In this article, Owais Afaq gives you hands-on access to his journey of creating a digital assistant capable of connecting with any system via a RESTful API to perform various tasks. He will create a chatbot using Node.js and Microsoft’s Bot Framework SDK; send the data collected from the user to an API; set up both local and server environments; and deploy it live on dev.botframework.com. In part 2 of this series, you’ll learn how to add natural language processing using LUIS to make our chatbot intelligent enough to understand human language and to extract information from a user’s utterances.
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Imagine that you get up to get a glass of water, but the exact reason why you did that at that particular time isn’t easy to explain. It was “too hot” and you were “somewhat thirsty,” but also maybe “a little bored.” Each of these qualities isn’t either/or, but instead fall on a spectrum of values. In contrast, software is usually built on Boolean values. You set isHot to true and if isHot && isThirsty && isBored, then you call getWater(). If you use code like this to control your game characters, then they will appear jerky and less natural. In this article, Lou Franco will show you how to add intelligent behavior to the non-player characters of a game using an alternative to conventional Boolean logic.
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What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at.
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if an app is not useful, it will have no practical value for the user. Even if the app is useful but requires a lot of effort, people won’t bother learning how to use it. Good design has a clear focus on key user goals, and it removes all obstacles from the user’s way by bringing clarity to the interface. In this article, Nick Babich brings you closer to seven UX design tips that are key for creating really great mobile user experiences.
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The simpler, smaller and lighter an application is, the cheaper and easier it will be to write from scratch. When Nick Gauthier set out to build MeetSpace, he and his team had a familiar decision to make: What’s our tech stack going to be? They gathered their requirements, reviewed their skillset and ultimately decided to use vanilla JavaScript and to avoid a front-end framework. Using this approach, they were able to create an incredibly fast and light web application that is also less work to maintain over time.
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Have you ever wanted to make a website that non-technical folks can edit right in the browser? Or have you ever wanted to make a website that presents an editable collection of items (e.g. your portfolio)? Or simply upload images to a website you made, right from the browser? In this article Lea Verou will show you that you can do these things (and more!), just with HTML and CSS? No programming code to write, no servers to manage. You can make any element editable and saveable just by adding one HTML attribute to it. In fact, you can store your data locally in the browser, on Github, on Dropbox, or any other service just by changing an HTML attribute.
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When working with creative designers on web page designs, it’s fairly common to receive multiple Sketch or Photoshop artboards/layouts, one for each breakpoint. In this article, Jake Wilson is going to examine how to create scalable, fluid typography across multiple breakpoints and predefined font sizes using well-supported browser features and some basic algebra. The best part is that you can automate it all by using Sass.
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What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at.
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Fuse is not only used to describe the UI and layout; you can also use it to add effects and animation. In this article, Wern Ancheta will show you what Fuse is all about. He’ll show you how it works and how it compares to other platforms such as React Native and NativeScript. In the second half of the article, you will create your first Fuse app. Specifically, you will create a weather app that shows the weather based on the user’s current location. Towards the end of the article, you will consolidate your learning by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of using Fuse for your next mobile app project.
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WebAssembly is a way of taking code written in programming languages other than JavaScript and running that code in the browser. When you’re talking about WebAssembly, the apples to apples comparison is with JavaScript. With WebAssembly, it is possible to run code on the web faster. There are a number of reasons why WebAssembly code runs faster than its JavaScript equivalent, but it is useful to compare the two, so you can understand the potential impact that WebAssembly will have.
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