Figma is a popular design tool that allows designers to create and collaborate on user interface designs. React Native is a framework that allows developers to build mobile applications for iOS and Android using JavaScript and React. In this blog post, we will explore how to turn Figma designs into code with React Native.

First, we need to export the design from Figma as a JSON file. In Figma, open the design you want to export and go to the File menu. Select the "Export" option and choose "JSON" as the file format.

There are tools available that can make this process much easier. One such tool is react-figma, which allows designers to turn Figma designs into code with React Native.

What is React-Figma?

React-figma is an open-source library that allows developers to easily convert Figma designs into React Native code. It uses the Figma API to fetch design components, such as buttons, text, and images and generates the corresponding React Native code. This means that developers can quickly and easily convert Figma designs into working React Native code, without having to manually recreate each component.

Steps to turn figma code into React Native

To install the library, run the following command in your project's root directory:

Once the library is installed, we can import it into our code and use it to access the design elements. For example, the following code imports the JSON file and prints the name of the first element in the design:

With the design elements accessible in our code, we can start using them to build our React Native application. For example, we can use the dimensions and colours of the elements to create the layout and style of our application.

To create the layout, we can use the View component from React Native and set its style prop to the dimensions and position of the design elements. For example, the following code creates a View with the same dimensions and position as the first element in the design:

To style the View, we can use the StyleSheet module from React Native and set the backgroundColor prop to the colour of the element. For example, the following code sets the background colour of the View to the colour of the first element in the design:

This is just a basic example of how to use the Figma design in React Native. You can use the same techniques to create more complex layouts and styles by accessing other design elements and properties.

It's important to note that this method is not a one-to-one conversion and some design elements may need to be adjusted or recreated in code. It's also important to consider the device's screen size and adjust the layout accordingly.

Conclusion

Overall, using Figma designs in React Native allows designers and developers to collaborate more efficiently and create high-quality mobile applications with consistent design. Our react native developers at Fibonalabs are well-versed in the concepts of Figma and React Native. They keep themselves up to date with the latest versions and develop highly efficient mobile and web applications, websites and so much more.

There is a lot that can be said and written when it comes to cyber security. But in the past few years, this game has completely changed with the increased remote setup and the uncertainty till which it will continue. Cyber Security in business has taken a different path altogether. How good it will be to learn about the measures that can be taken to ensure Cyber Security in a serverless environment.

Serverless Environment: Brief Introduction

A serverless environment/architecture is a manner in which applications are run without any physical server or without a specific infrastructure. It is a virtual setup where the server along with the applications is managed via cloud computing. It has innumerable benefits.

1. It saves the cost of setting up a proper physical server and its maintenance.
2. The overall cost is reduced.
3. It fastens the process of deployment and updates.
4. The serverless environment is wide and expandable to a great extent.

Apart from this, you can have other benefits such as:

1. You can work anywhere around the world irrespective of your office’s location.
2. It gives you the flexibility of making any place your home (of course abiding by your organization’s rules).
3. It saves a lot of time in terms of commuting.

Serverless Environment: Cyber Security Threats

In a serverless environment, vulnerabilities of attack increase to a great extent which is an indication of taking quick and advanced actions to ensure cyber security in a business. Let’s have a look at some of the cyber security threats in a serverless environment.

• Injection Flaws: The most common cause of cyber security threats is function event-data injection. Unlike web environments, in serverless environments, it is difficult to figure out secure and non-trusted paths. In such cases, the interpreter takes untrusted information and executes it. This makes the whole environment quite vulnerable to attacks. The most common examples of injection flaws in a serverless environment are:

1. Function run time code injection (happens in node.js/javascript, python, C##, Java, etc.)
2. SQL injection
3. OS command injections and so on.

• Authentication Gets Broken: In a serverless environment, exist a number of functions as it is a microservices-type environment. Now each of these functions is not completely secure as they can promote exposure of public web APIs. Some of them can act as proxy functions for various processes thus exposing the entry points of the environment and posing a great threat to cyber security.
• Incorrect Configuration Settings: As we all know that the concept of a serverless environment is not very old, hence, it is still a learning curve for computer architects and engineers to set a properly configured environment. This may lead to misconfiguration or incorrect configuration of the environment, which in turn increases the risk of loopholes that can compromise cyber security.
• Granting High-Level Permissions: Giving high-level permissions for accessing confidential data via a serverless environment is another way of inviting threats. This could result in the mishandling of information by performing unintended operations such as “executing system function”.

• Improper Monitoring of Logs: Though most organizations make it a point to constantly monitor the logs/activities of users, especially in a serverless environment, it is quite possible that they lag behind in it. As monitoring of logs is done in real-time, missing out on any suspicious activity can result in a mismatched audit trail, thus increasing the risk of cyber-attacks.
• Untrusted Third-Party Dependencies: With the latest open-source frameworks, app development has become easier, but it has also made the serverless environment vulnerable. It takes just a small code to inject a virus while a developer is calling a third-party service through API calls.

Now that we have discussed some of the possible security threats to a serverless environment, let’s have a look at the measures to strengthen it.

How to Make a Serverless Environment More Reliable?

Several measures have been taken by organizations to ensure maximum cyber security in a business. Some of the most remarkable ones are listed below:

• Permission at Every Step: As mentioned above, granting high-level permission makes the environment more vulnerable to threats. Hence, introducing permissions at every function helps in the micromanagement of cyber security. The more restrictions are imposed on the usage of functions, the less chance of attack there is.
• Checking Every Bit of Data Carefully: No matter how reliable the source of data is, we should keep checks at every point by properly evaluating every program and every line of code. It goes without saying that even the finest developers can miss damages like file intrusion attacks, so evaluation at even the smallest step is compulsory.
• Collection of Real-time Security Events: It is highly recommended by experts to have proper data monitoring of real-time security events. This helps in detecting threats and stopping them at a very initial stage. Taking advantage of AWS services like AWS X-Ray, Amazon CloudTrail, and Amazon CloudWatch is a great option to avail of third-party security services.

• Frequent Risk Assessment: A serverless environment can expose confidential data through various functions. Therefore, it is important to conduct risk assessment exercises on a regular basis. Further, data encryption tightens the boundaries for any sort of cyber-attack.
• Introduce Secure Authentication: Make full use of enormously beneficial tools like Microsoft’s Azure AD. These tools help in creating a complex security system for a serverless environment. You can also enforce steps that can nullify the effect of a potential threat.
• Privatization of API Gateways: You can set a limit for the number of clients to access your API gateways. The smaller the number of clients the less vulnerable API gateways will become. Hence, make these gateways are private and completely deprived of any sort of cyber-attack.

Apart from these measures, there are general safeguarding techniques, like training of staff, endpoint protection, continuous data backup, usage of secured Wi-Fi connection, etc. that encourage cyber security in a business.

Future of serverless environment

With the businesses reaching the pinnacle of success with serverless environment setup, things have taken a different route altogether. While earlier serverless environment was restricted to a few jobs, now it has become more and more popular for things like batch and transaction processing. So, workloads like scheduling an event and tracking of any failure protocols can be done with utmost ease with serverless environment.

With more organizations adopting to serverless environment, there are various benefits of it.

Cost Saving: A serverless environment comes down to zero when there is no request being processed. This helps in saving the overall cost by reduced use of services.

Boon for DevOps: Setting up a physical environment is much of a tedious task for developers, but with serverless environment the complete operation can be done easily.

Easy use of Service: With serverless environment starting any service is easier with just a single line of code. So, another benefit for the developers.

Similarly, there are other benefits of serverless environment like high scalability, reduced latency, and so on. And with all this in consideration, cyber security has a vast role to play. In case you want to explore more about handling security in a serverless environment, visit www.fibonalabs.com and read our latest blog.

If we merely go by the definition then “User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person’s perception of the utility, ease of use, and efficiency.” Though it's pretty clear from this definition that UX is all about perceiving a product. But if we get zeroed to what impact it has on a product’s popularity, growth, business aspects, and overall progress, UX plays a massive role that we often fail to give it credit for.

Now, if you ask a tech-savvy person about what keeps them glued to a website and what disappoints them about it, the answer would be a different person to person. But if you shortlist the likes, then I'm sure you will get answers like easy navigation, nice look and feel, proper information hierarchy, and could be more. Similarly, for dislikes, you might get answers like confusing UI, slow page loading speed, haphazard navigation, and more and more.

Again, if you ask the same questions, say, to an environmentalist or a physician, or a politician, do you think they would have the same answers as above? I think not. Because their main concern would be, “do we have enough online work-related platforms to comment on this?” This is where we can witness the lack of UX solutions in non-technical areas and oh boy, what a huge difference it could bring to these sectors if adopted as a full-fledged work setup.

With this, let's throw some light upon UX for non-tech related industries. But before that let's understand the prerequisites for having UX.

Questions that need to be answered

Before introducing UX design in any non-tech industry, we need to have a proper answer to the following questions.

1. Is the industry aware of the UX Design concept?
2. How familiar is the industry with UX Design?
3. What method does this industry follow for software development?
4. What are the steps involved in their UX Design process?
5. Factors that influence their decisions for UX Design?

Once we find answers to these questions, our next step is to explain to them the benefits of an impactful UX Design. How a well thought UX Design can improve a company’s progress in the long term.

Pros of having UX Design in any industry

• Great consumer satisfaction: Having a UX design for your product is a result of user research, prototyping, information architecture, testing, and wireframing, to name some. And this part is done by a professional UX designer. But if a designer creates something from their perspective rather than considering what a consumer needs, and how relevant a design is for them, then it would be just a design that doesn’t resonate with the actual user. Hence, it is important to know what the end user is looking for in your design and therefore achieve great customer satisfaction.
• Saves development cost: There is often a misconception that UX design increases both the cost and time of development for any software. But in reality, it's just the opposite. A good UX design lessens the overall development cost and time by making things straightforward in terms of how a customer would be perceiving a product. Hence, implementing UX design at the time of development is the best approach.
• Exponential customer retention: If we have to explain this with a very basic example, many households have one defined grocery store, general physician, hair salon, car mechanic etc., that they go to. The reason is, they are satisfied with the products and services provided by these individual stores. Hence, they choose them over any other store that sells similar products. It is the same scenario with websites and mobile applications. A UX design that is attractive, less complex, information well-organized, icons with proper labels etc., promotes an increase in customer retention.
• More intuitive design: Let's ask a question here. Do you read a complete user manual that comes with the products you use on the daily basis or even online? Certainly not. We have this tendency to play around with a tool or a product to explore how it works, what features it has, how helpful it will be for us, and what can be done with it. So, any more intuitive UX design that has proper instructions given at different stages and levels, would save a lot of time from having calls/messages with customer care.

These are some of the benefits that UX design can provide in the upliftment of a product, services, and even a system.

Non-Tech Industries that need UX

Now that we have understood what is UX design, why we need it and what perks it brings along, let us focus on some non-tech industries that can witness a huge difference with the presence of UX design.

• Environment Industry: Discussions about global warming, natural disasters and other tragedies that environmental imbalance comes with are not new. We have been discussing climate change and how adversely it is affecting mother earth for quite some time now. Yet when it comes to surveying how mindful and aware people are about this crisis, the results are very poor. Despite the scarcity of natural resources that we are facing due to lack of water in some areas, extreme rises in temperatures in summers and vice-versa in winters, people are still ignorant.

By having UX design done around awareness about environmental issues, and our contribution to saving them, designers can impact a large audience, as the design is the first thing that we generally notice in any application. Choosing colours that symbolize environmental safety, and adding elements in the design that indicate the importance of nature can create more awareness in people. If designers take small steps like having a hint of environment-friendly design even for tech industries, it could result in a remarkable change in people’s attitude towards environmental issues.

• Healthcare Industry: At Fibonalabs, we have worked with clients from the healthcare industry. And so, we could see that UX design is getting into this field rapidly. But if we want to pinpoint a few areas which need more attention in healthcare, it would be dealing with patients that have disabilities and those who are below the poverty line. UX design that focuses on simple things like scheduling an appointment with a doctor, online video consultation, placing pharmacy orders online, and special attention to minority patients and handicapped patients, surely, we would be witnessing a more streamlined workflow in the healthcare industry.
• Research Programs: Often it is observed that educational institutes have little or no proper UX design on their websites. Universities that offer research programs are often unaware of the importance of UX design and how negative impact it leaves when it comes to browsing a university website. Hence it is one of those non-tech industries that need proper UX designing to create interest in the youth, students who are looking forward to getting enrolled in their research program. It will certainly attract a greater number of researchers, because let's be realistic, with such easy access to social media, e-commerce websites and other online platforms these days, people are becoming aware of what is user experience design and its importance.

Apart from these, we need UX for non-tech related industries like political campaigns, sports, fitness, law firms, etc., that can make the most out of UX design.

Conclusion

It is always better to work smart than work hard. So, even if you have put a word about your business, start-up, or entrepreneurship to your friends, friends of friends, or former colleagues, nothing can match your presence on the internet. And with cutthroat competition around your presence should be impactful. With a good, well-thought, well-discussed UX design, you can achieve it, whether you belong to a tech or non-tech industry.

As quoted well by Tim Ferriss, “Focus on being productive instead of busy”. We at Fibonalabs completely believe in this. Our end goal is to be productive and not just be busy filling our timesheets. Our team of experienced and excellent designers, ensures to stay well equipped with the latest skills and come up with ideas that have not only benefitted so many of our clients but have changed the UX design game for our company as well. So, what are you waiting for? Visit us at www.fibonalabs.com and avail the best of our services.

These days, it seems like every other person knows how to create a website. As you read this article, literally dozens of new websites are being added to the already overloaded Web. Getting recognized among the crowd is getting more and more difficult.

But let’s admit this, not every webpage that gets added to the web has been built with the capacity to get attention from the right audience.

So, here’s a quick read on how we can make use of some elements of website design along with the best practices to create effective website visual designs.

Elements of Website Design

• Layout Design: Layout refers to the way elements are arranged on a webpage. This includes the placement of text, images, and other content, as well as the use of white space and grid systems.

Image Credit: Visme

The 4 major things to keep in mind while designing the layout are the structure of the page, the visual hierarchy, the proximity or spacing between the elements on the page and the patterns used in the UI.

• Typography: Typography is the use of typefaces, font sizes, and styles to create hierarchy and readability. It is an essential aspect of website design, as it helps users easily navigate the content and find the information they need.

Image Credit: Elementor

The 4 major things to keep in mind while choosing fonts for your website are readability, and usability, it should reinforce visual identity and should maintain visual harmony.

• Colour Theory: Colour theory is the use of colour to create a cohesive design and evoke emotions. It involves selecting a colour palette that complements the overall design and enhances the user experience.

Image Credit: Justinmind

When choosing colours, it's important to keep in mind that consumers' perceptions of them might be strongly influenced psychologically. Colours are used by designers all over the world to evoke specific feelings in viewers as well as to capture a brand's identity. The right emotion to elicit will generally depend on what the product's ultimate goal is.

Finally, it's important for website designers to remember that not all users will be able to view the colours exactly as they are. The need for accessible design is growing, and testing for accessibility plays a significant part in the general testing and validation of the design.

• Imagery/Graphical Elements: Imagery includes photographs, illustrations, and graphics that are used to enhance the design and communicate a message. It is important to use high-quality images that are relevant to the content and add value to the user experience.

The graphics make up the majority of the product's visuals and are an essential component of web design. The practice of modifying the user experience using the available images, and graphic design touches on subjects like typography and layout design.

Image Credit: UX Planet

• Content: Content is a critical element of website visual design, as it provides the information and context that users are looking for. The design of a website should be focused on making the content easy to find, read, and understand.

The website's content should be well-written, original, and relevant to the users and the website's purpose.

The 4 major things to keep in mind when adding content to a website are structuring the data/information, design, display of content and UI patterns.

Image Credit: Freepik

Apart from considering the details of all the elements of website design, if you follow the below practices, you can create the best designs that are both visually appealing as well as serve the purpose.

1. Keep it simple: Avoid clutter and use negative space to create a clean, uncluttered design.
2. Use consistent branding: Use the same colours, fonts, and imagery throughout the website to create a consistent brand identity.
3. Make it easy to navigate: Use a clear and intuitive navigation structure to help users find the information they need.
4. Use responsive design: Design the website to adapt to different screen sizes and resolutions, to ensure it looks good on all devices.
5. Use high-quality images and videos: Use high-resolution images and videos to create a visually engaging experience for users.
6. Use typography effectively: Use typography to create hierarchy and emphasis, and make sure it is easy to read on all devices.
7. Provide visual cues: Use visual cues such as arrows and buttons to guide users through the website and help them understand how to interact with the site.
8. Consider accessibility: Make sure the website is accessible to users with disabilities, using techniques such as the proper use of contrast and alternative text for images.
9. Test the design: Test the website design with users to get feedback and make sure it is effective before launching the site.
10. Keep it updated: Regularly update the website to keep the design fresh and ensure it stays up-to-date with current design trends.

New Age Visual Design for Websites

Designs these days prioritize multiple factors to give the user a seamless experience. Focusing on a minimalistic style of design, engaging the customers with immersive design elements and clean typography, all of which make it easier for the user to navigate and find the information they need.

We’ll talk more about this approach in the following blog.

In a Nutshell

Web design is a multi-disciplinary field that combines technical skills with creativity and critical thinking. It involves creating visually appealing and user-friendly websites that meet the needs of both users and clients. Web designers use their skills in layout, typography, colour theory, and user experience to create a cohesive design that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. The sharp eye of a web designer is essential in creating a website that is both beautiful and functional.

A hybrid cloud is an IT architecture that spans multiple different environments, such as on-premises, public cloud, and private cloud solutions. Every hybrid cloud solution is different according to the needs of an organization. So, let’s take a dive into the world of hybrid cloud to know how it can benefit your business.

To start with, first, we need to know why the hybrid cloud came into existence. Earlier organizations had on-premises IT architecture, and then they were required to make a choice between the private or public cloud. But later when choosing between both of them became difficult as each cloud format has its own pros and cons depending upon the needs and situation, hybrid cloud was designed by merging unique benefits of on-premise, public and private clouds to best meet the needs of the organization.

Why Hybrid Cloud Model?

Hybrid cloud took advantage of existing cloud architecture and created its own identity. It gives businesses greater control over their private data. Hence, there are many reasons why the adoption of a hybrid cloud can be good for building faster and smart applications.

• Reduced Cost: Since the hybrid cloud is a combination of both private and public clouds, an organization can house their critical and sensitive data on their private cloud, while less sensitive data on their public cloud. Therefore, being a cost-effective way to scale their operations and meet organizational demands, and separate critical workloads from less sensitive workloads. The cost has become the biggest driver of the hybrid cloud adoption rate as 46% of private cloud users are shifting to the hybrid model due to high operational costs.
• Data Management: In a hybrid cloud, all the public and private resources, data centers and workloads are under common data management while at the same time being distinct. Hence, data can be managed easily and efficiently in a hybrid cloud as compared to private and public clouds separately.
• Risk Management: Security in any organization is all about managing the risk to the business. A strong key to managing risk is by classifying data according to its criticalness. Organizations can opt for which data is more crucial and which data is less sensitive. Thus, a hybrid cloud can help in managing the risk by keeping the crucial data in its private cloud. Its centralized management helps by using strong security techniques. 67% of enterprises are concerned about security risks with the public cloud, hence moving to the hybrid model.

• Flexibility: In the cutting-edge technology world, organizations have to stand strong with the latest technology for constant changes. One of the major reasons to use a hybrid cloud is its flexibility for the future. 42% of companies opt for cloud services to access data from anywhere and 37% for enabling better flexibility. A hybrid cloud helps to match the data management requirements that are best in handling them and also provides complete control over the infrastructure.
• Swiftness: Speed is a very important perspective for any organization as it plays a key factor in competition and innovation. It can make or break any company’s competitive advantage over other organizations. A hybrid cloud allows IT staff to optimize the network to minimize latency and make it easier for data to get where it needs to be. Thus, it helps in increasing the speed by optimizing IT performance and providing the agility required to meet the changes in business demands.
• Business Continuity: Downtime can be destructive for businesses, both in terms of revenue and reputation. But by using hybrid cloud business continuity can be maintained. A hybrid cloud is a key part of a business continuity solution because it helps organizations back up key data and ensures scalability so when there are failures all the operations are able to continue work with minimal interruption. As computing demands fluctuate, the business isn’t at risk to overload their private servers thus saving the businesses from downtime.

Ultimately hybrid cloud approach is a great option for organizations looking for the best of both computing worlds as it allows workloads to transit between public and private cloud environments. It is the future of cloud storage as it provides scalability, flexibility, swiftness, security, and data management by being cost-efficient at the same time.

The hybrid cloud approach requires the will along with the digital transformation and tools to support your every move in cloud computing.

Now that we have learnt the what's and why’s of hybrid cloud, it's time to discuss the advantages that it brings along.

Advantages of Hybrid Cloud for an organization

It goes without saying that even if you have a very clear knowledge of a larger picture, when it comes to implementation things start from macro level. Hence, it is very important to understand that as an organization what benefits can hybrid cloud provide at a ground level.

Increased developer’s productivity: With a unified hybrid cloud it becomes easier for development team to work along with the DevOps team and simplify the process of deployment, which otherwise is a very tedious and time taking task. This is such a relief for the developers to develop once and deploy anywhere within the hybrid cloud setup.

Easy Regulation Compliance: Monitoring is easy when is done with everything at one place rather than having things scattered. The unified platform that gets created with hybrid cloud, allows an organization to create a sturdy and reliable security environment across the platform. It eases implementation of security and compliance in a consistent way.

Increased organization’s efficiency: With hybrid cloud efficiency of any organization or business gets accelerated. Since product development cycle get shorter, response to customer’s feedback increases. This helps in faster delivery of applications, timely completion of business goals, faster integration, and so much more.

Quick Processing of Large data set: As a business blooms into a great functioning entity, having data and comparatively larger sets of data becomes obvious. Maintaining these huge chunks of information is a challenging task very often. Hybrid cloud is one of the best solutions for this issue as well. It makes handling a large amount of data easy and streamlines everything in the best and secure manner.

Conclusion

When we use the word data, we often fail to anticipate the gravity of it. Even a small list of contact numbers in a phone is a data that needs proper storage. Now imagine how much data an organization, a full-fledged business would require to store. And it’s not just about storing the data, the prime factor here is the flow of data, flow of that meaningful information that developers, architects, designers, QA engineers require all the time. Switching to hybrid cloud is the best solution for such a cross-functional scenario. And having read the benefits of it, hybrid cloud has a positive impact in growth, development, efficiency, and scalability of a business. So, make right choice at the right time and show your business, your venture the light of success. You can avail the best cloud engineering services at www.fibonalabs.com. So, feel free to reach out to us and we will be delighted to serve you.

What is a Responsive UI?

Responsive UI (user interface) is a design approach that allows mobile and web apps to adapt their layout and design to the size and shape of the device or screen on which they are being displayed. The goal of responsive UI is to create an optimal viewing experience for the user, regardless of the device or screen size.

In a mobile app, responsive UI allows the app to adjust its layout, font size, and other elements to fit the smaller screen of a smartphone or tablet. For example, the app might display a single column of content on a small screen, but switch to a multi-column layout on a larger screen. This can help ensure that the app is easy to use and provides a good experience on a variety of devices.

Similarly, in web development, responsive UI allows the web pages to adapt their layout, font size, and other elements to fit the size of the device or browser window on which they are being displayed. It helps to ensure that the web pages are easy to read and use on a variety of devices, from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets, thus making it a flutter responsive design.

Responsive Design Goals

• Larger audience: The more devices an app can be run on, the wider audience it will attract.
• Lead users to the purchase: For sure, there must be an emotional component pushing people to move intuitively on the user path. Simply speaking, it’s thinking ahead about all user stories.
• Brand awareness: A beautiful design makes your brand easy to recognize among competitors.
• Improved SEO: Responsive web design enhances search engine optimization through stronger backlinks and better  bounce rates.
• Improved online and offline browsing experience: The first impression is everything, free your users from zooming and pinching their screens.

There has been a significant audience transition in favour of mobile browsing. Responsive design is the easiest way to reach users across multiple devices and ensures a smooth user experience.

The Problem

The question that we’re answering today is “How can we provide all relevant information at a widget level to modify our UI ?”.

The Solution

The are two ways to solve responsive UI

1. Using Flutter Class
2. Using Packages

Firstly, we will see using the Flutter core class which the flutter framework is providing.

• LayoutBuilder
• MediaQuery
• AspectRatio
• FittedBox
• FractionallySizedBox
• OrientationBuilder

a. LayoutBuilder

Layout Builder changes the UI according to the size constraints of the device screen. Layout builder takes a builder which returns a widget and changes the view according to the condition specified by the user.

In the parameters, the builder takes a Buildcontext and BoxConstraints.

• BoxConstraints

1. Creates box constraints with the given constraints.

2. Click here to read more about the BoxConstraints class.

3. We can also get the maxWidth, minWidth, maxHeight, and minHeight.

b. MediaQuery

Use the MediaQuery.of() method in your build functions.

What is the MediaQuery class and which properties are provided in the build method? The MediaQuery class is used to determine the size and characteristics of the screen on which the app is being displayed. The MediaQuery class provides several properties that you can use to determine the screen size, resolution, and other characteristics. These properties include:

1. size: The size of the screen in logical pixels.
2. devicePixelRatio: The ratio of physical pixels to logical pixels.
3. textScaleFactor: The scaling factor for text.
4. platformBrightness: The current platform brightness (e.g., light or dark).
5. padding: The padding around the screen.
6. viewInsets: The space that the system software occupies around the screen.

You can access the MediaQuery data through the MediaQuery.of(context) method which will give you the current MediaQueryData object. You can also use the MediaQueryData fromWindow method to create a new MediaQueryData object from the window.

Here's an example of how you might use the MediaQuery class to create a responsive UI in a Flutter app:

Using Package Or library

• flutter_screenutil

https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_screenutil

• responsive_framework: ^0.2.0

https://pub.dev/packages/responsive_framework

• sizer: ^2.0.15

https://pub.dev/packages/sizer

• responsive_builder: ^0.4.3

https://pub.dev/packages/responsive_builder

• adaptive_breakpoints: ^0.1.4

https://pub.dev/packages/adaptive_breakpoints

Flutter Support for Foldable Devices

Flutter, being a flexible and expressive framework, allows developers to create apps that can run on foldable devices, like Samsung Galaxy Fold, Huawei Mate X and Microsoft Surface Duo.

Your app is already aware of one type of display feature if you use the SafeArea widget to avoid display cutouts. The three types of display features that we add support for are the cutout, hinge, and fold.

Display features are properties of the display. This kind of information is provided by MediaQuery. We are adding

1. displayFeatures – a list of all display features.
2. hinge – a simple way of knowing info about the hinge.

Here are some tips for creating responsive UIs in Flutter:

In order to create responsive UI, its important to have flutter responsive design and with the following tips, this process becomes fast and seamless.

1. Use the LayoutBuilder widget: The LayoutBuilder widget allows you to determine the size of the screen, and then adjust the layout of your app accordingly. You can use the LayoutBuilder to determine the maximum width or height of the screen and then adjust the layout accordingly.
2. Use the MediaQuery class: The MediaQuery class allows you to determine the size and characteristics of the screen on which the app is being displayed. You can use the MediaQuery.of(context).size property to get the size of the screen and then adjust the layout of your app accordingly.
3. Use the WidgetsBindingObserver class: The WidgetsBindingObserver class allows you to detect changes in the screen size and orientation, and adjust the layout accordingly when the device is folded or unfolded.
4. Use the Expanded widget: The Expanded widget allows you to specify exact sizes and positions for widgets, which can be useful for creating complex, responsive layouts.
5. Use Flexible widget: Flexible widget allows you to define the proportion of space that a child widget should take up with other children in a Flex widget. It allows you to create a dynamic and flexible layout.
6. Use Responsive Widget: Many libraries provide responsive widgets, like flutter_responsive and responsive_builder. They provide an easy way to create responsive widgets that can adapt to different screen sizes and orientations.
7. Use OrientationBuilder: OrientationBuilder allows you to determine the current orientation of the device, and adjust the layout of your app accordingly.
8. Use responsive font sizes: Use the MediaQuery class to determine the screen size and resolution, and then adjust the font size accordingly.
9. Test your app on different devices and screen sizes: Test your app on a variety of devices and screen sizes to ensure that it looks and behaves correctly on different devices.

By following these tips, you can create a responsive UI in Flutter that adapts to the size and characteristics of the screen, providing an optimal viewing experience for the user.

Conclusion

Whether you use Flutter class or any package or libraries, the end goal will be achieved. But with the tips that have been shared at the end of this blog, the whole process of creating a Flutter responsive UI app becomes easier, and faster.

The need for big data is inevitable. Data is the new currency and it is estimated that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, with 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day. With this amount of data being created, companies are facing greater challenges to ensure that they are using their data in the best way possible, and creating a data lake is one such method.

A data lake is a vast pool of raw data that comprises structured and unstructured data. This data can be processed and analyzed later on. Data lakes eliminates the need for implementing traditional database architectures.

This blog post will discuss the best practices to build a data lake. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Benefits of Data Lake

To combat the issue of 360-degree visibility of your organization’s data which includes customer’s behavioral patterns and other sensitive data. By creating a data lake that too a centralized one, it becomes easier to access data at the time of crisis or to quicky resolve any customer issue. This also helps in taking timely decisions thus saving organizations from any inefficient planning and business risks.

• No more hassle

With centralized data being available easily, the struggle of searching required data gets changed into a streamlined mode of searching. It's like creating a master folder in your cloud and labelling all the important sub folders in a way that any data related to them is easily accessible.

This is further helpful in not having any sort of data duplication, applying multiple security policies with data properly consolidated and cataloged at one place.

• Format won't be an issue

With data lake you have the freedom to store data in any format that you are comfortable with as it eliminates the need of data modelling. So, whether your data is in RDBMS, NoSQL or any other format, it will never be an issue. Data lake is low in cost in comparison to other traditional data warehouses which acts as an added advantage.

• Improved data value

As there are no predefine schemas for data processing, data lake is the best option to store raw data. It processes this data even without any clue of the type of analysis that might be needed in the future. This way it kind of empowers your organization by maximizing your data’s value and security with the help of cloud-based solutions.

• Easy data analysis

Having a centralized repository in the form of data lakes, it gives multiple sets of data that can be combined for various machine learning models. This gives added benefits for predictive analysis for various Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence based analytical services.

Best Practices To Build A Data Lake

• Regulation Of Data Ingestion: Data ingestion is the flow of data from its origin to data stores such as data lakes, databases, and search engines. As we add new data to the data lake, it is important to preserve the data in its native form. By doing so, we can generate outputs of analysis and predictions with greater accuracy. This includes preserving even the null values of the data, out of which proficient data scientists squeeze out analytical values when needed.

When To Perform Data Aggregation?

Aggregation can be carried out when there is PII(Personally Identifiable Information) present in the data source. The PII can be replaced with a unique ID before the sources are saved to the data lake. This bridges the gap between protecting user privacy and the availability of data for analytical purposes. It also ensures compliance with data regulations like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, etc.

• Designing The Right Data Transformation Idea: The main purpose of collecting data in data lake is to perform operations like inspection, exploration, and analysis. If the data is not transformed and catalogued correctly, it increases the workload on the analytical engines. The analytical engines scan the entire data set across multiple files, which often results in query overheads.

How To Design The Right Data Transformation Strategy?

1. Store the data in a columnar format such as Apache Parquet or ORC, these formats offer optimized reads and are open-source, which increases the availability of data for various analytical services.
2. Partitioning the data concerning the time stamp can have a great impact on search performance.
3. Small files can be chunked into bigger ones asynchronously. This helps in reducing network overheads.
4. Using Z-order indexed materialized views would help to serve queries including data stored in multiple columns.
5. Collect data set statistics like file size, rows, and histogram of values to optimize queries with join reordering.
6. Collect column and table statistics to estimate predicate selectivity and cost of plans. It also helps to perform certain advanced rewrites in the data lake.

• Prioritising Security In A Data Lake: The RSA Data Privacy and Security survey conducted in 2019 revealed that 64% of its US respondents and 72% of its UK respondents blamed the company and not the hacker for the loss of personal data. This is due to the lack of fine-grained access control mechanisms in the data lake. Along with the increase in data, tools, and users, there is a dynamic increase in the risks of security breaches. Hence, curating a security strategy even before building a data lake is important. This would grab the attention of the increased agility that comes with the use of a data lake. The data lake security protocols must account for compliance with major security policies.

Key Points For Curating An Efficient Security Strategy

1. Authentication and authorization of the users who access the data lake must be enforced. For instance, person A might have access to edit the data lake whereas person B might have permission only to view it. They must be authenticated using passwords, usernames, multiple device authentication, etc. Integrating a strong ID management tool in the underlying cloud service provider would help in achieving this.
2. The data should be encrypted at all levels i.e. when in transit and also at rest so that only the intended users can understand and use it.
3. Access should be granted only to skilled and well-experienced administrators, thus minimizing the risk of breaches.
4. The data lake platform must be hardened so that its functions are isolated from the other existing cloud services.
5. Host security methods such as host intrusion detection, file integrity monitoring, and log management should be enhanced.
6. Redundant copies of critical data must be stored as a backup option in another data lake so that it comes in handy in cases of data corruption or accidental deletion.

• Implementing Well-Formulated Data Governance Strategies: A good data governance strategy ensures data quality and consistency. It prevents the data lake from becoming an unmanageable data swamp.

Key Points For Crafting A Data Lake Governance Strategy

• Data should be identified and catalogued. The sensitive data must be clearly labelled. This would help the users achieve better search results.
• Creating metadata acts as a tagging system to organize data and assist people during their search for different types of data without confusion.
• No data should be stored beyond the time specified in the compliance protocols. This would result in cost issues along with compliance protocol violations. So, defining proper retention policies for the data is necessary.

Conclusion

One thing is clear from this blog that data lake is of utmost importance as it gives the whole organization complete access to the data. For any team whether a development team, DevOps team, etc., it becomes easier to get solutions for the issues that arise due to lack of data. It is also one of the best ways to respond to customers’ queries and tickets raised related to your product or services.

From a front-end developer's point of view this is what happens when a team inherits a project and their task is to work with updated designs. With react component inheritance the challenges that we faced and the positives and negatives of the complete journey is explained in this blog.

First, the team analyzed the existing software & found some “issues”. Issues like: using class components (more about this later); huge file size (1000+ lines) with no clear organization; using old library version; Clunky Routing; Lots of Unused code / Unreachable code / Unused files; Huge comments with no clear purpose; Logs without purpose; Unsafe methods; etc.

It did have its good sides too. The core architecture was really clean and it used good practices, to begin with. Over time, one can read the fall from their own highly set standard. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

React version update

While using class components in itself is not really a bad decision or bad practice, like it's so complicated, and functional components can make it so much easier. Lines will be reduced and you don’t worry about the this keyword. Our task was to implement existing functionality in new designs so it meant that we had to write most of the modules from scratch. So we took that as an opportunity to use functional components.

The first thing the team did was to upgrade to react version 16.4+ so that we could use hooks and functional components. At the time of writing this post, the latest release of react is v18.0.4. In the interest of not breaking existing code for deprecation reasons and library dependency, we decided to use the most recent version which meets our needs. In the near future, a bolder migration is in the plan.

Other library updates

We analyzed the core libraries that the website depended on, and tried to upgrade the libraries.

UI analysis

So the team had just received the new designs and the fact that most modules shared a very consistent design was, of course, a given (thanks design team) from this, we quickly noted down the common designs and saw big opportunities to reuse code. Things like the header on each page; The tables on the site; The forms were very similar; The detailed view of any modules followed the same card designs; The filters were everywhere and used the same design.

Actually working on the new designs

Then came the time to work on the new designs finally. Developers were assigned their own modules to work on.

Some common ways to speed up development which we eventually found are discussed below.

So for the pages with very similar layouts, we created CLC - container layout components and used that on all the pages. This may sound simple but in practice, it took at least 3 to 4 iterations before developers were happy with the container and they started to use it in their modules. This holds true for most CLC that we created. Of course, some were faster to be adopted simply because of the sheer simplicity and frequency of requirement, for example, the header component while having many props and many features were fast to be adopted because nearly every page used it and it had a simple clean api.

The anatomy of a container layout goes as such.

We now have container layout components for nearly everything, and this speeds up development time tremendously.

Here are some container layout components that we have created over time:

HeaderWithBackButton, PageLayout, Search, Table, InfoHeader

If you can guess the purpose of these Components from their name, the team has won. But even I can tell we need work.

CLC serves as a base for all the abstractions we do for our application…

While Developing

CLC - container layout components ****are not new and everyone uses them but It's not so easy to get them right and keeping them maintainable gets progressively challenging with more feature requirements. The key to keeping it a good component is to keep it simple. If the new feature request is seemingly a part of the CLC but implementing it involves yet another conditional and another prop just for the sake of the new feature, then maybe it's better to create another component for that instead of taking away from simplicity for the sake of compactness.

Then again when is it acceptable to extend a CLC ? maybe when yet another conditional and another prop just for the sake of the new feature is not required? let me know too. Sometimes compactness does not pay off.

CLC was useful but we frequently saw that depending on which module it is used in, i.e; its context, it had similar props all the time and so we saw that it could be abstracted out with those props passed so that it can be called with fewer props and more logic can be abstracted in a localized place. This is an abstraction over abstraction.

Here is some sample pseudo code illustrating the situation.

In practice, AbstractedContainer will do initialization and much boilerplate stuff.

Below is a slightly simplified real-world AbstractedContainer example,

It fetches some data from an api and provides the layout, its only dependency from its parent is handleSubmit

import { message, Modal, Select, Spin } from "antd";
import React, { useEffect, useState } from "react";
import { DEFAULT_CITY } from "../../constants/Common";
import callApi from "../../services/networkUtils/networkUtils.index";
import FilterPin from "../ESCommonFilterPin";
const { Option } = Select;
/*
Location filter is AbstractedContainer which only requires the handleSubmit
*/

export default LocationFilterModal;

This allows other developers to focus on other problems. With this approach, developers can spend their time, solving problems not yet solved and not re-solving something already solved.

Here is an excellent article on the nature of abstraction.

Not a smooth ride.

I know you are thinking that it probably wasn’t so simple to adopt this in the project, and you would be right. Situations like developer A is developing CLC-A and developer B wants to use CLC-A in their module even before CLC-A development is not complete. This can happen because of conflicting timelines and a lack of planning before development.

CLC-A is already developed but dev has no intention of using CLC-A simply because they are not aware of it so they build one themselves. After building, there is now two component which is doing the same thing, and it's not an easy thing to tell someone to drop their work. This can happen due to a lack of communication at the right time.

CLC is developed but is used in the “wrong” way. This is a classic and this can be for various reasons like

• Not being able to follow along with integrated work due to differences in class vs functional components.
• Not understanding the use case of CLC
• CLC with hard API is often misunderstood and setting it up can be challenging especially for other developers who are not involved in the development of CLC (this is not a good reason because a CLC should be easy to use and set up).

I am sure there were other non elegant juxtapositions! but I can’t remember them. If anything I think the CLC abstraction is really neat and can save a lot of time. Section while developing is actually really fun and interesting, so don’t miss it.

Conclusion

At Fibonalabs we have developed several projects using CLC. It has helped our developers in saving a lot of time and coming up with clean, less complex modules that can be of great help even for the projects with react component inheritance. Our developers ensure that when it comes to maintenance they put their best foot forward and use the best of their skills that do the job in less possible time. Along with our excellent product development services, we provide UX design and cloud services and have helped several clients in reaching their goals. You can also visit us at www.fibonalabs.com and avail the best of our services.

GitHub is a website and cloud-based service that helps developers store and manage their code, as well as track and control changes to their code. It lets you and others work together on projects from anywhere. Git is a distributed version control system, which means that the entire codebase and history are available on every developer’s computer, which allows for easy branching and merging.

Difference between Git and GitHub

While Git is a tool that's used to manage multiple versions of source code edits that are then transferred to files in a Git repository, GitHub serves as a location for uploading copies of a Git repository. In a sense, then, there's no comparison when it comes to Git vs. GitHub as far as their function.

Three primary actions:

1. Fork: The process of copying another’s code from the repository to modify it.
2. Pull: When you’ve finished making changes to someone else’s code, you can share them with the original owner via a ‘pull request’.
3. Merge: Owners can add new changes to their projects via a merge, and give credit to the contributors who suggested them.

To sum up the difference between Git vs GitHub:

1. Git is a local VCS software that enables developers to save snapshots of their projects over time. It’s generally best for individual use.
2. GitHub is a web-based platform that incorporates git’s version control features so they can be used collaboratively. It also includes project and team management features, as well as opportunities for networking and social coding.

How to Integrate Git?

Step 1: Install git and Add a Repository

Download the git software for your Operating System (OS).

Once it’s up and running, there are a few terms you’ll want to familiarize yourself with as you start using the software:

1. Repository: The file location where your project is stored.
2. Commit: The command is used to save new changes to your project in the repository.
3. Stage: Before you can commit changes in Git, you need to stage them – this gives you the chance to prepare your code before formally adding it to your project.
4. Branch: The part of your project you’re actively developing.

To connect Git to GitHub, you’ll need to add a repository and make at least one commit. You’ll then have enough of your project established to start working in GitHub.

Step 2: Add a GitHub Repository to Your Account

After you’ve created, you’ll need to create a repository in GitHub where you can store your project when you move it over from git. You can do so by clicking on the relevant link in the left-hand sidebar:

Then, you’ll need to choose a name for your repository:

You can also decide if you want the repository to be public, so other GitHub users can find and contribute to it, or if you want to keep it private.

Either way, since you’ll be using an existing project, make sure to leave the Initialize this repository with a README box unchecked.

Step 3: Push a Repository to GitHub

Next, you’ll have the option to add code to your repository in a few different ways.

Since you’ve already set up your git repository, you can use the push an existing repository from the command line option:

The clipboard icon to the right enables you to copy the commands listed here, so you can quickly paste them into your preferred command-line interface to create your GitHub repository.

Once that’s done, refresh your GitHub page:

You should now be able to see your repository in GitHub. From there, you can start making changes to your project online.

It’s also possible to send and merge pull requests, and use any other tools included with your plan.

Step 4: Pull Your Changes Back to git

While you can see all the changes you and others have made to your project on GitHub, the platform doesn’t have direct access to your computer’s files. To keep your project up-to-date on your computer, you’ll need to pull your edits via git.

To do so, simply enter git pull origin master into your command-line interface. This should update your files so that everything is in sync across all iterations of your project.

What are the Most Common Git Commands?

1. To rename the branch: git branch -m new-branch-name
2. Combination of add and message: git commit -am "message"
3. Show all commits in the current branch yet to be merged to Master: git cherry -v master
4. Modify the previous commit without modifying the commit message: git commit --amend --no-edit
5. To unstage new file use: git rm --cached

Git status - short status flag

?? - Untracked files

A - Files added to Stage

M - Modified files

D - Deleted files

Tips and Tricks

• To Open GitHub CLI: Type (>) or type github1s.com in the GitHub link.

• To send a function: Inside the repository open any function, copy the URL, and send it.

• To send a line: Type #L and the line number in the URL to be copied and send.

Conclusion

Git is a powerful tool and is full of neat tricks. Of course, there are more tricks you can learn, but I hope that this series of articles help you.

Before diving into cloud migration, we just need to understand what is cloud computing. Cloud computing is a remote virtual pool of on-demand (ready-to-use) shared resources offering computing, storage, database and network services that can be rapidly deployed at scale.

The term cloud migration is not we are going to migrate the cloud but migrate every digital asset to a cloud environment.

What is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving a company’s digital resources, services, databases, IT resources, and applications into the cloud. Cloud migration is also about moving from one cloud to another.

Types of Cloud Migration

There are two types of migrations in the cloud,

1. On-Prem to Cloud (Ex: Existing Physical Data Centers to AWS/GCP/Azure)
2. Cloud to Cloud (Ex: Microsoft Azure to AWS or AWS to Google Cloud Platform)

Here we are going to talk about On-Prem to Cloud Environments.

Why do we need to migrate existing On-prem resources into the cloud?

In recent years, companies have been migrating their services and data to the cloud as they adapt to become elastic digital workplaces to deal with an increase in online demand and remote working. Businesses that have already begun the move to cloud computing, they're accelerating a cloud transformation, which will increase their profits and reduce their complexity.

With access to the cloud comes agility and flexibility, both of which are imperative to meet changing consumer and market demands.

Benefits of migrating to the cloud include:

1. Increased agility and flexibility
2. Ability to innovate faster
3. Easing of increasing resource demands
4. Better managing of increased customer expectations
5. Reduction in costs
6. Deliver immediate business results
7. Better management
8. Cloud scalability
9. Improved performance

What are the Six Phased Strategy for Cloud Migration?

There’s a well-known framework for organizing your strategies for cloud migration. This is known as “The 6 Rs of Cloud Migration”:

Options:

1. Rehost (Lift and Shift): Rehosting is often called “lift and shift”. Just as the name implies, there is no big architectural change to the servers and applications in this situation. They are simply taken from on-premises (the lift) and moved to the same type of system on the cloud (the shift). Organizations that are just starting their migration journey will often use the lift-and-shift strategy.
2. Replatform: Replatforming is the second option. This is where we modify “lift and shift” into something more complicated but better suited to the new cloud environment. Replatforming is a process that optimizes the application during the migration phase. This requires some programming knowledge and input. You might move from your database system to a managed DB hosted on a cloud provider.
3. Repurchase: Sometimes referred to as “drop and shop,” this cloud migration strategy comprises a full switch to another product. This could mean ending existing licensing or repurposing services for new platforms and services. Examples of a “dropped” application may be a CRM system or HR app that was not created to be run on the cloud.
4. Refactor: Companies that choose to refactor will reuse already existing code and frameworks, but run their applications on a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) provider's platform – instead of on IaaS, as in rehosting.
5. Retain: It is the fifth strategy. Some applications may be too difficult to migrate, so you might want to keep them. So here comes the hybrid cloud, where you can keep some of your existing on-premises deployments.
6. Retire: This is our final strategy to retire services. Every application becomes no longer useful, whether due to redundancy or the availability of better options in a cloud-based offering.

What are the 5 Phases of Cloud Migration?

1. Plan: Think about performance, timeframe, and cost goals – these are concrete numbers to aim towards.
2. Choose the cloud providers: The most popular environments include Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and AWS (Amazon Web Services). All of these environments provide a lot of distinct cloud models for adoption, whether it is multi-cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, or public cloud.
3. Copy existing data to a cloud provider: Make sure this is ongoing throughout the entire migration so you’re positive that your cloud database is always up-to-date.
4. Secure the Environment: Test the applications which are moved to the cloud with a different environment before moving to production and also implement the security inside your cloud with certified cloud professionals.
5. Maintain the cloud Environment: After migration and testing, we just need to maintain the cloud environment

Top 3 Cloud Providers and their Migration Tools

• Amazon Web Service (AWS)

1. AWS Migration Hub
2. AWS Application Delivery Service
3. AWS Application Migration Service
4. AWS Database Migration Service.

• Microsoft Azure

1. Azure Migrate
2. Data Migration Assistant.
3. Azure Database Migration Service.

• Google Cloud Provider(GCP)

1. Google Cloud Rapid Assessment & Migration Program (RAMP)
2. Application migration
3. Database Migration Service

Conclusion

Doing business in the cloud is being popular and lot of advantages to the enterprise over the enterprises running in existing data centres. Cloud makes the overall data, service and security easily manageable. Reducing a lot of physical resources increases in a lot of profit. However, there are many advantages of cloud migration as well few difficulties with cloud migration if we didn’t do it in the right way.

Have you ever felt that despite putting all your efforts into creating a successful product, the customers still don’t want to use it as it is not providing the best user experience?

Well, let me explain why. When you’re designing a product from scratch, it can be easy to assume that the users will intuitively understand how you intended it to be used. However, this isn’t typically the case. The same features that you find to be incredibly simple to use may leave your users perplexed and discouraged—unless you design your product to meet basic usability criteria. If your users are complaining that your product is confusing, inflexible, or error-prone, it’s important to take a step back and reevaluate your design. And the best way to accomplish this is by using a heuristic analysis. Now, let's understand what is heuristic evaluation?

What is meant by Heuristic Evaluation?

​​Heuristic evaluation is crucial for developing a great product that users can easily engage with and find valuable. It is a comprehensive evaluation of the user interface of a product. Its objective is to uncover usability problems that might arise when users interact with a product and suggest solutions.

The main goal is to increase the product’s usability, and another factor is efficiency (in this context, "efficiency" is the speed with which a product can be used as a direct consequence of better usability). The UX of a product is significantly enhanced when these components are provided at a high level of quality.

Although there are many heuristics principles created by different experts. In this article, I attempt to explain the 10 rules with examples by Jacob Nielsen who created the Heuristics for User Interface Design in 1995, which are the most commonly used standards in usability inspection.

What is Nielsen's Ten Heuristics?

Lets understand the famous 10 heuristic principles by Jakob Nielsen.

• Visibility of System Status: Users should constantly be kept updated on what is happening by the system through relevant feedback delivered on time. One example of this is Google Drive showing the status of a document upload.

• Match Between the System and the Real World: The system should communicate what the user understands, using words, expressions, and concepts that are familiar to the user instead of just system-oriented terms. Try to work with real-world norms by arranging information in a logical and natural order. An example of this could be the folder icon from Microsoft which resembles the real-world folder.

• User Control and Freedom: Users frequently choose system operations by mistake, and they will require an obvious "emergency escape" to get out of the undesirable state without having to engage in a lengthy conversation. Preferable solutions should be undone and redo.

• Consistency and Standards: Users shouldn't have to guess whether certain terms, scenarios, or actions are identical to each other. Example: All these ecommerce websites shared below follow the same navigation standards. A prominent search bar, simple account access, and an unmistakable shopping cart are all displayed in a similar manner.

• Error Prevention: A thoughtful design that prevents a problem before it occurs is preferable to good error messages. Eliminate error-prone situations, or check for them and provide consumers with the chance to confirm before committing to an action.

• Recognition rather than Recall: Make objects, actions, and options visible to the user to reduce the cognitive burden for the user. The user should never have to recall information from one part to another. Help text & system instructions should always be easily recognizable and can be retrieved at any given time. Here's an example of Quora suggesting questions based on what I'm typing.

• Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: Unseen by the novice user, accelerators may frequently speed up the interaction for the expert user, allowing the system to cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to customize frequently performed actions.

• Aesthetic and Minimalist Design: Information that is unnecessary or rarely used shouldn't be included in dialogues. Each additional piece of information in a dialogue clashes with the relevant pieces of information and reduces their relative visibility. Google's homepage is a great example of minimal design.

• Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors: Error messages must be written in clear words (no codes), accurately describe the issue, and helpfully offer a solution.

• Help and Documentation: Although it is preferable if users can operate the system without assistance, additional help and documentation may still be necessary. Any such documentation should be concise, focused on the user's task, easy to search, and describe specific actions that need to be taken. An example of GoDaddy's Help page is shown below. While there is a search field, the page also includes main categories and frequently asked questions.

How to conduct a Heuristic Evaluation?

• Decide what you are Evaluating: Before initiating the Heuristic Evaluation be certain about what you are evaluating, is it a feature on your website or app? Or is it a whole page or a user task across different pages? Figure out first. After you decide on the tasks, any type of wireframes/mockups/prototypes can be your materials for evaluation.
• Select Evaluators: Heuristic evaluations utilize usability experts to go through the site with an educated eye to test out the product, so make sure to carefully choose your evaluators. The evaluators should be usability experts and preferably with domain expertise in the type of industry that your product is in.
• Follow Severity Ratings for Usability Problems: Severity ratings can help determine where to focus extra usability efforts and how much money should be spent on fixing the most critical issues. Nielsen's explanation guided the severity rules I used. It takes three main factors into account.

1. Frequency: Is it common or uncommon?
2. Impact: Will the users find it easy or difficult to resolve?
3. Persistence: Is this a one-time or recurring issue?

And also the rating can differ. It is largely decided by your requirements. I followed Nielsen's instructions in this particular instance.

0 = I disagree that this is a usability issue at all.

1 = Only cosmetic issues should be addressed unless additional time is available on the project.

2 = Minor usability issue: Low-priority fix

3 = Major usability issue: High-priority fix

4 = Usability disaster: must be addressed before the release of the product.

• Analyze the Evaluation Results: In this part, you are going to prioritize the severity. Remember to discuss the suggested solutions with the evaluators. You have to ensure that you are on the same page. And then list your findings and split them into different iteration stages to find out the best possible solution.

Conclusion

Heuristic evaluation is a great way of identifying usability problems in your product while spending less time and money. Today, many product owners want someone to perform a quick audit and advise them on the simplest and quickest fixes. A heuristic evaluation provides much more. It's a method for defining and thinking about your deeper core issues so you can focus your energy on what matters the most.

Angular is one of the widely used JavaScript frameworks, written in typescript. It is a component-based framework which is used for developing SPAs and large enterprise applications. It was developed by Google in 2009, and as a result, there have been many iterations. In general, frameworks increase performance and web development efficiency by providing a consistent structure for developers. It also offers developers a host of additional features which can be added to the software/application without any additional effort, hence saving a lot of development time.

Benefits

1. Faster Development Process: It allows the developer to build a highly efficient application faster with the help of technical advantages that the angular framework provides like – Angular CLI, Two-Way data binding, built-in routing, templating and a large developer community which makes angularJS web development easier.
2. Lightweight web Apps: Earlier performance of large-scale applications was very poor. Thanks to angular for the Lazy-Load feature. Which significantly improves the performance of such large-scale apps by reducing the size of the initially-loaded app.
3. Efficient Problem-solving patterns: It offers an efficient design pattern, dependency injection and service which helps in solving productivity issues and speeding up the development process.
4. Cross-Platform Development: It also supports cross-platform development. It allows the developers to write code that can run on multiple platforms like mobile and web applications.

Sharing data between Parent & Child components

Data sharing between components in angular is an important thing in a component-based framework. Small components are good to manage in angular. When we start breaking down the complex requirements into smaller ones (I.e., smaller components) then it's very important to have a proper data-sharing mechanism. There are multiple ways in which data is shared between the components. Few of them are

1. Parent-to-child component
2. Child to a parent component
3. Sharing data between sibling components

Let us see how this can be achieved

Let us consider the below hierarchy for understanding the purpose

<parent-component>

<child-component></child-component>

</parent-component>

Here <parent-component> serves as a context for the <child-component>

@Input() and @Output() decorators give the child component a way to communicate with the parent component

@Input(): Lets the parent component pass the data to the child component

@Output(): Using this decorator child component can pass data to the parent component

Sending data from Parent to Child Component

• Child Component

Create a child component to receive the input from the parent component

@Input() decorator in the child component signifies that it can receive data from the parent component. @Input() properties can have any type, such as string, number, object etc

• Binding the Property in the Parent

• Use the property in the child component

// child.html

Now the data will be available in the child component. By using interpolation binding syntax we can access the value in the template file.

<p> User: {{name}} </p>

Sending data from child to parent

For sharing data from child to parent we need an output decorator.

@Output() decorator allows data to be sent from the child component to the parent component. This decorator acts as a doorway for the transfer of data. The child component needs to notify the parent component about the change/update in data. This can be done by using event emitters.

• Preparing the child component for emitting data

Whenever the user clicks Submit button, an event is emitted. Which contains the new user’s name.

The next step is to instruct the child selector in the parent component to listen to this event. This can be done by event binding.

• Configuring the parent component to access the data from the child

Now the parent component  is aware of the event but we have to create a method to access the data that the child component is emitting.

//parent.ts

In the parent component, let us create a class with a variable to store the data and a method that will be invoked whenever the child component emits an event.

Sharing data between sibling components

This can be achieved by sharing the data from one child to parent by using an output decorator and event emitter. Once the data is received in the parent component, we can share it with other child components using the input decorator. To achieve this we have to follow the first two steps.

Windows error message: The user always is well aware that something went wrong and the system is trying to reconnect.

What is UX Writing?

Design is all about communication. Whether the product is about sales, retail, fintech, healthcare or any other industry, there should always be proper interaction between the user and the product.

By definition, "UX writing is the practice of designing the words people see when they interact with software". The responsibility of UX writers includes creating the words users read or hear at the time of using the digital product. They are responsible for both microscopy (labels for buttons, menu options, error messages) and macro copy (information messages and invitations, text on confirmation pages).

Why is UX Writing so important?

As we know the pen is mightier than a sword, likewise, copies (words) are more impactful than visuals in an interface. A copy can make or break the user experience! No matter how beautiful the user interface is, it is always a disrupting and not-so-good experience if the copy is confusing, it is misleading, or there are grammatical errors. Thus, everything from the smallest label to a message has an impact on the UX. it’s the job of a UX writer to craft the right copy.

Ex: Do you remember this Clippy assistant from windows? It was a great design effort by Microsoft to introduce assistance for providing a smooth experience for the user. (Although it did not turn out to be a great design which could understand user needs exactly, around 1997, this was brought in as a feature to aid users)

Each copy used is done with the idea of improving the user experience while using Microsoft office.

In the past, UX writing often fell under the purview of product designers and managers. Recently, however, the fierce competition across the software industry has driven many companies to invest in dedicated UX teams. UX content writer roles centre on creating successful user experiences through research, feedback, analysis, testing and best practices.

Rules of Effective UX Writing

Like any other practice, there are UX Writing rules as well. If followed properly, it helps in effective UX Writing.

• Use Limited Words: Effective communication always happens when we use limited words. Need to always use simple, generic and impactful terminology that provides the user with ease of performing a task without cognitive load. Always remember that the user always needs to spend time completing the task sooner rather than reading copies on the interface.
• Avoid Double Negatives: If the copy has a double negative, then the user spends extra time decoding messages. Always the copies must be concise and clear to avoid misunderstanding. Using words that repeat the same meaning will not let the user perform the task with clarity and often the user ends up clueless about the choice he/she makes.
• Prioritize Objectives: The objective of the copy needs to be addressed initially as other content if any. Any sentence should describe the objective followed by the action needed to be taken in order to fulfil the objective. The purpose of the interface is to let the user achieve their goal, So, every copy (Text) used should have a direct meaning of the purpose. Ex: Airbnb always lets users know what is it about and begins the page with the agenda of where you want to go and find properties.
• Easily Translatable: Copies curated must have a universally accepted across linguistic, cultural and geographical boundaries. It is of utmost importance to use easy-to-understand language. This makes the text easily translatable in multiple languages thus making it more user-friendly for users of any region.

Ex: Zomato does a great job in translating The Hindi language into English words to grab users' attention.

• Tone & Voice: Copies that build trust are essential and provide information that is evident and communicates a clear idea to the user. To achieve that, a UX content writer must consider the brand language and include it in copy throughout the design.

Ex: Apple’s brand voice can be easily identified every time Siri is active on one’s device. Every command that the virtual assistant says is processed and reverted with a clear solution for the users.

• Consistent Copies: To maintain consistency in the copy across the complete application, it is highly recommended to use the same language across the interface. For example, use "Next" every time you direct the user to take the upcoming step, and do not replace it with another word. This gives the user impression that the text is written by the same person. Another common pitfall is combining forms of address. Also, maintain consistency while referring to the users, either addressing them in the first person or in the second person.

• Show, Don’t Tell: Human brains have evolved with recognition through visual memory, although we provide detailed information, humans always look for a visual cue as a reference to accomplish a task. At this point, the use of imagery comes into place as it helps users understand things at a better pace. It supplements the copy and provides additional information. Ex: Swiggy does a great job in telling users by providing info with an icon alone, where the delivery charge is more than normal, due to rains in that area.
• Avoid Showing all the Content at the Beginning: Sometimes it is important to provide all the information upfront, but all too often such details are presented at the beginning. Too much information can quickly overwhelm users and add cognitive load. Thus, reveal detail as needed. Rather you can opt for adding a "Read More" button and link it to the detailed content. This mechanism will help them in getting the summary of what is required and if interested, they can dive deep into the topic.

Conclusion

The design platforms need to consider these principles for an effective digital design. Following these simple and important rules will always help the end user we are designing for, by communicating the right ideas and the right solutions.

The time taken to complete UX Writing is definitely worth it and you will be delighted with the results achieved. But believe me, it’s worth it. Every text/copy you use is part of how you communicate with the user.  As a designer, it is your objective to design conversation in a way that communicates the message properly to the user. Altogether, UX content writer creates a distinctive brand or product voice that all other content creators within a company can understand and replicate. Most importantly, they provide digital value to an interface that engages the user for rite time and accomplishes his/her goals.

Firebase is a platform developed by Google used to create mobile and web applications. It was originally an independent company founded in 2011.

Firebase provides a very simple and quick way to add authentication to your Vue.js application. In this article, I will show you how easy it is to allow users to register with your application using their email and password.

In 2014, Google acquired the platform and it is now their flagship offering for app development. Cloud Storage for Firebase is a powerful and cost-effective storage service. The Cloud Storage SDK supports file uploads and downloads for your apps. You can use the cloud storage SDK to store images, audio, video, or other user-generated content.

Prerequisites

When building any type of application, privacy and security are two important factors to keep in mind. With cyber criminals becoming more advanced, authentication is an important step to deter hacking and protect your users’ most valuable information.

Firebase Authentication provides backend services to help authenticate users in your application, supporting different authentication methods, like passwords and phone numbers, and supporting identity providers including Google, Twitter, and Facebook.

To integrate Firebase Authentication into your application, you can use either the Firebase UI, which handles the UI flows for signing users in with different providers, or you can manually set up the Firebase SDK in your project and configure support for whatever provider you would like to use.

Overview

• How to Create our Project
• How to Add New Components
• Create Login and Sign-up Form
• Update the Routes
• Register New User
• Login Users
• Create a Route Guard
• Logout Users
• Conclusion

How to Create a Project?

To get started, we’ll use the Vue CLI v3.0 to quickly scaffold a new Vue project. Then, install the new CLI globally by running the following command:

npm install -g @vue/cli

Next, create a new Vue project by running the command below:

vue create firebase-auth

Next, create a project in firebase, and enable the authentication service. To install a firebase into your Vue project, please run the command below,

npm install firebase –save

How to Add New Components?

When we created our application with Vue Router, it automatically created two routes for our application — Home and About. We will use Home as the login for our application. We will use the About page to register as a new user for our application.

When a registered user logs in to our application, we want to show them the dashboard page. We also want to provide a way for a user to log out of our application. Currently, neither of these options is available in our application so let’s add them now.

Open up the App.vue file. Currently, the nav has two entries for Home and About. We will change About to be registered and add two new entries for Dashboard and Logout.

Create Login & Sign-up form

Open up the Home.vue file in the views folder. Delete all the HTML code in the template section. Replace it with this code that provides a very basic login form. Here is the code:

Update the Routes

Currently, the URL to display our Register page is /about. Let’s change that to be /register. Open up the index.js file in the router folder. Change the second route for /about to be /register. Your routes array should look like this:

While we are in this file let’s go ahead and add an entry to display our dashboard component. Add a 3rd route to the display /dashboard. Your routes array should now look like this:

Register New User

Earlier when we updated the About.vue file to register users we had a call to a method called Register. We need to add the functionality to register new users.

First, let’s check out the Firebase documentation on how to create a password-based account. Firebase Auth has a method called createuserWithEmailAndPassword. You need to pass in the user’s email and password. This method will either register the user and return a user object or it will return an error message. Let’s implement this method now.

Open up the About.vue file. We need to add an email and password to our data object. In your script section add the following data object:

Next, add a methods object with one method called to register. We can copy the example from the Firebase documentation for this method. We will need to make the following changes to the code from the documentation:

1. We will not use the user object
2. Display an alert if login fails
3. If the user is registered redirect them to the login page

Here is the code for the register method:

Let’s test registering our first user for our application. Click on Register in the navigation. Enter an email address and password and click the Register button.

Now that we have successfully implemented registering new users for our application, we need to implement the ability for the users to login.

Login Users

We used the code provided by Firebase to register a new user. The Firebase documentation page provides a sample code to log in as a user with an email address and password. The Firebase auth method we will use is signInWithEmailAndPassword.

Like Register, we will make the same changes to the sample code. We will alert the user if they are logged in successfully and redirect them to the Dashboard page.

If login fails, then we display an alert with an error message.

Here is the login method which you should have in your Home.vue file.

Create a Route Guard

We don’t want users to be able to navigate to /the dashboard unless they have logged in. We can do this by adding a route guard for /the dashboard.

Open up the index.js file in the router folder. We will add a meta key to the /register route that will say that authentication is required. Here is the updated route:

Before Vue Router processes a route it has a method called beforeEach. We can check to see if the route requires authentication by checking the meta value.

If authentication is required, we need to be able to check if the user is logged in or not. Luckily there is a currentUser object in Firebase Auth. We will use that to check if the user is logged in or not.

If they are currently logged in then we will display the Dashboard page.

If not we will display an alert telling the user they must be logged in and redirect them to the Home page for them to log in.

Here is the code:

Logout Users

The last thing we need to add to our application is the logout method. Firebase Auth provides a signOut method that we will use.

Open up the App.vue file. We will log out the user. If successful, they will receive an alert and be redirected to the Home page.

If the logout fails we display an alert with the error message and redirect them to the Home page.

Add this code for the logout method:

In the code above, we are using Firebase but we do not have any reference to it in our index.js file. We need to add that. Scroll up to the top of the file where the existing import lines are. Add this line:

Now with that added, you can practice registering a new user. Then log in with that user and verify that you are redirected to the Dashboard page. Then log out and verify you are redirected to the Home page.

Congratulations – you have successfully added Firebase Authentication to your Vue application!

Conclusion

Firebase is a very efficient method of adding authentication to your Vue applications. It allows you to add Authentication without having to write your Backend service and implement Authentication yourself.

You should now have the basic tools you need to build a simple application using Vue.js for the client side and Firebase for data storage and hosting.

A dark theme is a user interface with a modified colour, commonly referred to as night mode. It has a black background with a light foreground, light lettering, and light elements. The UI elements used in dark mode are usually backgrounds with black and grey colours as shown in this picture.

Now before diving deep into the dark theme, let's understand why we need a dark theme or a dark mode.

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." -Winston Churchill

Very rightly said, the above quote points towards change. For almost three decades we have been used to seeing dark-coloured fonts on a white-coloured background, but do you recall the time when those giant-sized computers had green-coloured UI with white text on them? Already seems like a century ago, right? But with the arrival of applications with iOS 13, things changed all of a sudden. People once again started liking it so to say "for a change".

This change with dark theme design was accepted with a few combinations of light and dark and the UIs as a result were amazing. While some people liked the pop-up of text in white colour, others were happy with the ease of finding relevant options easily.

The use of dark mode then became a trend and continues to be the favoured choice for many organizations, UI/UX design studios, UI/UX designers, and the users themselves. Now, even though the dark theme is very popular and makes astonishingly stunning user interfaces for several software applications, it is of utmost importance that designers should opt for the right colour choice. Just like clothes, colour contrast plays a supremely important role in the design of any UI. Discussed in the next sections are some utterly useful tips that can help you design an appealing UI for your app.

Important Tips while Working on Dark Theme

1. Refrain from Using Pure Black: If you are a beginner, you might be craving to use pure black colour as a UI theme. Also, it looks pretty tempting and cool but the truth is that very high contrast colours might result in pain to the eyes, especially while switching between the content and the background. Hence it is recommended to use dark grey in place of black and light grey in place of white.
2. Think Twice Before Using Saturated Colours: The use of saturated colours on dark themes may look exponentially vibrant thus giving a punch effect to the eyes. These colours might pop up as the first choice in a designer's mind to balance the colour scheme, yet choosing saturated colours wisely is another important thing to consider while using font colours, buttons, etc. in a UI. Hence, it is advisable to perform corresponding colour tests before using colours like neon blue, neon green etc.
3. Take Care of your Brand's Identity: Using a dark theme is not an easy of a choice, especially for brands that are trying to establish their business identity. Therefore, it is important to find the right balance between your brand and the colours used. Even though the theme used is dark, the colours should never suppress the emotions that you want to deliver as a brand.
4. Less or No Use of Shadows: Shadow is itself a dark-coloured reflection of an object. Using shadows in a dark theme is not at all a good idea. Even if it will take a lot of effort in creating a shadow, it will either be more intense than the background or will be lighter than the object. In both cases, it is of little or no help at all.
5. Give Users the Choice to Switch Modes: Dark modes, though appear to be cool and trendy, might not be the top choice for many users. Therefore, you must always give users the option to switch between themes. This will give users a sense of control as well as help them easily go back to the regular theme.
6. Clever Contrast and Lighting: Since we can't use shadows in dark mode, what is that you can do to make your design more appealing to users? Introduce contrast and lighting smartly. Declutter wherever it is required and make your design stand out with the use of negative spaces in your favour.
7. Test your Design with End Users: Testing your design with end users is the final and most important step as it gives you the best picture of the design. It helps you attain the confidence that your design is solving customers' issues and helping them in several other ways. Remember, a good user experience is the result of a good UI.

Benefits of Dark Mode

There are several benefits of using dark theme design in UI, few of them are discussed here:

• Comfortable for Eyes: Dark mode doesn't attack your eyes with the flash that light mode does. Whether you are using your device in light or dark, the dark theme is always comfortable for the eyes and doesn't black out your vision with the sudden flash of the light theme.
• Enhances Battery Life: Mobile phones are not just phones these days but are so much more. From making payments, online shopping, and keeping notes, to making calls, you can do everything on phone. And in such cases, good battery life plays a vital role. Dark theme is therefore not just a change but a damn useful one, as it saves your phone's battery thus enhancing its overall life.

• Has Good Appeal: The dark theme looks so cool and awesome. It gives UI a very unique look that is unusual as well as mysterious at the same time. With its characteristics going well with younger people, it is they who adapt to dark themes more quickly and in great numbers.
• Increases Users' Focus: With its dramatic canvas, the dark theme helps users to stay focused as they usually focus only on the useful and relevant information on the screen.  If designed while paying proper attention to the key elements, dark theme UI is undoubtedly the best option to keep users glued to your app.