Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
To incentivize potential answerers, sponsors now enjoy double their reputation power ... in other words, how many points you can influence someone else's reputation by.
The goal is that people will be more motivated to answer questions asked by sponsors, because when sponsors vote up their posts, they carry double the weight.
Are you a student studying programming from home? Are you an employee who is working from home for the time being? Or are you a self-employed freelancer?
Has your work shifted during this time?
If I need a quick background pattern to spruce something up, I often think of the CSS3 Patterns Gallery. Some of those are pretty intense but remember they are easily editable because they are just CSS. That means you could take these bold zags and chill them out.
My usual go-to through is Hero Patterns. They are also editable, but they already start from a pretty chill place, which is usually what I'm looking for from a pattern. They also happen to provide ones we've baked into the Assets Panel on CodePen for extra-easy access.
If you're into SVG-based patterns (and who isn't?) SVG Backgrounds has some extra clever ones. Looks like it's gotten a nice design refresh lately, too, where the editable options are intuitive and the code is easy to copy. If you are a DIY type, remember SVG literally has a <pattern> element you can harness.
I've seen some new fun pattern sites lately though! One is the exceptionally deep Tartanify which has over 5,000 Scottish tartan patterns. Paulina Hetman even wrote about it for us.
Beautiful Dingbats has a very nice pattern generator as well that seems pretty newish. It's got very fun controls to play with and easy output.
One that is really mind-blowing is Mazeletter. It's a collection of nine fonts that are made to be infinitely tiling, so you essentially have unlimited pattern possibilities you can make from characters.
Just to end with a classic here... you can't go wrong with a little noise.
The post A Few Background Patterns Sites appeared first on CSS-Tricks.
Marie, Klare, and Chris talk about the things CodePen has learned about working from home and offer some advice to those who are unexpectedly making the transition to working from home.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that brings eCommerce to your WordPress sites. It's unique in its customizability and flexibility. You can use it to sell physical products, digital downloads, memberships, services, and tickets, plus offer customers lots of different ways to pay, including things like Apple Pay and Bitcoin powered by Stripe.
The post 260: Remote appeared first on CodePen Blog.
As conversational language interfaces begin to dominate customer service, so does the backlash against chatbots grow. Forrester predicted last year that 2019 would be the year of the backlash against inefficient chatbots, and it looks like they were right. For example, a survey commissioned by an open software service company Acquia, that analyzed responses from more than 5,000 consumers and 500 marketers in North America, Europe and Australia, found that 45 percent of consumers find chatbots “annoying.”
At the same time, the importance of conversational AI for business today cannot be overestimated. When done right, conversational AI has the ability to significantly increase your competitive advantage and fundamentally change the nature of business-customer interaction.
I got myself confused about this the other day, went around searching for an answer and came up empty on finding something clear. The answer actually is quite clear and I feel a little silly for not knowing it.
With it in place, like this:
<video src="..." controls playsinline></video>Mobile browsers, will play the video right where it is instead of the default, which is to open it up fullscreen while it plays.
Here's what it looks like without playsinline:
Here's what it looks like with playsinline:
(If you're like me, you tried to play that video from the play button on the video in the video, only to realize it's not a real play button. 🤯)
(While we're getting meta, I'm making sure those videos above have playsinline on them right here in this blog post.)
Note that the user still has the ability to go fullscreen with the video even in the playsinline scenario, so I'd say it's probably a smart default choice. It's not literally the default — you have to add it, but you know what I mean.
One of the places this shows up regularly is in the attribute soup that is required to make video be a GIF-replacement:
<video autoplay loop muted playsinline src="..."></video>If you have all four of those attributes, the video will actually autoplay (and loop) on mobile browsers, just like a GIF would, only with far better performance. You can skip loop if you don't want that, but all the other three are required if you want the autoplay attribute to work.
I also learned that the (only?) way to get a thumbnail to show up on mobile (at least for iOS) is to use a poster attribute. Even if you preload, you don't see anything but blank white unless you have a poster.
Without a poster:
With a poster:
<video
src="movie.mov"
poster="thumbnail.jpg"
controls
></video>mo
If you can't be troubled to deal with a poster, you might wanna toss a border or something on video elements to sort of visually block off that area. Otherwise, the floating play button is a little awkward.
The post What Does `playsinline` Mean in Web Video? appeared first on CSS-Tricks.
Smartable AI, an artificial intelligence services provider, has announced free access to the company’s newly developed COVID-19 Stats & News API. The API provides data collected from credible sources that is segmented by country or state and updated hourly.
Dialogflow from Google (earlier known as API.ai) is a great platform for developing chatbots for multiple platforms. Earlier when Dialogflow was known as API.ai, they had an Android and iOS client library to integrate chatbot into mobile apps. But after merging into Google, the existing library is not getting updated; rather we are seeing Dialogflow added to Google’s Cloud platform and a new Java-based client API is being developed.
In this article, I will show you how you can integrate a chatbot developed in Dialogflow using the new Java client API.
In addition to a GUI, Python and REST APIs, it is now possible to access your Zato caches from command line. Learn from this article how to quickly check, set, and delete keys in this way. It's particularly useful for remote SSH connections to Zato environments.
This functionality will be released in Zato 3.2 (June 2020). Right now, if you would like to use it, Zato needs to be installed from the source.
The usability of the skill directly depends on how well the sample utterances and custom slot values represent real-world language use.
As Alexa best practices say:
Meta Box released its MB Views add-on plugin last week. The new extension allows developers to build custom templates from the comfort of their WordPress admin. The goal is to provide an easy-to-use interface for outputting custom fields without editing theme files, but its flexibility pushes the boundaries of full-site editing.
Quick take: MB Views offers a solid developer experience but falls a little short of being friendly for those unfamiliar with code.
I have long been a fan of what the Meta Box team has done with its core plugin and extensions. The project’s developers have created a well-documented code base, written solid documentation, and have generally paid attention to details where others have failed. MB Views is no different. In minutes after activating the extension, I had custom views set up and rolled out on the front end of my test site.
The interface is simple enough to pick up almost immediately with enough flexibility to build nearly anything from the WordPress admin.
On the whole, the team’s new add-on is well worth the price of one of the available premium bundles, which range between $79 and $349. It is not without a few minor issues, but that is to be expected with a version 1.0 release.
My experience working with the view-editing screen felt natural. The code editor uses Code Mirror and its Oceanic Next theme. It has auto-tabbing and auto-complete built in, so it feels like most offline editors. Developers should feel at home quickly building a custom view.
Because I mostly use Tailwind CSS these days, I was able to build a faux email signup form in a couple of minutes and display it directly beneath my posts using the available view settings.
The code editor has a “New Field” button that opens a slide-out box on the right side of the screen. It allows users to insert post, site, user, and query fields. The options also include custom fields created via the Meta Box plugin.
Besides editing the template, users can also add custom CSS and JavaScript directly from the view code editor.
The output of these fields are all handled through Twig, a modern PHP templating engine. Many PHP developers will already be familiar with Twig and will feel comfortable with its syntax. Through this system, plugin users are not limited to HTML. They can use conditionals and loops to customize the output of their view content.
For a better developer experience, it would be nice to see an auto-complete option for inserting new fields instead of clicking the “New Field” button and then clicking on a particular field. Most likely, developers will begin memorizing the fields over time and simply type them out. Auto-complete would be a nice touch for custom fields.
Where MB Views really shines is its view settings. The plugin allows views to take over the entire page between the theme header and footer or just the content area. It allows users to choose between displaying a view on singular posts, archive pages, or something custom using its built-in shortcode. Users can further break down where a view appears based on conditions that can be grouped in various ways. It can be as simple or complex as needed. It is not completely on par with what’s possible with custom PHP conditionals, but it is close enough to cover the majority of use cases.
If someone wanted to try their hand at it, they could use MB Views as an entire site editor. The only real requirement would be to build their theme with a header and footer. At some point, maybe the plugin will allow users to take over the entire page layout, effectively making a theme unnecessary.
Version 1.0 is about shipping something into the hands of users. It is a time when developers get some of their most useful feedback, so I expect the following to be addressed as the developers continue to build upon the plugin in the future. I did not hit any major roadblocks, but I did come across some minor issues and had some ideas for improvement.
The first issue I hit made me initially believe the plugin did not work at all. I had chosen to display my custom view on singular posts. This is easy to do via the view settings. You select the “Singular” type. Then, select “Post” in the first drop-down select. I had assumed this would make the template appear on all posts. However, nothing happened after saving. None of my custom content appeared on the front end. The problem was there was a second drop-down select, which had not been populated with a value by default. There was an “All Posts” option I needed to select. It was a quick issue to address, but this is why good defaults are so important in plugin development.
There is no revision support. For a code editor in the WordPress admin, it makes sense that users could revert their code to an earlier version. If users only ever create views with minor bits of code, this will be a non-issue. However, the plugin goes as far as allowing users to create an entire page layout between the theme’s header and footer. That will sometimes mean a lot of code and the need to backpedal changes.
MB Views offers an [mbv] shortcode for outputting a view within shortcode-ready areas, such as post content. However, there is no block equivalent for use in the block editor. At this point, having a shortcode but no block seems like a major oversight. Shortcodes need to die a slow and painful death.
The view management screen could use a little love too. It would be nice to see at least a column for the view type. As the list of custom views grows, it may get hard to figure out where each view is used at a glance.
You want to get values of Meta Box fields and put them on your front-end templates, but you’re not too familiar with coding and don’t want to touch theme files?
MB Views’ opening description claims the plugin is geared toward users who are not familiar with coding. I am unsure if the average user could take advantage of it without picking up some coding knowledge along the way. The interface is primarily geared toward developers. Quite literally, the view editor is a code editor. It does have an easy-to-click field inserter, but those fields will often be useless without some familiarity with HTML and CSS.
The tool is good at what it does, but it almost feels like a stop-gap measure in the era of the block editor.
For MB Views to be a more useful end-user tool, it will need to transition to more of a visual, point-and-click interface with design options. Otherwise, it will mostly stay in the land of developers who can customize view output to perfection.
I don’t necessarily think MB Views must go in that direction if the team wants to focus on a great developer experience. However, it does not currently live up to its claim of friendliness for those less familiar with code.
We are still likely at least a year out from a full-site editing experience via the block system. Efforts by the Meta Box team may be best spent integrating view editing within that system. The MB Views add-on is a useful and necessary tool for many Meta Box plugin users today, but it may not have time to gain traction before full-site editing lands in core. At that point, the plugin team will need to already be transitioning into a much different world of user experience with WordPress.
Artificial Intelligence-based Operations (AIOps) is the convergence of AI and traditional AM/IM operations. Like in all other domains, AI is going to have a significant impact on operations management. When the power of AI is applied to operations, it will redefine the way applications and the supporting application/infrastructure is managed.
Multiple applications are running simultaneously generates a lot of data. The data is generated right from the network layer to the latency of an API call to an end-user. The user expects experience of applications without the slightest performance disruption.
Customer experience is rising to become the top priority of many business companies nowadays. The expectations of these customers with the services provided by an organization are also growing with each passing moment. The need is to have a system that can guarantee improved customer satisfaction, which is where artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role.
With the help historical data, AI is being used to minimize the chances of errors while providing extremely accurate analysis and solutions. More and more organizations are using AI to improve their customer interactions and experiences, by searching for immediate solutions and actions regarding opportunities that can boost customer experience and simultaneously provide them leverage over their respective competitors. This helps achieve goals such as; lower customer churn, higher revenues, less staff turnover, and increased growth.
In light of the current world we live in, and an age of social distancing, what can DaniWeb do to do a better job of connecting its members? It was always my goal of Dazah / DaniWeb Connect that it be used to connect people who work from home or are solo-preneurs and miss the social aspects of being in an office environment. What can we do to be doing a better job of that?
Discord, a popular chat service, reported widespread outages early this week. Discord indicated that the outage was related to servers being "completely unavailable." By late in the day Monday, the Discord status page showed "All Systems Operational."
Indexes and foreign keys are great tools when confronted with large databases. They can be the answer to a good design and great performance. In this article, I will go through some tips that helped me understand how to use these tools efficiently and streamline my work with complex databases.
Every image example was done with DbSchema. I enjoy this tool because it is diagram oriented, integrates many features, and has a very good price.
Today, API security provider and creator of REST API DevSecOps tooling and an API Firewall, 42Crunch, announced the launch of their new REST API Static Security Testing extension for Microsoft Azure Pipelines. This extension enables companies to enforce secure API design right from their CI/CD pipeline. With REST API proliferation and REST APIs becoming one of the top attack vectors, ensuring that all APIs that a company develops and hosts are secure by design can be a problem.
Cloud computing is on the rise for a couple of reasons: it is flexible, relatively cheap compared to supporting in-house infrastructure, and it allows excellent automation of resource allocation, which cuts costs even more.
Cloud computing also allows horizontal scalability, which is crucial for many businesses in today’s digital age. When the amount of data to be processed grows year-to-year, one cannot rely on old-fashioned vertical scalability models. In this era of distributed computing, data should be spread across multiple cheaper systems, where data can be stored reliably, processed, and returned to the user when needed.