DAU (noun) Daily active users. Hip-hop (noun) If you got to ask, you ain’t got it. In this article, Benjamin Hersh will talk about the unique challenges of designing a hip-hop app as he led design for one of the few successful apps in that space. Benjamin will share insights from his research and design process, and the lessons he and his team learned about the DAU of hip hop. This is not strictly an article about technical innovations. Benjamin’s focus is how an awareness of complex cultural issues can be critical for good app design.
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In this article, Adam Simpson will cover Grunt, Gulp, Webpack and npm scripts, providing some examples of each one to get you started into task runners. Task runners can solve real problems. Adam has used them to compile different builds of a JavaScript application, depending on whether the target was production or local development, or to compile Handlebars templates. Task runners are constantly evolving and changing, and in this article Adam will try to cover the most used ones in the current zeitgeist. Happy task running!
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Studies reveal that 90% of all downloaded apps are used only once and then eventually deleted by users. Sometimes, when people finally download an app, they feel abandoned. You must clearly show users why they need your app. In this article, Anton Kosolapov will show you that for users to give your app a second chance, they need to understand a few things. The best way to communicate the purpose of your app is through an engaging onboarding experience.
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How do we make sure the website layout stays responsive and displays correctly on all kinds of devices with various resolutions? In this article, Ivan Shubin will guide you through an interesting new layout testing technique. Using Galen Framework, he will provide a detailed tutorial for writing meaningful generalized layout tests, which can be executed in any browser and on any device and at the same time used as a single source of truth in your design documentation. You will learn how to extend Galen’s syntax with your own language, how to improve the test code and how to turn a layout testing routine into art.
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Passwords are written off as inconvenient and unavoidable, but due to a combination of sensors, encryption and seasoned technology users, authentication is taking on new (and exciting) forms. In this article, Drew Thomas will show you that it’s OK to rethink common password habits, and it’s acceptable to use common sense and due diligence to create usable, secure and error-free authentication – passwords or otherwise. Most other interaction patterns have been updated over time, but no one wants to mess with password authentication. It’s time to change that!
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Melody Jams may not have made the creators millionaires, but it’s with no doubt an incredibly successful project. Since Melody Jams’ launch Jamie Kosoy and his team overcame massive technical, mental and physical challenges to produce something that is of really high quality. A certain kind of ruthlessness was required with the number of features they wanted to create. They had to go well out of their way to prove their trust to one another. And they had to constantly be making stuff to show each other, rather than just talking about what they were going to make.
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Fluid typography resizes smoothly to match any device width. It is an intuitive option for a web in which you have a practically infinite number of screen sizes to support. Yet, for some reason, it is still used far less than responsive techniques In this article, Michael Riethmuller will teach you how to apply the techniques you know in a slightly different way. Careful attention to detail will ensure you still have a perfectly crafted experience at all screen sizes.
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If you’ve ever written an iOS app beyond a trivial “Hello world” app with just one screen and a few views, then you might have noticed that a lot of code seems to “naturally” go into view controllers.
Because view controllers in iOS carry many responsibilities and are closely related to the app screens, a lot of code ends up being written in them because it’s just easier and faster that way.
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Imagine how great it would be to write your tests only once and run them on different platforms. Writing tests to guarantee bug-free software is not straightforward. However, the underlying technology to build a testing infrastructure should not be an impediment. Appium is a solution that protects you from the heterogeneity of mobile platforms and helps you focus on writing functional tests that can be run independent of platform. In this article, Antonio J. Roa-Valverde will show you how to build your own test automation environment for Android by relying on Appium. Hopefully, this guide will lower the barrier for you to build your own mobile test automation solution.
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In recent years, new prototyping tools have emerged, many for mobile design. The landscape is constantly changing, with some tools losing favor with UX designers (or UXers) and others taking their place. While this article will not serve as a complete paint-by-numbers manual for selecting a prototyping tool, Svetlin Denkov will discuss important factors that influence the selection process. Near the end of the article, the “Resources” section will point you in the direction of more specific comparisons to give you additional context for decision-making.
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