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Netguru

netguru

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book .  Preface to the Electronic Release of The Hacker Crackdown here Preface to the Electronic Release of The Hacker Crackdown January 1, 1994—Austin, Texas Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book. Out in the traditional world of print, The Hacker Crackdown is ISBN 0-553-08058-X, and is formally catalogued by the Library of Congress as "1. Computer crimes—United States. 2. Telephone—United States—Corrupt practices. 3. Programming (Electronic computers)—United States—Corrupt practices." 'Corrupt practices,' I always get a kick out of that description. Librarians are very ingenious people. The paperback is ISBN 0-553-56370-X. If you go and buy a print version of The Hacker Crackdown, an action I encourage heartily, you may notice that in the front of the book, beneath the copyright notice—"Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling"—it has this little block of printed legal boilerplate from the publisher. It says, and I quote: "No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books." This is a pretty good disclaimer, as such disclaimers go. I collect intellectual-property disclaimers, and I've seen dozens of them, and this one is at least pretty straightforward. In this narrow and particular case, however, it isn't quite accurate. Bantam Books puts that disclaimer on every book they publish, but Bantam Books does not, in fact, own the electronic rights to this book. I do, because of certain extensive contract maneuverings my agent and I went through before this book was written. I want to give those electronic publishing rights away through certain not-for-profit channels, and I've convinced Bantam that this is a good idea. Since Bantam has seen fit to peacably agree to this scheme of mine, Bantam Books is not going to fuss about this. Provided you don't try to sell the book, they are not going to bother you for what you do with the electronic copy of this book. If you want to check this out personally, you can ask them; they're at 1540 Broadway NY NY 10036. However, if you were so foolish as to print this book and start retailing it for money in violation of my copyright and the commercial interests of Bantam Books, then Bantam, a part of the gigantic Bertelsmann multinational publishing combine, would roust some of their heavy-duty attorneys out of hibernation and crush you like a bug. This is only to be expected. I didn't write this book so that you could make money out of it. If anybody is gonna make money out of this book, it's gonna be me and my publisher. My publisher deserves to make money out of this book. Not only did the folks at Bantam Books commission me to write the book, and pay me a hefty sum to do so, but they bravely printed, in text, an electronic document the reproduction of which was once alleged to be a federal felony. Bantam Books and their numerous attorneys were very brave and forthright about this book. Furthermore, my former editor at Bantam Books, Betsy Mitchell, genuinely cared about this project, and worked hard on it, and had a lot of wise things to say about the manuscript. Betsy deserves genuine credit for this book, credit that editors too rarely get. The critics were very kind to The Hacker Crackdown, and commercially the book has done well. On the other hand, I didn't write this book in order to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of the mitts of impoverished sixteen-year-old cyberpunk high-school-students. Teenagers don't have any money—(no, not even enough for the six-dollar Hacker Crackdown paperback, with its attractive bright-red cover and useful index). That's a major reason why teenagers sometimes succumb to the temptation to do things they shouldn't, such as swiping my books out of libraries. Kids: this one is all yours, all right? Go give the print version back. *8-) Well-meaning, public-spirited civil libertarians don't have much money, either. And it seems almost criminal to snatch cash out of the hands of America's direly underpaid electronic law enforcement community. If you're a computer cop, a hacker, or an electronic civil liberties activist, you are the target audience for this book. I wrote this book because I wanted to help you, and help other people understand you and your unique, uhm, problems. I wrote this book to aid your activities, and to contribute to the public discussion of important political issues. In giving the text away in this fashion, I am directly contributing to the book's ultimate aim: to help civilize cyberspace. Information WANTS to be free. And the information inside this book longs for freedom with a peculiar intensity. I genuinely believe that the natural habitat of this book is inside an electronic network. That may not be the easiest direct method to generate revenue for the book's author, but that doesn't matter; this is where this book belongs by its nature. I've written other books—plenty of other books—and I'll write more and I am writing more, but this one is special. I am making The Hacker Crackdown available electronically as widely as I can conveniently manage, and if you like the book, and think it is useful, then I urge you to do the same with it. You can copy this electronic book. Copy the heck out of it, be my guest, and give those copies to anybody who wants them. The nascent world of cyberspace is full of sysadmins, teachers, trainers, cybrarians, netgurus, and various species of cybernetic activist. If you're one of those people, I know about you, and I know the hassle you go through to try to help people learn about the electronic frontier. I hope that possessing this book in electronic form will lessen your troubles. Granted, this treatment of our electronic social spectrum is not the ultimate in academic rigor. And politically, it has something to offend and trouble almost everyone. But hey, I'm told it's readable, and at least the price is right. You can upload the book onto bulletin board systems, or Internet nodes, or electronic discussion groups. Go right ahead and do that, I am giving you express permission right now. Enjoy yourself. You can put the book on disks and give the disks away, as long as you don't take any money for it. But this book is not public domain. You can't copyright it in your own name. I own the copyright. Attempts to pirate this book and make money from selling it may involve you in a serious litigative snarl. Believe me, for the pittance you might wring out of such an action, it's really not worth it. This book don't "belong" to you. In an odd but very genuine way, I feel it doesn't "belong" to me, either. It's a book about the people of cyberspace, and distributing it in this way is the best way I know to actually make this information available, freely and easily, to all the people of cyberspace—including people far outside the borders of the United States, who otherwise may never have a chance to see any edition of the book, and who may perhaps learn something useful from this strange story of distant, obscure, but portentous events in so-called "American cyberspace." This electronic book is now literary freeware. It now belongs to the emergent realm of alternative information economics. You have no right to make this electronic book part of the conventional flow of commerce. Let it be part of the flow of knowledge: there's a difference. I've divided the book into four sections, so that it is less ungainly for upload and download; if there's a section of particular relevance to you and your colleagues, feel free to reproduce that one and skip the rest. [Project Gutenberg has reassembled the file, with Sterling's permission.] Just make more when you need them, and give them to whoever might want them. Now have fun. Bruce Sterling—bruces@well.sf.ca.us About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Bruce Sterling (1994). The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/101/pg101-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book.

Websites can be of 2 types: . For static types, when user requests a file, server sends the file and user can see it. Every page is hand coded in html. In a dynamic type, When user requests, content is generated and server builds the page then sends it to the user. Generally managed by CMS like Wordpress or Joomla. static and dynamic Static site generator (SSG) bridges the gap between static HTML sites and CMS based sites (like Wordpress). It provides better performance of static sites and we do not have to write HTML for content of our site. Think of a static site generator as a script which takes in data, content and templates, processes them, and outputs a folder full of all the resultant pages and assets. -Phil Hawksworth In short, SSGs bring good of both worlds together. Why use SSG ? 1. Security Static websites do not have a database and all our server does is returns the file asked by user. Our server becomes dumb (doesn't use logic to construct page) so no security issue to exploit. 2. Performance Static websites perform better and load faster because the page isn’t constructed at run time. 3. Version Control Our website can live in a version controlled environment, meaning if you make a mistake you can go back to a previous version in one command. 4. Scaling When the number of users on a dynamic website increase it would mean to efficiently scale the website to ensure every user's page is served as quickly as possible while for static sites thats not a issue because our work is pre-done. Our website pages are already made and we just have to provide them. 5. Price Static websites are obviously cheaper because we dont have to buy expensive server space as in the case of dynamic websites. We can even host our website on services like github or netlify. 6. Caching Caching is easier with static sites as any URL will return same HTML content until and unless that file is updated by site owner. But with dynamic sites, content changes all the time so caching becomes difficult. 4 Features in SSGs : Avoiding repetition of code. Ex — Header and Footer templates can be created and included in every page. Templating : We can write our content in Markdown which is pretty basic and then we can focus just on the content. Markdown Support — Content on the website can be broken into logical pieces like Tags,Categories etc. Metadata — Most SSGs allow to build complete site in 1 command. Ex: Jekyll uses jekyll build which creates _site folder containing the whole website, while Hugo uses hugo command to build whole project in public folder. Building the Site 5 Popular SSGs to choose from According to : Staticgen — Free and open source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing fast websites and webapps Gatsby — Written in Ruby it is most popular framework, and helps to create websites Jekyll — Based on Go language. It boasts on being fastest framework for building sites. Hugo — Based on React it helps us make highly customized sites and supports server side rendering Next.js — Based on VueJS it also supports server side rendering. Nuxt.js JAMStack “A modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup” -Mathias Biilmann (CEO & Co-founder of Netlify) The above mentioned frameworks are based on JAMstack. Now what is ? JAMstack JAM stands for Javascript, API and Markup. Now this is not just static sites, they have server side capabilities too with the help of APIs and Javascript. Why are SSGs becoming popular? The concept of SSG isn't new, so why is it taking off now? Only possible reason is with advancement of browsers and their ability to deal with APIs and Javascript made it possible to go serverless. Things that required us to go dynamic in early 2000s can now be done using APIs. For example: Adding comments to site can be done using Disqus. Search can be done using Swifttype. The focus on performance has increased and we cannot simply wait for 5 seconds for a website to load. With the requirement of faster sites developers had to move to SSGs. → Referrences Phil Hawksworth article . Netguru — What are static site generators SmashingMagazine — Modern static generator is next big thing Previously published at https://www.arjitsharma.com/posts/staticsitegenerators/

An Introduction to Static Site Generators

Silicon Valley has always been a dream destination for developers and tech talent. The so called “The Bay Area,” is the world’s largest and most famous startup ecosystem. Associate Professor Peter McGraw, Director of the Executive MBA program at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), believes that “it is the epicenter of all these shifts happening in technology. It is home to more than 2,000 tech companies including Google, Facebook, Atlassian and Airbnb, and it really is the center of the startup world.” Nevertheless, along with many advantages, the Bay Area comes with some weaknesses as well – the most important being the very high cost of operating and/or living and the level of competition – new players are showing up and striving to become the most sustainable and desirable startup ecosystem in the world. After Brexit, Berlin and Frankfurt were considered to be taking over the title of “the European Silicon Valley,” but there is also something else very important going on in the Old Continent and it needs to be considered—the case of Eastern Europe. Eastern European tech hubs are on the rise, and early stage investment in the region has surged from $10 million to $283 million in just five years (2011 to 2016). This growth is expected to accelerate even further since new accelerators, co-working spaces, meetups, mentoring opportunities, and reliable VC companies are acting as catalysts. There are almost 30,000 startups now operating in Eastern Europe. While ten years ago, Central Eastern Europe (CEE) was not even part of the list of foreign investors, today, thanks to the fillip given by startups such as Skype, Prezi, Avast, Transferwise, and others in the region, CEE is drawing attention east, as a rival in the tech world. Some of the most important reasons this is happening are the knowledge, expertise, mindset, and the low cost Central Eastern Europe has to offer. Tallinn, Estonia Estonia is home to about 400 startups and has a population just slightly more than a million people. Estonia has the third highest number of startups per capita in Europe, according to the Startup Investment Report Estonia by Funderbeam, Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, has been named as the center of innovation in the CEE region. It is home to two of the most well-known success stories in CEE, Skype and Transferwise. Today, both companies have relocated their headquarters to Stockholm and London, respectively. However, for these startups Tallinn remains the main source of development talent for their product teams. Two more success stories born in Tallinn could also be the cases of GrabCAD and Pipedrive. The first one was actually founded in Tallinn (and not Massachusetts) before being acquired by Stratasys for $100 million. Still GrabCAD’s product is being developed mostly in Estonia. has already raised $31.2 million and decided to move its headquarters to New York while keeping a large part of its operations in Tallinn. Pipedrive The system in Estonia is designed to develop the next generation of digital workers. According to , Estonian children are taught to code at school and Tallinn University of Technology has partnered with some of the world’s leading universities such as the MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, and Stanford. Forbes Prague, Czech Republic Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic is also known as “The City of a Hundred Spires” or “The Golden City.”. These sobriquets are anything but random. Apart from the great infrastructure and amazing architecture of its buildings, the privileged location of the Czech Republic between Central and Eastern Europe make it the perfect place to access as well as “attack” both markets. With a young population that is technically very well-qualified compared with the other countries around, with a high level of English and its very affordable cost of living, Prague has turned out  to be a very competitive player when it comes to startups. Polish software company Netguru supports that the business-friendly environment and focus on high-tech have spurred the rapid growth of IT companies, which are the primary target for the venture capital industry. As a result, the Czech Republic is now the second largest private equity market in CEE. Avast, a Czech cybersecurity company, is one of the best-founded tech startups in Europe. It was funded in 1988 and appears to be the first unicorn of the country. While the London Stock Exchange in May 2018 valued it at £2.4 billion, in 2016 Avast acquired rival AVG for $ 1.3 billion.The city has helped build a variety of very well-known startups such as Kiwi.com, GoodData, JetBrains, and ZOOM International. This is mainly due to the high availability of technical talent as well as due to locally-based funds such as Prague’s Credo Ventures, Genesis Capital, and ARX Equity Partners. Budapest, Hungary Divided by the Danube river and lying between Buda and Pest, this city is split but not riven. According to the , a lively startup ecosystem has been sewing itself into the fabric of Budapest, boosted by cool cosmopolitanism and strong technical talent emerging from Hungary’s universities. Financial Times Many existing startups in Budapest came to life as a side project in some outsourcing development workshops. The hottest domains are cybersecurity, encryption technologies, big data, and SaaS. Budapest is ranked as the top Eastern European ecosystem for scaleups due to the city’s availability of capital. Based on , Budapest became the No.1. capital in the European Union in terms of per capital venture capital in the past 5 years. CEED Tech There are three sources of venture capital in town: the traditional VC firms managing private funds, JEREMIE funds, and government-owned venture funds, Széchenyi and Corvinus (MFB Invest) which have made investments to more than 150 companies to date. The tech infrastructure in Budapest is exceptional as well. Several Budapest startups have succeeded globally. Ustream, which provides video conferencing solutions, was acquired at the beginning of 2016 by IBM for $130 million and is the fastest online video conferencing provider worldwide today. Prezi, created in 2009 by Adam Somlai-Fischer, Peter Arvai and Peter Halacsy, was meant to replace ordinary slide presentations. It was built with the support from Kitchen Budapest and Magyar Telekom incubators. The hugely popular company now has raised over $70M from investors such as Accel Partners. Given its pace and ever eager startup community, it won’t be long before it becomes a leading startup destination in Europe! Take-home Notes The growth story and success of Central and Eastern Europe as a tech hub is mainly due to a combination of factors, including its geographic location, an abundance of affordable skilled labor, the attractive business environment, and the countries’ low corporate tax rates (which vary per country) — making both living and conducting business extremely affordable. In addition, in this area the availability of skilled technical talent scores high and foreign investors are turning their attention to cities which show high potential to become the new Silicon Valley of Europe. Simon Szczepankowski, CEO of Buddy, says that “in CEE we have brave founders who dream big; what is missing is the venture capital (VC) culture of the Silicon Valley.” While this is true and there are only a few entrepreneurs and investors willing to take risks and support brave founders, the region is making huge and fast steps into turning itself in a coding powerhouse. The proof lies in the successful startups born in the area even though at some point in their story, they decided to (or might) move HQs outside home, they keep their technical and product teams home. Furthermore, big organizations such as Google and IBM seem to be attracted to the immense talent available in Eastern Europe and invest more and more money on outsourcing activities in the area. To conclude, Eastern Europe seems to be home to great talent with technical background and most of them are willing to freelance with companies outside the region or relocate to other countries for work opportunities. Therefore, this talent could be a great opportunity for your organization/project as well.

The Rise of Eastern Europe as a Coding Powerhouse

Top Custom Software Development Companies

Best of the best! Experts in Flutter around the globe! 2019 is in its second month and the era of mobile application technology is continuously reaching new peaks. In the midst of the power struggle between companies to take hold of this division, has made its mark by releasing its own open-source SDK for app development. Google was announced in its alpha stage in May 2017 and towards the end of 2018, Google announced the first stable release of its brainchild at the annual Flutter conference in December. Flutter has proved to be a revolution in the Mobile application development scene with its intuitive design and cross-platform developmental features. Removing the need for JavaScript bridges for communication and it has become one of the fastest frameworks to be adopted by companies and organisations worldwide. Flutter Largely based on a close research in expertise, contributions and community involvement, here is a comprehensible list of the top 10 companies that are experts in Flutter worldwide: 1. GeekyAnts Founded in 2006, is a technology centered company based in Bangalore, India and London, UK. A close mix of services and products based organisation, GeekyAnts hold great expertise in React Native, React, Flutter, AngularJS, NodeJS PHP et cetera. GeekyAnts They are one of the earliest adopters of Flutter, experimenting with it since its early release and have also written a part of the official documentation for it. Their work has also been recognized by the core Flutter team at Google and they have been registered service suppliers for Google LLC since 2017. They also have a major presence in many Flutter community events hosted across the globe and have their own Flutter . Marketplace They have built products like (open-source venture with over 11,000 stars on GitHub) which is a UI components Library for React Native and (proprietary) which is a design tool that codes React Native for you. They have also built starter kits, themes and animations which are hosted on their own marketplaces and are available for purchase. NativeBase BuilderX With an equal focus on mobile development, web development and UI/UX design, they have worked with and for countless clients around the globe and provide a wide array of services. Their clients range from Tech Giants to startups and individual clients as well. Visit them at- https://geekyants.com/ 2. Yakka Founded in 2003, , formerly known as Posse, is an organisation based in New York, NY. They center their services around Flutter and React, creating mobile experiences for brands around the globe. They specialize in Android and iOS development. They have also been contributors to Flutter in the community. Their claim to fame is following a strategic, design-driven and deeply collaborative service provision to clients and ship Flutter as the fastest way to ship mobile apps. Yakka Visit them at- https://theyakka.com/ 3. Droids On Roids Started in 2011, has quickly gained momentum as a world-class service provider for mobile and web app development in Poland. With a plethora of awards and recognition, and a major focus on mobile development, they offer services like native iOS and android development, with their mobile SDK expertise being in Flutter. Droids On Roids With offices in Ruska, PL, London, UK and San Fransisco, USA, they have partnered with big names in Technology and provided state-of-the-art services. They are the work-force behind apps like loop, LiveChat and GiphyCam. Visit them at- https://www.thedroidsonroids.com/ 4. Appinventiv Headquartered in Manhattan, NY, Appinventiv focuses on delivering futuristic solutions in mobile, UI/UX design and software engineering. The mobile application development team at WillowTree specialize in React Native and Flutter for cross platform development and native iOS and Android platforms. They have created applications like et cetera. Domino’s, Vime Visit them at- https://appinventiv.com/ 5. BrainMobi is a consultation, design and development firm based in Noida, India. Founded in 2015, they focus their services on next generation mobile solutions, SME’s and consultations for mobile app development and web development. BrainMobi They have adopted Flutter and have a designated team of Flutter experts at their beck and call. Along with mobile app development, they are also involved in gaming app development in Unity, web solutions and progressive web solutions. They are also experts in cloud computing and AWS. They have offices in the USA, UK, Germany, India and Qatar. Visit them at- https://www.brainmobi.com/ 6. Intelivita A company originating in the UK in 2015, has since then strived to be the best company for mobile application development and web app development in the UK. has a large service record of Flutter development, AR and VR development and Game development for Mobile. Intelivita Intelivita With their offices in the UK and India, is continuously growing its reach with its global clientele while delivering high quality solutions and continuously inventing new things on the fly. Intelivita Visit them at- https://www.intelivita.co.uk/ 7. Singsys in an established name in the mobile app development scene in Singapore since 2009. A fast growing company that offers mobile application solutions in Android and iOS with WWDC trained iOS experts, Magneto certified developers and ISTQB certified QA teams. Singsys Located in Singapore and India, their primary focus in mobile development is on Xamarin, React Native, Windows and Flutter. They have served over 2000 clients worldwide and are also setting their footing in IoT. Visit them at- https://www.singsys.com/ 8. XongoLab is an organization based out of Ahmedabad, India that is involved in Mobile App and e-commerce, CMS solutions, Website development and JS development. They build hybrid apps, iOS, Android and Windows apps. XongoLab They have built some apps in Flutter which are renowned in app stores across platforms. This company was started in 2011 and still continue to grow its service platforms. Visit them at- https://www.xongolab.com/ 9. Netguru Founded in 2008 and with 9 years of industry experience, are making their name in the mobile app development and web development with over 80 satisfied clients and 200+ projects successfully completed. Situated in Poznan, Poland, is continuing to spread its wings and be a bonafide Flutter development company. Netguru Netguru Visit them at- https://www.netguru.com/ 10. Bacancy Tech. Starting from 2011, , based in Ahmedabad, India, has been a leader in handling technological projects involving Ruby on Rails. They have worked in a wide array of domains such as Healthcare, Real Estate, Logistics et cetera. Bacancy Tech. They have extensive knowledge of MVC and have helped many startups on their feet. Amongst their many services, they have recently started using Flutter for mobile application development and have built quite a portfolio for their name. Visit them at- https://www.bacancytechnology.com/ So, here are the crème de la crème of the companies adopting Flutter in 2019. Know that these are ranked such in my opinion and mine only. It’s always great to see new people adopting new technologies and making the community richer and more knowledgeable. Until next time… Godspeed!

Top 10 Flutter Companies in 2019

You may have started hearing more about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) recently. 2018 saw increasing support for the technologies behind PWAs from major players like Google, Microsoft and Apple. As adoption of PWAs become mainstream, it could also open up new growth opportunities for your business. What are PWAs? Progressive Web Apps are web apps that load like a normal web page but offer you the fast and amazing experience of a native desktop or mobile app. PWAs are not just web apps with a responsive design though. Compare the mobile version of Facebook and their official app. One would quickly find that the Facebook app offers a much richer user experience. You access the app through a button on your home screen, and animations and scrolling are also faster and smoother. PWAs are meant to bridge this gap. Like Native Apps but Better PWAs extend normal web apps and add plenty of user functionality to a web app: The web app can be accessed offline or even when network connectivity is poor Ability to engage with the user via push notifications Unlike a normal web page, PWAs are full screen and can also be installed on the home screen New information can be synced even if the app is closed However, the web-based nature of PWAs give an unmatchable advantage over native apps — discoverability. How much easier it is for someone to access your app by going to “www.xyz.com" versus having to search in and download from the app store? Why PWAs are Exciting for Growth On the surface, native apps already do what PWAs do, so what is different about PWAs that make them exciting growth opportunities? PWAs have a much lower cost and risk of adoption. With a native app, different versions would need to be developed for each platform. Like web apps, PWAs run on the browser and are developed with the same technology stack. Whether it’s on iOS or Android, the PWA is browser-based and uses the same code base for both platforms. Existing websites can also easily adopt PWA technologies. This would open up new possibilities for “traditional” websites to test out app experiences. Even a blog could easily add PWA functionality and experiment with new content delivery channels. New content could be synced in the background and read offline by users. E-commerce stores could offer their more loyal customers to stay engaged. A push notification can be sent when their order is shipped. Customers could communicate with the store within the app experience and be notified when the store replies. Adapt Faster With PWAs With a native app, releasing a new version means submitting and waiting for approval from the app store. It may be days or weeks before a new update reaches a user. The high costs of releasing an update to the app store means it is not feasible to release simple changes such as testing different copies. Updating a PWA would be the same process as deploying a normal web app. New features and changes can be released much faster, shortening the feedback loop. Shorter feedback loops are beneficial for growth because they allow for faster testing and learnings. Should you start adopting PWAs immediately? PWAs have a relative low cost of adoption. PWAs are implemented with Javascript and do not require creating a new app from scratch. A web engineering team can already start adding PWA functionality to an existing web app without having to adopt a new technology stack. PWAs are also not all-or-nothings when it comes to implementation. The different bits of PWAs can be added in incrementally. For example, an app could do an initial test with allowing it to be installed in the home screen. More advanced features such as offline capability can be added in later only if the initial test results prove worthy. However, one important thing to note is that while support for PWAs have increased considerably, it is not consistent across all mobile platforms yet. For example, while Apple has started to support PWAs officially as of iOS 11.3, not all PWA features are fully supported. In some cases, alternative implementations for the same functionality are required. Web Notifications are in iOS 12, instead, requiring an alternative form such as service. not yet supported Apple Push Notifications On Android, a native popup would show and prompt users to install your PWA as an app in the home screen. Unfortunately again, this is not present at the moment on iOS. There are also other quirks with iOS support such as not following the official standard of setting the app icons. Netguru lists a pretty good list of to make the experience better. iOS PWA quirks and tips Conclusion In summary, PWA support is growing although there is still plenty of room for improvement. There are however several possibilities to start testing PWAs with minimal risk. Websites or apps that would traditionally have been too costly to implement as a native app can now benefit from native app features at lower cost. What are your thoughts on progressive web apps? Do you see them as a huge opportunity for growth or do you think they will fizzle into the unknown? I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you’d like to discuss more, or talk about growth generally, I can be reached via . LinkedIn

Why Progressive Web Apps Are the Next Growth Opportunity

Everyone is very concerned about design trends. Dribbble is the hub of designers and the easiest place to reflect the design trend. If you always pay attention to the design works on Dribbble, you will always notice many interesting commonalities. If you pay attention to these commonalities at a longer timescale, you will find that many of them will extend to a larger design area and scope. Many of them will become a stage or even long-term design trends in popular form. Some of these popular trends are about techniques, some are about , and even some kind of metaphor. color and style Of course, no matter what, as designers, the value of these trends is beyond doubt. Pay attention to them and face them with an open mind. Maybe they will blossom and bear fruit in our own works in the next stage. graphic design 1. The Non-standard proportion of characters Custom illustrations with people as the core are one of the most significant design trends in the past two years. This form of illustration can quickly present the desired environment, process, and more importantly, create emotional appeal. The standard and realistic figure image appear mediocre but not enough prominent under a large number of design demands, This also makes the figure proportion of the distorted and non-standard character more outstanding. Above is Diana Stoyanova’s illustrations present a busy woman with a non-standard and abstract figure, but powerful. Diana Stoyanova’s emphasizes that you are bigger and more important than a mobile phone by exaggerating huge characters. illustration Radio’s illustration uses a distorted figure to create an interesting and lovely image, making interaction more interesting. 2.Supporting Information Provided by Interface Illustration Today, illustrations are no longer uncommon in UI. Custom illustrations have long been no decorative design. They make UI interfaces more visually appealing and expressive. This interface was created by the icons8 team. Auxiliary illustrations make error reporting information bright enough and positive enough so that users will not feel uncomfortable. This group of works is also from icons 8. This time, the style is different, and it is designed to guide new users on the mobile side. Attractive illustrations show the advantages of description more vividly. text Netguru’s error page looks very pure and cute The illustration designed by Hoang Nguyen is even interactive, inspired by a classic slider game that simulates the . effect 3.Dynamic LOGO and Image Animation effect is an important means to enhance vision. In the past, most of the visual and graphical elements were static, but now in order to more actively cater to user experience, the dynamic design has become a routine, many dynamic effects cannot be presented by static design, and the creation of emotions and atmosphere is more powerful. A dynamic effect can not only make the product more attractive visually but also show the quality of the product to users. In addition, you can find effects on websites, notifications, tutorials and interaction processes. That’s why there are so many dynamic graphical elements in Dribbble’s design. The dynamic LOGO Motion Design School designed above borrows the design method of negative space, while the main body adopts the image of a dog, which is very lovely and vivid in dynamic presentation. Awsmd’s design is even more interesting, giving the movement characteristics of jellyfish to flowers. Two different and gorgeous life form is identical in Motion form and has unique visual expression. Markus Magnusson dynamically connects a group of illustrations with a consistent style and coherent plot, which makes LOGO have a strong narrative ability. Yup Nguyen’s animation is not only fashionable but also very interesting and pleasant while forgetting the worry of waiting. Another 7 trends please waiting for next sharing!

Design Trends Reflected by Dribbble on 2018

Top Custom Software Development Companies 2018

On a late Sunday afternoon, a team gathered on this online platform called “Skype”, to reunite with an idea. Most came up with ideas from data visualisation and others, spontaneously. It branched off from topics such as eco walks , sleep patterns to topics such as an altitude map for those who were scared of heights. books However, it was wise Lewis, the 29 year old Laboratory Research Scientist or for your understanding (the frog), who had an idea that resonated in everyone. An idea that not only educated the public but an idea that gave freedom to the public, of what they wanted to be educated by. This idea was to “create your own map” and learn about the place you are in based on where you go and your interest. In other words, a travel diary. Our First StandUp Onwards: On Monday morning, we started to flesh out this idea of what this travel diary could be. Eva prompted the question: “How would you summarise the idea in one sentence.” At this point, we realised that we were drifting away from the “education” concept and wanted to something that possibly had a purpose of educating but not entirely. We wanted this travel journal to not only document one’s places, tracks and memories of those places around the world. We also thought it be a cool idea to make it social, to see where your friend or people base on your interest had travelled to as well. Hence, we concluded that we wanted to make “A social travel journal with a map interface.” We believed that the travel journal idea done by digital platforms were not as interactive or user friendly, and technically thought that it was going to be a challenge. Our next strategy listed our the “Needs” of the idea and “Nice to have’s.” This allowed us to segregate on what features were priority and to also to have potential to start thinking about our MVP. However, immediately once we had this one-line idea set in stone, this idea bounced different interpretations of how it could look, in mind and thus, we had to flesh it out to get a balanced view of how we all imagined it. We adults definitely know how to draw the map of the world. It would good to get our interpretations out there to get people in the team to see what we individually saw. It also gave a rough outline of what features we would go where and how it could work. This open other ideas for features. Given that we suddenly had a kick-off in five minutes, we quickly listed out what things we had to research or do today to sort everyone’s mind of the list of things that needed to be done. What was great about a to do list was that we had options of jumping to another topic if we got stuck, or if we wanted a change of scene. Setting the end goals for the end of the day ended up quite vital, given that the project was under a time-frame and that the goals wouldn’t linger on. Knowing what technology we were going to use and familiarise ourselves with it Investigate testing frameworks (such as Jest, Mongoose) Having this answered by the retro Coming back from our kick-off, it stepped up the process by a notch and we got down to documenting some user stories. Through the process, apart from concluding the user stories, we decided this app was going to be a web app given it would work nicely with the map interface. Categorising the user stories was a smart strategy to use as it forced us to think small. We started from the top left, coming up with our MVP ( Minimal Viable Product ) and thought carefully on what made our project unique. Given we wanted a map interface, most of our MVP did the following See a map on screen Drag a pin on the map Save the pin on the map Load the pin on the map Having these as small things to implement will allow to stay focus on the objectives, and not stray into struggling of building a bigger problem. Finally, we ended up setting a list of things that everyone set out to do in order to make sure of our number one goal of the team. “That everyone was on the same page” Goals were to familiarise ourselves with Map-box, with testing React and Figuring out the Back End So, with all this in mind along with the list of things to do, our first objective was “knowing what technology we were going to use and familiarise ourselves with it” My Morning Venture, MapBox: MapBox is a web mapping library that allows developers to acquire maps in web or mobile applications. Many great companies such as Airbnb, National Geographic and Pinterest have used it. It’s a library that allows one to do the following: Get the datasets for the map (streets, location, etc) Custom your own data via an Api and use it. Geocoding (This means to translate an address into coordinates, visa versa) Customise the styling for the map Create static maps through programming (if you want to) One could say you could just use Google Maps from the Google Api. However, as developers and craftsmen, we want to have as much full control and customisability of a map instead of having restrictions. Hence, Map-box was the better option for us to use, given it did this in many ways more than Google’s. To get the datasets or use the functions of MapBox, they use webApis. We can use it for either two reasons. First, to retrieve data and second, to use the Mapbox functionality. Given that Mapbox communicates via apis, we would have to suggest to the api on what data or function we want to use. In the api request, you have a base link (which is from mapbox, and ends with a json), a mode input (they’ve used mapbox.places, which I assume is a set of data), a query input (which they’ve used Chester, which is a place) and finally an access token key, which will allow the access of that data. To get the access token, you would have to sign up to Map-box to retrieve the access key. What’s interesting is that MapBox Api’s have different , which means it has different permissions on accessing the api. In other words, if we specify the scope, we are specify the accessibility. scopes Each Api has a version attached to it. Like how softwares have versions, Api has versions that can remain the same or can be incremented ‘independently from other APIS’. I’m assuming here it means if we were using multiple apis in our situation. An Api would only have to be incremented if we are deciding to remove propeties from a Json Object or change the Api Structure. To render a map on a page, Mapbox uses something called tilesets, and there are two tyles. Raster tilesets and Vector tilesets. Raster tilesets contain tiles of an image of map. This is what display the map on the page, or what we are looking at specifically. Vector tile-sets are similar to tilesets, except they produce the data. Whether it be street name, city name or location, they are bits of data that match up. Given they are small file sizes, you can load thousands of them without worrying about the speed and have all of the street names printed out! In addition, they are customisable style-wise! Sweet. You can obviously not only get tilesets, but data sets of what one would like to portray on the map. As Mapbox works with API’s, we can not only get the visual stuff but also print out the data Mapboxs uses. This could become in handy for geocdoing (coordinates) or getting data about the place to a extent of specificity such as street name. Mapbox have different identifications which represents a map with a certain style and what data they show. As mentioned that maps used something called tile-sets, they can be retrieved by Tile-json or through HTML. Sounds Great! How do I implement it in my code? Very, very excellent and good question. Let’s start off with a simple tutorial of putting a pin from the api, because the code is let’s just say quite heavy. However, before I show you the crazy image of code…concept-wise we are doing the following. Mapbox has default map styles, which we intend to grab from their website to put it on our website. Then, with the data we get from the GEO.json file we download, we then want to do a get request to that API dataset. Then, we would want to pin those locations on the map, and finally, we will do something funky at the end. It sounds so simple in three lines. Step 1, let’s go…line by line-ish. 01. Setting Up the Map Whoa, look at this crazy amount of cde. We have our html file, that’s great. We then have a viewport, which means that this sets the settings of the display of the content base on the window size. In this case, there is 1 value for the scaling because we don’t want the map to scale with the viewport (if not we would place on value to 0 or one value to 1). Im guessing this, given I’m used viewport CSS once. In addition, Mapbox already has a feature where we can zoom into the map, so we don’t need a viewport adjustment to the window if not things get a bit crazy. Then, we have the fonts api that gets a font, we then require both the mapbox-gl.js file (which is the file that will give us the map and data of the map). We then require the css styling of the map, to deliver us the map as how we all recgonise it. Lastly, we have our own css file because guess what, the styling of the markers and actual window needs to be somewhere that isn’t going to cluster our HTML page. Good so far? Then, in our map div which we will style, we call our access token to allow us access to get the data from the api. Lastly, the map is called with the following features. Container (where this data of the map should live. We made a div called map so that’s where this map from Mapbox will go) Style (Mapbox comes with stylesheets you can customise and default ones) Centre (The centre point of the map in base of coordinates, longitude and latitude) Zoom (How much you want to be able to zoom into a map. Similar to Google Maps, we can zoom in to the specifics as much as we want) Now, magically, this page of code so far will give us this: Omg cool slick map that can turn 3D omigash. That’s step 1. 02. Loading our Data Currently, the tutorial has asked us to hard-code the data of the api in, in which I have done so. However, I believe if we were dealing with a heavy API, we would require our Geodata.json file from somewhere or have a link containing all of our data in the api. Either way, you need to get your data from an Api into this HTML file. Whether it is through jquery, some form of Get request, it just needs access to the data you from the Api, so you could make a callback from your Api that you got with the access key. We’ve saved it to a variable so we could use this and affect it later. Cool. Nothing has changed visually because we have not asked our files to do anything with the data yet. 03. Making the Markers Oh finally, the fun stuff has come in. For this part, I have required an image to be the marker and styled the marker as that image in CSS file. However, let’s look at the code we have to the HTML file. Remember that we saved our api data in a variable, we’re going to use that variable now to iterate over the data to print the map base on the coordinates. So, here we are iterating over the for Geojson variable, to implement the same method to every location we have chosen. We are calling the div block to save it into a variable, given we want the marker on the map. We are going to make the class name “marker” given that is what we are doing, but this is simply a html class that we will style. From there, we are using the mapbox.gl, and placing this “marker” html class base on the coordinates, and adding to the map. The magical result is the following: Oh my god! We have points on the page! 04. The Fancy Stuff The fancy Stuff is how we are going to be implementing a pop up on the pointers that will allow us to see details of the pointer. This could be anything, but let’s say that this will just so the location on the page. Remember the last two lines we were talking about. We know that the first line mentioned how it was going to place the markers base on the images, and then the second line was to add to map. However, if we think about this logically, What stuff do we want to add to the map before we add them? In this case, for the fancy stuff, we want to add the pop up with the following details of title and description of location before we add it to the map right? In other words, we are adding all the elements of the marker and pop up before we say “okay add them and let them pop up now!” Hence, after this step, we would have come to this outcome of the map. Oh, look there’s a fancy pop up on the map now where our marker is! From the little experience I have of Map-box, it already proves itself to be quite straight forward on how it works and what it offers. Whether you are using their own software to place a marker or code the marker yourself on your own website, the documentation is quite effective (although there are multitudes of it everywhere) to obtain and give it a try. Plus, I believe that’s the only thing that they can do for their product. They can only advertise what it does and what it can do. The ways of how one will use it, customise it and extract it is an exploration set out for the developer. Home Study: After researching through back-ends, of which were the best to use for our project, majority of us were keen to use Node.js given it was a popular combination to use React.Js as the front and Node as the back. javascript My instant concern was that through reading articles, node would have limitations such as memory for large scalable apps and thus, being unstable with Apis. However, as we were only going to use less than two apis max in the project, this settled my nerves to give node a shot. Within that, we would use MongoDB to handle the database section of the project. We need database to not only store the User’s information but the API dataset we will get from MapBox. This is a program we will install via Node. Perhaps, it my mind, we would also want to use Express.js which is the Sinatra of Javascript. In other words, our file where all our roots would be determined but these are thoughts for the next day onwards. It sounds like we wanted to have a full on javascript front and back end for the project. This may not have necessarily been the case although we all knew we wanted to escape from Ruby due to the limitations it had compared to Javascript. If anyone is stuck in this dilemma, theses were some of the useful reading resources are in the links below to give me a better scope: _Node.js is one of the most commonly used technologies in the web space. According to the StackOverflow 2017 survey, 47…_nordicapis.com 13 Node.js Frameworks to Build Web APIs | Nordic APIs | _Choosing backend technology is one of the most important decisions that every CEO and CTO have to make. It determines…_www.netguru.co Why to Use Node.js: Pros and Cons of Choosing Node.js for Back-end Development _In 2009, a new technology made its humble beginnings in the vast universe of backend development. Node.js was the first…_snipcart.com Node.js as Backend: Best Use Cases, Tools & Limitations - Snipcart _For single-page applications there is a pretty clear-cut distinction between frontend and backend. The presentation and…_www.leanpanda.com Ruby, NodeJS and Go: advantages and disadvantages for backend development Although it was intimidating being the only team unsure of the technologies, what I appreciated was that we did our research on what technologies for the front and back were suited for the project. Whether it was based on popularity or understanding what the technologies were used for (pros and cons), it helped us get a better scope and list of considerations for the project. Although today felt not as productive, given we were reading a lot of documentation and not reaching for the keyboard, it’s a benefit for tomorrow’s venture. At least for me, it will help be aware of all the technologies we need and enable myself to map out the architecture of our program, and how all these technologies talk to each other. As I sit here, tired after a long day, about to end my day with a Youtube clip about Node, I await till tomorrow’s standup/retro to have these decisions be made and begin the exciting setup. Fun Fact of the Day: Dear Juniors and Mids at , Makers Academy When you watch the graduation, of if you are going to do or have watched one already, you might be in awe of how many new technologies groups tackle in their three month of coding experience. You might think to some extent they are crazy and greatly admire them for the stretch that they’ve done. I was once like you, thinking they were nuts but as my team and I are about to tackle three new things, it’s honestly normal. Makers trains you to have a growth mindset and be unafraid of exploration, even in the times that it count. It’s bold, it’s risky but looking at the graudations, everything works out. And sooner than you know it, you will be in the position that I am in, scared but excited but hopefully be less afraid than I was ~ Dania

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