Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
IBM has announced several new IBM Watson technologies that the company hopes will advance the Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities within Watson APIs. These new features, which had previously been developed as part of the company’s Project Debater program, include advanced sentiment analysis, advanced topic clustering, and summarization tools.
Brent Jackson says CSS utility libraries failed somewhat:
Eventually, you'll need to add one-off styles that just aren't covered by the library you're using, and there isn't always a clear way to extend what you're working with. Without a clear way to handle things like this, developers tend to add inconsistent hacks and append-only styles.
I have a feeling Tailwind people would disagree. I have no particular opinion here, I'm just noting that Tailwind seems to have a more fervent fanbase than those early days of Basscss/Tachyons.
Brent goes on to say that CSS-in-JS solves the same problem, but in a better way:
CSS-in-JS libraries help solve a lot of the same issues Utility-based CSS methodologies were focused on (and more) in a much better way. They connect styles directly to elements without needing to name things or create abstractions in class selectors. They avoid append-only stylesheets with encapsulation and hashed classnames. These libraries work with existing build tools, allowing for code splitting, lazy loading, and dead code elimination with virtually zero effort, and they don't require additional tools like Sass or PostCSS. Many libraries also include CSS performance optimizations, such as critical CSS, enabled by default so that developers don't need additional tooling or even need to think about them.
No wonder people have been raving about this.
The one-step-back refers to the fact that CSS-in-JS is more open-ended and doesn't encourage consistency as much. I'm not sure about that. Seems like if you're building in a component-based way already, consistency kind of comes along for the ride, even before using design tokens and the like — which a CSS-in-JS approach also encourages.
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As the API economy evolves, so too does the art form of getting developers from zero to "Hello API.” So much so that ProgrammableWeb editor Wendell Santos is marshalling an entire series of articles that document all of the best practices employed by leading and innovative API providers (it starts off with a massive
You could say that I am a bit of a fanboy of the late 1990s and early 2000s web. I loved the funkiness of GeoCities. I enjoyed the random midi file that began playing when a new web page opened. I am nostalgic about an early web that felt like an explosion of weird creativity that was driven by the passion of the people who were using this newfangled toy and were not quite sure what to do with it. Visiting a web page was like diving into a shameless, bottomless pit of geekdom.
When I see a new block editor plugin pushed out by Nick Hamze, I perk up. It is sure to be something interesting.
Hamze is the mind behind Sorta Brilliant, a website that is dedicated to sharing unique blocks mostly for the fun of it. In a web development world that is seemingly pushing another business or eCommerce tool every day, it is easy to sit back with blinders on. Yawn. Hamze is asking, where has all the creativity gone? He is putting his ideas and cash behind the development of features that harken to those early, fun days of the web. His projects will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he is filling in a particular void that has been widening for years. And he’s doing it in style.
“I have at least 10 new block ideas a day,” said Hamze. “They just pop in there, and I have them made as fast as I can.”
Part of the problem is finding enough developers to help push out these projects at the pace that he can draw them up. Hamze is the creative force behind the projects, but he is not a programmer.
Discoverability of these plugins can be also an issue. They are not exactly the types of plugins that are in fashion at the moment and can fly under the radar. “I waffle back and forth between wanting to make stuff to make WordPress fun and get lots of installs,” he said. “Every time I ask someone how to get more installs, they tell me to make more boring stuff, but I don’t want to do that.” Hamze is speaking about the ecosystem’s drive toward more minimalist and business-oriented trends.
Hamze said many of his plugin ideas come from building his Zune fansite, Hello From Seattle. It is a passion project for a long-dead MP3 player, but it fuels his brand of creativity.
“I see zero passion, especially in the WordPress space,” Hamze said. “It seems like everyone is just going through the motions lately. I’m trying my best but I don’t see anyone else who wants to bring back the old days. Fun doesn’t seem like something WordPress is supposed to be used for. It makes me kind of sad. WordPress is supposed to be used for large corporations and business; it shouldn’t be used for silly things like I’m doing.“
He has at least one fan. Hello. I am just here to bring the rest of you along for the revival of the weird and wacky web experienced during the golden age of website creation.
One such throwback plugin is his Peculiar Pointers block. It is a container that allows users to upload an image to use as a custom cursor while moving the mouse over anything within the block. May the modern web development gods strike me down, but custom cursor images were really fun back in the day. I said it. No shame here.
For users who do not have a custom cursor image in mind, Hamze provides some inspiration via his new WeirdPress website, an early venture into his weirder WordPress ideas. “I love making things but also really want to get people to actually use them,” he said. “With Block Garden and Sorta Brilliant, I try to stay a bit between fun and business because of this. With WeirdPress, I just wanted to make things that were really dumb but made me happy. Plugins, that if I’m the only user, it’s OK. People don’t do things for fun anymore.”
Hamze wants more plugin developers to use their skills to be creative with block development. “I’ve asked all my ex-coworkers or people that I know in the WP world, if you have the ability to make blocks, why don’t you? I can’t code, so I end up paying a ton of money every month to developers. If I had the ability, I’d be coding fun plugins all day long. But, to most people, WordPress is a business, a job, not something they do for fun.”
Last week, Hamze released the Altered Reality plugin, which allows users to select from over two dozen filters to apply over images. Aside from simply having a cool name for a plugin, end-users can enjoy everything from the funky Acid Trip filter to something more professional like the cool, blue tones of the Brooklyn filter. Most of the filters come from the CSS Gram project, but there are a few extras thrown in for fun, such as the throwback VHS style.
Hamze laments about the shortage of unique designs in the WordPress theme design world. “It’s like an afterthought,” he said. “All the themes look basically the same. They are minimalist and boring and have no personality. One of the main things I want to do is introduce fun design to WordPress. I can’t do anything about boring themes, but I can make them a bit more fun.”
Because of the complexities of building out a fully-fledged WordPress theme, it is not cost-effective to fund such development at the moment. Hamze is sticking with smaller, one-off plugins that bring something unique to the block editor.
Last month, Hamze released Meme Me, a plugin that allows users to generate a meme-style image directly via the block editor. The plugin is simple. It creates a custom image block style. When chosen, the image caption becomes the meme text. The plugin also offers a few design settings, such as the location of the text. A useful feature for the future would be to make the entire meme downloadable for sharing on social media. That’s what half of Facebook and Instagram are these days, right?
It is not all fun and games. Hamze, through his Sorta Brilliant brand, has several block-related plugins that fit into the more sensible side of the web. Blockshots allows end-users to snap a screenshot of individual blocks from the editor. Lazy Lists is ideal for people who need to sort their list block alphabetically or numerically at the click of the button. Dapper Desktop is useful for turning large images into multiple, downloadable image sizes for visitors to use as wallpapers.
On the wackier side of things, Hamze released a plugin called Vital Information yesterday. It displays messages from a segment titled Vital Information for Your Everyday Life from the 1990s sketch-comedy All That across the top of the block editor. It is the modern-day Hello Dolly plugin with useful information like, “If you’re drinking apple juice, and it feels warm, odds are that ain’t apple juice.”
We are barreling toward the point where there is truly a plugin for everything.
Hamze said he does not plan far in advance when it comes to plugin ideas. “Most of my projects go like this,” he began. “I think of an idea in the morning and two days later it’s launched.” He is currently working on a plugin that will blockify the WordPress dashboard. He also has a budding project for fun button styles. Followers of the Sorta Brilliant GitHub account can keep track of his projects as they are born.
Recently, Hamze has felt discouraged by the seeming lack of interest from leaders within the core and inner WordPress community. He feels like there is not enough of a push to bring unique flavors to design in general to the WordPress ecosystem. “One thing that I really believe is that we need fresh blood in the WordPress world,” he said. “There are some amazing designers out there that could make WordPress fun if we just made them feel welcome.”
I, for one, am ready see a scrolling-text block plugin. Because the old <marquee> HTML tag is obsolete, we need a replacement to bring back some of the fun from those long-lost days of my early foray into the web.
We have all been looking forward to our SmashingConf in San Francisco, and are so sad to have to announce that the conference is being postponed until 10th–11th November 2020. If you have tickets for the event, you should already have received an email. If not, then please see the detailed information on this page, get in touch with us, and we will help you out. The team is on standby to try and help you as quickly as possible.
As you can imagine, it was a very tough decision for our team to make. We have been working hard to plan this event and were looking very much forward to it for the last few months, however, we believe it is the right decision for the conference and for everyone we hoped to meet there.
We are all faced with a difficult few weeks ahead, but we still need to do our jobs, keep learning, and also stay connected with our friends. We hope that even though we can’t all meet in person, we can help a little bit as we all get through this together.
We know that many of you are working from home for the first time to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, and the events and meetups that we all love to attend are being cancelled. We’re working on some ideas for the coming weeks that can be attended virtually — with no need for awkward elbow bumps and footshakes. Our online communities are going to become even more important than usual.
Lot's of us will be stuck at home for weeks if not months. Let's help each other. What are your best coping tips? How do you take care of your mental health?
— Christoph Nakazawa (@cpojer) March 12, 2020
The entire Smashing team are remote, and the conferences are one place that many of us get to meet and spend time in person, so we know how hard it can be to lose those opportunities. The community have been sharing some great resources online, however, for those of you who are new to working from home, we went ahead and asked Twitter for tips and got some great replies — as well as links to resources.
The Smashing Team are all remote, but many of our friends are having to work or lead teams remotely for the first time.
— Smashing Magazine (@smashingmag) March 12, 2020
What are your top tips, or useful websites and apps for remote working, or remote team leading?
Some of you might be having to manage a remote team for the first time, with little time to prepare. In “You’ve Found Yourself Leading A Remote Design Team,” Mark Boulton shares some tips from his own experience having led remote teams for many years. On Twitter, Linda Eliasen wrote a thread with all her tips on leading a team remotely. Also, Holloway have released a section from their upcoming guide which covers morale, mental health, and burnout in remote teams.
Laurie wrote some tips on “Remote Work For Teams” while Zsolt exlained how we can switch from in person to remote UX Research in the time of coronavirus.
For people new to remote work, there are some useful tips in “The Leapers Little Guide To… Working Well From Home Under Self-Quarantine For Coronavirus,” and also in Carie Fisher’s post, “Top 10 Pro-Tips For Working Remotely.” Benedikt Lehnert wrote a great guide with lots of practical suggestions, “I’m Working Remotely, Now What?!” Vice.com have some information which they claim will help us not to feel like a “lonely garbage slug”. (Wait, what is a garbage slug?)
As someone who usually has a smarter shirt to hand to throw on over my gym clothes when I need to do a video call, I liked this tip:
Wear pants! Otherwise you’ll forget and go grab a snack. I don’t know that from experience…
— Emma Bostian 🐞 (@EmmaBostian) March 12, 2020
We have a whole back catalog of video from previous conferences, which you can enjoy from the comfort of your sofa. The talks from last year alone should keep you occupied for a while.
Watch videos featuring Dan Mall, Brad Frost and Ian Frost, Marcy Sutton, Denys Mishunov, Trine Falbe, Maggie Wachs, Wes Bos, dina Amin, Harry Roberts, Sara Soueidan, Remy Sharp, Scott Jehl, and Miriam Suzanne.
Watch talks from Guillaume Kurkdjian, Joe Leech, Heather Burns, Uri Shaked and Benjamin Gruenbaum, Anna Migas, Val Head, Rémi Parmentier, Sara Soueidan, Robyn Larsen, Benjamin Hersh, and Philip Walton.
Listen to talks from Brad Frost, Sarah Drasner, Phil Hawksworth, Jenny Shen, Kristina Podnar, Steven Hoober, Phil Nash, Dan Rose, Diana Mounter, Scott Jehl, and Chris Gannon.
Watch and learn from Jen Simmons, Jason Pamental, Jeremy Wagner, Katie Sylor-Miller, Miriam Suzanne, Chris Coyier, Darin Senneff, Anna Migas, Sara Soueidan, and Brad Frost.
If you haven’t found our Smashing Podcast yet, we’re already up to episode 11. Check out the episodes and subscribe here. Of course, we will also be bringing you an article every day here on Smashing Magazine, and perhaps if you find yourself with some extra time, you might like to join our authors and write for us.
We are obviously dealing with a fast changing situation, and can only take each day or week as it comes. Take every chance to keep in touch with your friends and peers via phone, text and video chat. Check in on people who might be having a hard time. Your outgoing extrovert friend may be the person who finds the isolation of the next few weeks the hardest. Look after yourselves, each other, and please wash your hands!
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Spider is a storage engine for the MariaDB Platform that allows you to build distributed databases from a standard MariaDB setup. The technology is not complicated, although the implementation is. This blog will explain how the Spider storage engine works, what it does and will also show some of the use cases.
Before we look at the Spider storage engine, let's have a quick look at the storage engine concept. A storage engine is the implementation of code that manages the low level of data access in MariaDB. The storage engine handles things such as reading and writing data, row-level locking, if supported, multi-versioning and transaction management, among other things.
Docker runs its containers as root. But does your workload really needs root permissions? The answer is rarely. Still, your containers, by default, continue to run as a root-user. This could have serious security concerns. A process that runs inside the container as root is in fact a process running as root on the host itself. This provides an opportunity for a malicious attempt to gain unrestricted access to the host itself.
You can check it by yourself, just use the following command on any image that you commonly use:
When you think of data monetization, you're probably thinking of data generated from cars (the ultimate computer on wheels) or perhaps wearables, and then sold on through a marketplace. But, today's farm is a hotbed of data analytics, taking the lead from laboratories and factories. Data enables farmers to gain critical insights to assist with precision agriculture, including planning, water and fertilizing, yield optimization, etc. But, it also is a product that can be bought and sold and a former commodity trader has created hardware and a market place to sell this data. That company is Farmobile.
I spoke to CEO Jason Tatge to find out more. Jason shared:
Google has announced that on April 1, 2020, its Google Ads API will stop the creation of App engagement campaigns for any app in a prohibited category. As of now, developers can create App engagement campaigns for apps in any category. The only current limitation is that prohibited category apps cannot serve ads.
At TestProject we strive to use the most up-to-date best practices, and as part of an upgrade for some components and workflows in our infrastructure, we are partially shifting to Jenkins X. There is a lack of useful material available on Jenkins X serverless setup, so as part of our belief in sharing and giving back to the community we’ve decided to create a full-blown step by step tutorial on about it!
Jenkins X serverless and Kubernetes continuous integration solves the following problems:
When Go first appeared in November 2009, we didn't hear much about it, and our first interaction happened in 2012 when Go version 1 was officially released by Google. Our team decided to convince our customer to use it for its project, but it was a hard sell, and the customer rejected our recommendation (mostly due to lack of the knowledge in their support team ).
Lots of changes have happened since that time: popularization of Docker, microservice architecture, Go maturing more as a programming language (without any changes to its syntax). So, my brother and I decided to take another look at Go, and our journey began. We started reading official documentation, tutorials, blog posts and articles about Go, especially ones where authors shared their experiences of migration from Java to Go or comparison Java with Go, as at that moment, we'd been using Java for 15+ years.
The MuleSoft Database Connector provides the ability to easily connect to any database as long as you have the JDBC driver. Here’s a quick post/walk-through on how to configure the connector to connect to Heroku Postgres. This post assumes you have a Heroku account with Postgres already added and configured. You also have Anypoint Studio 7.x installed. To start, let’s build a simple Mule flow with the following components:
You may also like: Mule 4: Database Connector Bulk Insert
The flow will listen for an HTTP request, make a call to Heroku Postgres, and return the data in JSON format. We’ll keep the listener simple and use the defaults, localhost and port 8081. For the path, we’ll use /post so the config looks like the following:
Dropbox is one of the few SaaS companies that managed to achieve that sort of SaaS growth in such a short time.
It has a well-known story in the SaaS world – being in the spotlight as one of the fastest-growing cloud services in the world. Founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowski in 2007, Dropbox has continued its fast and wild growth ever since.
During the 19th Hands-on Agile meetup, 30-plus people addressed the path to becoming a successful Scrum Master or Agile coach, following up on the “Scrum Master Career 2020 — Using Ecocycle Planning to Identify Opportunities” meetup we had in December 2019.
We used two Liberating Structures microstructures — Appreciative Interviews and Superpower Cakewalk — to delve into what lets us grow as professionals as well as individuals.
There are two key concepts that you must understand when you start with Spring or JakartaEE/CDI–inversion of control and dependency injection.
In brief, inversion of control means letting a framework take control of the execution flow of your program to do things like create instances of your classes and inject the required dependencies.
In Part 1, we covered a reactive web and a simple blocking and non-blocking call. In this part, we will be covering, in-depth, the thread execution and business flow.
The diagram looks complex, but what we are doing is starting a new thread from the request thread and then calling the reactive function. Again, creating the new thread from the previous thread to do some console printing. What we want to test or achieve here is that both reactive sum() function and console printing happens in parallel. Execution of sum() is not blocking the start and print of the new thread.
As engineering teams grow, obvious difficulties arise. It’s simple math. You can’t keep up with everyone and everything in the same way as you did when the team was small. To maintain the high level of impact you’ve always had, your ways of working need to change.
The good news is, there are a few principles and laws that have emerged from social science and project management — like Conway’s Law, Dunbar’s Number, and Brooks’ Law — that can help inform your growth. The truths revealed by these principles about team dynamics and system design point the way to better outcomes and more team satisfaction.