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Popular Design News of the Week: February 14, 2022 – February 20, 2022

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.
The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!”

15 Websites with Inspiring Menu Design

Boardy – Dashboards for Everyone

42 Card Effects CSS for Websites

20 Best New Websites, February 2022

Move Over JavaScript: Back-end Languages are Coming to the Front-end

UI Generator – Get Mockup UI in Seconds

50 Cool Web and Mobile Project Ideas for 2022

These are the Highest-paying Design Jobs in 2022

Top Trends in Product Design for 2022

Pppointed – SVG Arrow Maker for all Kinds of Decorative Arrow Styles

Simple.ink – Build Websites with Notion in ~10 Sec

The React Cheatsheet for 2022

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

20 février 2022/par Service comm.

How to Prepare for the Immersive Web

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Websites as we know them are going to change very soon. The days of text, images, and basic interactions in a 2D browser window have served us well, but virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences are getting better all the time. Developers and designers need to think beyond the browser window and prepare for an immersive future.

Many have been very skeptical about VR and AR in the past because despite grand promises about what they would achieve, they’ve mostly failed to deliver on the scale that the industry hoped for.

But it’s different this time: industry leaders like Meta, Apple, and Microsoft are pursuing a range of different mixed reality projects; they see the opportunity and are dropping hints about what’s next.

In a survey from Perkins Coie LLP and the XR Association, nearly 9 in 10 respondents said that by the year 2025, immersive technologies—including augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality — will be as ubiquitous as mobile devices.

That’s a bold prediction, but it could be our new reality.

Use Cases

VR and AR aren’t a logical fit for every website, and that’s fine. There’s no need to force an immersive experience on something better suited to a standard viewing experience.

But when they’re done right, 3D experiences can add a lot to your website. Check out the demo experience from Mozilla, the 3D tours from Matterport, and the immersive storytelling from Within.

Here are a few areas where these technologies shine:

Retail – VR can be used to provide a virtual showroom where customers browse through products. AR can even bring the products into your home by showing you how a piece of furniture will fit in your room, what a painting will look like on your wall, or in Apple’s case, how a product will look on your desk.
News – Coverage of events can be enriched by providing a 360-degree view and placing viewers in the center of the story.
Training – AR can generate virtual overlays over physical equipment so employees can have hands-on training that’s more effective.

Define Your Platform

Adding immersive experiences to your website will require various skills based on what you’re trying to create. Whether you’re new to web development or are a seasoned developer with many years of experience, the main difference from classic web development is that you’re switching from a 2D to a 3D experience. Development in VR/AR is much closer to developing 3D video games than creating web applications.

First of all, you need to decide on the hardware that you’re building for. Are your viewers mainly using computers, smartphones, or a headset like the Oculus Quest? Each hardware category offers a different set of capabilities for what’s possible.

Next, when we look at 3D engines and frameworks on the market, some big names like Unity, Unreal Engine, and CRYENGINE stand out. Most of these engines were spun out of game development and are based on programming languages like C, C++, or C#. While very powerful, they’re overkill for anyone trying to create a basic immersive web experience.

The good news for web developers is that the WebXR Device API is an open standard specified by the W3C with a JavaScript API that makes immersive experiences possible in the browser. So if you already have a background in web development, you can use your knowledge of JavaScript to get started.

There are some useful frameworks and platforms that make working with WebXR more convenient:

A-Frame – A web framework for building 3D experiences.
React 360 – A framework for the creation of interactive 360-degree experiences that run in the web browser. As the name already suggests, it builds on React and reuses the concepts you already know.
Amazon Sumerian – A managed service that lets you create and run 3D, AR, and VR applications. Since it’s integrated into the AWS ecosystem, it’s also possible to add AI-enabled elements into your generated world.

Create Your Content

No one wants to read long blocks of text in 3D. Since we’re talking about visual experiences, it’s logical that the emphasis should be on creating content that is pleasing to the eye and interesting to look at. What works on a normal website probably isn’t going to feel natural in a 3D environment, so you need to decide what visuals you should create to suit the format.

What high-resolution images and assets do you need? Can you add videos? How about 360-degree videos? Will viewers just be looking at something, or will they be able to interact with it?

You also can’t forget about sound because it’s a critical part of immersive experiences. What music and sounds should you create to make the content come alive?

Not everyone is going to have the latest and greatest device or 5G coverage. The requirements for bandwidth and transmission quality are much higher with 3D content. A few milliseconds of latency can go unnoticed on a typical website, but in a VR/AR setting, it can make the experience laggy or unusable.

Try to optimize your content to be the highest quality it can be within a reasonable file size. If the experience starts to suffer from too many assets downloading at the same time, it’s better to create a more streamlined experience that maintains a high performance rate.

It’s important to consider your hosting infrastructure, as well. This shouldn’t be a big problem, but it is worth mentioning that you need to add new content types to your configurations, and your CDN needs to support these new types, too.

Make Your Content Flexible

When we’re talking about getting your website ready for immersive experiences, we’re not just talking about having people scroll through your regular website in VR. That isn’t compelling for your audience.

The idea is to take some content that’s already on your website and separate it from the presentation layer so you can use it in a 3D environment or any other platform that you want. Classic content management takes place in silos, which means you cannot easily reuse the content from your website.

This separation can be achieved by using a classic database, but if you want developers and content teams to collaborate, a headless CMS is front-end agnostic and more user friendly.

Start Experimenting Today

Building 3D content experiences may seem intimidating, but as we’ve seen, you likely already have the web development skills necessary to get started and try out some different ideas.

What you build today will prepare you for the 3D future of tomorrow.

Featured image via Pexels.

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The post How to Prepare for the Immersive Web first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

8 décembre 2021/par Service comm.

Is it Time to Transition to JAMStack?

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Jamstack (JAMstack), is one of the most popular (and rapidly growing) tools for app and website creation. A unique ecosystem of functionality, Jamstack promises developers the support they need to create powerful websites and progressive applications.

For a while, Jamstack was mostly written off as just another buzzword in the developer space. However, today, it’s growing to become a powerful investment for many business leaders. Even big companies are getting involved, like Cloudflare, with Cloudflare pages, and Microsoft with Azure Static Web Apps. Elsewhere, we’ve seen brands like Shopify, PayPal, and Nike getting involved too.

So, what exactly is Jamstack, and is it time you transitioned over? Let’s find out…

What is Jamstack?

Jamstack, otherwise known as “JAMstack,” is the name of a developer ecosystem made up of JavaScript, APIs, and Markup (hence: JAM). The solution is a web development architecture allowing developers to access static website benefits, such as higher security and better performance, while still unlocking dynamic database-oriented CMS.

The Jamstack solution allows companies and developers to build a dynamic website where real assets are pre-rendered static files in a CDN. The dynamic environment runs on JavaScript client-side, through serverless functions.

For a better insight, let’s compare Jamstack to the LAMP stack development strategy, which originated from the four open-source components many developers used to build sites: Linux, Apache HTTP, MySQL, and PHP.

With LAMP, each user request for a page forces the server to query a database — unless the page is cached — and combine the result with page markup data and plugins. Jamstack websites serve pre-built optimized assets and markup solutions quickly because the files are already compiled on a CDN. There’s no need to query the database.

Jamstack workflows dramatically reduce cumbersome issues with development and excess maintenance, making them highly appealing to developers.

What Are the Benefits of Jamstack?

Jamstack won’t be the ideal development tool for everyone, but it has a lot of benefits to offer. By fetching HTML from a CDN, the system doesn’t have to wait for HTML to be combined and returned to clients. The solution also provides an improved developer experience with static methods.

Using Jamstack, developers can build fantastic static files ready to serve by request, hosted on a global CDN. Some of the biggest benefits of Jamstack include:

Performance: Because you’re serving pre-built static files from a CDN directly, you’ll achieve much faster loading times, unmatched by typical server-side rendering options. Because you’re serving static files, you’re also better equipped to handle any traffic spikes you might encounter, with minimal slowdown.
User experience: Better website performance significantly improves user experience and website traffic, as well as SEO efforts. User experience has always been a critical factor in ensuring the success of a website, and it’s essential to keeping your customers around for as long as possible. Websites optimized for performance will always delight users.
Security: With Jamstack, there are no servers or databases to worry about. You use third-party solutions to handle these issues for you. The architecture of Jamstack means the back and front end of your development processes are decoupled, and you can rely on APIs to run server-side processes easily. Jamstack also comes with security benefits other approaches can lack. Clear separation of services is essential here.
Hosting and scaling: Scaling and hosting can often be problematic in the development world, but because you’re serving files from a CDN, you’re less likely to encounter issues. CDNs are almost infinitely scalable, so you get excellent extensibility built into your development environment. CDN hosting for static files is also cheaper than traditional hosting, so you can keep costs low.
Maintenance: Jamstack makes it easy to push your front end to the edge rather than managing infrastructure directly. Ditching plugins, databases, and other hosting services can help you to save more time and money on a significant scale.
Developer experience: From a developer perspective, there are tons of benefits from Jamstack. You get the ease of a Github, CI/CD, CDN flow, and auto previews with simple rollback to reduce the need for backups. Local developer environments and the ability to run and debug cloud functions locally are all fantastic.

Does Jamstack Have any Limitations?

In a lot of ways, Jamstack is an innovative and revolutionary solution for development. It can help you to create a far more engaging website and present your company in an incredible way. Of course, that doesn’t mean there are no limitations to be aware of.

Jamstack is developer-friendly, for instance, but it’s not beginner-friendly. You will need at least some knowledge of web development to start unlocking the benefits. You’ll need to understand things like Vue or React, but you should develop a tool anyone can use with a bit of work.

There’s also a handful of things you can’t pre-generate, like user-specific and real-time data. So, this means you may not be able to use Jamstack effectively on projects requiring these kinds of data. Building an analytics dashboard, for instance, probably isn’t a good idea with Jamstack. Other issues for some developers may include:

API complexity: It can be overwhelming to try and find the right solution for your needs among so many different options. Of course, this could also be something you’d say about the WordPress ecosystem and its huge variety of plugins. An API usually won’t break your production website, at least.
Long building processes: If you have a large number of pages, there’s more likely to be an extensive building process to think about. Whenever you make a change to a single page, even a little one, you’ll need to rebuild your entire website. This is a problem if you run into a website with thousands of pages. There are solutions to this problem available, however.
Handling dynamics: Going with Jamstack doesn’t mean abandoning your backend. An important part of the approach is accessing serverless functions, which are becoming more effective over time. These serverless functions can also be executed on the edge. The backend parts of your website will require regular maintenance as they scale.

Best Jamstack Tools to Check Out

Now you know the basics of Jamstack, let’s look at some of the tools you can use to design an incredible website or application within the Jamstack environment.

The Git Tool Landscape

There are tons of tools within the Git ecosystem common among Jamstack developers. Starting with Git itself. Git represents a powerful free, and open-sourced distributed version control system. With this solution, companies can handle everything from small to enterprise-level projects with efficiency and speed. The solution is extremely easy to use and learn, and outclasses a range of tools like Perforce, ClearCase and Subversion.

GitHub Pages and GitLab pages are two hosting services for Git repositories with built-in services to host static pages from out of your codebase. This makes the two solutions fantastic for when you’re building a Jamstack website. You can access the functionality for free too.

GitLab gives you a comprehensive DevOps platform to work with, where you can enjoy a comprehensive CI/CD toolchain out of the box. The comprehensive solution, delivered as a single application, changes the way security, development, and Ops teams integrate and collaborate. Gitlab helps to accelerate software delivery on a massive scale.

AWS Amplify

AWS Amplify, created by Amazon Web Services, is a development platform packed full of useful features for people in the Jamstack environment. The Amplify offering aims to reduce the complexities associated with Amazon Web Services for mobile and web deployment. You get 12 months of hosting for free with new accounts, and you get Storage with Amplify too.

The Amazon Amplify solution dramatically improves the regular AWS workflow, especially if you’re just a novice user. There’s a huge documentation hub to help you too, which is way more convenient than Amazon’s usual documentation solutions. Amplify is still accessed from a somewhat bloated console, however.

With AWS Amplify, companies can access features like a comprehensive data store to sync data between the cloud and websites. There’s also easy-to-use interface access across all different categories of cloud operations. The service works well with a range of JavaScript central tools.

Netlify

Netlify is a pioneering solution in the Jamstack environment, allowing users to go dynamic with their websites and applications on their own terms. You can access a range of add-ons and integration, access your favorite tools, and make your own. The flexible environment enables developers to run websites on a multi-cloud infrastructure designed for speed and scale automation.

Built to be entirely secure from the ground up, Netlify makes it easy to build a site that’s custom-made for performance and deployed directly. You don’t need to worry about managing, scaling and patching web services, which means you can more quickly implement your Jamstack architecture.

Unlike other large legacy apps, Jamstack projects are neatly separate from your front-end pages and UI from the backend databases and apps with Netlify. Using this service, the entire front-end can be pre-built with highly optimized static assets and pages, and developers can deliver new web projects faster than ever before.

Next.JS

Inspired by the functionality of PHP, Next.JS is a solution for pre-rendered JavaScript modules. The solution allows developers to easily export the components of their apps and perform individual tests to determine how each element works. You can also access a wide range of components and modules from NPM. The Next offering allows developers to save time, removing the need to use webpack bundles and transform with compilers.

The full solution is extremely intuitive, ensuring developers can create solutions quickly. What’s more, the technology you build will allow you to load only the bundle needed from your JavaScript workflow, rather than all the JavaScript at once. Pre-fetching, one of the features of Next.JS, also picks up where standard code-splitting leaves off, allowing for optimized bundles of code to load seamlessly.

Next.JS also supports hot-module replacement. This means instead of reloading an entire application when you change the code, you only recreate the modules you’ve altered.

Angular

Probably the most widely-recognized of all the JavaScript frameworks, Angular, designed by Google engineers, appeared first in 2012, offering developers a new way to create dynamic pages. Before this technology, there were other opportunities for creating dynamic pages, but they were nowhere near as convenient or speedy.

Angular is probably one of the most essential tools companies can use when building a Jamstack website or environment. The front-end web development tool attracts developers from all over the world. Every version is packed with features and constantly upgraded to ensure you can generate the best results.

Angular extends HTML file functionality with powerful directives, and it requires very little effort to enable these directives too. All you do is add the ng- prefix to your HTML attributes and you’re ready to go. Angular also allows developers to create widgets leveraging editable data with two-way binding. This means developers don’t have to write code that syncs constantly between the model and view.

With Angular, developers also get access to things like virtual scrolling, which can help with displaying large lists of elements performantly, rendering on the items that fit on the screen to reduce loading times.

React

Another must-have tool in the JavaScript world for Jamstack, the React solution was launched first in 2013, and has won thousands of customers across the globe thanks to fantastic functionality. Today, the full landscape is maintained by Facebook, along with all the members of the standard developer community. The solution is used by some of the biggest giants in the tech industry, like Netflix, PayPal, and Apple.

React is a true pioneer in the Jamstack ecosystem, with its sensational approach to simple and straightforward solutions for JavaScript management. You’ll be able to access batched and virtual DOM updates, which makes it easier to unlock components quickly, and write your components the way you see them. There’s also the added benefit that React is compatible with a lot of tools.

You can build a comprehensive app or website with the help of React, and you’ll have no trouble accessing some of the top features, particularly with plenty of support available from the React community.

Gatsby

Created from the ground up to improve user experience on a comprehensive level, Gatsby is a static site generator with heavy focus on things like SEO, performance, and accessibility. The solution offers plenty of out-of-the-box features to help developers deliver the most immersive solution for their users, without unnecessary complexity.

Gatsby users pre-configuration to develop static websites giving developers faster loading pages, stronger code splitting, and server-side rendering. You can also access features like data prefetching, asset optimization, and quick image loading. Gatsby boasts excellent documentation and starter packs to help you get your site up and running more quickly.

The GraphQL data layer of Gatsby also means the system can collect your data from anywhere, including your CMS, JSON, Markdown, and APIs. More than just your standard site generator, this is a tool built specifically with performance in mind.

Agility CMS

Developing an effective Jamstack website means having access to the right CMS technology. Agility CMS wasn’t the first CMS solution to support Jamstack, but it is one of the better-known options. As one of the first headless CMS solutions to hit the market, the company has quickly captured the attention of a huge range of developers worldwide.

Agility CMS is a Jamstack pioneer, capable of helping developers to build a foundation for any online ecosystem. The technology is an API-first CMS with support for REST APIs, so developers can connect all the third-party apps and front-end frameworks they like.

The technology also gives developers the freedom to code their solutions their way. You don’t have to follow a specific set of guidelines for how content is created, but templates are available to fast-track development. Agility CMS also hosts and abstracts your database, so you don’t have to worry about connection strings, backups, and maintenance.

With a strong content architecture to help companies manage digital content and a partnership with Gatsby, Agility is ideal for Jamstack development strategies.

Building Your Jamstack Website

The Jamstack solution is more than just a buzzword in today’s development world. This unique approach to building incredible development experiences delivers an excellent advantage to both developers and their end-users. Fast, scalable, and full of solutions for customization, Jamstack is a powerful way to bring websites to life with simplicity and speed.

Every day, more companies take advantage of the Jamstack environment, and we’re constantly seeing a wide selection of new tools, APIs and offerings emerging to help enhance the Jamstack landscape too. This environment is definitely worth consideration for any developer looking to significantly speed up their development strategy.

Featured image via Pexels.

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The post Is it Time to Transition to JAMStack? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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25 novembre 2021/par Service comm.

Exciting New Tools For Designers, December 2021

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With the holidays fast approaching, there are plenty of fun gifts for you in this roundup of new tools and resources for web designers. Make sure to share anything you find helpful with others to spread additional holiday cheer.

Here’s what is new for designers this month…

Volley

Volley, billing itself as Snapchat for work, is a new way to collaborate with remote teams. The tool addresses the two main problems of remote teams (lack of communication and loneliness) with an async video messaging app with interactive transcriptions neatly organized into workspaces. Volley emphasizes talking over typing (76% of volleys sent are video), doesn’t require you to coordinate schedules (it’s 100% asynchronous), and lives in a threaded conversation with context that’s neatly organized. Plus, the tool is free to use.

Upnext

Upnext is a new type of reading list. It’s designed to help you save, organize, and focus on fantastic content while expanding your knowledge on your favorite topics. You can create playlists with almost any type of content that you can refer to later and follow “thinkers” that you love. Search and filter content, focus on reading, integrate videos, and even highlight and note specific content in your customized library. This brand-new web app has a waitlist that you can join to get access soon.

Startup 5

Startup 5 is a new version of the popular website builder, and it’s a perfect tool to create your online presence. With Startup, it’s fast and easy to get your business online with pre-designed blocks. It includes a visual editor with 150+ blocks with pre-designed and pre-coded elements and styles you can easily customize in a drag and drop interface. It’s an easy tool for building a website quickly without a coding background. Most users can publish a website quickly and easily.

Flatmap

Flatmap generates Mapbox Vector Tiles from geographic data sources like OpenStreetMap. It is memory-efficient so that you can build a map of the world in a few hours on a single machine without any external tools or database. Vector tiles contain raw point, line, and polygon geometries that clients like MapLibre can use to render custom maps in the browser, native apps, or a server. Flatmap packages tiles into an MBTiles (SQLite) file that can be served using tools like TileServer GL or even queried directly from the browser.

Cleanup.Pictures

Cleanup.Pictures is a web-based tool to remove objects, people, text, or other defects from your images before using them in projects. It’s an AI-based alternative to other photo-editing software.

Linkz.ai

Linkz.ai helps you make smart link preview popups for your website to help encourage greater engagement and interaction for links. It works with a line of code you can install quickly and easily, and then you get smart link previews (in two style options) for every link on your site.

Llline

Llline is an SVG generator that helps you create smooth and organic lines and strokes with plenty of customization options for almost any application. This tool helps create graphic elements in just a few clicks, allowing you to add a few points to a canvas and then draw a smooth curve using these points. You can then tweak the resulting SVG graphic by rotating it, changing its color, giving it a gradient, making it a dashed line, and then you can download or copy the SVG markup.

Lorem.Space

Lorem.Space is a valuable placeholder image tool. With just a little bit of code, you can pop cool placeholder images – from movie posters to shoes – right in your website mockup so that the design is easier to visualize. It’s a great solution that’s fun and keeps you from having to put empty boxes throughout the design. And everything can be randomized, so you don’t spend time looking for placeholders.

Huetone

Huetone can help you create more accessible color palettes by making use of the Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm. The contrast ratios and color combinations show on one screen to help you quickly develop palettes and combinations. Plus, the tool has hotkeys that make it easy to change hues, toggle, and adjust quickly. Then you can export everything to Figma.

Rowy

Rowy is an open-source tool to build on the Google Cloud Platform. You can manage Firestore data in a spreadsheet-style user interface, write Cloud Functions in the browser, and connect to third-party platforms.

AdCreative.ai

AdCreative.ai uses artificial intelligence to help create better ad creative. To get started, you upload logos and color files, connect social and other accounts, pick the sizes you need, write text, pick a background, and upload product images, and let the AI do the work. Once you have the creative you like, you can connect to your online ad accounts for easy use. This is a premium tool that’s free to try.

Flowrift

Flowrift is a tool to browse and then copy and customize Tailwind CSS blocks in groups of collections. Filter by block type and then experiment with the options. It even has e-commerce blocks.

Layout Patterns

Layout Patterns is a collection of layout patterns built using modern CSS APIs to help you build common interfaces such as cards, dynamic grid areas, and full-page layouts.

You.com

You.com is a new private search engine that summarizes the web. The tool is in open beta and includes superior privacy choices, actionable results, extensible apps, and personalization through preferred sources.

3D Icons

3D Icons is a fun set of three-dimensional, full-color icons that are free for all uses. (Donations are accepted.) They integrate with pretty much any web design tool you are using and come in four color styles – clay, gradient, color, and premium – so you can get just the right look for your project. Each icon also includes three rendering views – dynamic, side, and isometric.

Arco Design

Arco Design is a comprehensive React UI components library based on the Arco Design system. It includes a customizable theme and more than 60 crafted components that you can use out of the box.

Seekvectors.com

Seekvectors.com is a search tool to find free resources in five different formats, PNG, SVG, JPG, EPS, and AI.

Outline to Single Stroke

Outline to Single Stroke is a tool in the Figma community that works just like the name implies. Select a filled vector on the canvas, and then you can outline it to a single stroke and adjust the line weight if you like.

Codeamigo

Codeamigo is a new self-paced platform to help you learn coding skills. It’s packed with various lessons for different languages and templates and has something for every level from beginner to advanced.

Sizze

Sizze is a Figma to React Native export tool to create app prototypes and instantly export to code.

CodingFont

CodingFont is an excellent game that can help you pick a font to use for coding that you like! If you spend a lot of time looking at code each day, the right font can help reduce eye strain and make the work a little easier to see.

Christmas Revue

Christmas Revue is the first in a trio of holiday typefaces that you can use this season. This SCG color font is fun and perfect for the holidays with exciting glyphs. It is free for personal use only.

Hotsnow

Hotsnow is a fun display font that has interesting fills and shapes in an all-caps character set. It is free for personal use.

Marlwich

Marlwich is a feminine handwriting-style typeface that has the feel of signing a holiday letter or card. It contains upper- and lower-case characters and is only for non-commercial use for free. (A paid option is available for commercial projects.)

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15 novembre 2021/par Service comm.

11 Must-Follow Web Design Blogs

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Need inspiration for an upcoming web design project? Want to learn how to add live chat functionality to your site, or which trends you should be aware of as you pursue new projects? Leading web design blogs could be the solution to your problems.

Just as marketers follow posts on websites like Search Engine Land and Mashable, and tech enthusiasts read up on Hacker Noon and TechCrunch, designers have plenty of blogs worth following too. The top web design blogs are incredible sources of inspiration, information, and guidance for today’s budding professionals. You can find insights into recent web design news stories or learn how to use new components in your website content.

As one of the best resources for any designer, a good web design publication can expand your education, act as an instant muse, or give you some much-needed entertainment.

Here are our top choices for the ultimate must-follow web design blogs.

1. Webdesigner Depot

You’re already here, so obviously, you already know that Webdesigner Depot’s a comprehensive hub of tech tips, news, thought leadership posts, and inspiration. Webdesigner Depot stands out among the most popular design blogs in the world. Frequently updated with content from a series of experienced authors, Webdesigner Depot is the go-to place for designers. Here, you’ll find the latest design news, explore the pros and cons of different coding systems, and discover some of the best design resources around.

We have many categories to choose from, including coding, news, resources, SEO, inspiration, content marketing, and user experience. You can even find the occasional “funny” post or poll to take part in too.

Many of the articles produced by Webdesigner Depot also go above and beyond the competition in terms of detail and depth. If you’re learning about freelance project management apps on this site, you can expect a complete overview of each of the available apps covered, along with notes on how to choose and use these tools correctly.

Webdesigner Depot also has a newsletter you can subscribe to in order to stay informed about recent posts.

2. Smashing Magazine

Another excellent publication popular among web design professionals, Smashing Magazine, covers all kinds of helpful content. To make finding the right posts a little easier, the company organizes content by category, covering topics like user experience, web design, React, JavaScript, CSS, and accessibility. You can also search through articles with the search bar at the top of the page.

Alongside standard blogs, Smashing Magazine also produces eBooks and guides for those who need more extensive information about a specific topic. All of the content shared on this website is designed to be easy-to-read and informative. You’ll find plenty of sketches, screenshots, and images to guide you through learning experiences too.

Notably, the blog has been around since 2006, so although it has a lot of material to explore, some of the content might be a little outdated. If you want to stay up-to-date with Smashing Magazine’s latest posts, you can also subscribe to their email newsletter for once-a-week messages.

3. The Design Blog

While many of the top design blogs on the market today focus on sharing a combination of inspirational and informative content, The Design Blog is explicitly intended for inspiration. The site shares a “designer of the week” every Monday, and that person’s content is featured on the web and social networks of TDB. There’s also a quote of the week, featured video, and free resources every week.

Most of the design blog’s content is split into sections according to the days of the week. Web design Wednesday is a great section to check out if you’re looking for inspiration. The segment covers a range of well-designed websites from different niches to help guide your next project.

On Thursdays, the design blog covers UI and UX designs from around the web, as well as well-designed apps from budding creatives. Every Friday, there’s a “freebie” offered on the site in the form of an available download or digital resource.

The design blog also covers recommended books and websites you should visit, leading Dribble profiles, and more. The biggest downside is navigating through all the available content can be quite a complicated process.

4. Web Design Ledger

Beautifully organized and packed with helpful information, the Web Design Ledger is an excellent site for designers to visit. The website splits into various segments depending on the kind of design you’re interested in. For web designers, there are content categories for portfolio work, mobile design, business development, ecommerce, and even wearable devices.

You’ll also find several sub-categories for sections like User Interface design, graphics, and web development. For those looking to learn from thought leaders in the industry, Web Design Ledger has a range of fantastic interviews to explore. There’s also a review section, where you can check out some of the latest tools available for design professionals.

The “Inspiration” section of the site also includes many great ideas for people who need a little creative boost for their next project. You can check out some top-rated WordPress themes, explore tips about branding and design for specific industries, and even get advice on logo creation.

5. Mockplus Blog

Mockplus is more than just a blog producer. The company offers tools to make design teams faster and more productive through unified collaboration, interactive prototyping, and scalable design systems. If you’re using Mockplus’ cloud technology for your design projects, there are plenty of tutorials and articles on the website tailored specifically to you.

The Mockplus blog, alternatively, delivers easy-to-consume content to designers from all environments, using various kinds of tools and software. You can find guides on how to experiment with new web design strategies and tips on how to master things like navigation menu design.

Many of the most popular posts on Mockplus are lists of useful resources, websites, and downloads you can use in your design tasks. For instance, you can use this site as inspiration when finding Android UI systems or wireframing tools. The site has a subscription form available for people who want to sign up for regular blog updates.

6. Design Bombs

Design Bombs is an attractive and reliable source of blog content for the design world. Easy to explore for beginners, Design Bombs even has a helpful “Start Here” section, where you can find beginner articles on how to start a blog, make a website, or use WordPress hosting. If you already know what you want to learn about, there are plenty of categories to choose from.

Content covered on Design Bombs ranges from the top WordPress plugins and themes on the market to news stories about recent design events and guides on coding or design. The “inspiration” section of the website is excellent for those who need a little creative refresh before working on the next part of their project, and Design Bomb also offers freebies and deals to readers too.

You can check the website regularly to see what kind of offers are available for popular design software and tools, as well as what sort of resources you can access for free. For beginners, the “glossary” section covering common design language is fantastic for your bookmarks.

7. Web Design Library

Otherwise known as Webdesign.org, Web Design Library is a simple but attractive blog environment for design professionals. The site includes a lot of valuable information for beginners and professionals looking to hone their skills. There’s a search bar to help you sort through content quickly at the top of the page, or you can choose your content focus through the “categories” section.

The Web Design Library has various categories to choose from, including web design basics, design principles, website usability, typography, Photoshop tutorials, web layout guidance, and HTML or CSS tips. You can also find plenty of inspiration in the “Showcase” section of the site.

Like many of the top web design blogs available today, Web Design Library offers access to extensive tutorials and guides for pros and beginners. You can learn everything from creating your first web page to how to shave someone’s head in Photoshop. The “Freebies” section on the site is a great place to visit for budget-friendly resources too.

8. Hacking UI

A community-focused website built for people who want to master the user interface, Hacking UI is a brilliant blog for all kinds of creative professionals. This laid-back website contains all sorts of different content for designers, including thought leadership articles, opinion posts, and even a regular podcast, where David Tintner and Sagi Shrieber discuss all kinds of design questions.

Hacking UI covers simple and complex topics alike. You can learn how to accelerate the performance of your web-design side project and how to make the transition from freelancer to a business owner. There are also topics like how to improve your workflows. Hacking UI covers a lot of content from worldwide events like the Global Innovation Forum too.

You can find information about upcoming events, conferences, and classes on the “Event” page, ideal for developers and designers who want to improve their skills. There’s also the Hacking UI “Master Class,” which constitutes a series of live conversations and lectures with experts in development and design.

9. 1stWebDesigner

One of the most attractive things about 1stWebDesigner, is its commitment to sharing ideas from a range of different designers and experienced creatives. Though still relatively new, 1stWebDesigner is a growing platform for sharing all kinds of design insights, including news, guides for learning, and lists for design inspiration.

The 1stWebDesigner site is wonderfully easy to navigate, with a search bar for those who want to find content on specific topics and keywords and a range of categories to choose from. You can check out collections of content on things like WordPress design, CSS, JavaScript, UX, Mobile UI, and Typography. There are also sections dedicated to things like Photoshop and how to succeed as a freelance designer.

1st Web Designer is a valuable source of inspiration for beginners and a great way to top up your knowledge as the design industry evolves. The “Learn” section is home to a host of guides and tutorials perfect for design enthusiasts from different backgrounds. Make sure you check out the site’s YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pages too.

10. Design Shack

Design Shack is a simple blog for beginners in the design landscape. Here, you’ll find many in-depth guides and tutorials to walk you through the basics of design. There are thousands of articles to explore, listed under several categories, including User Experience, app creation, and Photoshop. You can also search for specific content with the search bar.

Design Shack is particularly good at producing long-form content for designers in search of inspiration. Their lists of things like mock-up templates, photo collages, and premier pro templates are excellent. It’s also worth checking out the “Trends” section on the website, where you can find content written about some of the most appealing trends for design leaders.

Design Shack has a subscription available for those who want to stay up-to-date on the latest blog posts with regular emails. You can also interact with the community on sites like Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

11. Web Design Tuts+

Created by the Envato+ company, Web Design Tuts+ is a website offering learners in the design world all the information they need to excel in their projects. The website is packed full of free tutorials and learning guides, as well as online courses you can follow in your own time, to help you learn more about various aspects of web design. Tutorials and courses cover everything from interface design strategies to front-end development, UX (User Experience), and accessibility.

To help you figure out where to get started, Envato sorts all of its available guides and resources into sections based on the kind of design information they cover. You can also check out a list of the most popular and featured eBooks, courses, and tutorials on the homepage.

One thing Web Design Tuts+ does exceptionally well is translating complex ideas into simple guides. You don’t have to have a lot of coding knowledge or understand design-focused language to benefit from this site. Everything is written in an easy-to-digest format, with plenty of pictures and examples to guide you.

Choosing the Best Web Design Blog

As web design and development continue to thrive as a crucial skill in the digital world, there’s no shortage of blogs out there to help inspire and educate professionals. Whether you’re a beginner learning about the techniques required to start your first WordPress site, or you’re keen to know more about specific aspects of CSS code, there’s plenty of content to help you.

With a wide range of fantastic websites to choose from, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to picking the best web design blog. Many designers devote an entire folder in their bookmarks to blog pages, news sites, and other resources they can visit when they need information or inspiration. You may find yourself using various blogs throughout your career.

Our advice? Start with a website capable of covering many different topics in the web design world, to begin with. Resources like Web Designer Depot are packed full of content to sink your teeth into. Then, as you develop your knowledge in the industry, you’ll begin to find other more focused sites offering specific guidance into your chosen niche or specialty.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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13 octobre 2021/par Service comm.

Exciting New Tools For Designers, October 2021

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There are some spook-tacular finds in this month’s October collection of resources and tools for designers and developers. From interesting tools that can help in the design process to boo-tiful typefaces, there’s something for everyone here.

Here’s what is new for designers this month…

Atropos

Atropos is a lightweight, open-source JavaScript library to create touch-friendly, three-dimensional hover effects. The results are stunning and have a nice parallax style. Everything is highly configurable and customizable. It’s available for JavaScript, React, and Vue.js and has zero dependencies.

CSS Gradient Editor

CSS Gradient Editor helps you create the perfect gradient style – you can start from presets – that you can use in projects. Design a background, fill, or almost any other gradient element you might need, make adjustments or customizations, and then get the CSS with one click so you can use it right away.

Octopus.do

Octopus.do is a fast visual sitemap builder that lets you work in real-time using the content brick method. Share and collaborate in real-time and there’s no signup required to use it.

Pirsch Analytics

Pirsch Analytics is a privacy-friendly, open-source alternative to Google Analytics — lightweight, cookie-free, and easily integrated into any website or directly into your backend. It includes filters to see metrics in the way you want and light and dark modes.

Basic Pattern Repository

Basic Pattern Repository is a collection of simple SVG patterns for projects. Everything is rooted in a simple style to help push projects along quicker. You can get it via GitHub or as a Figma Library.

Blobr

Blobr is a way to get a branded API portal, manage access, and monitor usage all in one place. Customize everything to fit your brand and the tool grows as you do with the ability to increase or change capacity. Plus, it is easy to set up and free to use.

HEXplorer

HEXplorer helps you better understand something you use all the time – HEX colors. This pen by Rob DiMarzo shows how the values for different colors come together to provide greater comprehension when it comes to this color format.

CCCreate

CCCreate is a curated collection of tools and resources for web creators. It includes some tools that have been around for a while as well as some newbies. Everything is grouped and sorted by type of resources – color, icons, type, layouts, animation, shapes, docs, and miscellaneous so you can find what you are looking for faster.

Glass

Glass is a photo-sharing app for photographers. It’s a social network of sorts that lets you share images with the greater photography community without “likes.” Just great images.

Revolt

Revolt is a chat app that’s still in beta and designed for easy communication without having to download apps. It’s an open-source project that is customizable and with an intuitive and recognizable interface. The thing that’s different about this app is that it is built on a privacy-first model.

Doodle Ipsum

Doodle Ipsum is the illustrated version of placeholder elements. Customize your doodles, grab the code, and use them on your web prototypes, landing pages, or no-code tools.

Mechanic

Mechanic is an open-source framework that helps you create custom, web-based tools that export design assets in your browser. The best part is you can try it right on screen using the “poster generator.” If you like what you see, there’s plenty of documentation to help you along the way.

Medio Website Template

Medio is an agency-style website design template for Bootstrap 5. The layout is perfect for a design agency or marketing group but can be adjusted for almost any multi-purpose design. The free template includes a minimal design and includes features such as parallax, popup video, and more.

Tutorial: Simplifying Form Styles with Accent Color

This tutorial is a life-saver when it comes to using and understanding the new CSS accent-color property. This quick lesson will help make your life easier and is simple to use. It starts with setting an accent-color property on the root element and then applying it.

Houdini.how

Houdini.how is a worklet library that is full of CSS and code examples to help you work smarter. See how different elements look cross-browser and learn to adjust the code and put them together in just the way you want. Houdini is a set of low-level APIs that exposes parts of the CSS engine, giving developers the power to extend CSS by hooking into the styling and layout process of a browser’s rendering engine.

Chainstarters

Chainstarters is a powerful, rapid, Web3-enabled platform for software developers. It eliminates the burden of setting up and maintaining a secure and scalable infrastructure, allowing you to focus on creating amazing technology.

Web Vitals Robot

Web Vitals Robot is a search optimization tool that monitors SEO metrics for you – so you can prevent your business from disappearing from Google.

Searchable

Searchable is a unified search tool that looks at local, cloud storage, and apps to find the files you are looking for. It returns results in a jiffy with previews so you don’t have to open every file to find what you are looking for.

Athlone

Athlone is a fun serif with lots of personality. The free demo version includes a limited character set for personal use only and the full version has everything you need for fun display or branding with this typeface.

Capitana

Capitana is a Geometric Sans typeface with humanistic proportions and open apertures. This means that all shapes are constructed from basic forms, the circle, triangle, and square, and are designed according to the classic proportions of the Roman Antiqua. Distinct ascenders and pointed apexes with deep overshoot give it a cool beauty and classic elegance. It includes 784 characters per style in nine weights from Thin to Black, it offers both light and extremely heavy weights for striking headlines.

Colours

Colours is a funky script with just enough texture to keep it interesting. The free version includes a partial character set and is for personal use only.

Flexible

Flexible is a variable typeface that includes 18 styles in the family. It’s made for creativity and display use. This typeface is made for experimenting because there are so many things you can do with this single family.

Singo Sans Serif

Singo Sans Serif is a simple and strong typeface that would make an excellent display option. The free version is for personal use only. Fun fact: Singo means Lion in Indonesia, which is where the name of this strong font comes from.

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11 octobre 2021/par Service comm.

4 Steps to Improve PageSpeed Insights Score and SEO

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PageSpeed Insights is a free performance measurement tool provided by Google. It analyzes the contents of a web page for desktop and mobile devices. It provides a single number score (from 1 to 100) that summarizes several underlying metrics that measure performance. If you have not run PageSpeed Insights on your website, then you should stop and do it now. It’s an important indicator of how Google scores and ranks your site.

If your PageSpeed Insights score is below 80, don’t panic. You are not alone. Many websites are not optimized for performance. The good news is that you can take steps that should immediately improve your score.

You will notice that PageSpeed Insights highlights issues that cause slow page loading. However, you might need more guidance to resolve these issues. Below, we walk you through how to resolve four common issues related to images. We also show you how ImageEngine, an image CDN, can simplify, automate, and deliver the best image optimization solution possible.

Performance Drives Google SEO Rankings

Why does the PageSpeed Insights score and performance matter? Isn’t SEO ranking all about content relevance, backlinks, and domain authority? Yes, but now performance matters more than it did a year ago. Starting in 2021, Google added performance metrics to the factors that impact search engine rankings. In a market where websites are constantly jockeying to match their competition’s pages (for content relevance, keywords, and other SEO issues), performance is making a difference in keyword search engine rankings.

What Are Core Web Vitals Metrics?

PageSpeed Insights relies on a set of performance metrics called Core Web Vitals. These metrics are:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the render time (in seconds) of the largest image or text block visible within the viewport, relative to when the page first started loading. Typically, the largest image is the hero image at the top of pages.

First Input Delay (FID): Measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page (i.e. when they click a link, tap on a button, or use a custom JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures the layout shift that occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one rendered frame to the next.

Images and JavaScript are the Main Culprits

PageSpeed Insights breaks down problems into categories based upon how they impact these Core Web Vitals metrics. The top two reasons why you might have a low score are driven by JavaScript and images.

JavaScript issues are usually related to code that either blocks or delays page loading. For example, lazy-loading images might involve JavaScript that blocks loading. As a rule of thumb, do not use a third-party JavaScript library to manage image loading. These libraries frequently break the browser’s built-in image loading features. Lazy-loading may make above-the-fold images load slower (longer LCP) because the browser starts the download later and because the browser first has to execute the JavaScript.

Another JavaScript issue involves code that is large or unnecessary for the page. In other words, code bloat. There are good resources for resolving these issues on the web. However, in this blog, we will focus on image problems.

Images are a major contributor to poor performance. The average website payload is 2MB in 2021, and 50% of that is images. Frequently, images are larger than they need to be and can be optimized for size with no impact on quality…if you do it right.

Four Image Issues Highlighted by PageSpeed Insights

Largest Contentful Paint is the primary metric impacted by images. PageSpeed Insights frequently recommends the following four pieces of advice:

Serve images in next-gen formats.
Efficiently encode images.
Properly size images.
Avoid enormous network payloads.

That advice seems straightforward. Google provides some great advice on how to deal with images in its dev community. It can be summarized in the following steps:

Select the appropriate file format.
Apply the appropriate image compression.
Apply the right display size.
Render the image.
Write responsive image code to select the right variant of the image.

We call Google’s process the “Build-Time Responsive Syntax” approach. If you have a relatively static website where you don’t generate new pages or switch out images frequently, then you can probably live with this approach. However, if you have a large and dynamic site with many images, then you will quickly feel the pain of this approach. Google itself stresses that developers should seek to automate this image process. Why? Because the process has some serious workflow drawbacks:

Adds storage requirements due to a large increase in image variants.
Increases code bloat and introduces more code complexity.
Requires developers’ time and effort to create variants and implement responsiveness.
Requires logic to account for different browser’s support for next-gen image formats.
Doesn’t adapt to different contexts. It relies on best-guess (breakpoints) of what device visits the web page.
Needs a separate CDN to further increase delivery speeds.
Requires ongoing maintenance to adapt to new devices, breakpoints, image formats, markets, and practices.

Key Steps to Achieving High-Performance Images

Instead of using the Build-Time Responsive Syntax approach, an automated image CDN solution can address all of the image issues raised by PageSpeed Insights. The key steps of an image CDN that you should look for are:

Detect Mobile Devices: Detection of a website visitor’s device model and its technical capabilities. These include: OS version, browser version, screen pixel density, screen resolution width and height, support for next-gen image and video formats. This is where ImageEngine is unique in the market. ImageEngine uses true mobile device detection to further improve image optimization. It has a huge impact on the effectiveness of the image optimization process.
Optimize Images: An image CDN will leverage the device’s parameters to automatically resize, compress and convert large original images into optimized images with next-generation file formats, like WebP and AVIF. Frequently, an image CDN like ImageEngine will reduce the image payload by up to 80%.
Deliver by CDN: Image CDNs like ImageEngine have edge servers strategically positioned around the globe. By pushing optimized images closer to requesting customers and delivering them immediately from the cache, it often provides a 50% faster web page download time than traditional CDNs.

Easy Integration Process for Image CDN

After signing up for an ImageEngine account and free trial, you will receive a Delivery Address. After adjusting your <img /> elements to include the Delivery Address, ImageEngine will start to pull the original images from your website (no need to move or upload them), automatically optimize them, and deliver them.

You can automate the addition of the Delivery Address to the img src tag by using plug-ins for WordPress and Magento. Developers can also use ImageEngine’s React, Vue, or Angular JavaScript frameworks to simplify the process.

Additionally, there are many ways to simplify implementation via adjustments to templates for many CMS and eCommerce platforms.

Results: Improved Performance, Better SEO

Most ImageEngine users see a huge improvement in LCP metrics, and consequently, a big improvement in the overall PageSpeed Insights score. ImageEngine provides a free demo analysis of your images before and after image optimization. In many cases, developers see improvements of many seconds on their LCP and Speed Index.

In summary, performance drives higher search rankings, and better UX, and increases website conversions for eCommerce. The steps you take to improve your image performance will pay for themselves in more sales and conversions, streamlined workflow, and lower CDN delivery costs.

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5 octobre 2021/par Service comm.

Leveraging Salesforce Using Mobile Applications Written (Once) In React Native

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

In the “Leveraging Salesforce Using Spring Boot” article, I navigated the course for introducing a Spring Boot service that would leverage the well-established Salesforce RESTful API. The goal of this service is to act as a middleware layer to allow clients not written in Salesforce to retrieve and update contact data stored in Salesforce. This backend service implements its own caching layer to provide a faster response time and also cut down on the number of times Salesforce needed to be called.

In the “Leveraging Salesforce Using a Client Written In Svelte” article, I introduced a simple client written in Svelte, which provided the ability to make updates to the Salesforce data using an inline editor—again, without actually using the Salesforce client.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

29 septembre 2021/par Service comm.

Improve Performance by Combining Headless CMS with an Image CDN

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The headless CMS trend is gaining traction growing at over 20% annually. The driving force behind the headless CMS trend is developer’s increasing need for flexibility and control. Using the headless CMS’s API, front-end developers can use JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular to quickly deploy content and designs in various web pages and apps.

Images Are A Crucial Part Of Any Web Experience

A headless CMS holds potentially thousands of images. How quickly images are rendered has a huge impact on user experience. This is why developers and designers need to focus on streamlining how they access, optimize, cache, and deliver images in a performant way.

ImageEngine is an image CDN that provides a simple solution for accelerating performance, and saves you time and delivery costs. With its multiple components and plugins for React, Vue, and Angular, ImageEngine makes it easy for developers to achieve superior image performance scores on tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Plan for Image Performance. It is Worth It

Performance is not always the first thing designers and developers consider when designing a website. But performance has a huge impact on eCommerce sales, conversion rates, and SEO. That’s why setting aside budget and time to solve image performance issues yields substantial benefits.

The most compelling reason to work on image performance is the upside from sales or website conversions. Google estimates that the average website on mobile takes around 9 seconds to load. However, 75% of users will consider abandoning a site that takes over 5 seconds to load.

Companies like Amazon and Walmart have closely scrutinized the relationship between load times and sales conversion rates. For Amazon, they estimate that for every 100 milliseconds they accelerate their site, it increases revenue by 1%. For them, that means millions of dollars. But even if you are a relatively small company, performance boosts sales and pays for the time you put into it.

Images are a big reason why websites load slowly. The average website payload is 2MB in 2021, and 50% of that is images. Frequently, images are larger than they need to be and can be optimized for size with no impact on quality…if you do it right.

However, image optimization can be challenging. Knowing the requesting device screen dimensions, pixel density, ability to handle next-gen image formats becomes very complicated. That is where ImageEngine comes in. It simplifies and offloads all the complexity to an expert image optimization solution.

Performance Drives Google SEO Rankings

Even before users come to your site, performance has a critical impact. You may have heard of Google’s latest Page Experience update to their search engine ranking algorithm. It integrates a new set of performance metrics called Core Web Vitals. These metrics are:

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures the layout shift that occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one rendered frame to the next.

LCP is an image-centric performance metric. The more optimized your images are (particularly your hero images at the top of a page), the faster your LCP will be.

Why do Core Web Vitals matter? Isn’t SEO ranking all about content relevance, backlinks, and domain authority? Yes, but now performance matters more than it did a year ago. In a market where websites are constantly jockeying to match their competition’s pages (for content relevance, keywords, and other SEO issues), performance is making a difference in keyword search engine rankings.

ImageEngine customers that have optimized their images have improved their Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed Insights scores and seen search ranking improve dramatically. Frequently this means moving onto the first search results page, or even the #1 or #2 spot.

Avoid Code Bloat and Exponential Image Variants from Responsive Images

When they hear “image optimization,” many web designers think of the practice of generating multiple image sizes, multiple file formats (JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF), and massive amounts of code using tags to select appropriate variants. While this approach works, it leaves much to be desired and often yields a sub-standard optimization and a maintenance headache.

That is where the automatic settings of an image CDN like ImageEngine solve yet another problem. ImageEngine detects mobile devices and their image-related parameters, optimizes images for these parameters, and then delivers images through its global CDN. In most cases, the automatic mode of ImageEngine will provide optimization up to 80% on most images, with no perceptible impact on quality.

Combine an Image CDN with your JavaScript Front-End Framework

If you are already using a headless CMS or eCommerce platform, then how can you integrate image optimization into your front-end system?

There are a number of options for integrating ImageEngine. From the headless CMS side, the only thing required is to store high-quality, large images in your CMS. Don’t worry about their size or format in the CMS. ImageEngine will pull the images and perform optimization immediately and tailor them specifically for any requesting device.

Next, you will need to sign up for a free trial from ImageEngine. In the example below, we will address how to configure for Contentful, a popular headless CMS. To set up an ImageEngine account that pulls images from Contentful, all you need to do is to create a user account and set images.ctfassets.net as your image origin. “images.ctfassets.net” is where all images are served from when using Contentful.

At the end of the signup process, you will receive a Delivery Address. You will need to copy this and insert it after installing the ImageEngine component.

For your front end, ImageEngine offers components for many popular JavaScript frameworks.

React: Overview; NPM Package ; Documentation
Angular: Overview; NPM Package ; Documentation
Vue: Overview; NPM Package ; Documentation

For the following example, we will use Contentful CMS with React framework. A full example and explanation can be seen here. Another example can be found here.

Install React NPM Package

First, install the ImageEngine NPM package

npm i @imageengine/react

Integrate ImageEngine Into Your App

We will only be working in “App.js”. Make sure to delete all the code from it.

Import ImageEngine Components

In the “App.js” file, import the necessary components from the ImageEngine NPM package like so:

import { ImageEngineProvider, Image } from "@imageengine/react"

Add the “ImageEngineProvider” component inside your app’s main div. This allows all child components to access images from ImageEngine.

Insert Delivery Address Into ImageEngine Provider

When you sign up for an ImageEngine account, you receive a Delivery Address. You can find it in your ImageEngine dashboard after logging into your account. This Delivery Address is how the component will point to ImageEngine and start optimizing and delivering images. Make sure the origin related to your delivery address is images.ctfassets.net. This is where all the images from Contentful can be reached.

In the ImageEngineProvider, modify and insert your own “deliveryAddress,” replacing “blazing-fast-pics.cdn.imgeng.in” shown below.

 return (   <ImageEngineProvider      deliveryAddress="https://blazing-fast-pics.cdn.imgeng.in"      stripFromSrc="https://images.ctfassets.net">      <Image src={page.logo.url} className="App-logo" alt="logo"></Image>      </ImageEngineProvider>

Insert “Image” Component

Lastly, add an “Image” component inside the “ImageEngineProvider” providing the image source.

The image source may be local to your app or fetched from Contentful using the GraphQL API. The following example renders an image from Contentful.

Completed App.js example

Your final App.js should look like this:

import { ImageEngineProvider, Image } from "@imageengine/react" function App() { return ( <ImageEngineProvider deliveryAddress="https://blazing-fast-pics.cdn.imgeng.in" stripFromSrc="https://images.ctfassets.net"> <Image src={page.logo.url} className="App-logo" alt="logo"></Image> </ImageEngineProvider> ) } export default App;

Note that the example is also using the stripFromSrc property. This will replace any occurrences of https://images.ctfassets.net in the image source url that the Contentful API returns, with the deliveryAddress which is already mapped to the Contentful origin in the ImageEngine control panel.

Automatic Image Optimization By Default

For most images, the automatic mode of ImageEngine will deliver perfectly optimized images. For example, in many cases, this will be a resized image WebP that can be up to 80% lighter payload. You can inspect the final image and see the Delivery Address, the new image format (e.g. WebP), and the ImageEngine CDN server.

Device Intelligence in Action

In auto-mode, the most notable optimizations applied to an image are format conversion, change in pixel size, and compression rate. ImageEngine in auto-mode will make sure that your customers get the highest quality image with the lowest possible byte size.

Format Conversion

Thanks to ImageEngine’s built-in device detection, the most efficient format for a given image is automatically chosen. The input needed to make this decision comes from ImageEngine’s device-aware servers and an advanced ruleset. For example, ImageEngine can accurately identify devices and browsers that support the WebP format. This means ImageEngine can confidently convert from JPEG to WebP, deliver huge savings in terms of byte size, and dramatically improve the web browsing experience.

Resizing

On the web today, where the majority of traffic comes from mobile devices, one size is not enough to offer a great user experience. Again, the built-in device detection knows the size of the screen – both in pixels and millimeters – and is able to resize the image to perfectly fit the viewport. This is further enhanced by ImageEngine’s support for Client Hints. It can also handle high-resolution displays, like Retina, out of the box and will scale the image at the actual pixel size needed to produce high-quality images.

Using Directives

If you want more granular control over how the image is presented, you may use ImageEngine’s directives. Use the “directives” prop to do so without having to modify the source image.

<Image src="/images/pic_2.jpg" directives={{ outputFormat : 'webp', rotate: 45, inline: true }}/>

Conclusion

After implementation, you will have 30-days of ImageEngine and on-boarding support so you can be sure that you are seeing the improvements you need from an image CDN like ImageEngine. You can even schedule a call with our Customer Success team to help you get set up with ImageEngine today!

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of ImageEngine –]

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28 septembre 2021/par Service comm.

The Pros and Cons of Tailwind CSS

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As a utility-first CSS framework, Tailwind has rapidly become popular among developers. With its fast styling process and the freedom it offers when designing a website, it’s really no wonder why.

But how can you make sure this is the right CSS framework for your upcoming development projects? In this blog post, you’ll learn what Tailwind is, and how it differs from other frameworks like Bootstrap, or Foundation.

In addition, we will highlight the main advantages and disadvantages of the framework. By the end, you will be able to make an honest and objective assessment as to whether Tailwind is the right framework for you. So without further ado, let us dive deeper into it.

What is Tailwind CSS?

First released in May 2019, Tailwind CSS is a front-end CSS framework. It is currently at version 2.2. Since its release, Tailwind has created quite a following. More than 260k developers have used it to enhance their design systems.

Stats like these make Tailwind one of the most popular CSS frameworks on the market, and all in less than two years. There are many reasons for this. Primarily, because its features make it the ideal choice for a wide variety of projects. Tellingly, most developers prefer it to create React projects.

The main difference between Tailwind and its competitors is that it gives developers complete control over the styling of a web application. So, is it the right CSS framework for you? To answer this question, let us take a look at Tailwind’s advantages and disadvantages.

Tailwind CSS: Pros and Cons

Tailwind CSS: Advantages

1. Control Over Styling

Tailwind is a unique CSS framework when it comes to styling web applications, meaning that Tailwind does not have a default theme that you have to use like other CSS frameworks.

For example, you can give each project a different look even if you use the same elements (color palette, size, etc.). Therefore, it’s one of the few CSS frameworks that is not opinionated on how you should style your project.

2. Faster CSS Styling Process

There is no faster framework than Tailwind when it comes to styling HTML. As a result, you can easily create good-looking layouts by styling elements directly. This is possible because Tailwind offers thousands of built-in classes that do not require you to create designs from scratch.

Therefore, you do not have to write CSS rules yourself. These CSS classes are the main reason why building and styling with Tailwind is so fast.

3. Responsiveness and Security

With Tailwind’s pre-built classes, you can design the layout directly in an HTML file. This makes it a very responsive, mobile-friendly CSS framework. Apart from that, Tailwind has proven to be a stable framework since its initial release.

The framework was developed by top-notch engineers, which is why bugs and breaks are rare.

4. Additional Features

Tailwind CSS works in the front end of a website. For this reason, it is reasonable for developers to demand ultimate responsiveness. Well, Tailwind provides the ability to create responsive themes for your web applications and remove all unused CSS classes. With PurgeCSS, Tailwind helps you keep your final CSS as small as possible.

Tailwind CSS: Disadvantages

1. Styling and HTML are Mixed

Because you do not have to write CSS rules yourself, Tailwind works differently than most CSS frameworks. While this is great for those unfamiliar with CSS, it also means that Tailwind mixes style rules in with your HTML files.

This goes against the principle of the “separation of concerns.” Many developers prefer to separate page structure and style, claiming that classes make the Tailwind markup process verbose.

2. It Takes Time to Learn

Because of the built-in classes, Tailwind CSS is quite learning-intensive. Even for experienced developers, it can be a challenge to learn how to use and fully utilize the pre-built classes. But, of course, as with any other development task, practice makes perfect.

However, if you are confident and quick when it comes to writing CSS classes, Tailwind may not be the best choice for you. Even if that’s true, Tailwind generally makes CSS styling faster in the long run.

3. Lack of Important Components

Unlike Bulma and Bootstrap, Tailwind does not have many significant styling components. Unfortunately, this means you have to manually add features like headers, buttons, and navigation bars for web apps.

This is not a significant drawback, as experienced developers can implement these features quickly. However, you will need to spend some time doing so.

4. Documentation

Although Tailwind CSS has made great strides when it comes to adding guides and video tutorials, it still lags behind competitors like Bootstrap. Of course, you can always contact the developers if you have a problem.

However, keep in mind that this may take some time. For this reason, you may need to customize the framework to your needs manually.

Is Tailwind Worth Trying?

In a few words, working with Tailwind is quite different from other CSS frameworks. We have identified its main advantages and disadvantages. Based on these features, we can easily say that Tailwind is:

An excellent solution for developers familiar with CSS who want to speed up the creation and design process in the long run.
Not such a good idea if you are not familiar with CSS or do not want to spend time learning a new CSS framework.

It becomes clear that it all depends on your personal needs and preferences. However, if saving time on CSS styling is a priority for you, you should definitely give Tailwind a try.

Regardless of whether you choose to use Tailwind or not, it’s evident that many developers use it for good reasons. Since it offers a faster styling process and is a responsive and stable framework, it’s here to stay.

Tailwind can help you save time and change the way you design websites, and so taking the time to test it out is worthwhile.

Source

The post The Pros and Cons of Tailwind CSS first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

24 septembre 2021/par Service comm.