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Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2022

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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 Definitive Guide to Building a Data Mesh With Event Streams

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Data mesh. This oft-talked-about architecture has no shortage of blog posts, conference talks, podcasts, and discussions. One thing that you may have found lacking is a concrete guide on precisely how to get started building your own data mesh implementation. We have you covered. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to build a data mesh using event streams, highlighting our design decisions, and the key benefits and challenges you’ll need to consider along the way. In fact, we’ll go one better: we’ve built a data mesh prototype for you to check out on your own to see what this would look like in action, or fork to bootstrap a data mesh for your own organization. 

Data mesh is technology agnostic so there are a few different ways you can go about building one. The canonical approach is to build the mesh using event streaming technology that provides a secure, governed, real-time mechanism for moving data between different points in the mesh. 

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Data Privacy Jobs Reportedly Growing While National Employment Slows

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Companies in virtually all industries use the information to some extent. Often, most of an organization’s operations revolve around collecting and analyzing it. Of course, most people in modern society know and accept that, but they assert that businesses must do whatever’s necessary to keep data safe. 

Recent data privacy report statistics show a high demand for people who have the training to keep information secure. As a result, they often have multiple offers to the field, even though statistics about the U.S. job market indicate the per-month growth may be becoming less robust.

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SAST in Secure SDLC: 3 Reasons to Integrate It in a DevSecOps Pipeline

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Vulnerabilities produce enormous reputational and financial risks. As a result, many companies are fascinated by security and desire to build a secure development life cycle (SSDLC). So, today we’re going to discuss SAST — one of the SSDLC components.

SAST (static application security testing) searches for security defects in application source code. SAST examines the code for potential vulnerabilities — possible SQL injections, XSS, SSRF, data encryption issues, etc. These vulnerabilities are included in OWASP Top 10, CWE Top 25, and other lists.

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Hacking and Securing Python Applications

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Securing applications is not the easiest thing to do. An application has many components: server-side logic, client-side logic, data storage, data transportation, API, and more. With all these components to secure, building a secure application can seem really daunting.

Thankfully, most real-life vulnerabilities share the same root causes. And by studying these common vulnerability types, why they happen, and how to spot them, you can learn to prevent them and secure your application.

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6 Simple Steps to a Career in Web Design

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No one likes talking about money. Most of us got into web design because we loved it. But the fact is, we’ve all got bills to pay.

If you’re a half-decent designer or a relatively competent developer, then there’s no reason you can’t make a living as a web designer. Here are six simple steps towards earning a living using the skills you already have.

Step 1. Freelance Work

Many individual bloggers and small company owners require websites to reach a larger audience. You might exploit this opportunity to begin a side business as a freelancer.

One of the most efficient ways to start is to look through employment networks and online classifieds. Eventually though, you’re going to need a portfolio. Building your freelancing company website could be your first opportunity to demonstrate your web development talents. As you embark on new projects, this website can display client testimonials that demonstrate your expertise. Ensure that it’s up to date, relevant, and follows current design trends. Also, make sure your website is linked to your social media profiles. 

Even though you are responsible for finding clients, you have a great deal of flexibility: you can choose your working hours and exercise more freedom and creativity. However, you’d still be accountable for your work and have to execute assignments on time to keep your clients satisfied.

It’s also important to remember that you’ll have to keep track of your taxes and other financial paperwork. Furthermore, you would not have a standard employer who will provide you with health insurance and other perks.

Step 2. Specialize

Today’s market offers a wide choice of web design services most suited to our needs. From designing and building custom websites to creating social media websites to managing SEO and PPCs, web design services offer various services. And while it is beneficial to have a general understanding of what all these services entail, it is always good to identify and refine your expertise. Becoming proficient in one aspect of web design will give you more confidence and direction regarding the kind of work you would like to do.

Allowing yourself to land repeat clients specializing in one type of service will make it easier for you to create processes in your business to complete work accurately and quickly. These processes will also help you build a team should you need one.  

Step 3. Networking Effectively

You should leverage social networking sites such as LinkedIn, practical tools for engaging with colleagues and potential customers. Ensure your profile is updated with all the services offered and all talents you deliver. Make sure you include links to any past projects you’ve worked on. There’s also a career board on LinkedIn that can help you avail yourself of many freelance projects. Registering and engaging with relevant organizations can allow you to acquire more visibility.

Freelancers are generally matched with modest design/development assignments through these websites. Although some developers heavily vouch for them, getting work from these websites when you’re just starting may be exceedingly challenging, considering most of your time will be exhausted in securing billable employment. 

Step 4. Start Your Own Blog or Podcast

Blogs and podcasts are an excellent way to organically acquire fresh customers and other relevant parties. A well-written blog is a terrific source of amusement and knowledge for potential clients. Aside from showcasing your services, a blog may be used to earn money in various ways. Once the blog grows large enough, you can incorporate backlinks, ads, or author-sponsored content. Many popular blogs eventually grow into fully-fledged businesses.

When you start a blog from scratch, it can take a long time to see a return on investment. Consider producing freelance articles for a blog with a constant stream of traffic to help you get started. This will enable you to demonstrate your skills while also getting compensated for them. 

Step 5. Work at a Design Agency

Working at a design agency or in-house could be an ideal option if you desire a more traditional job title. It also helps you build your portfolio with larger and more recognizable clients than those you can secure as a freelancer.

Instead of stressing about the management side of things, you can focus on serving clients and constructing websites with this approach. You wouldn’t have to look for new clients, and you’ll get all of the paid benefits that regular employees get. However, you’d have to work under strict supervision and have less creative control over your projects. There will also be harsh deadlines looming over your shoulder. And this procedure will also set a wage ceiling for you. On the other hand, obtaining employee insurance and securing a source of income can be very reassuring.

Step 6. Start Your Own Agency

Once you feel you have enough relevant experience and are confident in your abilities to perform and manage things well, you can start your own agency. It’s like freelance work, but on a much larger scale. The flexibility to employ others to do your work is the fundamental advantage of having your own agency. You can recruit additional designers and eventually recruiters to help you secure clients.

Having your own agency allows you to do the work you want and how you desire. As a general rule, start as a freelancer and gradually create the foundations for your agency as you gain expertise. You can eventually automate the entire process with hard effort and an innovative business plan.

You must actively network with other people in your business and reach out to new clients in addition to working on your skills. If you can create a solid customer base and take measured chances with your chosen projects, you can procure meatier projects and become prominent in the corporate sector.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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The Top 5 Form Types to Use in Your Web Design 

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There are a lot of factors that contribute to a better user experience on a website. Pages need to load quickly to give users peace of mind and efficiency. Navigation must be clear and straightforward, with direct pathways for visitors to follow when finding your contact pages, blog posts, and products. Your colors need to work seamlessly together while providing just enough contrast in the areas that need it most.

Excellent user experience needs to be considered for every part of your website that acts as a touchpoint with a potential customer or user.

One of the most significant touchpoints of all is your forms.

All websites need some form of interactive content to thrive. Users need to be able to do something with the site, whether it’s looking for information with a search bar, contacting a team for a quote, making a booking, or completing a purchase. Forms power the majority of the interactive activities available on websites.

If you know how to master great UX on a form, you can contribute to more meaningful interactions between your brands and their customers. But not all web forms are the same. Here are some of the top types of forms you need to master and how you can optimize them.

The “Opt-In” Form

The Opt-in Form is probably the best-known form in the digital landscape. It’s essentially a form that asks visitors to “opt-in” to a specific offer. Sometimes, this means signing up for a webinar; other times, it’ll be agreeing to an email newsletter or a regular series of blog updates.

Opt-in forms grab attention quickly and ask for something specific from the audience. For instance, this example from HuffPost encourages visitors to “Subscribe to the Morning Email.”

Opt-in forms are all about generating action.

Sometimes, they’re placed at the bottom of a landing page after a company has had a chance to explain precisely what they’re offering. Other times, you’ll find the opt-in form situated on a sidebar of a website, constantly enticing people to “sign up” if they like what they see on a blog post or article.

It’s also common for opt-in forms to appear as pop-ups and exit pop-ups on modern websites. For example, a brightly colored opt-in form that promises an immediate benefit to a customer could encourage them to hand over their details before they abandon your website.

How to Design a Great Opt-In Form

So what kind of best practices go into an excellent opt-in form?

  • Start with simplicity: If you’re asking your visitors to do something, don’t overwhelm them with too big of a request straight away. Keep the form short and simple, so it doesn’t seem like too much extra work for the visitor. Something like “Subscribe to our newsletter” should ask for nothing more than an email. 
  • Highlight the benefits: Most customers won’t want to give you a place in their inbox or the opportunity to interact with them further unless you can offer something in return. Even if you’re asking for something small, like an email address, let the customer know what’s in it for them. In the HuffPost example above, the company highlights that you can wake up to the day’s “most important news.” 
  • Give the visitor the power: Let your visitor know they’re in control here. They want to see that they’re getting exactly what they need from you in exchange for their contact details. This means reassuring them that their email address won’t be used for spam, like H&B Sensors does here: 

The Contact Form 

The Contact Form is another crucial part of building an effective UX for your website – but it’s also an element that web designers and business owners often overlook. When customers decide they want to learn more about a business, they need a quick and easy way to get in touch.

Contact forms need to be easy to find and use on any website. Usually, your user will expect to see a link to the contact form situated somewhere at the bottom of your webpage. It might be called “Contact Us” or “Customer Support.” Avoid anything that would go over the user’s head.

Aside from being easy to track down, your contact form also needs to reassure an audience that they’re making the right decision by getting in touch. Therefore, the content needs to be short, sweet, and authoritative—highlight why the user might contact your company and how they can do so.

Avoid any unnecessary information in the contact form. For example, you don’t need to know your client’s age and their job to answer a question about where their nearest physical branch is. Keep form fields to the point, or you’ll chase customers away.

How to Design a Great Contact Form

Design something personalized but straightforward to make the most of your contact form. Use features like smart content and conditional logic, if possible, to adapt the page to the user’s needs. Dynamic content is becoming increasingly valuable these days. Other best practices include:

  • Set the right expectations: Let your customers know how active you are and how quickly they can expect to hear back from you. Imagery and the right fonts can also set expectations about the kind of communication your audience can expect. For example, this contact page from the Marvel app is fun and playful, like the company itself:

  • Provide multiple options: If your customer doesn’t want to use your contact form, give them another way to get in touch. Ensure the contact page includes information like where to find you on social media and your professional phone number. 
  • Simplify things on your end: To ensure that you can contact your audience as quickly as possible, allow your customers to choose a specific subject that their query is connected to. Allowing them to choose “Sales” or “Order issues” means you can automatically direct the message to the right team member on the back-end. 

The Online Payment Form 

Sometimes, when your customers have seen what you have to offer and they’ve checked out the competition, they decide to go ahead with their purchase. To facilitate this, you’re going to need an online payment form. Online forms ensure that your customers can safely enter their credit or debit card details to purchase whatever you have to offer.

Most payment processing companies like PayPal, Square, and Stripe come with payment forms included, so you can easily embed them into a website in minutes. However, there’s always the option to customize those payment forms.

For instance, ideally, you’ll need a payment form that keeps your customer on the same page, so they don’t have to log into another browser to make their purchase. The fewer transitions your client has to make, the safer they’ll feel.

How to Design a Great Payment Form

When designing any payment form, simplicity and security are the two most important factors. Your customer should be able to enter their information quickly and easily and get through the transaction process without worrying about their details.

Remember to:

  • Keep it simple: The fewer fields the visitor has to fill out, the better. Customers still feel uncomfortable sharing personal information and payment details online. Make the experience as painless as possible. If your client already has an account with your business, you might create a system that automatically fills some of the fields, such as their email address, name, and billing address. 
  • Offer the right integrations: The proper payment forms will integrate with the payment services your customers prefer to use. Options include PayPal, Stripe, Square, Verified by Visa, and Mastercard. Get a developer to integrate the right APIs with your form to give your customers the broadest range of options. 
  • Ensure security: Give customers peace of mind by providing as much security evidence as possible. An SSL certificate that places the padlock on the top of the browser next to the URL is a great way to make customers feel more secure. Integrating verification options so your customers can avoid fraud issues is another significant step. Sometimes just putting logos from the card types you accept on the page will make a customer feel more secure. 

Support Forms

Some companies bundle the contact form and the support form together. Others have a separate support form to get their queries routed directly to the people most capable of helping them. If you want to take the second route, it might be a good idea to design a “help” section on your website where you can locate the support form.

The “Help” section on a site often appears alongside other links on the footer. For instance, it could appear alongside “About” links and “Contact” options. Here’s an example of Hubspot’s Customer Support options:

The best customer support pages come with various ways for clients to help themselves and find answers to their most pressing questions. For example, you might have a search bar where your audience can search for the answers to their queries or a knowledge base full of helpful blogs.

Hubspot allows users to choose between a blog, knowledge base, academy training center, community forum, developer discussion board, and assistance from a certified partner.

How to Design a Great Customer Support Form

Designing a good customer support form is about getting your audience the information they need as quickly as possible. Once again, you’ll need to stick to as few form fields as possible here to avoid angering an already frustrated customer. Also, remember to:

  • Ask for the right information: Find out what the query is about by giving the customer a drop-box menu full of possible topics to choose from. If you need a product reference number or something similar, ask for that at the top of the form, then allow the customer to provide extra information about their query underneath. 
  • Set expectations: Let your customers know when they can expect to get a response to their concerns and provide them with advice on what to do next. For instance, you could invite them to check out your knowledge base while they wait for a response. 
  • Keep it simple: Avoid using technical jargon on your support request forms. Be direct in your requests for summaries of the issue at hand, contact information, and other supplemental data. 

Customer Feedback Forms

According to Microsoft, around 96% of customers say that customer service is crucial in determining their loyalty to a specific brand. Another 52% of global customers believe that companies need to respond to the feedback provided by customers.

To ensure your customer service strategies are on-par with what your customers expect, you need to get feedback from your audience. That’s where a feedback form comes in. Customer feedback forms often appear after a client has finished purchasing on the “thank you” screen. They may also occur after a customer has completed a service interaction online.

Here’s an example of an Apple feedback form:

How to Design a Great Customer Feedback Form

By leaving you feedback, your customer is doing you a massive favor. They’re giving you a chance to learn from your mistakes and improve the service you can give next time around. Feedback is one of the best tools for any business that wants to grow and thrive.

If you want your customers to use your feedback forms, you’ll need to make them as simple as possible. Your customers don’t have time to waste on a complex form.

  • Don’t make any fields mandatory: Don’t stop your customers from submitting a form unless they’ve completed every field. Allow them to enter the information they consider to be the most important, and that’s it. You can even fill some of the form out for your customer, if possible, by entering their name and email address if they’re already a member of your site.
  • Make it mobile responsive: Remember there are around 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. You can’t afford to lose feedback because your form isn’t responsive. Every form should look and feel incredible on any device. 
  • Include a rating option: If your customers don’t have much to say about your service, or they’re not wordsmiths, they might prefer a rating option instead. A one-to-five rating system that allows your customer to judge your product or service on a scale of poor to wonderful is a great way to gain quick information. Check out the Uber Engineering example here:

Though you can pre-enter some information on a feedback form to make your customer’s life easier, don’t overstep your bounds. Adding your customer’s email address to the form is fine if they’re already a customer with you. Pre-selecting the “very satisfied” rating above would look presumptuous.

Top Tips to Improve Every Form Design

The online form is an essential part of any web design project, but it’s also frequently overlooked. Unfortunately, without a good set of forms, your customers will struggle to interact with your company in a meaningful way.

When creating any form, remember:

  • Reduce friction: Reduce the friction for your customers by asking as few questions as possible. The less your customer has to answer, the better. If you can pre-populate forms with information like your customer’s name and email address, this could help. 
  • Keep it simple: Make sure that the form is clean and easy to use. Your customers shouldn’t be confused about where to click or how to submit their information. A single-column design is often better than a multi-column option.
  • Be clear in error messages: Don’t just tell your visitors that something has gone wrong. Let them know what they need to do to submit the form successfully. If possible, use inline validation with real-time feedback to let your audience know that you recognize the information they’ve submitted.
  • Keep data secure: Make sure your audience feels safe by letting them know how you will use this information and why you’re asking for it. If you’re asking for an email address, make the benefits of entering that information clear. 
  • Make fields optional: Allow your audience to add more information to a form if they want to – but don’t demand it. Give some freedom to the visitor. 

The better your forms are, the more effective your interactions with customers will be. Remember, it’s not just the face-to-face interactions that your customers judge when making decisions about your business and whether to trust you. Today’s digital world has prompted a new demand for more meaningful virtual experiences.

Your form could be the first interaction you have with a client, whether it’s a contact form, a booking form, or something else entirely. Get that right, and you can improve your chances of your customers coming back to interact with you again later.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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5 Big Web Design Predictions for 2022

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Every year, at this time, blogs like this one like to try and predict what’s going to happen in the year ahead. It’s a way of drawing a line under the archive and starting afresh. A rejuvenation that, as humans, we find life-affirming.

Ten years ago, I would have had high confidence in these predictions — after all I was eventually right about SVG adoption, even if it took a decade. But the last few years have shown that web design is tightly interwoven with the muggle world, and that world is anything but predictable.

So as we look at what might occur in the next year (or five), think of it less as a set of predictions and more as a wishlist.

Last Year’s Predictions

When I write this post every January, I like to keep myself honest by glancing back at the previous year’s predictions to gauge how accurate (or not) my predictions have been.

Last year I predicted the long-term trend for minimalism would end, WordPress would decline, cryptocurrency would go mainstream, and then hedged my bets by saying we’d make both more and fewer video calls.

Gradients, maximalism, and the nineties revival pulled us away from minimalism. It’s still popular, just not as dominant.

WordPress is still the biggest CMS in the world and will continue to be for some time. But the relentless grind of no-code site builders at the low end, and being outperformed by better CMS at the high end, mean that WordPress has passed its peak.

Over-inflated predictions for BitCoin reaching $100k by December 2021 turned out to be a damp squib. In the end, Bitcoin only tripled in value in 2021. However, with micro-tipping and major tech companies moving into the arena, it’s clear digital currency arrived in the public consciousness in 2021.

And how could I be wrong about more but also fewer video calls? So I’m calling that my first clean sweep ever. With that heady boast, let’s take a look at the next twelve months.

What Not to Expect in 2022

Do not expect the Metaverse to be significant in anything but marketing speak. Yes, the hardware is slowly becoming more available, but the Metaverse in 2022 is like playing an MMORPG on PS5: theoretically, great fun, until you discover that absolutely none of your friends can get their hands on a console.

Ignore the blog posts predicting a noughties-era retro trend. All those writers have done is looked at the nineties-era trend and added a decade. Fashions aren’t mathematical; they’re poetic. Retro happens when people find a period that rhymes with present-day hopes and fears. After the last couple of years, if we revisit a decade, it’s likely to be the late-forties.

Finally, don’t expect seismic change. Material design, parallax scrolling, and jQuery are still with us and are still valid choices under the right circumstances. Trends aren’t neat; they don’t start in January and conclude in December.

5 Web Design Predictions for 2022

Predictions tend to be self-fulfilling. So we’ve limited ourselves to five trends that we believe are either positive or, at worst harmless. Of course, there are no guarantees, but if these come to pass, we’ll be in good shape for 2023.

1. The Blockchain is Coming

Underpinning the cryptocurrency industry are blockchains. In simple terms, they’re a set of data that can be appended to but can’t be edited or deleted. Think of it as version control for data.

As with most technology, the first wave has been a way to make a fast buck. However, the exciting development is blockchain technology itself and the transformative nature of the approach. For example, Médecins Sans Frontières reportedly stores refugees’ medical records on the blockchain.

Imagine the Internet as a set of data, editable for a micro-fee, and freely accessed by anyone anywhere. Instead of millions of sites, a single, secure, autonomous source of truth. Someone somewhere’s working on it.

2. Positivity & Playfulness & A11y

Even before world events descended into an endless tirade of grim news, time was running out for dull, corporate, geometric sans-serif design.

We added gradients, we added personality, we embraced humor. And contrary to the established business logic, we still make money. Over the past few years, there have been extraordinary efforts by designers and developers to examine, test, and champion accessibility, and thanks to them, inclusive design is no longer reliant on the lowest common denominator.

In 2022 you can get experimental without obstructing 10%+ of your users.

3. Everything Green

Green is a fascinating color, the primary that isn’t (except in RGB, when it is).

Green has the same visual weight as blue, is substantially more flexible, and yet to date, has been radically underutilized in digital design.

Green has a prominent cultural association with the environment. At a time when tech companies are desperate to emphasize their ethical credentials, marketing companies will inevitably begin promoting a brand color shift to green as a quick fix for all those dumped chemicals, strip mines, and plastic-filled seas.

We’ve already seen earthy hues acquire popular appeal. At the other end of the vibrancy scale, neons are popular. Green spans both approaches with everything from calm sages to acidic neons.

In 2022, if you’re looking for a color to capture the moment, look to green.

4. Hero Text

A picture is supposed to be worth 1000 words, although I’m not sure anyone has actually tried to measure it. The problem is that sites increasingly rely on stock images, so the 1000 words that we’re getting may or may not accurately reflect 100% of our message.

In 2022, a handful of well-chosen words will be worth more than an image, with hero images taking a back seat to large hero text. This is aided by a number of minor trends, the most notable of which is the willingness of businesses to look beyond the geometric sans-serif to a more expressive form of typography.

Reading through the prediction posts on sites other than this, almost everyone agrees on large hero text replacing images, which virtually guarantees it won’t happen. Still, at the start of 2022, this seems to be the direction we’re taking.

5. Bring the Noise

One of the unexpected consequences of the past couple of years has been a renewed connection with nature. The effortless complexity in nature is endlessly engaging.

We’ve already begun to popularise gradients — there are no flat colors in nature — and the next logical step is the addition of noise.

In visual terms, noise is the grainy texture that sits so beautifully in vector illustrations. Noise has dipped in and out of trends for years, hampered a little by the leap in file size it creates. However, with WebP and Avif file types, noise is now usable on production sites.

Designing in 2022, when in doubt, throw some noise at it.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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STRIDE Threat Modeling: What You Need to Know

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Threat modeling is the ultimate shift left approach. It can be used to identify and eliminate potential vulnerabilities before a single line of code is written. Employing threat modeling methodologies should be your first step toward building networks, systems, and applications that will be secure by design.  STRIDE is a model of threats that can be used as a framework in ensuring secure application design.

STRIDE – Threat Modeling Methodology

STRIDE threat modeling

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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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