Friday, March 29

Author: phpInfo

A Brief Guide About Competitive Analysis
Web Tricks

A Brief Guide About Competitive Analysis

In this article, I will introduce the subject of competitive analysis, which is basically a method to determine how well your competitors are performing. My aim is to introduce the subject to those of you who are new to the concept. It should be useful if you are new to product design, UX, interaction or digital design, or if you have experience in these fields but have not performed a competitive analysis before. No prior knowledge of the topic is needed because I’ll be explaining what the term means and how to perform a competitive analysis as we go. I am assuming some basic knowledge of the design process and UX research, but I’ll provide plenty of practical examples and reference links to help with any terms and concepts you might be unfamiliar with.   Competitive Analysis,...
How to Launch Your E-Commerce Empire for $100 (or Less)
Web Tricks

How to Launch Your E-Commerce Empire for $100 (or Less)

No, it’s not a clickbait title and yes, starting with $100 can get you an actual running store. In this article I’ll go through every step you need to take to get your store up and running and explain the costs involved. Granted, to keep the costs down you’ll do all the heavy lifting but hey, nothing worthwhile ever comes easy so let’s dive right in… 1. The Product It might feel odd for some that I would go about explaining how to launch a $100 store and start with the product but truth is, the site, domain, logo everything needs to be tailored to fit the product you are trying to sell. The success or failure of your business will rely on your ability to select the correct product and the right market so don’t skip over this step. Here’s a quick way to validate your idea: Go to ...
“View Source” in DevTools
CSS Tricks

“View Source” in DevTools

When the conversation about the value of "View Source" rolls around, the #1 response I hear is along these lines: No way, Jose! I use View Source all the time! It's very useful when you want to look at the raw HTML, not the DOM. Yes, that is useful, and yes, there is a difference. But just because you are looking at DevTools doesn't mean the DOM is the only thing you can see.   This is Chrome DevTools. Safari has a Resources tab There is also a Network tab in DevTools for every browser. That's where you find a way to look at the document. Firefox's Network tab So, if your concern about losing View Source is that you'd have no possible way to see the document instead of just the DOM, that's just not true. You can rest assured that you have the same affordance in DevTools. ...
An Intro to Web Site Testing with Cypress
CSS Tricks

An Intro to Web Site Testing with Cypress

End-to-end testing is awesome because it mirrors the user’s experience. Where you might need a ton of unit tests to get good coverage (the kind where you test that a function returns a value you expect), you can write a single end-to-end test that acts like a real human as it tests several pieces of your app at once. It’s a very economical way of testing your app. Cypress is a new-ish test runner with some features that take some of the friction out of end-to-end testing. It sports the ability to automatically wait for elements (if you try to grab onto an element it can’t find), wait for Ajax requests, great visibility into your test outcomes, and an easy-to-use API. Note: Cypress is both a test runner and a paid service that records your tests, allowing you to play them back later. This ...
Web Tricks

Building A Room Detector For IoT Devices On Mac OS

Knowing which room you’re in enables various IoT applications — from turning on the light to changing TV channels. So, how can we detect the moment you and your phone are in the kitchen, or bedroom, or living room? With today’s commodity hardware, there are a myriad of possibilities: One solution is to equip each room with a bluetooth device. Once your phone is within range of a bluetooth device, your phone will know which room it is, based on the bluetooth device. However, maintaining an array of Bluetooth devices is significant overhead — from replacing batteries to replacing dysfunctional devices. Additionally, proximity to the Bluetooth device is not always the answer: if you’re in the living room, by the wall shared with the kitchen, your kitchen appliances should not start churnin...
5 Ways to Cleanse Your Design Palate
Web Tricks

5 Ways to Cleanse Your Design Palate

Much is made of the need for inspiration in design work. While most of a designer’s job is sweating the details, we all still need that little spark to get us going. We need (or at least enjoy having) that one initial idea or concept to get us started on the path to design greatness. And so we binge. We read articles that show off cool things other people have designed, watch videos of new and innovative products being unveiled, and generally seek that spark. The only problem with this process is that in our haste to be inspired, our good ideas can sometimes be obscured by everything else that’s already in our brains. Unless things have gone very wrong, our thoughts generally don’t happen in a vacuum. Our minds are filled to the brim with our daily tasks, our relationships, and most ...
Web Tricks

Announcing Scotch v8! Our Biggest Upgrade Ever

I've been waiting to write this post for a very very very long time. Work on this v8 site started in February of this year. This is version 8 in the 4.5 years we've been in existence. Rebuilding Scotch has always been a fun project for me. Getting to try all the latest and greatest toys in a site. Aside from trying new toys though, here's the main reasons I decided to start another new site: Site speed was slow for international users Since our servers live in New York, we saw site loading speeds of 5-10 seconds. For international users however, they were seeing a 20+ second load time. Unacceptable! Finding content was difficult We now have over 400+ guest authors. We were often publishing these amazing articles and then seeing them get buried down the feed. On top of that, our site searc...
Super-Powered Grid Components with CSS Custom Properties
CSS Tricks

Super-Powered Grid Components with CSS Custom Properties

A little while ago, I wrote a well-received article about combining CSS variables with CSS grid to help build more maintainable layouts. But CSS grid isn’t just for pages! That is a common myth. Although it is certainly very useful for page layout, I find myself just as frequently reaching for grid when it comes to components. In this article I’ll address using CSS grid at the component level. Grid is neither a substitute for flexbox nor vice versa. In fact, using a combination of the two gives us even more power when building components. Building a simple component In this demo, I’ll walk through building a text-and-image component, something you might commonly find yourself building on a typical site, and which I have frequently built myself. This is what our first component should look...
Best Practices For Mobile Form Design
Web Tricks

Best Practices For Mobile Form Design

Best Practices For Mobile Form DesignBest Practices For Mobile Form Design Nick Babich 2018-08-28T16:00:09+02:00 2018-08-28T21:57:21+00:00 (This article is kindly sponsored by Adobe.) Forms are the linchpin of all mobile interactions; it stands between the person and what they're looking for. Every day, we use forms for essential online activities. Recall the last time you bought a ticket, booked a hotel room or made a purchase online — most probably those interactions contained a step with filling out a form. Forms are just a means to an end. Users should be able to complete them quickly and without confusion. In this article, you’ll learn practical technique...
CSS Tricks

​Reinvest Your Time With HelloSign API

(This is a sponsored post.)G2 Crowd says HelloSign's API is 2x faster to implement than any other eSign provider. What are you going to do with all the time you save? Try it free Today! Direct Link to Article — PermalinkThe post ​Reinvest Your Time With HelloSign API appeared first on CSS-Tricks. Source: CSS-tricks.com
Beyond Blogging: Guest Slots & Thought Leadership
Web Tricks

Beyond Blogging: Guest Slots & Thought Leadership

Including high quality blogs and other forms of useful, interesting content is a great way to boost SEO and encourage repeat visits to a website. However, with everyone playing the same game, getting visitors flowing to a new site can still be touch and go — even if you do everything right. Increasingly, targeted advertising on Google and social media helps bring new eyes to every lovingly crafted website, and companies relying purely on SEO struggle. The drawback is that this puts a business’ hard-earned cash straight into the pocket of the Internet giants. That’s why they’re worth billions while small businesses struggle. There is a way, however, to get free advertising and introduce thousands of new surfers to your site: by guest blogging, you can showcase yourself — and by extension y...
Web Tricks

Building a React Native app as a Designer using BuilderX

BuilderX is a screen design tool that codes React Native* for you. It generates beautiful, readable and editable code for the designs. Just design the components in your app, or import your Sketch file and it generates the corresponding code. You can hop between design and code with just a click owing to the amazing bi-directional flow in BuilderX. The Problem It’s 2018, and Designers and Developers still don’t speak the same language. There is still a huge gap between the Design and Development phase. Designers and Developers work on different workspaces, tools, and most importantly, file formats. BuilderX is a revolutionary tool that seamlessly bridges this gap. First, you will need to install BuilderX. Just go to builderx.io and install BuilderX. BuilderX Interface BuilderX workspace i...
CSS Tricks

A Tale of Two Buttons

I enjoy front-end developer thought progression articles like this one by James Nash. Say you have a button which needs to work in "normal" conditions (light backgrounds) and one with reverse-colors for going on dark backgrounds. Do you have a modifier class on the button itself? How about on the container? How can inheritance and the cascade help? How about custom properties? I think embracing CSS’s cascade can be a great way to encourage consistency and simplicity in UIs. Rather than every new component being a free for all, it trains both designers and developers to think in terms of aligning with and re-using what they already have. Direct Link to Article — PermalinkThe post A Tale of Two Buttons appeared first on CSS-Tricks. Source: CSS-tricks.com
Google Tag Manager Course by Analytics Mania is live!
Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager Course by Analytics Mania is live!

Today is the big day! My Google Tag Manager course that I’ve been carefully crafting this entire summer is now open for enrollment. If you are just starting with Google Tag Manager or are a fresh intermediate user, then this is for you. This time, I will not tell you how awesome Google Tag Manager is. The fact that I’ve already posted more than 100 GTM blog posts by now should imply this by default. However, if you’re new to GTM, here are 11 reasons why it should be in your marketing/analytics stack.   Early-Bird bonus: Live Q&A Sessions (Livestream) This offer is valid until September 5th, 2018. If you enroll in my Google Tag Manager Masterclass during the initial launch, as a bonus I’ll host 4 live sessions where you can ask me anything you want about GTM. If you have some specific ...
CSS Tricks

A native lazy load for the web platform

A new Chrome feature dubbed "Blink LazyLoad" is designed to dramatically improve performance by deferring the load of below-the-fold images and third-party <iframe>s. The goals of this bold experiment are to improve the overall render speed of content that appears within a user’s viewport (also known as above-the-fold), as well as, reduce network data and memory usage. ✨ ?‍? How will it work? It’s thought that temporarily delaying less important content will drastically improve overall perceived performance. If this proposal is successful, automatic optimizations will be run during the load phase of a page: Images and iFrames will be analysed to gauge importance. If they’re seen to be non-essential, they will be deferred, or not loaded at all: Deferred items will only be loaded if t...