the new app to gather feedback and make adjustments.
Refine the app and address core issues before launching to the public.

Review

The project was kicked off by reviewing the current Todoist Android app implementation, noting down what areas needed to be fixed and what was up to date. While reviewing, we took screenshots of the app implementation for reference. This way we could easily see the current state of the app and compare it to the new design proposals that would be created. Once the review process was finalized, we had a comprehensive overview of the current state of the app and the layout, component, and styling changes we wanted to make.

Study

We continued the project by studying the latest Material Design Guidelines, assessing the components and practices that were most relevant to Todoist.

When the project kicked off in February 2021, Material 2 was the most recent version of their design system. Since Material 2 had already been released for quite some time, we anticipated that design changes to Material would be announced soon at the Google I/O event in May 2021. Rather than wait, because we expected the changes to be iterative, we pushed ahead with our work.

We identified 25 components and UI patterns that we wanted to change across the app. The changes included buttons, forms, menus, sheets, navigation drawer, app bar, system bars, text and color styles, and more. We started by creating a table view in a Dropbox Paper document with the component changes and references links to Google’s Material Design Guidelines.

This components list was a starting point for discussion to plan the scope and complexity of the changes. Close async discussions between the design and development team in Twist and Dropbox Paper comments helped us make decisions about scope and complexity early on and set a solid foundation for the project.

Research

In the initial Material Design study, we also researched inspiring Material Design apps, Material studies, Play Store apps, and Google Workspace apps to learn from their execution.

We started out by studying the Material Design Award Winners 2020 and tested out the products that were showcased. The showcased winners struck a good balance between implementing the Material Design Guidelines while maintaining their own product’s brand within the system. This balance between Google’s guidelines and the Todoist brand was also key for us to get right and so we strived to find this mix across the work we created and implemented in the project.

Along with the MDA winners, we researched the Material Studies that Google produced to showcase what apps could look like with branding and Material Design guidelines applied. It was a great reference to see how far components could be customized while maintaining the core platform principles. The Reply case study in particular offered valuable insight to us as its content type and layout came closest to Todoist. It showcased how components like the app bar, navigation drawer, and large screen layouts worked while being customized.

We continued our research by searching the Google Play store for inspiring app examples. Google Tasks, Press, Periodic Table, and Kayak stood out to us as the level of polish and quality of the apps were on par with the experience we were aspiring to create.

Sometime later in the project when Material You was released (more on that later), we stumbled upon the Google Workspace apps blog post which previewed Material 3 changes that Google was introducing to their own products. It offered a great glimpse at what was to come before the Material 3 Design Guidelines were officially released. This post sparked new internal discussions and further design explorations that we considered for future Todoist Android updates.

Design Spec

As we started to define the new Todoist Android app design language and document the changes, we opted to create a design framework, focusing on creating components rather than designing every screen in the app. This allowed us to consistently apply the design system in the app. We did so by using the previously defined component list that we created during the review and study process.

Core screens from different areas of the app were chosen to demonstrate how the components could be applied. We chose to mock up the Todoist project view, navigation drawer menu, project view edit screen, settings, and project detail view, among others. These screens gave us a good overview of how buttons, forms, drawers, lists, and other components would work together and in different states; selected, pressed, disabled, etc.

During the project, we were transitioning our Doist design system to Figma and started creating our first components in the new Doist Product Android Library. We started by using some components from the Material Design UI kit – Components library from the official Google Figma resource file and added them to our Doist design system. We then continued to build up the Product Android Library file with our Todoist-specific components such as task list & board views, detail views, sheets, colors, typography, etc.

We continued by documenting color and typography changes that were based on the Material Design guidelines. The design team opted to implement a new Design Token framework that would share the same values between our design system and the development implementation. The development team would output the values they had in the current implementation and the design team would analyze which values were needed and which could be merged, changed, or deleted. This informed the new Design Token color and typography system which we then documented and discussed with the team to implement. Later in the project, we were happy to see a similar token system introduced by Material 3 in the latest guidelines which validated our thinking and principles behind the new design system.

The design documentation expanded to hold other edge-case mockups that could sit alongside the design system. We documented different responsive screen experiences between phones and tablets against the previous implementation. Additional sections were created to document the motion that should be used for certain components and screens by referencing existing Material Design guidelines examples or prototyping custom motion in Principle and After Effects. The design spec also touched on haptic feedback that should appear on touch targets, how dark mode should work across the new components, documenting Todoist themes within the new design language, and more.

Design Implementation

At Doist, the benefit of the squad is that cross-team collaboration is built into the make-up of the team. Designers, developers, support, and product managers work together in a squad to deliver the project. This close collaboration from the start is key to bridging the gap between scope, estimations, design, development, and delivery. The squad discussed their findings on a daily basis and came up with the best plan of action together.

Designers started by creating components in Figma and shared them with developers in Dropbox Paper. We used screenshots to document the current implementation next to the new designs and linked to the default Google Material Design components. This allowed the team to compare all references in one place. Developers shared their feedback, adjustments would be brainstormed together as the designs were iterated.

Designers on the project would share their work in progress on a weekly basis with the rest of the design team in a design review Twist thread. Here details about the designs were discussed, alternatives mocked up and bigger picture plans made. Design reviews brought up topics like FAB (Floating Action Button) placement, theme options, accent color usage on components, consistency with other platforms, navigation options, and shadow elevation. After thorough discussions and alternative mockups were presented, the design team aimed to find the right balance between Material Design and Todoist brand guidelines. The development team, also part of the design reviews, gave their feedback on the solution and raised technical complexities early on.

Eventually, the design was stabilized and consistencies updated across components and mockups. The design spec was kept up to date so the development team could always review the latest designs in Figma.

Testing

As soon as the development process started, the Android team provided early screenshots and videos in Twist threads while they were implementing the design spec. This practice allowed us to review the app implementation early and often. Designers could review the development work and share feedback in Twist, which resulted in getting the implementation to a high quality. Alongside Twist discussions, the team set up a Todoist project to track ongoing issues and fix bugs. Designers logged new issues, developers would solve them and share the new implementation for designers to review.

When the team had the first stable version of the Android app, we shared it internally at Doist to get more insight and feedback. Other Doisters could access the redesign via a feature flag that could be turned on in the app settings and test the new version for however long they wanted. The feature flag system allowed people to give us early feedback on the design decisions we made and report bugs. Feedback was submitted by the wider team through a dedicated Twist thread and designers and developers could discuss how best to address the feedback during the active project implementation.

After we refined the app implementation further and addressed early feedback we opened up the app update to our beta users. Here users had access to the new Android redesign and were able to give us feedback. Our support team gathered feedback and shared it with us in a dedicated Twist thread. The squad aimed to analyze every comment and looked for patterns where we could make tweaks and improvements to the user experience.

As part of these tweaks, we made changes to how the bottom bar and navigation drawer worked. Some users reported frustrations with the way the new bottom navigation and menu drawer worked. In its first implementation, the drawer was half raised when opened and had to be swiped up to be raised again to see the full content list. This was an issue for some users as it was slower to get to the content below the list. So we decided to fully raise the drawer by default when opening. We also made it easier to open the navigation drawer by sliding up from the bottom app bar. This was a small shortcut but it enabled users to get to their content faster.

Material You

While we were in the testing phase and about to wrap up the project, Google unveiled Material You, and sometime later the Material 3 Guidelines were published. With the newly announced resources, we went back to study the latest guidelines and references we could find to see where the Todoist Android app redesign fits in and which adjustments we might need to make now or in the future.

Dynamic Color was a big new feature that was announced as part of the Material You update. As Todoist supports many different themes the Material You Dynamic Color feature seemed like a good fit for our product. We decided to prioritize this feature and implement Dynamic Color light and dark themes as part of our Todoist theme settings options.

To implement Dynamic Color, the development team started off by creating a demo prototype that utilized the Dynamic Color system and showcased how we could select from a range of color choices that the system defined based on the wallpaper choice. From there, we tried to incorporate system behavior in our design mockups. We designed a range of different color mockups and components to see which ones could fit with which components. We then came up with a color system that worked for the Todoist app and the new themes. These new Dynamic Color themes would sit alongside our current theme options in the Todoist app settings. From here users could choose between Dynamic Color Light and Dark themes.

Along with Dynamic Color, the team also created a customizable bottom app bar, allowing users to set up the app in a way that’s most convenient to their workflow. The location of the Dynamic Add Button can be changed to the center, left, or right corner of the screen. The order of the Menu, Search, and Notification buttons can be rearranged to best fit the ergonomics of the user’s dominant (left or right) hand and optimize their navigation patterns.

Launch

As critical beta feedback was addressed and stability tweaks were made, the squad felt ready to release the new Todoist Android app to the public. The team logged the issues that could not immediately be addressed for future reviews and updates.

The design and marketing team readied the launch by creating What’s New banner artwork and copy that are displayed within the app when launching the update. The Doist marketing team also created release notes and shared the app update announcements on our social channels. The brand and product design team worked together to create custom image assets and copy that summarised the project work in a simple and beautiful way.

What’s Next: Material 3

After a successful launch of the redesigned Todoist for Android app, Google contacted Doist to announce that Todoist was selected as the Material Design Award 2021 winner in the Large Screen category. The team was excited to be recognized for their hard work and it felt like we achieved the goal we had set out to accomplish.

Internally, designers and developers continued to study and discuss the Material 3 updates. The design team started exploring mockups and design changes inspired by Material 3 and Google’s Workspace app updates. Some of our current Todoist explorations include changing the FAB styling, updating the app bar, further removing elevation shadows, and more. Here is a preview of what a future Todoist update could look like.

We hope these insights into Doist’s design process and collaboration practices have sparked your interest. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for future design updates!

Takeaways

Study the Material guidelines, Material Design winners, Material studies, and Google Workspace apps to make informed design decisions when designing your next product or app update.
Evaluate which Material Design components and practices are right for you and implement them into your product.
Carefully balance the Material Design guidelines with your brand guidelines to create a unique and consistent experience between your product and the platform it lives on.
Collaborate with your Android developers early and often to ship app updates efficiently and increase the design implementation quality.
Use design components and build a design system along with practical mockups to create an efficient design spec.
Consider how the latest Android features fit into your product and which have the most impact on your users before deciding to implement them.
Test and review builds with your internal team and external beta users to get valuable feedback and make adjustments before releasing them to the public.
Create announcement artwork to showcase your latest app or feature update along with a clear description to share in-app and on social media.

Source

The post Case Study: Redesigning Todoist for Android first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

13 avril 2022/par Service comm.

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