Thursday, March 28

Web Tricks

Web Tricks

Handling Authentication In Vue Using Vuex

Traditionally, many people use local storage to manage tokens generated through client-side authentication. A big concern is always a better way to manage authorization tokens to allow us to store even more information on users. This is where Vuex comes in. Vuex manages states for Vue.js applications. It serves as a centralized store for all the components in an application, with rules ensuring that the state can only be mutated in a predictable fashion. Sounds like a better alternative to always checking localStorage? Let’s explore it. Prerequisites Knowledge of JavaScript Node installed on your local system Knowledge of Vue Have Vue CLI installed Have read Vue Authentication And Route Handling Using Vue-router ― Scotch Setting up the application modules For this project, we want to creat...
Web Tricks

6 Awesome Ways to Take A Screenshot of your Code

Introduction At some point behind that screen, you’ll need to capture an image of code - whether it’s yours or someone else's. This could be for different reasons; reference for an article, asking for help from a forum, showing off on Twitter, or even storing valuable tidbits that you’d like to go through later. Either way, the importance of screenshot tools cannot be overemphasized right now because like it or not, we could all use one. After some digging, here are six awesome ways to take screenshots of your code. Let’s look in! Polacode Polacode is a Visual Studio Code extension that lets you create unique and sharable screenshots of your code. While using Polacode, it retains your existing theme and fonts and renders them for an awesome layout. Check this out: In the screenshot abo...
20 Best New Portfolios, August 2018
Web Tricks

20 Best New Portfolios, August 2018

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Our Secret Reptilian Overlords, I asked for more color in last month’s article, and you have delivered. It’s August, now, and to distract myself from the oppressive heat, I have gathered some 20 of these more colorful designs together for your perusal. So as you might guess, there’s a fair bit of variety this month. There’s still some good old monochromatic minimalism for those of you who like that, so never fear. There’s just a bit more balance, this time around. Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX and accessibility suffer. For example, many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea, kids. If you ...
Attracting Users To Evaluate Your Product
Web Tricks

Attracting Users To Evaluate Your Product

Attracting Users To Evaluate Your ProductAttracting Users To Evaluate Your Product Joe Leech 2018-08-05T23:30:38+01:00 2018-08-07T12:41:07+00:00 (This is a sponsored article.) The entire ecosystem in which we are designing and researching the user experience is shifting and changing constantly. Traditional UX skills need to be expanded to meet the reality of the modern digital ecosystem. Understanding the user is essential to the job, but you also need to understand the wider user context. How do they discover they have a need? How do they find and evaluate a product to meet that need? This three-part series outlines the three phases of the product life cycle,...
Popular Design News of the Week: July 30, 2018 – August 5, 2018
Web Tricks

Popular Design News of the Week: July 30, 2018 – August 5, 2018

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.  The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week. Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news. Evolving the Firefox Brand   The Age of the Wordless Logo   How I Built my Side Project and Got 31,000 Users the First Week   Art and Copy: Bridging the Gap Between Design and Conten...
Comics of the Week #438
Web Tricks

Comics of the Week #438

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today. So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons. Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own… Time is money Time machine   Designer boot camp Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below… Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5! So...
We Are Just Getting Started: 1,000 Smashing Members
Web Tricks

We Are Just Getting Started: 1,000 Smashing Members

We Are Just Getting Started: 1,000 Smashing MembersWe Are Just Getting Started: 1,000 Smashing Members Vitaly Friedman 2018-08-03T13:50:31+02:00 2018-08-03T11:54:40+00:00 We’ve all been there: bringing a new product to the market is a tough nut to crack. It requires patience, commitment, and a bit of healthy stubbornness. That's the exact attitude we started off with when we launched our shiny new Smashing Membership last October — a friendly and respectful community that keeps this website alive, along with books, webinars, discounts, networking, and a seasoned selection of fancy cats. Thanks to the generous support of Smashing Members, we're incredibly honor...
5 Ways to Keep Designing When the Power is Out
Web Tricks

5 Ways to Keep Designing When the Power is Out

There’s a certain peace to be found at night, when the world goes dark and silent. You might settle down on the couch for a moment, and just soak in the absence of noise and bustle. However, if you’re at work, and the world goes dark and silent, it’s a lot less comforting. At the very least, it means a delay in your work. If you’re a freelancer, that could very well mean a delay in getting paid. It’s stressful, and it can happen anywhere, to anyone. First world countries can’t always prevent power-outs. Countries like Mexico can set their clocks by them. How do you know it’s rainy season? The power’s out. Oh, and the rain. Now, this isn’t always a terrible thing. A break might be just what you need to gather your thoughts, relax, and get ready to work like mad when the power’s back. Or, y...
Web Tricks

​Build a Chat Widget with Python and JavaScript

Building quality digital products is a requirement toward acquiring long-term customers, but inefficient communication is an efficient way to lose them just as quickly as you gain them. The internet is currently the world’s largest marketplace and everyone is building something for an online audience to consume, however, it would be a shame if there isn’t a way to receive feedback or interact with customers in realtime. In this tutorial, we will look at how we can create a realtime chat widget using Pusher, Python, and JavaScript. When we are done building, the final application will look and work like this: In the image above, we can see a digital product called “SPIN” and it has a chat widget option for visiting customers to interact with. On the left browser window, a customer visits t...
Web Tricks

What Happens When You Create A Flexbox Flex Container?

What Happens When You Create A Flexbox Flex Container?What Happens When You Create A Flexbox Flex Container? Rachel Andrew 2018-08-02T14:00:35+02:00 2018-08-02T14:02:18+00:00 In a short series of articles, I’m going to spend some time in detailed unpacking of Flexbox — in the same way I have done in the past with grid. We’ll have a look at the things Flexbox was designed for, what it really does well, and why we might not choose it as a layout method. In this article, we will take a detailed look at what actually happens when you add display: flex to your stylesheet. A Flex Container, Please! In order to use Flexbox, you need an element that will be the flex ...
Reading Waterfall Charts to Focus on Page Speed
Web Tricks

Reading Waterfall Charts to Focus on Page Speed

There’s no question that making your website’s pages load fast is important. Research shows that people start to lose focus on something after a single second, and lose interest completely somewhere between 4 and 10 seconds. There’s even a direct correlation between slow load times and losing sales, according to Amazon and Kissmetrics. But who has time for complex tools like reading waterfall charts? The easy solution would be to just keep files small and design simple, right? Maybe not. Modern design trends are heading towards animation and detailed, fullscreen images. If you don’t have these assets, your site may look washed out next to your competitors. And while these features may increase user engagement and sales in a vacuum, they don’t do anything for you if they bog down your site...
Web Tricks

Docker and Visual Studio Code

I recently wrote about My Top VSCode Tips and Features, and one of the VSCode plugins mentioned was the Docker Plugin. Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications, whether on laptops, data center VMs, or the cloud. Quite a mouthful, but wikipedia explains it a bit clearly. Docker is a computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization also known as containerization. Essentially, it enables us package our applications into images, and run them as containers on any platform that has docker installed. The aim for this article is to showcase the various ways the Visual Studio Code Docker plugin makes life easier when working with Docker. We'll look at 2 developer stacks, NodeJS and Golang. Installation You need...
How to Design for IPhone X
Web Tricks

How to Design for IPhone X

Designing for the iPhone X will bring some new challenges, but also some new design opportunities. In this article, I’ll share a few suggestions that will help you design apps and games that look and feel great on iPhone X. Display Specifics iPhone X has a new high-resolution, rounded, edge-to-edge Super Retina display has a resolution of 1125×2436px. While it gives designers more space for display content and allows them to create a genuinely immersive experience, there are a few things that should be considered when designing for this device: 1. 3x Image Scale Factor iPhone X has 3x image scale factors (@1x,@2x, and @3x). When rasterized images are needed, be sure to include both 2x and 3x image resolutions in your app image resolution catalog. Also, it’s recommended to use SVGs for gly...
User Experience Psychology And Performance: SmashingConf Videos
Web Tricks

User Experience Psychology And Performance: SmashingConf Videos

User Experience Psychology And Performance: SmashingConf VideosUser Experience Psychology And Performance: SmashingConf Videos The Smashing Editorial 2018-08-01T13:30:35+02:00 2018-08-01T15:01:09+00:00 Today, we’d like to shine a light on two videos from our archives as we explore two very different approaches to User Experience (UX). The first explores how we relate our websites to the needs and situations of our visitors, trying to meet them where they are emotionally. The second is a detailed technical exploration into how we measure and track the data around performance as it relates to user experience. The second video may seem unrelated to the first vide...
Firefox Working on a Rebrand
Web Tricks

Firefox Working on a Rebrand

Hey guys, remember Firefox? Remember the Mozilla Application Suite? That second one isn’t relevant, but everyone knows that nostalgia is an attention-grabber. Now that you’re here, let’s move on with that first item: Firefox. It’s getting a logo change… eventually. The Mozilla foundation wants your help deciding which direction to go. The Firefox logo as we know it was a collaboration by Daniel Burka, Stephen Desroches, and the inestimable Jon Hicks. It was they who introduced us to that little blue ball, and the weirdly-charismatic-even-when-we-can’t-see-his-face fox. Over the years, though, it has been changed, and simplified. As our collective Western aesthetic evolved, and as screens got smaller and smaller, it needed to change with the times. And now, once again is changing, because ...