David DeSandro has loads of super cool JavaScript libraries he's created over the years. His latest is Zdog, a "round, flat, designer-friendly pseudo-3D engine for canvas & SVG." It's only been about a month since he dropped it (although, like any good library, it's been simmering) and it has been pretty incredible to watch it capture the imagination of loads of designers and developers.
I'm shouting out Zdog here because I think it's worth y'all checking out. There is something about the API and how easy it becomes to draw in a 3D space that is clicking with folks. It might just click with you! Having a little moment like that is what web dev is all about ;). See the Pen The Official SiteSee the Pen CodePen CollectionsHere is a collection from Dave that gathers community-built examples: And here's is a Collection from Dave himself of demos he created while building the library. See the Pen There is a lot of cool stuff all around the web with Zdog, like this idea of plotting data with it from Zach: See the Pen CodePen TopicWe created a Topic on CodePen to help explore the library and find examples as well. We also covered it over on the CodePen Blog when the library dropped because it was so dang exciting. (By the way, if you have a good idea for a "Topic" on CodePen, let me know! The main thing we need is a good strong Collection of "starter" Pens to help people understand concepts and use the library, plus a Collection of strong, complete examples. I have some cool swag and stuff I could send your way if you're into the idea of helping.) The post Zdog appeared first on CSS-Tricks. from CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com/zdog/ Zdog Find more on: The Instant Web Site Tools Blog from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/24/zdog/
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I really like Say you wanted to reveal some extra stuff when a
That's not particularly keyboard-friendly. But if something in
That's nice, but it causes a tricky problem.
Browsers ignore entire selectors if it doesn't understand any part of them. So, if you're dealing with a browser that doesn't support Instead:
That is safer. But it's repetitive. If you have a preprocessor like Sass...
See the Pen I'd say it's a pretty good use-case for having native CSS mixins. The post Don’t comma-separate :focus-within if you need deep browser support appeared first on CSS-Tricks. from CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com/dont-comma-separate-focus-within-if-you-need-deep-browser-support/ Don’t comma-separate :focus-within if you need deep browser support See more on: The Instant Web Site Tools Blog from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/24/dont-comma-separate-focus-within-if-you-need-deep-browser-support/ The other day, I was collecting reference notes for Linux package managers on various online sources. When I tried to create a text file to save those notes, I noticed that the ‘New document’ option... The post How To Add ‘New Document’ Option In Right Click Context Menu In Ubuntu 18.04 appeared first on OSTechNix. from OSTechNix https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-add-new-document-option-in-right-click-context-menu-in-ubuntu-18-04/ The following blog article How To Add ‘New Document’ Option In Right Click Context Menu In Ubuntu 18.04 Read more on: www.instant-web-site-tools from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/24/how-to-add-new-document-option-in-right-click-context-menu-in-ubuntu-18-04/ Recently, I was part of a 3-person team of consultants who in 12 weeks built the foundations of a new design system. That design system is now used in multiple products and is contributed to by other developers and designers. In this post you’ll find some of the techniques we used to make the project a success within its short timespan. (While we did deliver code on the project, this article is written from my perspective as a designer.) 1. Invest in RelationshipsWhen building a design system, it’s crucial to first secure buy-in from your stakeholders, from product managers, product managers’ managers, developers and designers. it’s imperative that neither side see these repeated interactions as nuisances Ultimately, a design system can only be successful if everyone is on board. One way to do this is to meet with key figures one-on-one to discuss with them their hopes and fears for the design system. That helps with building trust and identifying potential roadblocks early on. The groundwork should be laid for relationships where you feel comfortable seeking feedback from any person as often and as many times as needed, no matter how high up they are. In order to make any project work – and make it work fast – it’s imperative that neither side see these repeated interactions as nuisances. That’s easier said than done: outside consultants, in particular, have to make an impression and make it fast. Be proactive in setting up meetings and slot yourselves in whatever available time you can find on a person’s calendar. 2. Get Clear on Your Design PrinciplesOnce all stakeholders are involved, it’s crucial to set a clear vision for the project along with a design vision. Getting aligned on project goals is best achieved with a kickoff meeting. Getting on the same page regarding the design vision is most often achieved by defining the design principles. It’s best to avoid using generic adjectives such as ‘simple’ and ‘beautiful’ when formulating design principles — all design systems should be this by default! Instead, focus on the goals and needs of the target audience of the products, that the design system serves. avoid using generic adjectives such as ‘simple’ and ‘beautiful’ One practical way to zero in on your design principles is to bring all stakeholders together in a short workshop. First, share examples of specific, working design principles that help everyone not familiar with the concept to understand what a good set of design principles should look like. Next, ask that everyone write down design principles they believe apply to their product (not just the design system, but the product(s) that the design system will be applied to). Then, have everyone share their thoughts with the group. Go through rounds of affinity mapping to reach a final set of principles. Don’t panic if the key terms aren’t beautifully worded at the end of the workshop. When we used this approach, the group work resulted in a set of specific and actionable principles, all ones that then needed to be reworded multiple times until they became clear and succinct. Agreeing on your design principles helps make sure everyone is heading full steam in the right direction. 3. Keep the Team Focused and NimbleDedicating yourself entirely to the project at hand will lead to faster results — in any project. A benefit of working on a design system as a consultancy is that it is easier to have that type of focus. Often, when a design system is built in-house, the designers and developers involved juggle that project alongside other responsibilities. The multitasking approach makes it challenging to get to a first usable version of a design system within a short timeframe. With a design system, there is plenty of high-level conceptual work to be done, including defining the design principles, but also an array of nitty-gritty, low-concept tasks, such as naming components and building a symbol library. It is often beneficial therefore to initially have at least two designers on the team, meaning that design tasks can be allocated according to the type of work they require. A repeated context switch between high and low concept work can otherwise wear the team out, significantly slowing down progress. For developers, by contrast, operating in the beginning as a single unit can be beneficial: it means a certain nimbleness and speed in implementing decisions. That said, it is necessary to acknowledge that there is more design work to be done in the beginning stages of a design system and an increasing amount of developer work towards the project end. That’s why — midway through our project — we mixed up the team by replacing one of the designers with another developer. That kind of agile, focused approach allows the team to maintain maximum speed throughout the project. 4. Build Robust Foundations That Allow For Quick Changes at ScaleThis is where the work of a designer gets tricky but rewarding: it’s critical to find the right balance between a near-perfectionism on the one hand, and a willingness to discard things that don’t work on the other. The foundations must become robust. A common way of doing that is to make heavy use of reusable symbols and styles from the start and then use those symbols as a base structure for the rest of the system. No one reads the manual, even if there is one Especially on short projects, it’s imperative to be able to execute repeated large-scale changes with rapid speed and limited effort. We did this by making heavy use of text styles and layer styles inside all symbols in Sketch, so that if we needed to adjust a color somewhere, we didn’t need to then change it in countless other places too. 5. Keep it StandardNo one reads the manual, even if there is one. That’s why it’s advantageous not to reinvent the wheel on the design side and keep things as standard as possible. Often, design systems are built for other designers and developers without them being there yet to use the system. That is especially true for consultants. For that reason, it is wise to not rely on any third-party plugins or any detailed instructions. Design systems should be easy to adopt by future designers and developers. In our project, we used only built-in Sketch functionality, which means the system works for whoever later uses it, whether they like to use plugins or not. 6. Make it Tangible For the Client From the StartWhat all of these lessons ultimately hint at, is that it’s vital to create a minimum viable product and to test it often to see if it creates real value. (And then, if it doesn’t, to have the courage to kill it!) In general, it’s not advisable to build a design system in isolation; the system needs to be plugged into the broader network of people and systems it will be influencing. It’s good to keep in mind that describing a product is one thing and showing a prototype of it is another; real, useful user feedback often requires that one additional step. the worst type of time lag is not falling a few weeks behind on a schedule, it’s building a system that nobody wants For one product, we created fake redesigns of what the new versions of our stakeholders’ systems could potentially look like. Showing people a single button does not elicit much in the way of a response. But when that same button is presented as part of a revamped, existing system the stakeholders can recognize, they suddenly have a wealth of opinions on that design language as a whole. It makes the potential change real, and that’s what all designers should be able to do. Granted, it’s harder with a design system — but equally as important as with any other product. Because the worst type of time lag is not falling a few weeks behind on a schedule, it’s building a system that nobody wants. 7. Get Users to Implement itFeedback on how components look is one thing, input on whether that component is usable for a designer or developer is something entirely different. A design system is only successful if designers and developers actually want to use it, so you have to make sure that it saves them time and makes their lives easier. Otherwise, they will (rightfully!) keep creating their own components from scratch and the investment in the design system will have been wasted. In the final month of our 12-week project, we stopped adding new components and instead focused on refining the system that we had built. We were lucky to be able to work with a developer outside our team who could use our design system’s components on a product. Inevitably, he discovered gaps, bugs, and things that could be better explained. It’s a great feeling to uncover problems through testing; correcting them means the system will have an even greater chance of success in the organization, years down the line. 8. Study the GreatsLearning from someone else’s successes and mistakes is always useful. When there’s limited time, learning from other people’s experiences becomes invaluable. You have less time to make – and learn from – your own mistakes. Readings that were valuable to us were Anna Kholmatova’s Design Systems book, Audrey Hacq’s “Everything you need to know about design systems” Medium post, and Dan Mall’s blog (particularly the excellent blog posts on design principles and type systems). Studying existing design systems is a great way to learn from others and speed up decision-making. When you get started and don’t yet have any components, it can be hard to imagine what the effect of documentation layout and design file organization will be later on. Taking a look at how certain choices pan out in mature design systems can help lot when making those types of choices at the very beginning. We learned a lot from dissecting IBM’s Carbon and Shopify’s Polaris, two very different design systems, as well as UX Power Tools’ methods for speeding up workflows.
Featured image via Unsplash. from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/07/8-ways-to-kickstart-a-design-system/ 8 Ways to Kickstart a Design System is republished from Instant Web Site Tools Blog from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/24/8-ways-to-kickstart-a-design-system/ What is the personality of your brand? No, it’s not a trick question. Is your brand formal or spunky or socially conscious? Identifying and defining the identity and personality of your brand is crucial. Even if you don’t define it, some sort of personality (even of the multiple variety) will come through. So it’s best to think about it now. The last thing you want is anyone else getting any say in how exactly your brand is defined. Who do you want your brand to be?
What is Brand Personality?Brand personality is a set of emotional and associative characteristics connected to a company or brand name. These things shape how people feel about and interact with a company. Often a brand’s personality mirrors that of the target customer base.
The idea of a brand personality applies to companies big and small and to anyone with a web presence.
Brands can have a variety of personality types and, left undefined, a mash-up of personalities based on the day. (This can be very confusing to users and consumers.) The idea of a brand personality applies to companies big and small and to anyone with a web presence. This means you – the designer, the freelancer, the developer – are a brand of your own if you have a website or even participate in public social media channels. Cultivating and harnessing that personality can be a key factor in your success. Types of PersonalityBefore you settle on a brand personality, do a little research. Know who you are, what you are selling and who your customers are. Then brainstorm options; what kind of voice would best relate to your core base. Finally, create and establish that voice. A brand guide will help keep everyone on point and create a unique and consistent brand personality.
If you were telling someone new, how would you describe your product or website or business?
So what type of personality is the right fit? Start by thinking about your brand’s story. If you were telling someone new, how would you describe your product or website or business? Brand personality types can be traced to 15 common traits that boil down to the “Big Five Personality Traits,” which was first developed in 1961. (This list is likely familiar to anyone who has taken a personality test.) The big five are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. From those five traits come the brand equivalents: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. Almost every brand can be described as one of these five personalities (or the opposite of such). Personality vs. IdentityNow that you are thinking about brand personality, don’t get it confused with brand identity. Personality is the emotional, and human, association to a brand. Identity is the image created and used by a company to relate to consumers. An identity can include all forms of communication and visuals such as logos, colors or fonts. But the two are symbiotic. A brand’s identity should be part of its personality. A fun voice means nothing if the logo and images are all overly formal. It is important to create both a voice and visuals that work together. Aaron Walter’s “Designing for Emotion” is a great lesson in branding, personality and identity if you want to learn more and big into a few case studies. Brand Personality QuizSo what kind of brand personality do you want to have? Think about your company name. Say it out loud. What other words come to mind? Now take this exercise out of your office. Ask people the same question. Show them a copy of your logo and ask again. What kind of responses do you get? Put these sets of answers together and you will start to see the shape of your brand’s personality. Does it match what you have in mind? As you keep thinking about brand personality, think about what you are and what you want to be. Here are a few comparisons to get you started:
Designing for PersonalityOnce you determine your personality, it’s time to start designing around it. Create a set of visuals that show off that personality and style. The key visual elements are color, typography and imagery. (Don’t forget to create a brand bible and style guide.) Just as words create voice, so do the visuals. Certain colors can make you feel happy or sad, fonts can be seen as feminine or masculine, images can be dark and mysterious, or inviting and happy. Other elements can be seen as emotionless – think about the typeface Helvetica or the color beige, which take on properties of surrounding elements. Associations should line up with the brand. Here are a few common elements and their associations: Color
Typography
Images
Other elements
How Do You Create Brand Personality?Now that you are thinking about brand personality and what different elements can mean, how do you create that personality? Put it all together across a variety of platforms. Understand and know the characteristics and tone of your brand. What are the five key phrases that define the brand? How can you communicate in that way? Make sure everyone who will communicate on behalf of the brand is on board with voice and style. If your brand is silly and fun, this should apply to both the website and Twitter feed, for example. And then just do it. Get out there and let your brand take on a life. ConclusionSome of the most notable brand personalities out there include companies such as Nike, Old Spice, Mail Chimp, Pepsi, Apple, Wrangler and Axe, which are showcased throughout this article. These personalities have existed for a while and have evolved over time. What’s the personality of your brand? How did it come to be that way? We’d love to hear your stories. Share them in the comments. from Design Shack https://designshack.net/articles/business-articles/how-to-find-or-create-your-brand-personality/ How to Find or Create Your Brand Personality was originally published on www.instant-web-site-tools from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/24/how-to-find-or-create-your-brand-personality/ For a presentation that you aren’t actually giving in person, you can narrate it within PowerPoint, recording your voice so that others can play it back when they watch the presentation. It’s a nifty trick that popular with slide shows and presentations on networks such as SlideShare, YouTube, and even individual websites. And it can even help you when rehearsing your presentation as well. Here’s how to narrate a PowerPoint presentation by recording your voice, in a few quick steps!
Create and Design Your PresentationThe first step to preparing a narrated or recorded PowerPoint presentation is to design the presentation and refine the content. During this step you may even want to think about how you will script the presentation so that you are designing with a flow in mind. Make sure to include any specific transitions you want to use from slide to slide, and don’t forget to read our guide on how to design a professional presentation for tips and pointers. Prepare for RecordingBefore recording a narration, it is advised to write out a script and check your computer microphone to ensure that the sound is correct and that recordings will be at an appropriate volume. You can do this with a short test recording. Now it is time to record the narration. You can record narration for all slides or select slides. Open your presentation and navigate to the Slide Show tab. If you are recording narration for all of the slides, you are ready. If you plan to record a voiceover for only some of the slides, you want to hide the slides you won’t have a recording for. You can do this by selecting the slides you don’t want to include, right- or ctrl-click and then Hide Slide. The other option is to create a custom show. From the menu select Custom Show > Custom Slide Show > use the + to add slides. You will need to know which slide numbers you want for this option because you can’t see previews. Record the NarrationNow you are ready to record. (Good luck!) In the Slide Show tab, click the Record Slide Show Button from the first slide in your presentation. Recording starts automatically. (You’ll notice the screen shifts into full presentation mode.) As you record the narration, you can use the navigation tools on the screen to advance slides. This will override any previous timing settings so that slides advance in tandem with your voice narration. When you are finished, click End and you will be prompted to save the recording. Only one recording can be saved at a time. A new recording will override any previously saved recorded narrations. You can preview the recording using the start button. Helpful Keyboard ShortcutsUsing keyboard shortcuts during recording can make it a little easier. Some shortcuts you might use include:
Choose a Playback OptionFinally, you’ll want to determine how the presentation will be played back for users. Click on Set Up Slide Show from the menu and make your selections from the options on the screen. Then you can save or export to a desired file format. ConclusionA PowerPoint presentation with a narrated recording can be a useful tool to help get your information in front of more people. All you need to do it is a quiet room to record and a microphone attached to your computer. Don’t forget to take a look at our full PowerPoint templates guide, or our collection of the best PowerPoint templates for your next project! from Design Shack https://designshack.net/articles/software/how-to-narrate-a-powerpoint-presentation-and-record-your-voice/ The blog post How to Narrate a PowerPoint Presentation (And Record Your Voice) is available on Instant Web Site Tools from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/24/how-to-narrate-a-powerpoint-presentation-and-record-your-voice/ Julia Carrie Wong and Matthew Cantor's How to speak Silicon Valley: 53 essential tech-bro terms explained was pretty hilarious. A little something in there to offend everyone. Speaking of kinda douchey words, I'm reminded of one of my favorite sites on the internet: Unsuck It. Not only does it call out a ton of terms for being, uh, sucky, but suggests unsucky alternatives.
Bubble Up
Unsucked: Tell someone with more authority. Powwow
Unsucked: Yet more unthinking appropriation of Native American culture. Meeting. SolutioneeringUnsucked: Thinking. On a somewhat related note, there's the ol' swoop and poop which is also a thing. Direct Link to Article — Permalink The post Unsuck It appeared first on CSS-Tricks. from CSS-Tricks http://unsuck-it.com/browse/ The following article Unsuck It was first published on http://www.instant-web-site-tools/ from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/23/unsuck-it/ “Defragging” or defragment sounds pretty technical. Truth is, there’s really nothing technical about it. It just refers to a process that can help boost your computer’s performance. The process is very simple and it can help every computer-user like you. So, if you want to boost your computer’s performance by cleaning up your hard drive in Windows 10, you can do so by defragging it.
(Via: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-defrag-windows-10) You might wonder how defragging a hard drive can help boost the performance of your computer. Here’s what happens when you defrag a hard drive.
(Via: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-defrag-windows-10) Here are the steps to defrag your hard disk.
(Via: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-defrag-windows-10) These steps are very easy to follow. However, there is one thing that you need to keep in mind. You cannot perform a defrag on an SSD.
(Via: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-defrag-windows-10) If your computer is running on Windows 10, it might be using an SSD. Make sure to check first.
(Via: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-defrag-windows-10) So, don’t make the mistake of defragging the storage of your Windows 10 without checking it first. You might end up defragging an SSD. That could eventually affect, not just the longevity of the SSD but your data as well. You don’t want to accidentally wipe out some data, do you? In case that happens, the Hard Drive Recovery Associates or HDRA can help with https://www.harddrivefailurerecovery.net/ssd-data-recovery/. They offer a free evaluation so that you could have a good idea as to how much it’s going to cost you to recover data from your SSD. After all, an SSD recovery doesn’t come cheap. Want To Clean Up Your Windows 10? Try Defragging It. was initially published to HDRA Blog from Hard Drive Recovery Associates - Feed Want To Clean Up Your Windows 10? Try Defragging It. is available on Instant Web Site Tools from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/23/want-to-clean-up-your-windows-10-try-defragging-it/ Yonatan Doron wrote a post on Medium not long ago called "Art of Code — Why you should write more Pseudo Code." Love that title, as a fan of pseudo code myself. That is, writing "code" that describes something you want to do or communicate, but that isn't of any particular language and doesn't use any correct APIs or anything.
Jeremy Keith once likened it to writing a script:
I've seen educators use this technique time and time again. But it isn't just for teachers to use and students to learn from — it's for anyone's benefit. I find myself doing pseudo code before I write real code, sure, but I also leave it in place sometimes in code comments. Most commonly, I do it in Notion documents or in Slack conversations to get across a point. Even simple ideas:
Anything with logic and branching or step-by-step bits benefits highly from it. Notice that code isn't valid code. It's not valid in any language I can think of. Sometimes, I'll throw in some random parenthesis or a semicolon out of muscle memory. Who cares? It's just about communicating an idea to myself or someone else.
It's natural. Chances are, they won't care about the syntax either, they'll just get the idea.
(After writing these out, it made me think of uilang. Check out how the plain language code blocks work there.) Yonatan's article was missing real-world pseudo code examples, so I asked around. Check out all these great examples!
I'm a little surprised at how much of it is on paper! That's pretty cool, really. Just weird for me as I very rarely use paper for anything. I probably should. The post Pseudo Code appeared first on CSS-Tricks. from CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com/pseudo-code/ Pseudo Code Read more on: Instant Web Site Tools from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/23/pseudo-code/ It's sorta sad by funny that that big Zoom vulnerability thing was ultimately related to web technology and not really the app itself. There is this idea of custom protocols or "URL schemes." So, like
In order for that web page to open up a native app, apparently, the tactic used by many is to have it communicate with a server running on localhost on your own computer which uses a URL scheme to open the native app. Clever, but I've heard sentiment from folks like:
That's the way it is though. But there are some protections in place. Namely: CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing). Ugh. I feel like I deal with some kind of CORS problem every week of my life. But it's important. It prevents XHR requests from websites that aren't specifically allowed. Imagine if you visit my website, and I have your browser shoot requests over to Facebook, hoping you are logged in so I can do things on your behalf. Bad. CORS doesn't prevent that, the same-origin policy of browsers prevents that. CORS is the mechanism to control that. If my website tries to communicate with your website, and your website's response doesn't have an Chris Foster thinks CORS and a lack of understanding of CORS was at the heart of the Zoom bug.
In the wake of all this, Nicolas Bailly wrote "What you should know about CORS":
The post Zoom, CORS, and the Web appeared first on CSS-Tricks. from CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com/zoom-cors-and-the-web/ Zoom, CORS, and the Web See more on: Instant Web Site Tools Blog from https://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/2019/07/23/zoom-cors-and-the-web/ |