Articles


Dart is a client-optimized language for developing fast apps on any platform. Its goal is to offer the most productive programming language for multi-platform development, paired with a flexible execution runtime platform for app frameworks.

MQTT is a lightweight IoT messaging protocol based on publish/subscribe model, which can provide real-time and reliable messaging services for connected devices with minimal code and bandwidth. It is widely used in industries, such as IoT, mobile Internet, smart hardware, Internet of vehicles, and power and energy.

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Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook — virtually every major brand nowadays uses live streaming to connect and engage their audience. For enterprises and developers building cloud-native applications, this growing trend creates a need for streaming technologies that can reliably handle the rush of massive amounts of data, while also being flexible and easy to manage for developers.

One such technology is Apache Pulsar® — an open-source, distributed messaging and streaming platform that’s easy to deploy, simple to scale, and packed with developer-friendly APIs. So the next question is: how can you stream from Pulsar to Apache Cassandra®, the powerful NoSQL database designed to support data-heavy applications in the cloud?

Join our beginner-friendly Pulsar workshop on YouTube and learn how to connect Pulsar with Cassandra for streaming! In this post, we’ll set the scene with an introduction to Pulsar and guide you through four hands-on exercises where you’ll use these free, cloud-native technologies: Katacoda, Kesque, GitPod, and DataStax Astra DB. Each exercise will also be linked to the step-by-step instructions on the DataStax Developers GitHub wiki.

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Two of the most popular message brokers used today are Kafka and those based around JMS. JMS is a long-standing Java API used generally for developing messaging applications, with its primary function of being able to send messages between two or more clients. Kafka, on the other hand, is a distributed streaming platform that provides a lot of scalabilities and is useful for real-time data processing. 

While both offer their own advantages and are highly useful in their own right, which of the two should you be actually using?

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An unreliable, semi-broken and unresponsive website is an excellent way to lose leads and visitors — regardless of how aesthetically pleasing or well-designed, the visual elements are.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen more initiative to deliver faster internet to regions of the world that were previously devoid of it. With online communities expanding and more people becoming receptive to online shopping, ensuring your site’s dependability is now more important than ever. 

One way to achieve this is by employing uptime and downtime monitoring tools. This guide will examine the best ways to get alerts when something goes wrong and your website falters.

Why Is Website Uptime Monitoring Important?

Downtime is bound to occur occasionally. Nonetheless, the goal is to minimize it. The longer the downtime occurs, the more traffic and potential clients you lose. A dysfunctional website is also detrimental to your credibility and reputation. People may associate your website’s unreliability with your real-world products or services.

With web developers charging an average of $200 per hour, high-quality websites can be expensive to build and maintain. Nevertheless, it’s often worth the investment. However, an unreliable website can backfire on you. Instead of attracting more customers, it could potentially repel them. This can result in lost revenue.

An uptime monitoring solution can help you prevent or reduce these losses. It verifies if your website is up and functional and notifies you if it’s not. This allows you to troubleshoot the issue and get your website back up and running as soon as you’re alerted. The most common issues behind your website’s downtime include: 

  • Server faults;
  • Network outages;
  • Power outage;
  • Traffic spikes;
  • Cyberattacks;
  • Domain name issues;
  • An erroneous web application deployment;
  • Increased server loads;
  • DNS Resolve issues;
  • Human error.

Thus, you must employ a dependable tool that detects downtime or any interruptions related to your website as soon as they occur. They are must-have tools for web designers, developers, and network administrators. However, not all of them are built the same. So how do you identify the best uptime monitoring tools?

Essential Features of Uptime Monitoring Tools

Uptime monitoring tools typically detect interruptions by running network tests such as pings and trace routes. You could practically monitor your website’s uptime by constantly running these tests yourself. 

However, this isn’t an efficient way to monitor your website’s uptime. A comprehensive uptime monitoring tool will automatically monitor your website’s uptime in the background. It will then alert you through various channels as soon as it senses that your website may be down. 

Furthermore, high-quality uptime monitoring solutions tend to offer additional information regarding your website’s uptime/downtime and its performance. These tools commonly feature dashboards, status pages, badges, exportable records, etc., to help you keep track of your site’s overall health.

9 Best Features of an Uptime Monitoring Solution

The ideal uptime monitoring tool or service should feature: 

  1. Website security features that notify of and repel potential cyber attacks;
  2. 24/7 uninterrupted background website monitoring;
  3. Multi-channel alerts (email, SMS, push notifications, instant messages, social media, etc.);
  4. Report generation;
  5. 24/7 customer support available through different channels (email, phone, chat, etc.);
  6. Be capable of monitoring multiple websites and proxies at the same time;
  7. Offer insights and suggestions to improve your website’s performance;
  8. Be affordable;
  9. High customizability should allow you to choose which features to enable and disable.

Another optional feature to look out for is public status pages that your clients can access to determine if all your services are up and running. GetWeave is an excellent example of this. The website features a well-organized systems status page where customers can check if all of Weave’s services are functional. 

Nevertheless, you can use the above information as a buying guide when assessing potential uptime monitoring tools. The rest of this guide will supply a few suggestions as to which tools you should use for your website.

3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools 

Some of the best uptime monitoring tools for website downtime alerts include:

1. Uptrends

Uptrends isn’t just a downtime detection tool; it’s a complete web performance monitoring solution. It will notify you as soon as it detects any disturbance in your website’s performance. It features highly customizable checks. For instance, you can set performance check limits for load times. Uptrends will notify you instantly if your website takes too long to load.

You can also configure from which locations you want it to monitor your website. Uptrends will then point you to where your website usually suffers performance dips in the real world. 

The service uses multiple communication channels to send users notifications: email, phone calls, and SMS. Alternatively, you can download one of Uptrend’s mobile applications and receive push notifications. Additionally, you can integrate Uptrends with messaging and communication applications such as PagerDuty, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.   

Another impressive Uptrend feature is its ability to emulate your website’s performance on different browsers. It runs Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge on its servers. Thus, you can compare how your website runs on these web browsers without installing them on your servers or computer. 

Uptrends supplies users with various charts, reports, and graphs to help identify sudden spikes or dips. Waterfall reports display the complete page-load from the initial request to the last download. This allows you to compare the history of your website’s performance element by element. It comes with three price plans whose costs depend on the number of monitors you would like. Starting at $16.21 (at the time of writing) the Starter Plan is the most affordable.

2. Oh Dear

Oh Dear is a slightly cheaper option than Uptrends, with the most affordable plan starting at $12 per month (at the time of writing). However, while Uptrends offers a 30-day free trial, Oh Dear only provides a 12-day trial period. Nevertheless, Oh Dear’s interface is a lot cleaner and more minimal. 

Since Oh Dear runs servers in different locations across the globe, it can track how your website performs in various regions. Oh Dear will scan through your website and index all the pages. If it detects any issues, it will alert you immediately. 

Oh Dear also features a continuous certificate monitoring function. Site owners who are concerned with their website’s security may find this feature to be especially useful. It will verify your SSL certificate expiration dates and alert you of any changes.  

Oh Dear’s public status page enables your clients to keep track of your website’s availability.

Oh Dear uses email and SMS text messages to alert site owners of any issues. It also features integrations with communications and social media applications such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. Oh Dear ensures that messages are as detailed and user-friendly. This makes it easier to troubleshoot and find the origin of your problem. Oh Dear is more than a worthy alternative to Uptrends. 

3. WP Umbrella

WP Umbrella is a little different from the previous entries. It’s intended to help users manage and monitor multiple WordPress sites. Thus, it is far more particularized in its approach to website uptime monitoring. Again, as is the primary function of the uptime monitoring tool, it offers a real-time alert system that will contact you through email, SMS, Slack, etc. 

WP Umbrella employs a simple minimal UI. Its main screen consists of a dashboard that allows you to view all your WordPress websites. By default, this dashboard features four columns: Site, Uptime, Speed, and Issues.

WP Umbrella will alert you of any outdated or erroneous plugins or themes. While it doesn’t offer dedicated public status pages, it does have a client report generation feature. You can automatically send these reports to your various subscribers or clients when your website is down. 

WP Umbrella is the most affordable option on this list. Users are charged $1.99 per month (at the time of writing) for each website monitored. In addition, WP Umbrella offers a 14-day trial and does not require your credit card details. It’s an excellent option for anyone running a WordPress website or two.

Conclusion

This guide has only explored three possible uptime monitoring solutions. They won’t only assist you in detecting downtimes, they can also help you find the reason your site may be slow.

These solutions are an excellent place to start. But there are many other options coming to market all the time. You may find that this is the first step to converting more leads and reducing your bounce rate. 

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The post 3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools  first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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Automation is the theme of this month’s collection of exciting new tools for designers and developers. There are tools to make your images better, tools to create illustrations, and tools to make your workflow more efficient. Plus, a whole host of tools that are just plain fun.

Here’s what is new for designers this month…

designstripe

designstripe lets you create beautiful illustrations with no design skills. Drag and drop different elements into place, then customize them for your brand.

DesignMaestro

DesignMaestro is a free keyboard extension app that lets you automate the tasks you repeat daily. Set up a macro with a keyboard shortcut, and tap the shortcut to perform the action.

Ghost 5.0

Ghost is one of the best personal blogging platforms around, and version 5 enhances it with custom code, support for video, and performance upgrades.

Yep

Yep is a new search engine from the makers of Ahrefs. Built from the ground up, Yep will give 90% of its ad revenue to content creators.

The CTO Field Guide

The CTO Field Guide is a free ebook for anyone newly promoted to a technology officer role or looking for a tech leadership role. It’s a simple guide to making the most of your first 90 days on the job.

ASCII Art Paint

ASCII Art Paint is a free, open-source web app for creating images made up of text characters and hieroglyphs. It’s a great way to add pictures to text-only formats.

Effekt

Make your own fun, wallpaper art at up to 8k resolution using Effekt, a mix between an image editor and a visual toy.

Animatiss

Animatiss is a fantastic collection of CSS animations that you can use for free. Tailor the speed of the animation, preview it, then copy and paste the code into your project.

Skiff

Skiff Mail is an email app that features end-to-end encryption. This means your email stays private and secure, so you’re free to discuss sensitive matters.

Super Designer Tools

Super Designer is a collection of design tools for performing simple tasks. There’s a background generator, a pattern generator, a blob generator, and more—all free to use.

Web UI

Web UI is a collection of UI kits and templates for Figma and Adobe XD. Most designs are free to download and use for projects, and some require payment.

Free Online Background Remover

Use this free online background remover to quickly and easily delete the background of photos, leaving you free to paste the foreground over flat colors, gradients, or even different backgrounds.

Untitled UI Icons

Untitled UI Icons is a set of clean, consistent, and neutral icons made for Figma in Figma. There are 3,500 icons in total. The line style is free to download.

OS

Turn your Mac or iPhone into an old-school Macintosh with this retro wallpaper and icon set, and transport yourself back to 1984. OS is a premium download.

Shrink.media

Shrink.media is a free app for web, iOS, and Android that lets you reduce the size of your image file size and dimensions to reduce its footprint.

3D Avatars

This big library of 3D avatars is perfect for any project that needs staff images. There are different ethnicities, clothing, facial expressions, and accessories, so you never run out of options.

Felt

Felt is a modern map maker for the web that gives you more control, more design options, and easier sharing than Google maps.

SureScan

SureScan is a helpful app that hunts through terms and conditions for dubious conditions on your behalf, so you can spend your time doing something less boring.

Reform

Reform is a no-code form builder that you can use to create clean, branded forms for your business without any design or code skills.

Copy Foundry

Discover how the best brands evolve their messaging over time with Copy Foundry, a brand positioning, and copywriting library to help your products stand out.

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The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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This month all of our web design trends have a common theme – imagery. Whether it’s seasonal or just coincidence, there’s a shift in the styles and types of images on many designs right now. One thing that might push these design trends is a relaxation of COVID-spurred rules worldwide or even fatigue from the pandemic.

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

1. Little Images Everywhere

The jury is still out on whether we love or hate this design trend – tiny images (and videos) everywhere.

The thing that’s nice is there is a lot to see and interact with. The thing that’s challenging is that these designs can feel a bit unbalanced and all over the place.

Most of these designs feature four or more images or videos at a time. That can be a lot for a user to digest when we are accustomed to having just one thing to look at in the hero area.

Those four or more images then include all of the other user interface elements that you would expect on the page – navigation, large headline, secondary text, scroll, or engagement interaction. It can be a lot to decipher.

Tokyu Garden City does it with a mix of still and moving images with sliders and other animations. The images are always changing and moving, and there’s constantly something new to look at with movement at the top and bottom of the screen.

Buro Jantzen takes the tiny image idea to an extreme with ten images on the homepage. And every one is smaller than a postage stamp. There is a cool effect that happens with each image though. On hover, the small image pops into the large black box at a size where you can really see the photo.

Oliver Guy uses a combination of video images on his website, which makes perfect sense for his industry of drone photography. There’s some interesting hover animation happening that allows you to see additional video clips without leaving the homepage. The contrast of small video on the white background makes this design easy to understand.

 

 

2. Big Detail Photography

Photographic details in all their glory. Images and elements that are so in your face that you can see every detail. That’s majorly trending in website design.

Big detail photography and videography is one of those image trends that can be so visually interesting that you can’t look away. It has other benefits, too, such as facilitating decision-making for e-commerce or helping someone better understand what an item is or the overall messaging.

Each of these examples shows something larger than life-size.

Karak creates ceramic tiles. The primary background image is so big and with such detail that it almost only serves as texture for the design. But it is paired with a smaller image and video that pull everything together for a complete understanding. The big detail image is beautiful and exciting and provides an extra layer of information.

Wuillemin Fleuristes features an off-balanced hero image with a large floral detail. What’s interesting about this design choice for a detail image is that it is the only image on the screen and partially obscured by a tinted box and text element. The overall design draws the eye but may leave the user wanting to see a little more of the image.

Horage pushes its watch in your face with motion in a video that zooms the product closer and closer into view. The combination of detailed video with very little text is a bold choice for e-commerce and might work because this item is still in the preorder phase. Detailed imaging is designed to help create a desire for the product.

 

 

3. Big Faces are Back

After two years of not having that many faces in design projects, designers are going big and bold and showing people again.

One of the reasons we haven’t seen as many faces in design projects is because there was concern over how to show people – masked or maskless, alone or in crowds – and it caused more concern than was worth just going another way.

But projects with big faces are back in a major way. And it’s refreshing to make virtual eye contact again.

There are plenty of ways to do it, as outlined in each of these examples.

Glassbox Media uses a full-screen oversized video on the homepage. You can see the subject’s eyes and feel engaged with the person on the screen. She seems happy, and the size and scale of the face make you feel almost like you are in a room with her, ready to have a conversation.

Reamarie uses smaller still images with tight crops to bring you into the faces on the screen. There are more, bigger faces throughout the scroll as well so that the user feels connected to the people and product. Even if an image isn’t super large, a tight crop can make it feel bigger and create the same level of engagement as something that has more size on the screen.

Recruit Holdings Co. uses a trio of people together, happy and smiling, to establish a connection with website visitors. The entire design features similar images throughout and makes you feel like you want to be a part of what they are offering. Note that the people are close together and without masks; that’s a culture shift we are starting to see in a lot of imagery.

 

 

Conclusion

Photography, videography, and image trends can be driving factors for website design projects. The types of images selected can set the tone for projects, relate to brand identity, and help engage users.

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The post 3 Essential Design Trends, March 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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SQLite is an often overlooked flavor of SQL engines. Some have suggested it is the most prolific SQL engine in existence due to its highly flexible nature and ability to run on almost any platform with limited resources. Unlike other SQL engines like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, or Oracle, SQLite runs without a server. SQLite does not rely on a data directory or a constantly running daemon: a database is encapsulated in a single file.

SQLite and iMessage

iMessage is one of the most popular messaging platforms today, largely because it is built into iOS and Mac devices. Since its release, it has evolved significantly. But, at its core, it is simply an instant messaging platform. iMessage uses SQLite in the background to store relational data about messages, conversations, and their participants.

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