Mr Branding

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Unconquered

Minimal One Pager with a touch of Brutalism for NYC Creative Agency, Unconquered.

by Rob Hope via One Page Love

How to Research Your Competitors on Instagram

Wondering what your competitors are up to on Instagram? Want to compare their marketing efforts to yours? Researching how your competitors market on Instagram can help you find new ways to reach your shared customer base. In this article, you’ll discover how to research your competitors on Instagram. #1: Identify Industry-Wide Trending Topics and Hashtags To [...]

This post How to Research Your Competitors on Instagram first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

by Hiral Rana via

#157: Have Web Standards on Mobile Caught Up to PhoneGap in 2017?

Mobile Web Weekly

May 10, 2017 #157

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Guidelines to Avoid Google's Penalty on Intrusive Interstitials — A detailed look at the types of interstitials that will be penalized by Google and the types that won’t.
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Have Web Standards on Mobile Caught Up to PhoneGap in 2017? — A look at the state of web standards for each of the core PhoneGap/Cordova plugins to see if the mobile web has caught up in 2017.
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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

7 Practical Social Media Marketing Tips You’re Probably Ignoring

It does not matter if you are running a multibillion dollar company or managing a small bookshop around the corner, what matters is your customers are virtually connected to you through social media. For the majority of your audience, if you’re not on Facebook, then you probably don’t exist or at...

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by Guest Author via Digital Information World

Getting Started with AnyChart — 10 Practical Examples

If your website is data-intensive, then you will need to make that data easy to visualize, normally by means of a JavaScript charting library. However such libraries a dime a dozen and they all have slightly different capabilities, so how do you know which is the best fit for you?

In this article, I'm going to present AnyChart by way of 10 stylish, yet easy-to-implement examples. I’ll demonstrate how AnyChart is a great fit for your data visualization needs and the ease with which it can handle data in almost any format.

You can find all of the CodePen examples from this article in our AnyChart Collection. Link to come ...

Why AnyChart Stands out from the Crowd

The following points illustrate why AnyChart is a serious contender on the charting scene. They are far from marketing, just plain and simple facts.

AnyChart is Well-established

AnyChart is a commercial library, but it is free for any non-profit use. It is very well established and has been on the market for more than 10 years. Originally Flash-based, AnyChart has since moved over to pure JavaScript, with SVG/VML rendering.

The AnyChart API is very flexible and allows you to change almost any aspect of the chart on the fly, at runtime.

AnyChart is a Product Family

AnyChart is usually presented as a set of JS charting libraries, or — if you like — a product family. It comprises the following:

AnyChart — designed for creating interactive charts of all basic types
AnyStock — intended to visualize large date/time based data sets
AnyMap — for geo maps and seat maps
AnyGantt — for project and resource management solutions (Gantt, resource, PERT charts)

However, these libraries can be treated as one big JavaScript (HTML5) charting library. They all share the same API, all the charts are configured in pretty much the same way, they share common themes, settings and ways to load data.

AnyChart is Open

Earlier this year, AnyChart opened the source code for these libraries. It's important to point out here that AnyChart didn't go fully open-source — no Apache, MIT or any other license of this kind was introduced. But this is still great news if you are choosing a library for a long-term project. Also, AnyChart's rendering is based on the fully open-source JavaScript library GraphicsJS, maintained by AnyChart but open for any community requests and modifications. You can learn more about GraphicsJS in this SitePoint article.

As the Head of R&D at AnyChart, I could spend all day talking about this library, but now it's time to get down to business.

Up and Running: Quick Start with AnyChart

To start using AnyChart in your HTML page, you need to do just three simple things. The first two are including a link to the library's JavaScript file and providing a block-level HTML element. Here is a sample HTML template you can make use of:

<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <style>
      html, body, #container {
        width: 100%;
        height: 100%;
      }
    </style>
    <title>AnyChart Basic Example</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="container"></div>

    <script src="http://ift.tt/2q1bzLV"></script>
    <script>
      // AnyChart code here
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

The third is adding the JavaScript code that creates a simple, interactive single-series column chart:

anychart.onDocumentLoad(function() {
  // create chart and set data
  var chart = anychart.column([
    ["Winter", 2],
    ["Spring", 7],
    ["Summer", 6],
    ["Fall", 10]
  ]);
  // set chart title
  chart.title("AnyChart Basic Sample");
  // set chart container and draw
  chart.container("container").draw();
});

And that's all there is to it!

See the Pen AnyChart Basic Sample by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.

Easy, right? But things get even easier and more flexible in AnyChart when it comes to setting the data. Let's proceed to the next section to take a closer look at that.

Getting Your Data into AnyChart

One of the things that makes AnyChart shine is the fact that it can work with data in a large variety of formats. Which one you choose will ultimately depend on the task at hand (and to some extent your personal preference), but AnyChart's flexible approach makes it a great fit for almost any project.

Array of Arrays

Actually, you have already seen the first way in the Quick Start with AnyChart section above. Using this method, you declare your data as an array of arrays and AnyChart does the rest. This method is concise, as well as easy to format and use.

anychart.onDocumentLoad(function() {
  // create chart and set data
  // as Array of Arrays
  var chart = anychart.pie([
    ["Peter", 5],
    ["John", 7],
    ["James", 9],
    ["Jacob", 12]
  ]);
  chart.title("AnyChart: Array of Arrays");
  chart.container("container").draw();
});

See the Pen AnyChart Array of Arrays by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.

Notice that changing the chart type is as simple as changing the method call from anychart.column() to anychart.pie(). I'll be demonstrating various other chart types throughout this article, but you can find a full overview here: Chart types and Combinations.

Array of Objects

The second way is pretty similar to the first one — setting data as array of objects. In fact, it is less compact but still very easy to format, read and understand. In addition, this format enables you to configure individual points from your data, which can also be handled in other ways but only with additional mappings.

Note: when you use data in objects in a similar situation, use appropriate names for argument and value fields. You can find comprehensive information on this in the AnyChart documentation for each chart (series) type. In most cases, the argument is x, and the value is usually placed in the value field.

anychart.onDocumentLoad(function() {
  // create chart and set data
  // as Array of Objects
  // the biggest point is marked with individually conigured marker
  var chart = anychart.line([
    {x: "Winter", value: 5},
    {x: "Spring", value: 9, marker: {enabled: true, type: "star5", fill: "Gold"}},
    {x: "Summer", value: 7},
    {x: "Fall",   value: 1}
  ]);
  chart.title("AnyChart: Array of Objects");
  chart.container("container").draw();
});

See the Pen AnyChart Array of Objects Sample by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.

Continue reading %Getting Started with AnyChart — 10 Practical Examples%

by Roman Lubushkin via SitePoint

Infinite Tubes with Three.js

A tutorial about creating some WebGL experiments where the viewer seemingly travels through a textured tunnel powered by Three.js

by via jQuery-Plugins.net RSS Feed

20+ Docs and Guides for Front-end Developers (No. 12)

It’s that time again to get learning! As before, I’ve collected a number of different learning resources, including guides, docs, and other useful websites to help you get up to speed in different areas of front-end development.

So please enjoy the twelfth installment of our Docs and Guides series and don’t forget to let me know in the comments of any others that I haven’t yet included.

1. React Bits

A compilation of React Patterns, techniques, tips and tricks. Includes sections on design patterns, ant-patterns, performance tips, and styling. This looks like a really good reference for those wanting to dig deep into React.

2. Vue.js Complete API Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet is available as a simple PDF with a quick reference to the different features or as a fully interactive guide. The interactive guide works as a shortcut to the official Vue.js documentation, opening each link in an overlaid iframe.

3. CSS Grid Cheat Sheet

The W3C’s new Grid Layout module features have really been picking up steam of late since browser support improved. This interactive guide is a pretty complex little app with a ton of options. This might not be a great guide for beginners but maybe a good option for those already familiar with Grid Layout basics.

4. Flexbox Cheatsheet

Flexbox (the other hotness in CSS layout) is represented in this cheatsheet. From what I can tell, this one is using the same descriptive info as the spec, but with some interactive code examples to help visualize the different features.

5. Inclusive Components

This site is technically a blog, but works well as both a pattern library and a superb example of an accessible site. So far only two entries have been posted in the “library”, but both cover their topics exhaustively, so there’s plenty to take in and this is a good one to keep an eye on for future posts if you are concerned about accessibility (and you should be!).

“The A11Y style guide comes with pre-populated accessible components that include helpful links to related tools, articles, and WCAG guidelines to make your site more inclusive. These components also serve as a guide for both HTML markup and SCSS/CSS code, to inform designers, front-end and back-end developers at every stage of the website’s creation.” Sections include forms, media, navigation, and more.

Continue reading %20+ Docs and Guides for Front-end Developers (No. 12)%

by Louis Lazaris via SitePoint