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Tag: Coding

Slashpixel

Creative / Development Inspiration 22

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week I have pulled together a list of 6 sites for both web designers, and developers. Some really good reads, both informative and inspiring.

 

Slashpixels – Google for Designers

A great one to start this week.

“Smart Artificial Intelligence Image Search Engine and aggregator for Dribbble, Behance, Pinterest, Cargo, Awwwards, Pttrns and other top Design sources.” is the tagline.

When this is live, I honestly think it will be a game changer. Easy access to freebies, design related images and all the top design sites connected. Get signed up!

http://slashpixels.com

 

Cropping Away Negative Impacts of Line Height

I’m not sure how useful this would be in the real world, due to different browsers rendering in different ways. However as a concept and almost working code, this is worth the read. The number of times an element doesn’t site quite right due to weird white space above and below a sentence. A front end developers nightmare (over-exaggeration maybe). This may just be the solution…

https://medium.com/eightshapes-llc/cropping-away-negative-impacts-of-line-height-84d744e016ce

 

Here’s everything I’ve learned from designing 10,000+ UI screens as a lead product designer.

This article by Jon Moore speaks worlds to me. From not reinventing the wheel, to creating pattern libraries, each point seems like common sense. Unfortunately in a lot of design projects these seem to be forgotten. This is aimed at app and web designers, but as a developer I can also relate.

This strongly relates back to user experience article I covered in Creative and Development Inspiration 8.

https://medium.com/ux-power-tools/heres-everything-i-ve-learned-from-designing-10-000-ui-screens-as-a-lead-product-designer-7d2810bee810

 

HTTP2 Explained

This is a very long read, (and more for the developers) however if you are interested in what HTTP2 can do/does then you should read this. Daniel Stenberg from Mozilla goes into incredible detail on the background of HTTP2, how it works, and how it will be deployed.

https://daniel.haxx.se/http2/

 

Truffle Suite

This is stemming from my interest in Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies. The idea of a decentralised network that you can run programs on is pretty interesting, especially considering that data protection is so poignant at the moment (GDPR / Facebook data scandal).

Enter Truffle, the most popular development framework for Ethereum with a mission to make your life a whole lot easier.

http://truffleframework.com/

 

Designer Trend – Offset and Overlap

Designers are continuing to break out of the grid. It’s been a great evolution from the early days of responsive web design. 5 years ago, responsive simply meant that your content block would resize infinitely. But it was always within the confines of a rigid grid.

In fact, responsive web design had a negative effect on how designers used grids because it was so difficult to figure out how content should react. Not any more.

https://medium.com/ux-power-tools/design-trend-offset-overlapping-content-blocks-53e20157d2a8

Google Music Lab

Creative and Development Inspiration 21

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

Dot Colors

A beautifully simple website built for web designers and developers to check their colour codes. Just drop in an array of HEX colours and away you go.

https://dotcolors.co/

 

Notifications – A breakdown

A great article on web notifications from Inclusive Components. In the format of a style guide, it covers how notifications can used correctly, and what aspects of web may need a notification. It has a nice checklist at the end, if you don’t want to read the whole thing…

https://inclusive-components.design/notifications/

 

Googles Music Lab

Google is back with some more fun. The Creative Lab team has built an in browser song maker, just click the grid to add notes when share it with a link. You can also use a MIDI keyboard or sing into it if you so wish. Google have been bringing out some great bits of inspiration and helpers for developers, as shown with Flutter in Creative and Development Inspiration 18.
Share your masterpieces in the comments!

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/

 

Navigating the complexity of change aversion

Change aversion is a concept well known to website designers and developers. It’s the negative reaction users have to changes in your product, whether that’s functional changes such as updates to product features, or interface changes such as visual redesigns. This article explains how this can be navigated.

https://blog.intercom.com/navigating-the-complexity-of-change-aversion/

 

Google Web Designer

Google Web Designer is a free, professional-grade HTML5 authoring tool. It can be used to build interactive, animated HTML5 canvas, no coding necessary (although you can use code if so inclind). It is more aimed at creating professional looking adverts that can run anywhere on the web. Still in beta but definitely worth keeping an eye on.

https://www.google.com/webdesigner

 

Ethical Design: The Practical Getting-Started Guide

Web designers and developers have an obligation to build experiences that are ethical, and better than using features that expliot human behaviour. This article explains how unethical design happens, and how to do ethical design through a set of best practices. A great read.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/03/ethical-design-practical-getting-started-guide/

 

Scrollbooster

A drag to scroll JS libary. Works in IE11 Edge, and most modern browsers. It is a great package that allows content to be easily scrolled by touch, and mouse, and is tiny in size. I am planning to use it in a current project to test it out. My only concern is being able to alter options when the device size change, i.e. scrolling vertical, to horizontal.

https://ilyashubin.github.io/scrollbooster/

Rough.js graphic creator

Creative and Development Inspiration 20

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week creative and development rundown is more development orientated. I have found some great packages to help enhance the user experience, as well as some alternatives to already well used solutions. Although a shorter list than usual, these items are far more usable, both in terms of using within a project and for learning more!

 

Driver.js

Driver is a powerful yet light-weight, vanilla JavaScript engine to drive the user’s focus across the page. This would be great for when a user signs up to a new website, or service., as well as providing interactive overlays. It is easy to implement and has great documentation.

https://github.com/kamranahmedse/driver.js

 

React Tutorial: A Comprehensive Guide to learning React.js in 2018

As the title says, this tutorial is a ground up guide to learning ReactJS. It is well broken down, and incredibly easy to understand. ReactJs is definitely a must for most front end developers. The majority of tech companies use it as a quick route to sale.

https://tylermcginnis.com/reactjs-tutorial-a-comprehensive-guide-to-building-apps-with-react/

 

Toast UI Chart

No one like having to make code work on legacy browsers. But sometimes it matters.  The developers of Toast US couldn’t find a project which supported legacy browsers, maintained reliably, and was free for commercial use, so they decided to make one. It is well documented, and quite pretty! I will most probably be giving this a trial run on the next web development project that requires charts!

https://github.com/nhnent/tui.chart

 

Animating Elements Along SVG Paths: Introducing PathSlider

This tutorial by Scotch is a really simple to follow SVG path animation guide. It used the PathFinder plugin, and anime.js, both very user friendly packages. Although not a groundbreaking example, it is a great gateway drug into SVG animations.

https://scotch.io/tutorials/animating-elements-along-svg-paths-introducing-pathslider

 

Rough.js

Rough.js allows you to create roughly drawn graphics within the browser. It is a light weight (~8k), Canvas based library that lets you draw in a sketchy, hand-drawn-like, style. The library defines primitives to draw lines, curves, arcs, polygons, circles, and ellipses. It also supports drawing SVG paths.

https://github.com/pshihn/rough

 

Creating User-friendly forms

Forms are of pivotal importance to individuals & businesses alike. When it comes to collecting data, forms most often than not is the direction we all take (perhaps due to it’s long-time presence around us offline before the internet boom). Therefore, creating user-friendly forms is a major key to increasing the completion rate of your forms.

https://blog.prototypr.io/creating-user-friendly-forms-46e3f7f4eef2

Esri Wind Animation

Creative and Development Inspiration 19

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This weeks design and development inspiration has a couple of great Codepen projects, showing off HTML5, Canvas and JS. On top of that I have found articles and design from across the web to get you into the mood.

 

The Last Experience

I’ll start you off with something great, and strange. The Last Experience is a collection of robots designed to dance in sync. That is, until you get involved.

https://codepen.io/ge1doot/pen/LkdOwj

 

StencilJs

Self-named as the “Magical reusable web component compiler” Stencil is a compiler that generates Web Components (more specifically, Custom Elements). It combines the best concepts of the most popular frameworks into a simple build-time tool to make development faster. Since Stencil generates standards-compliant web components, they can work with many popular frameworks right out of the box, and can be used without a framework because they are just web components.

https://stenciljs.com/demos

 

Wind Animation

Take a map, take a wind chart, animate. That is exactly what Esri have done. The code for this project uses nothing but an HTML5 Canvas element and pure Javascript. The data come from the Global Forecast System which produces a large variety of datasets as continuous global gridded datasets (more info below). Great inspiration, beautifully designed.

http://esri.github.io/wind-js/

 

The Future Of Mobile Web Design: Video Game Design And Storytelling

As technologies change and design techniques evolve, it’s inevitable that we’d experience massive growth in terms of design quality. There are similar parallels we can see within video game design as well. This article helps look at website design in another angle.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/03/future-mobile-web-design-video-game-design-storytelling/

 

10 Examples of Drag and Drop UI

Drag-and-drop has been with us for decades. It helps us to get things done on both our desktop, mobile apps and operating systems. There’s both a simplicity and intuitiveness that has led to it become one of the most universal UI features. Speckyboy has pulled together 10 examples to show this web functionality off.

https://speckyboy.com/drag-and-drop-ui/

 

Responsive Components

Media queries are great, but it can be such a nuisance when limited by needing to alter the whole page. As opposed to altering each section depending on is own size. This approach would allow fully modular design, with elements being able to be added without as much thought to device size. I honestly thing this development approach is a step in the right direction.

https://philipwalton.com/articles/responsive-components-a-solution-to-the-container-queries-problem/

 

Milligram

A minimalist CSS framework. Milligram provides a minimal setup of styles for a fast and clean starting point. Only 2kb gzipped! It’s not about a UI framework. Specially designed for better performance and higher productivity with fewer properties to reset resulting in cleaner code.

https://milligram.io/

CSS Animation Shooter Game

Creative and Development Inspiration 16

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This post has been a long time coming, what with crippling man flu (sympathy vote alert) and work deadlines I haven’t been able to put anything together. I have however had a lot of time to stare at my phone and look at pretty pictures. That means that this list is especially special, and has some pretty interesting links for you to peruse.

 

basicScroll

Inspired by skrollr, this scrolling library allows you to change CSS variables depending on the scroll position. Use the variables directly in your CSS to animate whatever you want. I am a massive fan of this, and can’t wait to roll it out on some of my projects.

https://basicscroll.electerious.com/

 

3D Parallax Example

Thismanslife built this example of 3D parralax on IMacs only using CSS.  Definitely need to take a look at that source code!

http://www.thismanslife.co.uk/projects/lab/imac3d/

 

Sweet Alert 2

Need to remind a user to save their work before they leave the page? This alert library is a perfect addition to any web project using alerts. Easy to integrate, and an improvement on the standard browser alert.

https://github.com/sweetalert2/sweetalert2

 

5 UX Design Principles That Never Go Out of Style

The best designers understand that there must be a balance between standardization and innovation. Keeping that in mind, here is how to design a product with GREAT UX.

https://medium.com/walkme/5-ux-design-principles-that-never-go-out-of-style-672cc6ba9047

 

Stimulus

Because why wouldn’t we need another JavaScript library?! Personally I doubt I will ever use this, but you may. Easy to install using NPM, Yarn ect and allows you to enhance your already existing HTML.

https://stimulusjs.org/

 

Gangbase

One for the designers. Gangbase was created to collect all studios, designers, tools and awesome websites in one big base, where it’s easy to find whatever you need.

https://gangbase.design

 

GradPad

A beautifully designed website, with only one purpose. To create perfect CSS colour gradients within your browser. Perfect for web designs / developers.

http://ourownthing.co.uk/gradpad.html

 

Kutt.it

Like Bitly, but yours. Free and open source, Kutt.it allows you to host your own server, and manage all of your links & data yourself. A great interface, and documented API.

https://kutt.it/

 

CSS Space Shooter

I haven’t had one of these in a very long time. An old-school arcade-style 3D shoot-em-up rendered entirely with CSS 3D transforms. A great break from work, as well as a perfect example of CSS transforms. How far can you get?

https://www.michaelbromley.co.uk/experiments/css-space-shooter/

SVG Landscape Polygon Background

Creative and Development Inspiration 15

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

After a weeks break (Girlfriends birthday) I am back with another web dev/design rundown. There are some great UX/UI articles, as well as some darn pretty pictures.

 

People Don’t Scroll ( and Other Page Length Myths )

A few page length myths debunked. A few of those “beliefs” that are thrown around and checked against studies to see what really is correct! Do people understand scroll? How long should a page be?

https://uxplanet.org/people-dont-scroll-and-other-page-length-myths-c7ca720a0595

 

UI Design Inspiration #3

A series of UI Design Inspiration from FreeUi.Design. Some beautiful examples of icons, applications and website. Definately worth a look.

https://freeui.design/ui-design-inspiration-3/

 

Daily Life Interactions To Learn UX From

If we look into our everyday life, it consists of continuous series of microinteractions that often go unseen, almost at a sensory level. The thing is, they feel natural but they are 100% artificial, which means someone designed them and as UX researchers, we might want to learn from it.

https://uxplanet.org/daily-life-interactions-to-learn-ux-from-2888e1ca9d80

 

SVG Backgrounds

Customizable SVG patterns and background designs for websites and blogs. Great for adding some colour, but keeping the page load time down!

https://www.svgbackgrounds.com/

 

The 12 Do’s and Don’ts of Web Design

If you design websites, you know that making your designs useful and enjoyable is your top priority. It can be an overwhelming task for anyone who just recently started creating websites, so to simplify it, Adobe has created a simple list of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when designing your next web design project.

https://theblog.adobe.com/12-dos-donts-web-design-2

 

Build a Download Button Full of Micro Interactions

On the same vain as most of the other articles, UX! Learn how to build a button that is full of useful micro interactions. Some coding goodness to end the list.

https://scotch.io/tutorials/build-a-download-button-full-of-micro-interactions

Material Design Example

Creative and Development Inspiration 14

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week I have found some great links for UX snippets and examples, some CSS/JS magic, and a little titbit for you cryptocurrency geeks. All in a days work.

 

Bye bye Material Design

Considering Material Design for your next project? Emin Durak thinks otherwise. He belives that it is, I quote, “premature, shallow and arguably incorrect approach”.

https://medium.com/techtrument/bye-bye-material-design-acaebcc7c6b4

 

Micron.js

A Microinteraction Libary Built with CSS Animations and JS. A great plug and play libary for a quick MVP.

https://webkul.github.io/micron/

 

How Much Do You Know About Web Typography

Web typography is a bit tricky. So many quirks and snippets of information you need to know. Take this web typography quiz and test your typography knowledge.

https://betterwebtype.com/web-typography-quiz

 

Gradient Topography Animation

Codrops is back with a great new code snippet. An incredibly sleek organic SVG shape layer animation based on Diana Hlevnjak’s work “Gradient Topography”. Powered by anime.js.

https://tympanus.net/Development/GradientTopographyAnimation

 

Button with Email Dropdown

Code My UI has brought us a nice little snippet to create a drop down input field from a button. Keep everything tucked anyand tidy!

https://codemyui.com/button-email-optin-dropdown

 

Jump on the Cryptocurrency Bandwagon

Minergate is a piece of software that mines a varity of cryptocurrency coins in the background whilst you work. You can set the level depending on how much you need to use your CPU/GPU. Keep the referral link, and I get a small percentage of the fee (nothing is taken from you!)

https://minergate.com/a/2b33a24f39993dc303296b47

Poor UI Missile Threat

Creative and Development Inspiration 13

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

2018 so far seems to be the year that UX/UI is at the forefront of every-bodies mind. Maybe that’s just me though? Well with that thought, here are a few links to tickle your Monday brain. Some are educational some are just pretty.

 

Microinteractions to Help Improve UX

As your users spend time on your website, they are constantly interacting with its features – and some of those small interactions matter more than you might think.

Each small movement has an impact on their overall experience. Use these small moments to improve your user experience, and ensure users follow through on further interaction as they begin navigating your website.

Speckyboy covers some examples of Micro interactions, and goes into a little detail.

https://speckyboy.com/eight-microinteractions-better-user-experience/

 

Hawaii’s missile alert fiasco highlights the importance of good interface design

We all read the news. The panic that struck residents and tourists in Hawaii on Saturday morning over the past weekend – owing to a public emergency alert about an incoming ballistic missile that was mistakenly transmitted – could have been easily avoided with the help of good design.

https://thenextweb.com/dd/2018/01/15/hawaiis-missile-alert-fiasco-highlights-the-importance-of-good-interface-design

 

Laws of UX

This site highlights a collection of key maxims that designers should consider when building user interfaces. A really clean site with some great insight.

https://lawsofux.com

 

Smooth Gooey Radio Slider Button

This is just something a bit different. A Codepen of a nice micro interaction for a radio button.

https://codemyui.com/smooth-gooey-radio-slider-button/

 

Sketch Icons – Generate a Dynamic Icons Libary

This one is for the designers. Creating a dynamic icon library is time consuming. Here is an article outlining how to do it manually, and then a link to a great plugin to streamline your workflow.

https://blog.prototypr.io/introducing-sketch-icons-2074d9dc9ed2

 

Decorative Letter Animations

Something pretty to finish off. Tympanus has done it again with some great text animations. Each example has a Github link to see the code snippet.

https://tympanus.net/Development/DecorativeLetterAnimations/