Tuesday, February 28, 2017
40+ Free Productivity Dashboards and Templates
This article was updated in February, 2017 to accurately represent currently available options.
Raise your hands if you think redundant tasks suck. Invoicing clients, accounting, time-tracking — these are some of the tasks which have little or no impact on the end result; usually they serve to help somebody else (the client, the taxman, et cetera).
But they have to be done, and since time equals money, it’s important that we don’t waste too much time on redundant tasks.
Let's take a look at the best dashboards, templates and apps that can help us complete redundant tasks quickly but thoroughly.
Business Planning and Projections
- Unfunnel: a free Microsoft Excel template to help you strategise your startup. It outlines objectives, customer growth and retention, brand awareness, value proposition and so on.
- Databox: an app to help you keep on top of your business KPIs wherever you are. Alternatively, you can learn how to make your own KPI dashboards at the Excel Dashboard School.
- If you think Excel is a little outdated but Databox isn’t for you or your business, Klipfolio, Grow and Geckoboard are some other alternatives.
- If you are an Excel fan, My Excel Templates, ExInFm or Excel Models will have what you want — everything from cash flow to valuation model to financial forecasting to risk assessment — break even analysis, SWOT templates, I could go on forever.
- Entrepreneur is probably the internet’s most concise list of high-quality business templates, ranging from Contractor Agreements to NDAs, and Employee Review Sheets to Cease and Desist Letters.
Project Management
- Office Timeline is a PowerPoint add-on that lets you you create Gantt charts and timelines, helping you manage projects in a highly-visual way.
- If you're also a student, you can use Basecamp for free — the ultimate project management tool, especially if you’re a large company wanting to avoid having random spreadsheets scattered around company servers. Asana comes in as a close second. Zoho is another free alternative.
- Trello’s card-based system is terrific for managing smaller projects; incredibly versatile as well.
- Wrike may be more suitable if your team needs to focus more on marketing than anything else.
- It’s literally impossible to list all of the best project management apps here — Capterra will help you find the right app for you and your company.
- For quick n’ dirty templates, Vertex42 might serve your needs — it has a range of templates like calendars, time cards, budgeting, Gantt charts and timelines.
- If you’re looking for prettier spreadsheets, try searching on Excel Online where you can directly view and edit them in the browser.
Invoicing and Financials
- Need to create an invoice now? Aynax offers an on-demand invoicing service — simply fill it out online and hit the “Print” button. Invoiced is another alternative.
Continue reading %40+ Free Productivity Dashboards and Templates%
by Daniel Schwarz via SitePoint
Front-End Tooling Trends for 2017
Do you have more than two years' development experience? Are your advanced CSS skills aided with Sass and Autoprefixer? Is your JavaScript knowledge reasonable and you're happy using Gulp, npm, and jQuery? If so, you're a typical developer, according to Ashley Nolan's Front-End Tooling Survey.
Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics and Surveys
Surveys such as this are useful to discover new tools and highlight obvious gaps in your knowledge. At the time of writing, the survey has received 5,254 responses which is a significantly better sample than most opinion polls. However, be wary about taking them as the gospel truth…
Worldwide results
The survey was offered worldwide, but will be heavily biased toward English-speaking countries. A popular tool developed or used elsewhere may be omitted.
Developer knowledge
The survey appealed to knowledgeable developers who understood the questions, were aware of its existence, and had the time and inclination to complete it.
83% of respondents had two or more years' front-end technology experience, with just 5% admitting to less than one year:
Developers with minimal front-end skills were less likely to complete the survey, so the results may be skewed accordingly.
Opinions and biases
Respondents were asked to judge their own experiences. Some may be modest and suffer imposter syndrome. Others may over-estimate their technical abilities because they're the sole front-end developer on a large team of novice programmers. Self-opinionated biases may average out, but there's no way to prove it.
Past activities don't indicate future trends
The results highlight what developers have been using. It does not follow that the tools were useful, saved time or will be used in future projects.
Continue reading %Front-End Tooling Trends for 2017%
by Craig Buckler via SitePoint
How to Become a Better Developer by Coding Less
Developers are frauds.
At least that's how it feels. Many developers feel it. The inadequacy, the feelings of failure. That somehow, you're not as talented as those around you.
The feeling that you're an impostor.
Over and over we hear from talented developers who aren't able to shake the feeling that they're frauds. Talentless hacks who simply can't measure up. Almost as if it's a dirty secret they're doing their best to cover up.
"Don't let 'them' figure out you don't deserve to be here."
The Burden of "You Don't Deserve It"
It's a heavy load most of us carry. The fear, doubt and despair that drives you to dot your i's and cross your t's. Most of us struggling with impostor syndrome carry that burden most of our lives.
Pundits tell us that impostor syndrome is a sign of greatness.
But it feels like a lie.
Some of us swallow that lie, we're able to function, to continue on in our careers. Recent studies suggest 70 percent of us have impostor syndrome. We're all slowly being crushed by the weight of it all.
Here's the thing. Impostor syndrome isn't automatically a sign of greatness. It's a sign of something deeper.
Impostor Syndrome Isn't a Sign of Greatness
It's a sign of malnutrition.
It's a sign your needs — creative, intellectual, psychological — aren't being met.
How do I know?
Anyone who's truly achieved mastery in any subject area knows there are gaps in their knowledge. They know enough to see where they are and how far they have to go.
They're well fed — creatively, intellectually, psychologically.
They analyze these gaps, testing them, exploring them. They seek to understand the limits placed on them. They learn from those around them, drawing on the skill of others to learn and grow.
Here's the part that's frustrating.
This is a skill most developers aren't taught. That's unfortunate because these are the skills they need to overcome impostor syndrome.
Their Career is Frustrating Because They Don't Have a System
Tools like Stack Overflow and Codepen.io are helpful tools, but they're also a double-edged sword. Most of us, instead of absorbing the tips these sites share, simply copy and paste.
Sometimes it's necessary.
Sometimes you're in a situation where you have to do what you can to get a project done.
But impostor syndrome is still there.
Can you see it?
- A Nissan developer was busted for copying and pasting code from Stack Overflow.
- A Quora user asks if they're a bad programmer because they search through Stack Overflow instead of figuring out problems on their own (hint: this makes him a good programmer).
- Developers asking if it's bad that they copy and paste other people's code.
These people haven't done anything wrong.
The vast majority of developers work hard, they're supportive of the community and they're loyal.
But they don't have a system.
Have You Ever Had Developer's Block?
It goes like this. You decide you want to build something. You sit down, fire up your IDE and then... nothing. You sit there and you can't concentrate.
You're trying but nothing's coming.
Sound familiar?
Read articles on developer's block and they'll share tips like: Push it out of the way, scratch an itch or just get it working. Those ideas can work but often times they're hit or miss.
They don't address the source of the problem.
Greatness, whether it's beautiful code or a practical piece of code, isn't innate. Greatness comes from structure.
A-list movie stars, public speakers, soldiers, athletes, you name it. Their success is engineered.
What does that have to do with developers and impostor syndrome?
All-Stars Follow a System
Here's the interesting thing about people performing at the highest levels. They don't rely on what they think they can do, how they feel or what others say about them.
They think about the outcome they want, then working backwards, they create a system that helps them get there.
It's the system that's so special.
Continue reading %How to Become a Better Developer by Coding Less%
by Andrew McDermott via SitePoint
Make a Skype Bot with Electron & the Microsoft Bot Framework
David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products at Facebook, gave a talk at Web Summit in November about Facebook’s involvement with chat bots, and it was quite clear Facebook has big plans for enabling customers and business owners to integrate not only customer support into Messenger chat but also some interactions which you would expect to […]
Continue reading %Make a Skype Bot with Electron & the Microsoft Bot Framework%
by Almir Bijedic via SitePoint
How to Build Your Own Progressive Image Loader
You may have encountered progressive images on Facebook and Medium. A blurred low-resolution image is replaced with a full-resolution version when the element is scrolled into view:
The preview image is tiny - perhaps a 20px width highly-compressed JPEG. The file can be less than 300 bytes and appears instantly to give the impression of fast loading. The real image is lazy-loaded when required.
Progressive images are great but the current solutions are quite complex. Fortunately, we can build one with a little HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The code will:
- be fast and lightweight - just 463 bytes of CSS and 1,007 bytes of JavaScript (minified)
- support responsive images to load alternative versions for larger or high-resolution (Retina) screens
- have no dependencies - it will work with any framework
- work in all modern browsers (IE10+)
- be progressively enhanced to work in older browsers or when JavaScript or image loading fails
- be easy to use.
Our Demo and GitHub Code
Here's what our technique will look like:
See the Pen responsive-image by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
The HTML
We'll start with some basic HTML to implement our progressive image:
[code language="html"]
<a href="full.jpg" class="progressive replace">
<img src="tiny.jpg" class="preview" alt="image" />
</a>
[/code]
where:
full.jpgis our large full-resolution image contained in the linkhref, andtiny.jpgis our tiny preview image.
We already have a minimal working system. Without any JavaScript - or in older browsers where it may fail - the user can view the full image by clicking the preview.
Both images must have the same aspect ratio. For example, if full.jpg is 800 x 200, it has a resulting aspect ratio of 4:1. tiny.jpg could therefore be 20 x 5 but you should not use a 30px width which would require a fractionally impossible 7.5px height.
Note the classes used on the link and the preview image; these will be used as hooks in our JavaScript code.
To Inline or Not Inline Images
The preview image can also be inlined as a data URI, e.g.
[code language="html"]
<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJ..." class="preview" />
[/code]
Inlined images appear instantly, require fewer HTTP requests and avoid additional page reflows. However:
- it takes more effort to add or change an inline image (although build processes such as Gulp can help)
- base-64 encoding is less efficient and is typically 30% larger than binary data (although this is offset by additional HTTP request headers)
- inlined images cannot be cached. They will be cached in the HTML page but could not be used on another page without re-sending the same data.
- HTTP/2 lessens the need for inline images.
Be pragmatic: inlining is a good option if the image is used on a single page or the resulting code is small, i.e. not much longer than a URL!
The CSS
We start by defining the link container styles:
[code language="css"]
a.progressive {
position: relative;
display: block;
overflow: hidden;
outline: none;
}
[/code]
Continue reading %How to Build Your Own Progressive Image Loader%
by Craig Buckler via SitePoint
Push Notifications in Your Ionic App with Onesignal
Push notifications are messages sent directly to your app’s users. They notify users of new content, even when the user is not using your application. They increase user engagement and retention in your app. An example is the WhatsApp “whistle” that notifies you of new messages received. In this tutorial, we’ll dive into integrating push notifications into your Ionic app using OneSignal.
How push notifications work
A push notification is sent from the Push notification platform of the mobile OS: Apple’s Push Notification Service for iOS and Google Cloud Messaging for Android. These push notification services relay the message to the devices that have subscribed to them.
This means that you need to keep track of all the devices that have subscribed for push notifications. But there are some great services out there to simplify the process. One such service is OneSignal.
Step 1: Install Ionic
To start off with, you need to have Ionic installed on your machine. You install it using the node package manager npm;
$ npm install -g ionic
If you do not have npm installed, follow the instructions in the References section to install it.
Continue reading %Push Notifications in Your Ionic App with Onesignal%
by Charles Muzonzini via SitePoint