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Tech News - Web Design

11 Articles
article-image-exploring%e2%80%afforms-in-angular-types-benefits-and-differences%e2%80%af%e2%80%af%e2%80%af-%e2%80%af
Expert Network
21 Jul 2021
11 min read
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Exploring Forms in Angular – types, benefits and differences     

Expert Network
21 Jul 2021
11 min read
While developing a web application, or setting dynamic pages and meta tags we need to deal with multiple input elements and value types, such limitations could seriously hinder our work – in terms of either data flow control, data validation, or user experience.    This article is an excerpt from the book, ASP.NET Core 5 and Angular, Fourth Edition by Valerio De Sanctis – A revised edition of a bestseller that includes coverage of the Angular routing module, expanded discussion on the Angular CLI, and detailed instructions for deploying apps on Azure, as well as both Windows and Linux.   Sure, we could easily work around most of the issues by implementing some custom methods within our form-based components; we could throw some errors such as isValid(), isNumber(), and so on here and there, and then hook them up to our template syntax and show/hide the validation messages with the help of structural directives such as *ngIf, *ngFor, and the like. However, it would be a horrible way to address our problem; we didn't choose a feature-rich client-side framework such as Angular to work that way.   Luckily enough, we have no reason to do that since Angular provides us with a couple of alternative strategies to deal with these common form-related scenarios:   Template-Driven Forms   Model-Driven Forms, also known as Reactive Forms   Both are highly coupled with the framework and thus extremely viable; they both belong to the @angular/forms library and share a common set of form control classes. However, they also have their own specific sets of features, along with their pros and cons, which could ultimately lead to us choosing one of them.   Let's try to quickly summarize these differences.   Template-Driven Forms   If you've come from AngularJS, there's a high chance that the Template-Driven approach will ring a bell or two. As the name implies, Template-Driven Forms host most of the logic in the template code; working with a Template-Driven Form means:   Building the form in the .html template file   Binding data to the various input fields using ngModel instance   Using a dedicated ngForm object related to the whole form and containing all the inputs, with each being accessible through their name.   These things need to be done to perform the required validity checks. To understand this, here's what a Template-Driven Form looks like:   <form novalidate autocomplete="off" #form="ngForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit(form)">  <input type="text" name="name" value="" required   placeholder="Insert the city name..."    [(ngModel)]="city.Name" #title="ngModel"   />  <span *ngIf="(name.touched || name.dirty) &&       name.errors?.required">           Name is a required field: please enter a valid city name.   </span>   <button type="submit" name="btnSubmit"          [disabled]="form.invalid">         Submit   </button>   </form>     Here, we can access any element, including the form itself, with some convenient aliases – the attributes with the # sign – and check for their current states to create our own validation workflow.   These states are provided by the framework and will change in real-time, depending on various things: touched, for example, becomes True when the control has been visited at least once; dirty, which is the opposite of pristine, means that the control value has changed, and so on. We used both touched and dirty in the preceding example because we want our validation message to only be shown if the user moves their focus to the <input name="name"> and then goes away, leaving it blank by either deleting its value or not setting it.   These are Template-Driven Forms in a nutshell; now that we've had an overall look at them, let's try to summarize the pros and cons of this approach. Here are the main advantages of Template-Driven Forms: Template-Driven Forms are very easy to write. We can recycle most of our HTML knowledge (assuming that we have any). On top of that, if we come from AngularJS, we already know how well we can make them work once we've mastered the technique.   They are rather easy to read and understand, at least from an HTML point of view; we have a plain, understandable HTML structure containing all the input fields and validators, one after another. Each element will have a name, a two-way binding with the underlying ngModel, and (possibly) Template-Driven logic built upon aliases that have been hooked to other elements that we can also see, or to the form itself.   Here are their weaknesses:   Template-Driven Forms require a lot of HTML code, which can be rather difficult to maintain and is generally more error-prone than pure TypeScript.   For the same reason, these forms cannot be unit tested. We have no way to test their validators or to ensure that the logic we implemented will work, other than running an end-to-end test with our browser, which is hardly ideal for complex forms.   Their readability will quickly drop as we add more and more validators and input tags. Keeping all their logic within the template might be fine for small forms, but it does not scale well when dealing with complex data items. Ultimately, we can say that Template-Driven Forms might be the way to go when we need to build small forms with simple data validation rules, where we can benefit more from their simplicity. On top of that, they are quite like the typical HTML code we're already used to (assuming that we do have a plain HTML development background); we just need to learn how to decorate the standard <form> and <input> elements with aliases and throw in some validators handled by structural directives such as the ones we've already seen, and we'll be set in (almost) no time.   For additional information on Template-Driven Forms, we highly recommend that you read the official Angular documentation at: https://angular.io/guide/forms   That being said; the lack of unit testing, the HTML code bloat that they will eventually produce, and the scaling difficulties will eventually lead us toward an alternative approach for any non-trivial form. Model-Driven/Reactive Forms   The Model-Driven approach was specifically added in Angular 2+ to address the known limitations of Template-Driven Forms. The forms that are implemented with this alternative method are known as Model-Driven Forms or Reactive Forms, which are the exact same thing.   The main difference here is that (almost) nothing happens in the template, which acts as a mere reference to a more complex TypeScript object that gets defined, instantiated, and configured programmatically within the component class: the form model.   To understand the overall concept, let's try to rewrite the previous form in a Model-Driven/Reactive way (the relevant parts are highlighted). The outcome of doing this is as follows:  <form [formGroup]="form" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit()">  <input formControlName="name" required />   <span *ngIf="(form.get('name').touched || form.get('name').dirty)            && form.get('name').errors?.required">           Name is a required field: please enter a valid city name.   </span>  <button type="submit" name="btnSubmit"           [disabled]="form.invalid">  Submit  </button>     </form>  As we can see, the amount of required code is much lower.  Here's the underlying form model that we will define in the component class file (the relevant parts are highlighted in the following code):   import { FormGroup, FormControl } from '@angular/forms';   class ModelFormComponent implements OnInit {   form: FormGroup;         ngOnInit() {       this.form = new FormGroup({          title: new FormControl()       });     }   }   Let's try to understand what's happening here:   The form property is an instance of FormGroup and represents the form itself.   FormGroup, as the name suggests, is a container of form controls sharing the same purpose. As we can see, the form itself acts as a FormGroup, which means that we can nest FormGroup objects inside other FormGroup objects (we didn't do that in our sample, though).   Each data input element in the form template – in the preceding code, name – is represented by an instance of FormControl.   Each FormControl instance encapsulates the related control's current state, such as valid, invalid, touched, and dirty, including its actual value.   Each FormGroup instance encapsulates the state of each child control, meaning that it will only be valid if/when all its children are also valid.   Also, note that we have no way of accessing the FormControls directly like we were doing in Template-Driven Forms; we have to retrieve them using the .get() method of the main FormGroup, which is the form itself.   At first glance, the Model-Driven template doesn't seem too different from the Template-Driven one; we still have a <form> element, an <input> element hooked to a <span> validator, and a submit button; on top of that, checking the state of the input elements takes a bigger amount of source code since they have no aliases we can use. What's the real deal, then?  To help us visualize the difference, let's look at the following diagrams: here's a schema depicting how Template-Driven Forms work:   [caption id="attachment_72453" align="alignnone" width="690"] Fig 1: Template-Driven Forms schematic[/caption] By looking at the arrows, we can easily see that, in Template-Driven Forms, everything happens in the template; the HTML form elements are directly bound to the DataModel component represented by a property filled with an asynchronous HTML request to the Web Server, much like we did with our cities and country table.   That DataModel will be updated as soon as the user changes something, that is, unless a validator prevents them from doing that. If we think about it, we can easily understand how there isn't a single part of the whole workflow that happens to be under our control; Angular handles everything by itself using the information in the data bindings defined within our template.   This is what Template-Driven actually means: the template is calling the shots.  Now, let's take a look at the Model-Driven Forms (or Reactive Forms) approach:   [caption id="attachment_72454" align="alignnone" width="676"] Fig 2: Model-Driven/Reactive Forms schematic[/caption] As we can see, the arrows depicting the Model-Driven Forms workflow tell a whole different story. They show how the data flows between the DataModel component – which we get from the Web Server – and a UI-oriented form model that retains the states and the values of the HTML form (and its children input elements) that are presented to the user. This means that we'll be able to get in-between the data and the form control objects and perform a number of tasks firsthand: push and pull data, detect and react to user changes, implement our own validation logic, perform unit tests, and so on.  Instead of being superseded by a template that's not under our control, we can track and influence the workflow programmatically, since the form model that calls the shots is also a TypeScript class; that's what Model-Driven Forms are about. This also explains why they are also called Reactive Forms – an explicit reference to the Reactive programming style that favors explicit data handling and change management throughout the workflow.   Summary    In this article, we focused on the Angular framework and the two form design models it offers: the Template-Driven approach, mostly inherited from AngularJS, and the Model-Driven or Reactive alternative. We took some valuable time to analyze the pros and cons provided by both, and then we made a detailed comparison of the underlying logic and workflow. At the end of the day, we chose the Reactive way, as it gives the developer more control and enforces a more consistent separation of duties between the Data Model and the Form Model.   About the author   Valerio De Sanctis is a skilled IT professional with 20 years of experience in lead programming, web-based development, and project management using ASP.NET, PHP, Java, and JavaScript-based frameworks. He held senior positions at a range of financial and insurance companies, most recently serving as Chief Technology and Security Officer at a leading IT service provider for top-tier insurance groups. He is an active member of the Stack Exchange Network, providing advice and tips on the Stack Overflow, ServerFault, and SuperUser communities; he is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Developer Technologies. He's the founder and owner of Ryadel and the author of many best-selling books on back-end and front-end web development.      
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Richard Gall
23 Jan 2019
4 min read
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Ionic Framework 4.0 has just been released, now backed by Web Components, not Angular

Richard Gall
23 Jan 2019
4 min read
Ionic Framework today released Ionic Framework 4.0. The release is a complete rebuild of the popular JavaScript framework for developing mobile and desktop apps. Although Ionic has, up until now, Ionic was built using Angular components, this new version has instead been built using Web Components. This is significant, as it changes the whole ball game for the project. It means Ionic Framework is now an app development framework that can be used alongside any front end frameworks, not just Angular. The shift away from Angular makes a lot of sense for the project. It now has the chance to grow adoption beyond the estimated five million developers around the world already using the framework. While in the past Ionic could only be used by Angular developers, it now opens up new options for development teams - so, rather than exacerbating a talent gap in many organizations, it could instead help ease it. However, although it looks like Ionic is taking a significant step away from Angular, it's important to note that, at the moment, Ionic Framework 4.0 is only out on general availability for Angular - it's still only in Alpha for Vue.js and React. Ionic Framework 4.0 and open web standards Although the move to Web Components is the stand-out change in Ionic Framework 4.0, it's also worth noting that the release has been developed in accordance with open web standards. This has been done, according to the team, to help organizations develop Design Systems (something the Ionic team wrote about just a few days ago) - essentially, using a set of guidelines and components that can be reused across multiple platforms and products to maintain consistency across various user experience touch points. Why did the team make the changes to Ionic Framework 4.0 that they did? According to Max Lynch, Ionic Framework co-founder and CEO, the changes present in Ionic Framework 4.0 should help organizations achieve brand consistency quickly, and to give development teams the option of using Ionic with their JavaScript framework of choice. Lynch explains: "When we look at what’s happening in the world of front-end development, we see two major industry shifts... First, there’s a recognition that the proliferation of proprietary components has slowed down development and created design inconsistencies that hurt users and brands alike. More and more enterprises are recognizing the need to adopt a design system: a single design spec, or library of reusable components, that can be shared across a team or company. Second, with the constantly evolving development ecosystem, we recognized the need to make Ionic compatible with whatever framework developers wanted to use—now and in the future. Rebuilding our Framework on Web Components was a way to address both of these challenges and future-proof our technology in a truly unique way." What does Ionic Framework 4.0 tell us about the future of web and app development? Ionic Framework 4.0 is a really interesting release as it tells us a lot about where web and app development is today. It confirms to us, for example, that Angular's popularity is waning. It also suggests that Web Components are going to be the building blocks of the web for years to come - regardless of how frameworks evolve. As Lynch writes in a blog post introducing Ionic Framework 4.0, "in our minds, it was clear Web Components would be the way UI libraries, like Ionic, would be distributed in the future. So, we took a big bet and started porting all 100 of our components over." Ionic Framework 4.0 also suggests that Progressive Web Apps are here to stay too. Lynch writes in the blog post linked to above that "for Ionic to reach performance standards set by Google, new approaches for asynchronous loading and delivery were needed." To do this, he explains, the team "spent a year building out a web component pipeline using Stencil to generate Ionic’s components, ensuring they were tightly packed, lazy loaded, and delivered in smart collections consisting of components you’re actually using." The time taken to ensure that the framework could meet those standards - essentially, that it could support high performance PWAs - underscores that this will be one of the key use cases for Ionic in the years to come.  
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Vincy Davis
09 Jul 2019
4 min read
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Introducing Photon Micro GUI: An  open-source, lightweight UI framework with reusable declarative C++ code

Vincy Davis
09 Jul 2019
4 min read
Photon Micro is an open-source, lightweight and modular GUI, which comprises of fine-grained and flyweight ‘elements’. It uses a declarative C++ code with a heavy emphasis on reuse, to form deep element hierarchies. Photon has its own HTML5 inspired canvas drawing engine and uses Cairo as a 2D graphics library. Cairo supports the X Window System, Quartz, Win32, image buffers, PostScript, PDF, and SVG file output. Joel de Guzman, the creator of Photon Micro GUI, and the main author of the Boost.Spirit Parser library, the Boost.Fusion library and the Boost.Phoenix library says, “One of the main projects I got involved with when I was working in Japan in the 90s, was a lightweight GUI library named Pica. So I went ahead, dusted off the old code and rewrote it from the ground up using modern C++.” The Photon Micro GUI client can use the following gallery code: Image Source: Cycfi This pops up a warning: Image Source: Cycfi Some highlights of Photon Micro GUI Modularity and reuse are two important design aspects of the Photon Micro GUI. It is supported by the following functionalities: Share Photon Micro GUI can be shared using std::shared_ptr. Hold Hold can be used to share an element somewhere in the view hierarchy. Key_intercept It is a delegate element that intercepts key-presses. Fixed_size Elements are extremely lightweight, fixed_size fixes the size of the GUI contained element. margin, left_margin These are two of the many margins, including right_margin, top_margin, etc. It adds padding around the element like the margin adds 20 pixels all around the contained element. The left_margin adds a padding of 20 pixels to separate the icon and the text box. vtile, htile Vertical and horizontal fluid layout elements allocate sufficient space to contained elements. This enables stretchiness, fixed sizing, and vertical and horizontal alignment, to place elements in a grid. Stretchiness is the ability of elements to stretch within a defined minimum and maximum size limit. Guzman adds, “While it is usable, and based on very solid architecture and design, there is still a lot of work to do. First, the Windows and Linux ports are currently in an unusable state due to recent low-level refactoring.” Some developers have shown interest in the elements of Photon Micro GUI. https://twitter.com/AlisdairMered/status/1148242189354450944 A user on Hacker News comments, “Awesome, that looks like an attempt to replace QML by native C++. Would be great if there was a SwiftUI inspired C++ UI framework (well, of course C++ might not lend itself so well for the job, but I'm just very curious what it would look like if someone makes a real attempt).” Some users feel that more work needs to be done to make this GUI more accessible and less skeuomorphic. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]Skeuomorphism is a term most often used in graphical user interface design to describe interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them (IDF).[/box] A user says, “Too many skeuomorphic elements. He needs to take the controls people know and understand and replace them with cryptic methods that require new learning, and are hidden from view by default. Otherwise, no one will take it seriously as a modern UI.” Another user on Hacker News adds, “don’t use a GUI toolkit like this, that draws its own widgets rather than using platform standard ones when developing a plugin for a digital audio workstation (e.g. VST or Audio Unit), as this author is apparently doing. Unless someone puts in all the extra effort to implement platform-specific accessibility APIs for said toolkit.” For details about the other highlights, head over to Joel de Guzman’s post. Apple showcases privacy innovations at WWDC 2019: Sign in with Apple, AdGuard Pro, new App Store guidelines and more Google and Facebook allegedly pressured and “arm-wrestled” EU expert group to soften European guidelines for fake news: Open Democracy Report Google I/O 2019 D1 highlights: smarter display, search feature with AR capabilities, Android Q, linguistically advanced Google lens and more  
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Vincy Davis
16 Aug 2019
3 min read
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Mapbox introduces MARTINI, a client-side terrain mesh generation code

Vincy Davis
16 Aug 2019
3 min read
Two days ago, Vladimir Agafonkin, an engineer at Mapbox introduced a client-side terrain mesh generation code, called MARTINI, short for ‘Mapbox's Awesome Right-Triangulated Irregular Networks Improved’. It uses a Right-Triangulated Irregular Networks (RTIN) mesh, which consists of big right-angle triangles to render smooth and detailed terrain in 3D. RTIN has two advantages such as: The algorithm generates a hierarchy of all approximations of varying precision, thus enabling quick retrieving. It is very fast making it feasible for client-side meshing from raster terrain tiles. In a blog post, Agafonkin demonstrates a drag and zoom terrain visualization for users to adjust mesh precision in real time. The terrain visualization also displays the number of triangles generated with an error rate. Image Source: Observable How does the RTIN Hierarchy work Mapbox's MARTINI uses the RTIN algorithm which has a size of (2k+1) x (2k+1) grids, “that's why we add 1-pixel borders on the right and bottom”, says Agafonkin. The RTIN algorithm initiates an error map where a grid of error values guides the following mesh retrieval. The error map indicates the user if a certain triangle has to be split or not, by taking the height error value into account. The RTIN algorithm first calculates the error approximation of the smallest triangles, which is then propagated to the parent triangles. This process is repeated until the top two triangles’ errors are calculated and a full error map is produced. This process results in zero T-junctions and thus no gaps in the mesh. Image Source: Observable For retrieving a mesh, RTIN hierarchy starts with two big triangles, which is then subdivided to approximate, according to the error map. Agafonkin says, “This is essentially a depth-first search in an implicit binary tree of triangles, and takes O(numTriangles) steps, resulting in nearly instant mesh generation.” Users have appreciated the Mapbox's MARTINI demo and animation presented by Agafonkin in the blog post. A user on Hacker News says, “This is a wonderful presentation of results and code, well done! Very nice to read.” Another user comments, “Fantastic. Love the demo and the animation.” Another comment on Hacker News reads, “This was a pleasure to play with on an iPad. Excellent work.” For more details on the code and algorithm used in Mapbox's MARTINI, check out Agafonkin’s blog post. Introducing Qwant Maps: an open source and privacy-preserving maps, with exclusive control over geolocated data Top 7 libraries for geospatial analysis Using R to implement Kriging – A Spatial Interpolation technique for Geostatistics data
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Fatema Patrawala
19 Sep 2019
4 min read
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Inkscape 1.0 beta is available for testing

Fatema Patrawala
19 Sep 2019
4 min read
Last week, the team behind Inkscape project released the first beta version of the upcoming and much-awaited Inkscape 1.0. The team writes on the announcement page that, “after releasing two less visible alpha versions this year, in mid-January and mid-June (and one short-lived beta version), Inkscape is now ready for extensive testing and subsequent bug-fixing.” Most notable changes in Inkscape 1.0 New theme selection: In 'Edit > Preferences > User Interface > Theme', users can set a custom GTK3 theme for Inkscape. If the theme comes with a dark variant, activating the 'Use dark theme' checkbox will result in the dark variant being used. Then the new theme will be applied immediately. Origin in top left corner: Another significant change integrated was to set the origin of the document to the top left corner of the page. It coordinates that a user can see in the interface match the ones that are saved in the SVG data, and makes working in Inkscape more comfortable for people who are used to this standard behavior. Canvas rotation and mirroring: With Ctrl+Shift+Scroll wheel the drawing area can be rotated and viewed from different angles. The canvas can be flipped, to ensure that the drawing does not lean to one side, and looks good either way. Canvas alignment: When the option "Enable on-canvas alignment" is active in the "Align and Distribute" dialog, a new set of handles will appear on canvas. These handles can be used to align the selected objects relative to the area of the current selection. HiDPI screen: Inkscape now supports HiDPI screens. Controlling PowerStroke: The width of PowerStroke is controlled with pressure sensitive graphics tablet Fillet/chamfer LPE and (non-destructive) Boolean Operation LPE: This new LPE adds fillet and chamfer to paths. The Boolean Operations LPE finally makes non-destructive boolean operations available in Inkscape. New PNG export options: The export dialog has received several new options available when you expand the 'Advanced' section. Centerline tracing: A new, unified dialog for vectorizing raster graphics is now available from Path > Trace Bitmap. New Live Path Effect selection dialog: Live Path Effects received a major overhaul, with lots of improvements and new features. Faster Path operations and deselection of large number of paths Variable fonts support: If Inkscape is compiled with a Pango library version 1.41.1, then it will come with support for variable fonts. Complete extensions overhaul: Extensions can now have clickable links, images, a better layout with separators and indentation, multiline text fields, file chooser fields and more. Command line syntax changes: The Inkscape command line is now more powerful and flexible for the user and easier to enhance for the developer. Native support for macOS with a signed and notarized .dmg file: Inkscape is now a first-rate native macOS application, and no longer requires XQuartz to operate. Other important changes for users Custom Icon Sets Icon sets no longer consist of a single file containing all icons. Instead each icon is allocated it's own file. The directory structure must follow the standard structure for Gnome icons. As a side effect of a bug fix to the icon preview dialog, custom UI icon SVG files need to be updated to have their background color alpha channel set to 0 so that they display correctly. Third-party extensions Third-party extensions need to be updated to work with this version of Inkscape. Import/Export via UniConvertor dropped Extensions that previously used the UniConvertor library for saving/opening various file formats have been removed: Import formats that have been removed: Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and below (UC) (*.ai) Corel DRAW Compressed Exchange files (UC) (*.ccx) Corel DRAW 7-X4 files (UC) (*.cdr) [cdr imports, but this specific version?] Corel DRAW 7-13 template files (UC) (*.cdt) Computer Graphics Metafile files (UC) (*.cgm) Corel DRAW Presentation Exchange files (UC) (*.cmx) HP Graphics Language Plot file [AutoCAD] (UC) (*.plt) sK1 vector graphics files (UC) (*.sk1) Export formats that have been removed: HP Graphics Language Plot file [AutoCAD] (UC) (*.plt) sK1 vector graphics files (UC) (*.sk1) Inline LaTeX formula conversion dropped The EQTeXSVG extension that could be used to convert an inline LaTeX equation into SVG paths using Python was dropped, due to its external dependencies. The team has asked to test Inkscape 1.0 beta version and report the findings on Inkscape report page. To know more about this news, check out official Inkscape announcement page. Other interesting news in web development this week! Mozilla announces final four candidates that will replace its IRC network Announcing Feathers 4, a framework for real-time apps and REST APIs with JavaScript or TypeScript Google announces two new attribute links, Sponsored and UGC and updates “nofollow”
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Natasha Mathur
05 Mar 2019
2 min read
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GNOME team adds Fractional Scaling support in the upcoming GNOME 3.32

Natasha Mathur
05 Mar 2019
2 min read
The GNOME team released beta version 3.32 of GNOME, a free and open source GUI for the Linux computer operating system, last month. GNOME 3.32 is set to release on 13th March 2019. Now, the GNOME team has also added the much-awaited support for fractional scaling to the GNOME 3.32, reports Phoronix. The GNOME 3.32 beta release explored major improvements, bug fixes, and other changes. Earlier GNOME would allow the users to scale windows by integral factors (typically 2). But this was very limiting as there are many systems between the dpi ranges that are effective for scale factor 2, or unscaled. In order to improve this, GNOME then allowed its users to scale by fractional values, e.g. 3/2, or 2/1.3333. This, in turn, allows its users more control over the UI scaling as opposed to the previous integer based scaling of 2, 3, etc. The newly added support for Fractional Scaling in the upcoming GNOME version 3.32 will help enhance the user experience with the modern HiDPI displays. The GNOME Shell changes along with the Mutter changes have also been merged ahead of GNOME version 3.32.0. GNOME version 3.32 says goodbye to application menus Fedora 29 beta brings Modularity, GNOME 3.30 support and other changes GNOME 3.30 released with improved Desktop performance, Screen Sharing, and more
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Sugandha Lahoti
26 Oct 2018
3 min read
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Bokeh 1.0 released with a new scatter, patches with holes, and testing improvements

Sugandha Lahoti
26 Oct 2018
3 min read
Bokeh has released their first stable version. Bokeh is an interactive visualization library that targets modern web browsers for presentation. Bokeh 1.0 marks the progress of making Bokeh a truly independent project in the context of a wider OSS community. Bokeh 1.0 comes with new features and other fixes and improvements. These include fixing patches with holes, a new scatter, JSON export and embed etc. Patches With Holes Patches with holes are often useful for working with GIS data or maps, and support all the usual and expected hover and hit-testing interactions. They are also helpful in filling contour plots. The Patches with holes approach adds a new glyph type MultiPolygons, inspired by GeoJSON format of sub-polygons. The GeoJSON specifies an "exterior ring" followed by optional "holes" inside the exterior ring. Source: Bokeh Github A New Scatter Scatter marker type is now parameterizable in the Bokeh 1.0 release. The scatter glyph method creates a new Scatter object, that can specify the marker type of each data point individually. This approach with a parameterized scatter is useful to keep all the data inside a single ColumnDataSource. This capability is especially useful together with a new factor_marker transform that can map categorical values to marker types. A new function to bokeh.embed Bokeh 1.0 adds a new function to bokeh.embed. This function can be called on any Bokeh object, e.g plots or layouts, and the output of the call is a block of JSON that represents a Bokeh Document for obj. This JSON output can be used in any HTML document by calling a single function from JavaScript: Bokeh.embed.embed_item(item, "myplot") The first parameter is the JSON output and the second parameter is the id of the div to embed the content into. Testing improvements Bokeh unit tests can now run continuously on Windows. Their Selenium integration testing machinery has also been rebuilt and expanded. Almost 200 Selenium tests can run continuously to explicitly exercise various Bokeh features and behaviors. These are just a select few updates. For full details, see the CHANGELOG and Release Notes. If you are using Anaconda, Bokeh can easily be installed by executing the command conda install -c bokeh bokeh. Otherwise, use pip install bokeh. How to create a web designer resume that lands you a Job. Is your web design responsive? “Be objective, fight for the user, and test with real users on the go!” – Interview with design purist, Will Grant
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Bhagyashree R
21 Feb 2019
2 min read
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Mozilla shares key takeaways from the Design Tools survey

Bhagyashree R
21 Feb 2019
2 min read
Last year in November, Victoria Wang, a UX designer at Mozilla, announced the initiation of a Design Tools survey. The motivation behind this survey was to get an insight into the biggest CSS and web design issues developers and designers face. She shared the results of this survey yesterday. This survey received more than 900 responses, which revealed the following issues: Source: Mozilla One of the main takeaways from this survey was that developers and designers, irrespective of their experience level, want to better understand CSS issues like unexpected scrollbars and sizing. Cross-browser compatibility was also one of the top issues. Now, the Firefox DevTools team is trying to find out ways to ease the pain of debugging browser difference, including auditing, hints, and a more robust responsive design tool. Some of the mid-ranked issues included building Flexbox layouts, building with CSS Grid Layout, and ensuring accessibility. To address this, the team is planning to improve the Accessibility Panel. Among the lowest-ranked issues included Lack of good Visual/WYSIWYG tools, Animations, WebGL, and SVG. Source: Mozilla The top issues developers face when working with a browser tool was “No easy way to move CSS changes back to the editor”. To address this issue the Mozilla team is planning to add export options to their Changes Panel and also introduce DOM breakpoints. You can read more about this Design Tools survey on Mozilla’s official website. Mozilla partners with Ubisoft to Clever-Commit its code, an artificial intelligence assisted assistant Mozilla releases Firefox 65 with support for AV1, enhanced tracking protection, and more!
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Fatema Patrawala
01 Aug 2019
2 min read
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Scroll Snapping and other cool CSS features come to Firefox 68

Fatema Patrawala
01 Aug 2019
2 min read
Yesterday, the Firefox team announced details of the new CSS features added to the Firefox 68. Earlier this month they had announced the release of Firefox 68 with a bunch of CSS additions and changes. Let us take a look at each: CSS Scroll Snapping The update in Firefox 68 brings the Firefox implementation in line with Scroll Snap as implemented in Chrome and Safari. In addition, it removes the old properties which were part of the earlier Scroll Snap Points Specification. The ::marker pseudo-element The ::marker pseudo-element helps in selecting the marker box of a list item. This will typically contain the list bullet, or a number. If you have ever used an image as a list bullet, or wrapped the text of a list item in a span in order to have different bullet and text colors, this pseudo-element is for you! With the marker pseudo-element, you can target the bullet itself. There are only a few CSS properties that may be used on ::marker. These include all font properties. Therefore you can change the font-size or family to be something different to the text. Using ::marker on non-list items A marker can only be shown on the list items, however you can turn any element into a list-item by using display: list-item. The official blog post covers a detailed example with codes on how you can perform this functionality. The ::marker pseudo-element is standardized in CSS Lists Level 3, and CSS Pseudo-elements Level 4, and currently implemented in Firefox 68 and Safari. CSS fixes in Firefox 68 Web developers suffer when a supported feature works differently in different browsers. These interoperability issues are often caused by the age of the web platform. Hence, the Firefox team has made many changes to the CSS specifications. Developers depend on the browsers to update their implementations to match the clarified spec. In the latest Firefox release, the team has got fixes for the ch unit, and list numbering shipping. In addition to changes to the implementation of CSS in Firefox, Firefox 68 brings some great new additions to Developer Tools to work with CSS. Take a look at the Firefox 68 release notes to get a full overview of all the changes and additions in Firefox 68.
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Richard Gall
08 Aug 2018
3 min read
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Snapchat is losing users - but revenue is up

Richard Gall
08 Aug 2018
3 min read
Snapchat's redesign was met with considerable anger earlier this year, with 1.2 million users signing a petition opposing the redesign. The impact of that anger was revealed on Tuesday with Snap Inc (Snapchat's parent company) confirming in a prepared Q2 earnings call statement that Snapchat had dropped from 191 million to 188 million daily active users in a quarter. However, CEO Evan Spiegel countered this 2% drop by revealing that Snapchat's monthly active users are actually growing in number. However, despite losing users, Snap Inc. has seen impressive results in terms of revenue. Year on year, revenue has grown 44% - in Q2 2017 it was 182 million up to 262 million in Q2 2018. That's 44% growth.  Snapchat's redesign was a gamble Clearly, Snapchat's decision to redesign its platform was a gamble - whether or not it will pay off isn't immediately clear. The trade-off is one between a design that users had grown to love and making the platform more friendly to advertisers and publishers that want to reach those users. This is something Spiegel recognizes in his statement: We feel that we have now addressed the biggest frustrations [about the redesign] we’ve heard and are eager to make more progress on the tremendous opportunity we now have to show more of the right content to the right people. For example, the number of people that watch Publisher Stories and Shows on iOS every day has grown by more than 15 percent this year, and we are excited to bring the learnings from our iterations on iOS to our Android application. Additionally, more Snaps from Publisher Stories and Shows were viewed in July than any other month in our history. You might say that this is now a critical moment for Snap Inc. This could just be a blip as it moves to grow its revenue streams with a more publisher-friendly platform. But equally, this might be an indication that users are beginning to fall out of love with Snapchat. This is all good news for Instagram, who might now smell blood as it appears to be moving from strength to strength in the battle for audience share. Is Snapchat's case unique in the social media world? To a certain extent, Snap's challenges aren't actually that unique in the context of social media companies. At the end of July, for example, Facebook shares fell 20% after its average daily visitors missed analyst projections. Twitter has also been in a similar situation with its market value struggling. However, one analysis put forward by Bloomberg suggests that Snapchat is having an identity crisis. Having "defined itself in opposition to the internet establishment," the platform is now "borrowing liberally from the internet conventions it has scorned." These 'conventions' are those design tactics deployed by platforms to drive revenue through advertising. We'll just have to wait and see how this identity crisis evolves, and what Snap Inc. decides to do next. Read next 15 year old uncovers Snapchat’s secret visual search function How to stay safe while using Social Media Facebook, Apple, Spotify pull Alex Jones content
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Fatema Patrawala
19 Jul 2019
5 min read
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New Twitter touts “write once, run everywhere” redesign, users roll eyes with displeasure

Fatema Patrawala
19 Jul 2019
5 min read
On Monday, Twitter rolled out the new website to the general public. Those who have already seen it, may find the new design refreshing in its subtlety. A few things have been rearranged in the new three-column design, and the site is noticeably faster, but according to users it seems there aren’t a lot of drastic updates. The official blog post reads, “a refreshed and updated website that is faster, easier to navigate and more personalized. The site has an updated look and feel that is more consistent with the Twitter you see on other devices, making it easier to access some of your favorite features, and with more options to make it your own.” The Twitter engineering team on Monday posted a separate blog on the new Twitter website and its architecture. They say that their goal was to create one codebase website that is responsive to more than just design and the screen size. The team posted, “Our goal was to create one codebase - one website - capable of delivering the best experience possible to each person.” The engineering team also wrote, “On web, we believe in the “write once, run everywhere” philosophy.” They said the goal for this new website is two fold. First to make it easier and faster to develop new features for people worldwide. Secondly, provide each person and each device with the right experience. This post gained a lot of attention on Hacker News and the users commented of appreciating the single code base for mobile and web but they feel the major turn off is how the Home timeline appeared on the mobile and desktop. One of the users commented, “To the posted article, I think it's impressive they are shipping a single codebase for mobile and desktop. Modular features you can turn off for different views. It's smart and I'll be curious to see if other sites follow suit. Unfortunately they've now ported one of the most offensive features from mobile to desktop. The "Home" timeline, with tweets out of order. And the real kicker; you can still select "latest Tweets first" but then the app literally undoes your preference every week or two, forcing you back to their "Home" view. It's offensive. Also a small thing, but the new desktop Twitter now has obfuscated CSS classes for everything. The names change frequently too, maybe at every deploy? Anyway it makes it a lot harder to modify the desktop HTML presentation with an extension or set of ad blocker rules.” Finally let us check out the new features added to Twitter. Updates to new Twitter With the new features listed below the team at Twitter has tried to make conversations easier to find and follow – and a bit more fun: More of What’s Happening: They have brought over Explore to bring the same great content found in our apps; you can expect more live video and local moments personalized for wherever you are in the world. Get context with profile information within conversations and check out your Top Trends in any view so you never miss what’s happening. Easy Access to Your Favorite Features: Bookmarks, Lists, and your Profile are right up front and have their own spot on the side navigation, making it easier and faster to jump between different tabs. Direct Messages All in One Place: Direct Messages have been expanded so you can see your conversations and send messages all from the same view. Now there’s less hassle switching between screens to send a message. Login, Logout Struggle No More: Whether you have one profile or a few, now you can switch between accounts faster, directly from the side navigation Make Twitter Yours: The love is real for dark mode themes Dim and Lights Out. Twitter has brought to you different themes and color options, along with two options for dark mode. However, the new site for Twitter was all about “Woah, What’s this? a shiny new Twitter.com is here. '' Users seem to be unhappy with the statement and posted dull comments on the announcement. The users feel new features were added to the site but a lot of it is still missing. Here’s some of the tweet responses to the official announcement. https://twitter.com/grandayy/status/1150948766851174402 https://twitter.com/BetterGarf/status/1150972967482023936 https://twitter.com/falcons_fan1966/status/1150833643046211596 https://twitter.com/Autumn_Antal/status/1150870408570134529 https://twitter.com/MrPuddins/status/1151342148626866178   Once again Twitter only focused on the web design and UI, made no efforts for better or healthier conversations on Twitter, which is actually their motto. Creative Commons’ search engine, now out of beta, indexes over 300 million public domain images Mozilla launches Firefox Preview, an early version of a GeckoView-based Firefox for Android Vue maintainers proposed, listened, and revised the RFC for hooks in Vue API
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