Life as a Web developer can be hard when things start going wrong. The problem could be in any number of places. Is there a problem with the request you're sending, is the problem with the response, is there a problem with a request in a third party library you're using, is an external API failing?
Good tools are invaluable in figuring out where problems lie, and can also help to prevent problems from occurring in the first place, or just help you to be more efficient in general. Command line tools are particularly useful because they lend themselves well to automation and scripting, where they can be combined and reused in all sorts of different ways. Here we cover six particularly powerful and versatile tools which can help make your life a little bit easier.
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Editor's Note: This article expresses the author's personal opinion and covers experimental UX techniques which aren't considered to be best practice.
Masking passwords is an old practice that’s commonly implemented in sign-up and log-in forms. It’s used to prevent over-the-shoulder snoopers from catching the user’s password. While masking passwords is a good security practice, there’s a chance it could jeopardize the user experience of your sign-up form. When users sign up on a website, they expect a no-hassle, worry-free form to fill out. But masking the password could prevent that.
Log-in forms are used more often than sign-up forms. Users only need to sign up once to create an account, whereas they will need to log in multiple times to access their account. Because log-in forms are used so frequently, there’s a strong chance that users will end up typing their password in front of other people.
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Roles have been an integral part of WordPress for quite some time now — many functions associated with managing them have been in place since version 2.0.0. Despite this longevity, they are rarely utilized which is a shame since they allow for the easy setup of custom user types (and also have the ability to micro-manage them). In this article, you'll learn everything you need to utilize user roles in WordPress and make the most of this incredible built-in functionality.
New roles usually come hand-in-hand with new capabilities. Usually, we first create a set of new capabilities, which are held by the admin (and a new role, as well). Let’s look at an example. If you have a large website, chances are you have a marketing team. This team doesn’t need to be able to edit and publish posts, but they do need access to advertising stats, trending search topics, etc. Perhaps it would also be beneficial to allow them to manage categories and comments for SEO purposes and customer satisfaction, respectively.
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When I was studying computer science in college, I had one extremely tough professor. His name was Dr. Maxey and he taught the more complicated courses like data structures and computer architecture. He was a wonderful teacher with a talent for articulating difficult concepts, but also an extremely tough grader. Not only would he look over your code to make sure that it worked, he would take off points for stylistic issues.
If you were missing appropriate comments, or even if you misspelled a word or two in your comments, he would deduct points. If your code was “messy” (by his standards), he would deduct points. The message was clear: the quality of your code is not just in its execution but also in its appearance. That was my first experience with coding style.
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With the intense workload throughout the year, we tend to miss out on the opportunites for networking with like-minded designers and developers. This makes it difficult for us to catch up and stay up to date with what's going on in our industry. For this reason, we’ve put together a list of upcoming Web design and development conferences that will present to you only the best techniques, tools and modern design approaches that are in strong demand worldwide.
This post covers events taking place in about a five-month timeframe up to late February 2013. These conferences take us pretty much through the end of the year, so keep a lookout for our next issue as 2013 gets underway.
There is no way for us to include every possible event, so you are more than welcome to help us out and provide a comment to an upcoming event that you feel would be of interest to Smashing Magazine’s readers. The list is quite lengthy, so let's dive in.
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With all the talk about responsive Web design, designers and coders are moving even further from the fixed pixel layouts of design’s print-based history. We’re finally thinking in terms of fluid layouts and expandable, interactive content. But when you get down to it, we’re still thinking of the fluidity in terms of desktop, tablet and mobile sizes.
Chances are that your responsive websites have media query breakpoints at precisely the tablet and mobile widths, essentially creating three different versions of a website with the same code. While this is much more ideal than what we’ve all done until now, it’s not always the best way to approach things. Often, our content breakpoints (the viewport widths where content should be reformatted) are different from common device breakpoints (the viewport widths that reflect physical devices).
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A few weeks ago, I dug up an old article that I wrote for Smashing Magazine, “When One Word Is More Meaningful Than a Thousand.” While I stand firmly behind all of the HTML development principles I listed back then, the article lacked one important thing: hands-on examples.
Sure enough, the theory behind component-based HTML is interesting in its own right, but without a few illustrative examples, it’s all very dry and abstract. Not that HTML enthusiasts should shy away from that (on the contrary, I would say), but there’s nothing like a good example to clear up some of the finer points of a concept.
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Testers are often thought of as people who find bugs, but have you ever considered how testers actually approach testing? Do you ever wonder what testers actually do, and how they can add value to a typical technology project? I’d like to take you through the thought process of testers and discuss the types of things they consider when testing a mobile app.
The intention here is to highlight their thought processes and to show the coverage and depth that testers often go to. At the heart of testing is the capability to ask challenging and relevant questions. You are on your way to becoming a good tester if you combine investigative and questioning skills with knowledge of technology and products.
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Care to make a cross-platform mobile game with HTML5? No need to dabble in Java or Objective-C? Bypass the app stores? Sounds like an instant win! A handful of game developers are pushing the envelope of mobile HTML5 games at the moment. Check out the likes of Nutmeg and Lunch Bug for some shining examples.
The great thing about these titles is that they work equally well on both mobile and desktop using the same code. Could HTML5 finally fulfill the holy grail of “write once, run anywhere”? Now, as a Web developer you’re used to dealing with the quirks of certain browsers and degrading gracefully and dealing with fragmented platforms. So, a few technical challenges won’t put you off, right? What’s more, all of these performance and audio problems are temporary.
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