by via Awwwards - Sites of the day
Friday, June 30, 2017
Higher Ground
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day
8 Best Online Businesses to Start This Year
Work for yourself without renting office space by starting an online business. Sell your skills, your expertise, or your crafts by filling an online niche for an industry or a community. It's amazing how you can figure out how to sell what you're good at if you just find the right angle....
[ This is a content summary only. Visit our website http://ift.tt/1b4YgHQ for full links, other content, and more! ]
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
[ This is a content summary only. Visit our website http://ift.tt/1b4YgHQ for full links, other content, and more! ]
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
Infinite Scroll – Automatically Add Next Page
Infinite Scroll is a JavaScript plugin that automatically adds the next page, saving users from a full page load.
by via jQuery-Plugins.net RSS Feed
Introducing Website Speed Test: An Image Analysis Tool
This article was sponsored by Cloudinary. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
Because images dominate page weight, methodical image optimization can have a significant effect on conversions and user experience. The performance tools you choose to use can have a powerful impact on how websites are built and maintained. One such popular open source tool is WebPagetest. It is designed to measure and analyze webpage performance, which is why Cloudinary chose to partner with our friends there to launch Website Speed Test.
Website Speed Test is an image analysis tool that provides detailed optimization insights beyond a simple compression check. The tool leverages Cloudinary’s advanced algorithms to demonstrate how changes to image size, format, quality and encoding parameters can result in significant reductions in file size while maintaining perceived quality. In short, Website Speed Test shows the why and how of image optimization.
How Website Speed Test Works
Advanced algorithms take into account many factors when examining images, including the exact content of an image and the need for responsive design. The resulting insights enable you to ensure that images are encoded correctly, optimized for performance, and look their best regardless of bandwidth, viewing browser, device or viewport.
At the top of the page, the report shows the total weight of images, potential compression and ‘Page Image Score’: a grade ranging from A-F. This grade is based on the image format used, fit between image resolution and the displayed size in the graphic design, and compression rate of all the images that were analyzed.
The overview is followed by a detailed analysis of each image, with performance insights and recommendations for improvement.
Left Tab – Current Image
Presents the current version of the image being analyzed along with its image score.
Middle Tab – Optimized Image
Presents an optimized version of the image, using the same format as the original image, with the following adjustments:
- Correctly-sized images - scales the image down to the actual required dimensions on the web page
- Intelligent content-aware encoding - analyzes the image to find the best quality compression level and optimal encoding settings, based on the content and viewing browser, producing a perceptually fine image while minimizing the file size.
Learn more about these manipulations
Right Tab - Format Alternatives
This tab shows how optimization works for different image formats and the impact on image weight.
Improved Image Analysis Using WebPagetest
Linked from a new Image Analysis tab, Cloudinary powers WebPagetest with robust image analysis capabilities, enabling you to receive valuable data and guidance on how to manage images and deliver an optimal user experience.
Optimizing Images is No Easy Task
The Website Speed Test tool provides insights on the why and how of optimization. While you may be able to optimize an image or two manually, the process becomes exponentially more complicated when you need to scale up, managing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of images delivered to a website.
For the best user experience, each image should be enhanced and optimized to meet the viewing context. This entails automatically adapting the image to fit the layout of the page and selecting the optimal quality and encoding settings.
Accomplishing this type of optimization is no ordinary feat. Optimizing images for different browsers, devices and bandwidth requires considerable knowledge of the intricacies of image formats, encoding parameters and visual quality metrics. For example, it makes sense that a smaller image file size will result in faster load time, less bandwidth usage and a better user experience. However, reduce the file size too much, and image quality could suffer and impair user satisfaction. This is where Cloudinary’s automatic optimization comes in play.
You can create your free account here.
Continue reading %Introducing Website Speed Test: An Image Analysis Tool%
by Alok Shah via SitePoint
#341: TC39, ECMAScript, and the Future of JavaScript
|
by via JavaScript Weekly
Square Cash
Stunning One Pager with the most spectacular load animation and background illustrations announcing Square's new Cash App. Shout out to the different positioning of cards and devices on multiple resolutions. A perfect One Pager.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
Eli Rousso
Super long scrolling case-study One Pager by NY-based product designer Eli Rousso who takes us inside his thinking when redesigning a remote. Thank you for such a detailed, visual insight Eli.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
8 Must Have PHP Quality Assurance Tools
For shipping quality code, we must have testing in mind while coding (if not doing TDD). However, with the wide range of PHP testing tools out there, it's hard to make a choice! Exploring PHP is a fun adventure (premium course on that here!) but it's hard to assemble a toolbelt that's not too heavy to wear to work!
This popular article will highlight the most popular testing tools and has been updated to reflect the state of QA tools in 2017.
Untested code is broken code.
PHPUnit
PHPUnit is the go to testing framework for PHP. It was created by Sebastian Bergmann in 2004 and current in version 6 that requires PHP 7.
We have plenty of tutorials coming up about it, but here are some you can already consume.
Cucumber
Cucumber is a framework for creating acceptance tests from specifications. It's known for it descriptive generated texts that can be read as just plain English. The official PHP implementation for Cucumber is Behat.
We have a getting started tutorial about it here on SitePoint. The below example taken from the documentation is a good example on how expressive those expectations are.
Feature: Listing command
In order to change the structure of the folder I am currently in
As a UNIX user
I need to be able see the currently available files and folders there
Scenario: Listing two files in a directory
Given I am in a directory "test"
And I have a file named "foo"
And I have a file named "bar"
When I run "ls"
Then I should get:
"""
bar
foo
"""
Atoum
Atoum is another unit testing framework for PHP. It's a standalone package that you can install via GitHub, Composer or via a PHAR executable file.
Atoum tests are very readable with expressive method names and chaining.
$this->integer($classInstance->myMethod())
->isEqualTo(10);
$this->string($classInstance->myMethod())
->contains("Something heppened");
You want to learn more about PHP unit testing with Atoum, you can follow this tutorial.
Selenium
Selenium is a tool for automated browser testing (Integration and acceptance testing). It transforms the tests to browser API commands and it asserts the expected results. It supports most of the available browsers out there.
We can use Selenium with PHPUnit using an extension.
composer require --dev phpunit/phpunit
composer require --dev phpunit/phpunit-selenium
Here's a simple example:
Continue reading %8 Must Have PHP Quality Assurance Tools%
by Younes Rafie via SitePoint
Creating a Blogging App Using React, Part 2: User Sign-Up
In the first part of this tutorial series, you saw how to implement the sign-in functionality. In this part, you'll learn how to implement the sign-up functionality and modify the sign-in functionality to check for valid users from MongoDB.
Getting Started
Let's get started by cloning the source code from the first part of the tutorial.
git clone http://ift.tt/2spGDCR
Once the directory has been cloned, navigate to the project directory and install the required dependencies.
cd ReactBlogApp-SignIn npm install
Start the Node.js server and you will have the application running at http://localhost:7777/index.html#/.
Setting Up the Back End
For this application, you'll be using MongoDB as the back end. Follow the instructions in the MongoDB official documentation to install MongoDB on Ubuntu. Once you have MongoDB installed, you'll need a connector to connect MongoDB and Node.js. Install the MongoDB Node.js driver using the Node Package Manager (or npm):
npm install mongodb
Once you have the driver installed, you should be able to require the driver in the application.
Create a file called user.js where you'll keep the user-related stuff. Inside the user.js file, require the MongoDB client-related dependencies.
var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;
You'll be using a library called assert to check the returned response. Include assert in the user.js file.
var assert = require('assert');
Let's name our database Blog in MongoDB, so our database URL is as shown:
var url = 'mongodb://localhost:27017/Blog';
Inside the user.js file, create and export a function called signup.
module.exports = {
signup: function(){
// Code will be here
}
}
Using the MongoDB client, try to connect to the database. Once connected, you'll log the connected message in the terminal.
module.exports = {
signup: function(name, email, password){
MongoClient.connect(url, function(err, db) {
console.log('connected')
});
}
}
Setting Up the Sign-Up Event
Once you have set up the MongoDB back end, let's implement the sign-up event. Inside the main.jsx page, include the on-change event for the name, email and password input text boxes in the signup class.
handleNameChange(e){
this.setState({name:e.target.value})
}
handleEmailChange(e){
this.setState({email:e.target.value})
}
handlePasswordChange(e){
this.setState({password:e.target.value})
}
Bind the above event changes in the class constructor.
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.handleNameChange = this.handleNameChange.bind(this);
this.handleEmailChange = this.handleEmailChange.bind(this);
this.handlePasswordChange = this.handlePasswordChange.bind(this);
}
Define the state variables inside the signup class constructor.
this.state = {
name:'',
email:'',
password:''
};
Define the signup method inside the signup class. Inside the signup method, using the axios library, make a post method call to the signup method in the user.js file.
signUp(){
axios.post('/signup', {
name: this.state.name,
email: this.state.email,
password: this.state.password
})
.then(function (response) {
console.log(response);
})
.catch(function (error) {
console.log(error);
});
}
Inside the signup function in the user.js file, you'll implement the database insert.
Add the /signup request handler in the app.js file as shown to handle the sign-up click event. Inside the /signup request handler function, make a call to the user.signup method.
app.post('/signup', function (req, res) {
user.signup('','','')
console.log(res);
})
Require the user.js file inside the app.js file.
var user = require('./user')
Save the above changes and restart the server. Point your browser to http://localhost:7777/index.html#/signup and you should have the sign-up page. Click on the Sign Up button and you will have the connected message in the terminal.
Save User Details in MongoDB
To save user details in the Blog database, you'll create a collection called user. Inside the user collection, you'll keep all the user details such as name, email address, and password. The MongoClient.connect returns a db parameter using which you can insert an entry in the user collection.
You'll make use of the insertOne method to insert a single record in the user collection. Modify the code in the signup method in user.js as shown below:
db.collection('user').insertOne( {
"name": name,
"email": email,
"password": password
},function(err, result){
assert.equal(err, null);
console.log("Saved the user sign up details.");
});
Here is the complete user.js code:
var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;
var assert = require('assert');
var url = 'mongodb://localhost:27017/Blog';
module.exports = {
signup: function(name, email, password){
MongoClient.connect(url, function(err, db) {
db.collection('user').insertOne( {
"name": name,
"email": email,
"password": password
},function(err, result){
assert.equal(err, null);
console.log("Saved the user sign up details.");
});
});
}
}
Modify the /signup request handler in the app.js file to pass in the name, email and password to the user.js signup method.
app.post('/signup', function (req, res) {
var name=req.body.name;
var email=req.body.email;
var password=req.body.password;
if(name && email && password){
user.signup(name, email, password)
}
else{
res.send('Failure');
}
})
Save the above changes and restart the server. Point your browser to http://localhost:7777/index.html#/signup. Fill the user sign-up details and click the sign-up button. You will have the Saved the user sign up details. message in the server terminal. Log in to the MongoDB shell and check the user collection in the Blog database. To find the user details, enter the following command in the MongoDB shell:
db.user.find()
The above command will display the user details in JSON format.
{
"name": "roy",
"email": "royagasthyan@gmail.com",
"password": "test",
"_id": ObjectId("58f622f50cb9b32905f1cb4b")
}
Implementing User Sign-In Check
In the first part of the tutorial, you hard-coded the user sign-in check since the user sign-up hasn't been implemented. Let's modify the hard-coded sign-in check and look into the MongoDB database for valid user sign-ins.
Create a function called validateSignIn in the user.js file.
validateSignIn: function(username, password,callback){
}
Inside the validateSignIn function, using the MongoDB client you'll connect to the Blog database and query the user table for a user with the specified username and password. You'll make use of the findOne method to query the user collection.
db.collection('user').findOne( { email : username ,password: password },function(err, result){
});
Check the returned result for null in case the entry is not found.
if(result==null){
callback(false)
}
else{
callback(true)
}
As seen in the above code, if no entry is found, false is returned in the callback. If an entry is found, true is returned in the callback.
Here is the complete validateSignIn method:
validateSignIn: function(username, password,callback){
MongoClient.connect(url, function(err, db){
db.collection('user').findOne( { email : username ,password: password
},function(err, result){
if(result==null){
callback(false)
}
else{
callback(true)
}
});
});
}
In the /signin method in the app.js file, you'll make a call to the validateSignIn method. In the callback function, you'll check for the response. If true, it will indicate a valid sign-in, else an invalid sign-in. Here is how it looks:
app.post('/signin', function (req, res) {
var user_name=req.body.email;
var password=req.body.password;
user.validateSignIn(user_name,password,function(result){
if(result){
res.send('Success')
}
else{
res.send('Wrong username password')
}
});
Save the above changes and restart the server. Point your browser to http://localhost:7777/index.html#/. Enter a valid username and password and you will have a success message logged in the browser console. On entering an invalid username and password, it would display an error message.
Wrapping It Up
In this part of the tutorial, you saw how to implement the user sign-up process. You saw how to create the sign-up view and pass the data from the React user interface to Node.js and then save it in the MongoDB. You also modified the user sign-in functionality to check for valid user sign-in from the MongoDB database.
In the next part of the tutorial, you'll implement the add post and display post page functionality.
Source code from this tutorial is available on GitHub.
Do let us know your thoughts or any suggestions in the comments below.
by Roy Agasthyan via Envato Tuts+ Code
Filema Rodion
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day
Creating Advanced Facebook Custom Audiences Using Google Tag Manager
Are you looking for advanced ways to build Facebook audiences for retargeting? Do you know you can combine Google Tag Manager with Facebook Pixel Events? To explore the value of using these tools together, I interview Chris Mercer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social [...]
This post Creating Advanced Facebook Custom Audiences Using Google Tag Manager first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
by Michael Stelzner via
500 Coins
Simple informational One Pager listing the top 500 Crypto Currencies with a useful Market Cap and Daily Volume filter. Would have loved crisp retina logos for each but hopefully something they're working on.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
Thursday, June 29, 2017
7 Emails Your E-commerce Store Needs to Send Out on an Automated Basis (infographic)
Are you hesitating about incorporating emails into your online marketing strategy? Think that this method is past its prime? Well, think again. More than 70 percent of customers chose email over other online channels, including social media, mobile apps, direct mail, and text messaging. Not...
[ This is a content summary only. Visit our website http://ift.tt/1b4YgHQ for full links, other content, and more! ]
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
[ This is a content summary only. Visit our website http://ift.tt/1b4YgHQ for full links, other content, and more! ]
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
Easily Set Up, Manage, and Protect Your Apple Devices with Jamf Now
This article was sponsored by Jamf Now. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
Employees have never been more mobile, increasing the demand for connected smart devices. Between visiting customers, working from home, being embedded with clients, or simply working on the go, connectivity and security is vital to the health and bottom line of all businesses.
Apple devices are incredibly popular in the modern workplace — their combination of beautiful aesthetics, powerful brand recognition, ease-of-use, and a rich application ecosystem makes them a natural choice. The ubiquity of these devices does come with a challenge though — how do you set up, manage, and protect your Mac and iOS devices, no matter where they are or how they’re used?
There’s a software solution that’s up to that challenge — Jamf Now.
Jamf Now — Mobile Device Management
Jamf Now is beautiful, fully-featured, easy-to-use, mobile device management solution designed to make managing iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices a pleasure, throughout your business.
Jamf Now mobile device management provides three key features:
Set Up Devices
Provide consistent configuration settings across all devices to minimize user effort and give employees the exact settings, accounts, and applications needed to work at maximum productivity.
Manage Devices
Collect device information for inventory visibility, manage data usage, and update or deploy applications directly to devices so users always have access to the latest, most functional, and secure versions.
Protect Devices
Ensure that sensitive company information and data accessed on an Apple device remains secure. This includes encryption and enforcing security on devices including passcodes, locking, and even remotely wiping devices.
The Business Benefits of Jamf Now
Jamf Now provides several benefits to your business:
- Reduces time and resources spent on setting up and managing Apple devices.
- Ensures consistent application and device settings that can be customized by role or need.
- Allows rapid deployment of applications for additional functionality or enhanced security.
- Provides better license and asset management across all devices.
- Enforces data encryption and passcode access to protect information.
- Wipes data if a device is lost or falls into the wrong hands.
Jamf Now is Designed Around Simplicity
Traditionally, device management has been the responsibility of the IT department. Jamf Now removes the complexity of managing devices through a simple, easy-to-use interface that lets anyone set up configuration, security rules, application details, and more. The philosophy behind Jamf Now is to get employees set up and using their devices as quickly as possible. The Jamf Now software runs in the background so it’s never a distraction to the user, meaning they can get on with their work in a safe, secure, and always updated environment.
Jamf Now Works with Apple / iOS Devices, Across Multiple Industries
Jamf Now works with Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod devices across your business.
Jamf Now works with Apple devices in any industry — from education to finance, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, field services, and more.
Jamf Now Device Setup
Jamf Now takes the hassle out of setting up devices by letting you create a “blueprint.” This lets you input settings once and quickly send them to every device. You can easily customize individual devices with areas like email addresses, role-specific apps, data access, and more. Jamf Now supports Microsoft Exchange, Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail, and any IMAP or POP mail accounts.
Every employee gets access to the right settings, accounts, applications, and data they need to do their job and contribute to your bottom line.
Jamf Now Device Management
It’s vital that employees have access to the latest versions of applications, whether that’s because they need greater functionality or as the result of patching security vulnerabilities. Jamf Now’s management features makes it a breeze to push out new versions of apps. Just point Jamf Now at the latest version and it will automatically download and install it on every user’s device, in the background.
This can significantly reduce the workload of your IT department as it removes the need for manual installs. It also ensures everyone is on the latest version of an app, making support and troubleshooting quicker, easier, and more effective. License management is more effective, letting you track assets and licenses to ensure you don’t pay for software you don’t use. Jamf Now integrates with Apple’s Volume Purchasing Program, letting you buy and deploy multiple licenses and apps to devices, quickly and easily.
Jamf Now also makes inventory and asset management easier — you can easily export details of every device for compliance checks and get insight into all the key information for every device.
Jamf Now Device Security
Mobile devices, especially iPhones and iPads, are easily forgotten and can be prime targets for theft. Jamf Now helps to protect your devices and company data from getting into the wrong hands. It does this in several ways:
- Encrypting data and information on the device.
- Enforcing a passcode on the device.
- Allowing you to remotely lock the screen.
- Allowing you to display messages on the lock screen (e.g. asking for the device to be returned).
- Allowing you to remotely wipe all sensitive data from the devices.
- Allowing you to see the physical location of the phone, through GPS.
Jamf Now is Cloud-Based
Jamf Now runs on a “software as a service” model. It’s cloud-based, so you can manage your Apple devices from anywhere with an internet connection.
Jamf Now Pricing
One of the most attractive features of Jamf Now is the pricing. You can manage your first three devices at no charge. After that, it’s just $2 per device, per month.
Jamf Now Support
Jamf Now is fully supported in three main ways:
- Live chat with customer service representatives and technical teams.
- Email support for issues and problems.
- A complete knowledge base covering all aspects of the software.
The knowledge base contains information on deployment, setup, enrolling devices, configuration, blueprints, devices, apps, settings, troubleshooting, and more.
If your business uses Apple devices, Jamf Now can give you the peace-of-mind you need. Its combination of smart setup, effortless device management, and enhanced security features will empower your users, protect your data, and help you manage all your Apple devices.
Continue reading %Easily Set Up, Manage, and Protect Your Apple Devices with Jamf Now%
by Paul Maplesden via SitePoint
Internationalization for Your WordPress Theme
WordPress is used to create a variety of types of websites. When building a WordPress theme, you should build it for as large of an audience as possible. That goal also implies that your theme should be ready for sites in different languages. WordPress provides a simple API that you can use in a theme to provide internationalization for it. In this article, you will see how you can make your theme ready for different languages.
How to Configure WordPress for Different Languages
You can add different languages to your WordPress site. For that, you can download the translation files from the blog of the WordPress translator team. From this page, you can see the various languages whose translations are present, as well as what percentage of the translation is complete. Suppose I want to download the French language. I will go to the French language row, then click on the percentage as shown in the image below.
Then, you can click on the WordPress version, and export the .mo file as shown in the image below
Once you have downloaded the .mo file, you will have to upload it to the wp-content/languages folder of your WordPress installation. You can then go to the Settings -> General in your WordPress admin. There you should be able to see the language options which you have put in the wp-content/languages folder as shown below in the image. Please select the desired language you want to change the site to and click 'Save Changes'
Continue reading %Internationalization for Your WordPress Theme%
by Abbas Suterwala via SitePoint
Podcast: Google Ventures on When Design Sprints Go Bad
In 2016 Google Ventures (GV) design partner Jake Knapp released a seminal book called Sprint. The book introduced the idea of 'Design Sprints', a concept that had existed within Google for several years and was a mainstay in the toolset employed by GV with their portfolio of companies.
[caption id="attachment_156493" align="aligncenter" width="400"]
Many of you will have heard of Design Sprints and perhaps even read the book. Some of you may have even run one. The design community at large loved the idea and before long articles were popping up all over the web and consultancies were adding Design Sprints to their lists of services.
When Design Sprints Go Bad
The beauty of Jake’s book is that it is very specific, there is even a 15-page checklist for when you are running your own Design Sprints. However, this didn't stop a swathe of folks from appropriating the name, but not the core ideas. This in turn meant is that acts were being committed under the name of Design Sprint but were not even remotely close to what Jake describes in Sprint.
The next domino to fall was the inevitable backlash announcing thatDesign Sprint are snake oil. In this episode of True North, we speak with Jake and Michael Margolis, a UX Research Partner at GV, about how design sprints were created, what they really are, and when they are best used.
[caption id="attachment_156494" align="aligncenter" width="400"]
We also visit the enterprise giant,Aus Post, speaking to a team lead where they ran 4 sprints in 5 weeks. Their story was featured on theSprint Stories blog.
Continue reading %Podcast: Google Ventures on When Design Sprints Go Bad%
by Alex Walker via SitePoint
VaynerX
Neat reference to a simple Parent Company One Pager for VaynerX - who now host VaynerMedia and PureWow.
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
Searching for Syria
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day
Why We Explore
Gorgeous One Pager for 'Why We Explore' - a unique Single Page blog about Space Exploration. Owner and developer Nicolas Lanthemann says the idea was to learn more about modern web technologies - just love how he combined this with a passion. The horizontal scrolling site features a draggable interface, interactive comets for the news and an image-of-the day-pulled from NASA's RSS feed. Final shout out to the VR mode if browsing on your phone, super impressive! 
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Divergent Realities: Augmented vs Virtual Reality (infographic)
Oftentimes you will hear about virtual reality and augmented reality in the same sentence, as though they are the same technologies. There are some important differences between the two, though. Augmented reality is a more integrative technology, in which the world becomes your screen and things...
[ This is a content summary only. Visit our website http://ift.tt/1b4YgHQ for full links, other content, and more! ]
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
[ This is a content summary only. Visit our website http://ift.tt/1b4YgHQ for full links, other content, and more! ]
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
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