Web Tricks Archives - Page 6 of 27

11Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Saving Grandma’s Recipes With Xamarin.Forms

My grandma makes the best, most fluffiest, go weak-in-your-knees buns that anybody has ever tasted. The problem is, there’s a ton of secret ingredients (and I’m not just talking love) that go into those buns, and those ingredients and directions are all stored in my grandma’s head.We all have family recipes like that, and instead of possibly forgetting them, in this article we’re going to create a mobile app for iOS and Android using Xamarin.Forms that will save them for myself and future generations of my family! So if you’re interested in writing mobile applications, but don’t have the time to write the same app over and over again for each platform, this article is for you! Don’t worry if you don’t know C# from a Strawberry Pretzel Salad; I’ve been writing Xamarin apps for over 8 y...

Create Sites Easily with WP Page Builder

11Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Create Sites Easily with WP Page Builder

There’s little doubt that WordPress is one of the biggest web technologies in the world, powering around a third of the web, and growing all the time. Until recently WordPress was only for the initiated, those developers who’d spent years learning how to dig into the source code and tinker, without breaking their whole site. In the last few years WordPress has been revolutionized by the introduction of page builders, applications that allow anyone—even someone with no design or coding knowledge—to create a professional standard WordPress site on the fly. Today, we’re talking about one of the most lightweight options on the market, with performance that outstrips many rival tools: WP Page Builder. WP Page Builder is the perfect tool for web professionals who want to branch into WordPr...

11Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Laravel Eloquent: API Resources

Introduction When creating API's, we sometimes specifying the data they want back in the various controller actions: public function show(Book $book) { return response()->json([ 'data' => [ 'title' => $book->title, 'description' => $book->description, 'author' => $book->author->name ] ]); } Notice we omitted the attributes created_at and updated_at when formatting the response? Take another scenario where we want to update a book and expect a response back. public function update(Request $request, Book $book) { $book = $book->update($response->all()); return response()->json([ 'data' => [ 'title' => $book->title, 'description...

10Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

How to Create Magnetic Content

I know I know: Content is king! You’re already sick to the back-teeth of hearing it.  You’ve made your content, you know your target audience—you just want to build some links and get some darn traffic to that content, am I right? Not to rain on your parade, but what if your content really is trash?  Will anyone actually link to it? If it is subpar, then probably not, and trying to build links to it will be a colossal waste of time. I’m borrowing this saying from a giant in the SEO field, Ryan Stewart: If you don’t have anything of value to say, don’t say anything at all Only create content which will be of real value to people. If you provide, true, honest value in your content the audience will love you. Don’t hold back! Don’t worry about things like “does providing free stuff de...

Form Design Patterns Book Excerpt: A Registration Form

10Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Form Design Patterns Book Excerpt: A Registration Form

Let’s start with a registration form. Most companies want long-term relationships with their users. To do that they need users to sign up. And to do that, they need to give users value in return. Nobody wants to sign up to your service — they just want to access whatever it is you offer, or the promise of a faster experience next time they visit. Despite the registration form’s basic appearance, there are many things to consider: the primitive elements that make up a form (labels, buttons, and inputs), ways to reduce effort (even on small forms like this), all the way through to form validation. In choosing such a simple form, we can zoom in on the foundational qualities found in well-designed forms. How It Might Look The form is made up of four fields and a submit button. Each fie...

10Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

React Apps with the Google Maps API and google-maps-react

This tutorial aims at integrating the google maps API to your React components and enabling you to display maps on your website. Introduction to Google Maps API. At some point of our lives, we've all gotten a chance to use and interact with the google maps, either through finding directions, viewing our current location, ordering cabs or estimating distance and time from one point to another. Including the Google maps API in a React App is actually far much easier than expected due to its rich documentation which I highly suggest that you look into, and the npm package by Fullstack React. Prerequisite: React Knowledge (at least intermediate level) A Google Maps API Key Go on ahead and grab your API key here. Simply click on the Get Started button Tick on the maps...

10Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Creating Multistep Forms With React and Semantic UI

Forms are the standard method used to collect user inputs on web applications. However, sometimes we may be collecting large amounts that may result in a very large form with several fields. This can be a pain not just for the user but for the developer as well since they will have to fit these fields into the form in a way that still looks appealing to the user. The solution? Break the form into several sections collecting a certain type of information at each point. undefined Fortunately for us, react makes this very simple to implement. We can do this by breaking down the sections(steps) into individual react components that collect certain inputs. We can then choose which components are rendered at each step by manipulating state. In this tutorial we shall walk through how we can ...

9Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Build a Custom Toggle Switch with React

Building web applications usually involves making provisions for user interactions. One of the major ways of making provision for user interactions is through forms. Different form components exist for taking different kinds of input from the user. For example, a password component takes sensitive information from a user and masks the information so that it is not visible. Most times, the information you need to get from a user is boolean-like - for example: yes or no, true or false, enable or disable, on or off, etc. Traditionally, the checkbox form component is used for getting these kinds of input. However, in modern interface designs, toggle switches are commonly used as checkbox replacements, although there are some accessibility concerns. In this tutorial, we will see how to build a...

Building Intelligent Apps with MongoDB and Google Cloud – Part 1

9Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Building Intelligent Apps with MongoDB and Google Cloud – Part 1

Data analytics is a perpetual underachiever. Every generation of tools promises us better insight and never quite delivers. So we get stuck re-platforming and re-designing, hoping the next iteration will finally get us to the intelligence utopia. Yet modern applications must provide rich experiences, offer decision support, and continuously learn and adapt to win their users. Analytics and AI are at the heart of these Intelligent Apps. We decided to build an Intelligent App to demonstrate how easy it is to take advantage of ML and AI cloud services without hiring a team of data scientists. First, we built a simple e-commerce application - MongoDB SwagStore - using React and MongoDB Stitch with MongoDB Atlas on GCP. Stitch saved us hundreds of lines of code and our app was ready in days. Bu...

Practical Suggestions To Improve Usability Of Landing Pages With Animation From Slides

9Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Practical Suggestions To Improve Usability Of Landing Pages With Animation From Slides

For a long time, UI animation was an afterthought for designers. Even today, many designers think of animation as something that brings delight but does not necessarily improve usability. If you share this point of view, then this article is for you. I will discuss how animation can improve the user experience of landing pages, and I’ll provide the best examples of animation created using the Slides framework. The Slides framework is an easy-to-use tool for creating websites. It allows anyone to create a sleek landing page in a few minutes. All you need to do is choose an appropriate design from the list of predefined slides. A collection of predefined designs in Slides. Four Ways Animation Supports Usability Of Landing Pages Landing page design is more than just about visual present...

Project Management Templates: The Key to Improving Your Workflow

9Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Project Management Templates: The Key to Improving Your Workflow

Last year, Rachel McPherson shared 9 ways to organize successful creative projects. It’s a very useful article that highlights the main things to do if you want to bring greater control and organization to your web design workflow. Tip #2: Take Advantage of a Project Management Tool, is the one I want to focus on today. Specifically, I want to look at some of the best tools for web designers, how to choose the right one for you, as well as give you a quick lesson on how to use project management templates to improve your workflow. How to Choose the Best Project Management Tool for You When considering a project management platform for your web design business, here are some things to pay attention to: Generic vs. Web Design Tools These are four project management tools I would recom...

8Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Getting Started With Gutenberg By Creating Your Own Block

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) by far —powering more than 30% of the web. It has undergone a huge metamorphosis during its 15 years of existence. Its latest addition is Gutenberg which is to be released in version 5.0. Named after Johannes Gutenberg (the inventor of the printing press), Gutenberg is going to fundamentally change WordPress, further helping reach its goal to democratize publishing. WordPress usually releases its major features as a plugin to test the waters before baking them into the core. Gutenberg is no exception. In this article, we will learn how to go about building your first Gutenberg block. We will be building a Testimonials Slider Block while dwelling on the basics of Gutenberg. Here is an outline for this article: Insta...

8Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

20 Best New Portfolios, October 2018

Hello Readers! Can you believe that I have not found one single Halloween-themed portfolio? I guess no one wanted to base their entire site on a one-day holiday. While understandable, this disappoints me. Someone get me a vector skeleton! What we do have is a general mix of calm and soothing minimalist sites punctuated by riotous color which might, if you’re not ready for it, hurt your eyes for a second. Enjoy. 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 find an idea you like and want to adapt to your own site, remember to...

5Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

Taming <code>this</code> In JavaScript With Bind Operator

Do you want to discover the next exciting JavaScript features that you didn’t even know you needed? In this article, I will introduce one of these proposals that if accepted may change the way you write code the same way the spread operator did. However, here’s a small disclaimer: This feature is under development and discussion. The goal here is to add some hype around it and create awareness of the hard work that TC39 is doing to find consensus, fix all the syntax and semantics issues and have it shipped with the next releases of ECMAScript. If you have any concerns, comments or desire to express your support, please go to the TC39 proposals repository, add a star to this feature to show your support, open an issue to voice your concerns and get involved. But before, I want to ask ...

The Alternative Dictionary of Web Design Terms

5Oct

By phpInfoNo Comments

Web Tricks

The Alternative Dictionary of Web Design Terms

It’s a universal truth that there’s more than one meaning to just about every word. This is doubly true for industry lingo. If you’re just getting started in web design, you need to know what everything really means, if you want to get ahead. So here it is: here’s what the Secret Web Design Illuminati doesn’t want you to know. Read this article, and you’ll be able to dab on the haters with your hip new slang. Isn’t that swell? .htaccess A file that sits on your web server which, if ever touched, is perhaps the quickest and easiest way to break your whole site. AJAX The practice of making all your content dependent on JavaScript to load in the first place; this never goes wrong. API A system whereby enterprising young developers make money from your users’ data. Remember that you c...