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Top 12 Frontend Development Tools, Libraries and Frameworks to Use in 2022

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Frontend development tools have become high in demand in only a few years. Due to their progress, you can enhance your workflow and get advantages from better possibilities at the time of creating a responsive website design. These tools help developers work with various technologies. Moreover, they offer quicker mobile app development at lower expenses. Apart from that, you can create things together due to ever-growing version control systems. From browser plugins and add-ons to processors that organize your code, there have not been more opportunities to develop amazing web apps. However, with the increasing number of web development tools, choosing the right software to do your job can be difficult. Hence, to help you in this regard, I have built a list of the top front-end development tools, libraries and frameworks that you should use in 2022. Just choose the one you find the best one from the list given below! Top Frontend Development Tools, Libraries and Frameworks to Use in 2022 1. Chrome DevTools Google Chrome offers many web development tools that have the functionality of viewing and transforming the DOM and the style of a page. Using these tools, you can run and debug JavaScript in the Console, view messages, identify an issue fast, edit the pages immediately, apply styles to HTML elements, and optimize the speed of the website. You can use these tools with a single browser. Features Using Chrome DevTools, you can check network activity. These tools have different functionalities for security panels like identifying securing problems, and for memory panel, network panel, application panel, elements panel, console panel, sources panel, and the device mode. Using the functionalities of the performance panel, you can assess runtime performance, optimize speed, and identify forced synchronous layouts. 2. Angular Directly from prototype to deployment, Angular offers the productivity and scalable infrastructure that supports the most important Google apps. It covers native desktop, native mobile, web, and mobile. Angular gives you full control over scalability and uniqueness. You can fulfill huge data requirements by building data models on push-model, Immutable.JS, and RxJS. Create functionalities and features smoothly using explanatory and hassle-free templates. Maximize the template language using your own elements and a wide range of current factors. Every IDE and editor provides you immediate Angular-specific support and feedback. Moreover, Angular helps you concentrate on building the best applications instead of making the code applicable. Features Automatically handles JS code suitable for all browsers. Provides options to write client-side apps using JS with MVC. Helps develop rich web apps. It is free, open-source, and used by many developers globally. 3. WebStorm WebStorm offers smart coding support for JavaScript. It gives advanced coding support for Meteor, VueJS, ReactJS, and Angular. Moreover, WebStorm helps developers code more proficiently while working on a big project. Features Provides in-built debugger for Node.js applications and client-side code. Highly customizable to suit different coding styles perfectly. Offers a unified interface to work with several popular Version Control Systems. Spy.JS in-built tool helps trace JS code. Integrates with famous command-line tools for developing web. Helps developers code appropriately while working on a big project. 4. NPM (Node Package Manager) NPM is used with JavaScript. It helps decide reusable code’s packages and brings them together in new solid ways. This is a highly utilized front-end development tool. It is used as a command-line service to communicate with said storage that provides assistance to the package. NPM has a notable functionality to opt for. It has 17.3k stars on GitHub. Features Directs private and public code by means of the same workflow. Publishes and streamlines the availability of a namespace. Assures code finding and helps reuse within the groups and teams. Decides and reprocesses more than 470000 free code packages in the provided registry. 5. TypeScript TypeScript is an open-source front-end scripting language that makes the best web development ambiance for front-end developers. It’s a definite syntactical superset of JavaScript that adds optional static typing. It is particularly made for developing big apps and complies with JavaScript. Being a popular front-end development tool, TypeScript supports 31296 tools. Features Connects other JavaScript libraries. Supports definition files that can comprise category data of active JS libraries incorporating C/C++ header files. Can be accomplished to use TypeScript on many environments supported by JavaScript. It is portable across different devices, browsers, and operating systems. 6.SASS SASS is popular as one of the most effective ways of maximizing CSS. It is known as a pre-processor for CSS. Its main team has been assisting it for the last 13 years and it is completely compatible with every version of CSS. SASS has been recognized by both industry and community support to a great extent that several frameworks have been developed using SASS. A few of them include Susy, Bourbon, and Compass. Features It has a big community. SASS is compatible with CSS. It has features of Arguments, Loops, Variables, Nesting, etc. Supports many inheritances. You can streamline large Stylesheets using SASS. 7. Meteor Without changing outlook among PHP, Python, Java, or Ruby, front-end developers can work on the backend freely using Meteor. It features the list of best JS frameworks. It is made up of different packages and a set of libraries that formulate it as one of the most useful front-end development tools. Meteor has been developed on ideas from other successful libraries and frameworks to make it easy to create various prototype apps and a robust front-end web design. Moreover, Meteor has a better ranking among all front-end development tools alongside 42.3k stars on GitHub. If you are a business owner who prefers creating everything from the beginning, you can put up every Meteor dependency that incorporates NPM, Node.js, and MongoDB with the provided script. Features Comes with many in-built features that hold Node.JS server and frontend libraries. Helps build apps efficiently and quickly. Allows MiniMongo and MongoDB that are coded in JavaScript. Accelerates development time significantly on every project. Live reloading feature consent to refreshing just the required DOM components.

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Google Releases Flutter 2 with Support for Different Platforms

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Google has finally released its Flutter version 2.0 on March 3 at an event named Flutter Engage. It’s an open-source UI development kit that helps app developers develop cross-platform apps using a similar codebase. With this upgrade, Google not just maximized the features of Flutter but also designed the new version in a way so it can make a move beyond mobile to support apps wherever they belong to – the desktop, web, and growing form factors like foldables. Using Flutter 2, you can utilize a similar codebase for shipping native applications to 5 Operating Systems: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux. Moreover, it gives web experiences targeting browsers like Edge, Safari, Firefox, or Chrome. You can embed Flutter in TVs, cars, and smart home apparatus, which gives the most portable and pervasive experience for an encompassing computing world. What’s New in Flutter 2? There are many exciting things causing as part of the release of Flutter 2. To see what is new in Flutter 2 and how it targets developers across all platforms, keep reading! Flutter’s Web Support Flutter’s production quality web support is the largest declaration in Flutter 2. Previously the web’s foundation was document-centric. But the web platform has developed to circulate richer platform APIs that allow extremely sophisticated applications using hardware-accelerated 3D and 2D graphics, paint APIs, and flexible layout. Flutter’s support for the web establishes these innovations, providing an app-focused framework that reaps the full benefits of everything that the modern web should provide. Initially, this release concentrates on 3 app scenarios: Single Page Apps (SPAs) Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) Bringing current Flutter mobile apps to the web Google mainly focused on enhancements and performance to their rendering fidelity. They added a new CanvasKit based rendered made with WebAssembly. Moreover, they added web-specific features like control over address bar URLs, text autofill, PWA manifests and routing. Also, they included a Link Widget to ensure a mobile app running in the browser feels like a web app. Flutter’s Desktop Support Google can try Flutter’s desktop support as a deployment target for all Flutter apps. There have been many enhancements to bring Flutter desktop to great quality, making sure that text editing operates like a native experience on every supported platform, incorporating foundational features like text selection pivot points. Google has also added a built-in context menu to the TextFormField and TextField widgets for Cupertino and Material design languages. Moreover, grab handles have been added to the ReorderableListView widget. This widget has always been excellent at moving things around with the small efforts of a developer. An updated scrollbar is another enhancement for platform-idiomatic functionality that precisely displays for the desktop form-factor. The updated scrollbar widget offers many engaging features that you can expect on the desktop, incorporating the capacity to click on the track to page up and down and drag the thumb and display a track when a mouse flutters over the scrollbar. For extra desktop-specific functionality, Flutter 2 release also allows command-line argument managing for Flutter applications so easy things like a double-click on a data file in the Windows File Explorer can be utilized for opening the file in your app. Moreover, Google has updated docs on what developers require doing for preparing their desktop apps for deployment to the precise OS-specific stores. In case you want to stay on the stable channel for availing of the desktop beta, you will not get new bug fixes or features as fast as moving to the dev channels or beta. Hence, to actively target Linux, macOS, or Windows, you are suggested to move to a channel that offers updates faster. Flutter’s Extended Portability Flutter is extending increasingly to other types of devices, beyond the web and conventional mobile devices. Google highlighted 3 team-ups that showcase Flutter’s maximized portability. Firstly, Canonical is teaming up with Google for bringing Flutter to desktop, with developers providing code for supporting deployment and development on Linux. Canonical wants to offer sturdy yet beautiful experiences on various hardware configurations. And Flutter is their primary option for upcoming mobile and desktop apps. Secondly, Microsoft will increase its support for Flutter. Alongside the current collaboration for providing premium quality Windows support in Flutter, Microsoft will introduce contributions to the Flutter engine that gives support to the growing class of foldable Android devices. These devices launch new design patterns, with applications that can either take benefits of dual-screen nature for offering side-by-side experiences or increase content. Finally, the world’s best-selling vehicle manufacturers, Toyota, declared its strategies for bringing the best-in-class digital experiences to cars, by creating infotainment systems enabled by Flutter. Toyota selected Flutter due to its consistency of experience and high performance, developer ergonomics and quick iteration, and smartphone-tier touch systems. With Flutter’s embedded API, Toyota can customize Flutter for the robust requirements of an in-vehicle framework. Flutter Fix Flutter fix combines several things. There is an exclusive command-line option to the Dart CLI tool named Dart Fix that knows where to seek a list of deprecated APIs and how it is possible to upgrade code with those APIs. Then it’s the list of accessible fixes, which is packed with the Flutter SDK as of version 2. And ultimately, it’s an updated set of Flutter extensions for IntelliJ, the VS Code, and Android Studio IDEs that can showcase a similar list of accessible solutions as fast fixes with little light bulbs that can help developers change their codes using their mouse. Flutter Folio Since now Flutter supports 3 platforms (iOS, Android, and the web) for production applications and 3 more in beta (Linux, macOS, and Windows), how is it possible to write an app that changes itself to several form factors (large, small and medium screens), various idioms (desktop, web, and mobile), and various input modes (mouse, keyboard, and touch)? Google commissioned the Flutter Folio scrapbooking app for answering this question. Folio is an easy example of an application that will run properly on different platforms from just one codebase. This app

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Mobile App Design Fundamentals – The Difference Between UI and UX

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Facebook. Uber. Amazon. What is the one thing all of these apps have in common? They are designed to near perfection! Many think the popularity of mainstream apps illustrates that all apps with a revolutionary proposition are bound to be successful. However, did you know that in 2019 alone, 25 percent of apps were only used once after being installed! One of the biggest reasons for this is the inability of apps to offer seamless UI and an integrated UX. Before Facebook ruled the world, MySpace failed miserably due to its poor UI. And while offering a similar solution as Yelp, Four Square didn’t make it big. Getting the app design fundamentals right is no longer a differentiating factor. Instead, the inability to deliver it can result in customer churns. As per UX Cam, 91 percent of people who are unsatisfied with a given experience end up abandoning the solution. But, to get the elements right, you must first clearly understand them. For instance, UI and UX are often confused with one another by businesses and developers alike. Understanding the Difference – UI Vs. UX A lot of newbie designers misunderstand the terms UI and UX to mean the same thing. The first step to creating a winning app is to understand the difference between the two and then ensuring that both are up to mark. User Experience (UX) At the crux of every product in the world is its ability to satisfy its users. Regardless of how great you think your solution is, if your end consumers are dissatisfied with it, it will all go down the drain. This is the main philosophy behind user experience. UX, or user experience, refers to the process of improving user satisfaction with a product, and in this case, your app. This is achieved by boosting the accessibility, usability, and performance of the app. Overall, users must feel pleased when interacting with your solution. Coined by Don Norman, UX describes the significance of having a user-centered design. Each app design decision must be made after considering the wants, expectations, and needs of the users. Note that here the medium is not limited to the digital solution. While many tend to think that UX is only limited to the users’ interaction with the app, this is not the case. Instead, UX encompasses perceptions of consumers prior to, during, and after their use of the app. This includes crafting the most compelling overview of the app, the download process, the actual usage of the app, and the post-usage interaction with the business. For example, in the case of an Ecommerce app, the user experience will involve the branding efforts of the business, the ease of downloading it from the app store, the reviews users read, the push notifications or emails the brands send on behalf of the app, etc. User Interface (UI) User Interface revolves around the usability of an app. A solution with a great UI will be one that is highly user-friendly and features an efficient interface. Another common misconception about the user interface is that it only about the development of navigation menus and buttons. However, in reality, it is much more complex than this. UI includes all interactions that occur between the app and the user. It doesn’t just encompass the look of the app but its functionality as well. Continuing the above example, when making decisions about where to place the cart option in an Ecommerce app, developers must consider what position would be optimum for their users. They must decide which color scheme to use to help consumers in detecting the presence of the cart. Additionally, the app developer must ensure that the overall flow of the app makes sense. The consumer journey must be mapped out, and an interface has to be made that simplifies this journey. The Main Difference Between UI and UX While UI consists of technical elements that allow users to interact with the app, UX revolves around the overall perception the user takes away about the experience with the app. Let’s take Google as an example. The user interface of the platform is highly simplistic. It is designed to ensure that users are able to get information quickly. However, if the search engine features a high load time, thereby hampering customers’ ability to seek information, the experience (UX) offered would be compromised. Apart from the basic difference, here are ways that UI and UX differ from one another. UI focuses on the app performance while UX focuses on the entire user journey. User Interface (UI) determines how the app will look like, while UX determines what problem it will solve in the users’ life. UI revolves around visually directing the user about the app interface, while UX includes researching, testing, developing, and prototyping the app. UI, unlike UX, is limited to the screen. UX transcends beyond it and includes all interactions and touchpoints with a user. The Overlap The reason UX and UI are often thought to be synonymous with one another is that quality apps must include both. And without proper UI, UX is automatically compromised. Why? This is because when interacting with the app, users require the platform to be user-friendly and efficient to call the experience smooth and convenient. Therefore, usability plays a crucial role in attaining optimum UX. What Makes a Great UX? Creating an app with an impeccable UX requires having the right mindset. To provide a quality user experience, you must aim to benefit your users from the get-go. The best way to have a great UX is via the design thinking methodology. Here, app developers must first research their target audience to identify their behavior, unmet needs, and wants. This helps in creating a solution that is truly needed by consumers. A value-based product idea is at the heart of creating a flawless user experience. You must then understand the business model of the app and see how it fits into the broader context of users’

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How We Perform QA Testing at MindInventory

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Testing a software application and maintaining international testing standards in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process and assuring the quality of the product to the customer is one of the challenging jobs in the IT industry. Are you really excited to know about the software testing and quality assurance (QA) process at MindInventory? In this blog, we’ll show you how the quality assurance activities are been carry forwarded in order to achieve customer satisfaction by maintaining industrial standards during web and mobile app development. Why We Need to Instill the Testing After the Development Process of Any Product? In real-world scenarios, the development process has got boom by growing rapidly where everyone focuses much on the development process. When the software is been developed by the developer, they could not able to test the application with respect to the real-world scenarios. For example, a chef who cooks a dish will never find any difficulties or issues in his own dish, someone has to taste it and tell how the dish is, and no one dares to tell and accept that there are some issues within the task or work they have done. In the same way when the software has been developed then it has to undergo a certain testing process where the developed software will be validated against the business/customer requirements. What QA Brings for Clients? The below are the some of the benefits that Quality Analyst (QA) will bring for your products: 1. QA Saves You Money If your product is having a fault then that product will cost you and your customers. If the bug is undetected in your software for a long period of time then it will be more difficult to manage and too expensive to fix it. By hiring QA, You can improve the quality throughout the development process of your product and you will save time and money. 2. QA Inspires Confidence for your Application In this competitive world, the main thing that we need to be strong enough is that how confident we are with our product before releasing it into the market. Always with corporate software, the stakes will be higher. This is colossally important for delivering quality in software and maintaining long-term relationships. So, Here QA builds confidence for your application. 3. QA Maintains Great User Experience Nowadays, the software that is being developed should be right from the User Experience (UX) point of view. As the user interface either make your business or break your business. If the user experience of any software is not good then literally users will not be showing interest and get frustrated in using your software application. So, Here QA tests the software with an end-user experience. 4. QA Boosts Customer Satisfaction If the developed product is bug-free and working fine as expected in such a way that the user really enjoys then the fame and reputation of your product will be high and customers will be satisfied and more users can be attracted. This makes good money as well. We need to give them the best satisfaction in such a way that they’ll be rewarding us with loyalty. 5. QA Promotes Organization, Productivity Instead of waiting for the whole product to be developed, organizing the QA activities at the initial stage of software development will bring you more productivity for your software, which can be achieved within your target time. Only bug-free software can bring good promotion to your products and good productivity of your projects. How the Software Testing is Processed at MindInventory? Here, In MindInventory we follow the international standard software testing process in sequential manner as mentioned below: 1. Requirement Analysis The initial phase of every software development life cycle is that the Business Analyst will interact with the client to confirm and finalize the project requirements. Then, later on the specification document will be prepared which includes detailed information about the tools, technologies, strategies that have to be exercised for the software development and this document will be transparent in order to perceive the project flow among the team. Then later on the Quality Assurance (QA) lead and senior software test engineers will determine the business logic-related challenges that might emerge which benefit the workflow of the development and testing process. We strictly followed Google’s, Apple’s developer guidelines and instructions, wireframe guidelines, user interface guidelines while developing an Application. 2. Test Planning In this phase, the Quality Assurance (QA) lead and senior software test engineers will prepare the test plan document which includes: To determine the Scope and Objective of testing. List of features to be tested. List of features not to be tested. Type of approach to be followed while testing the software either manual or automation. The number of resource allocation for testing. Type of training if any the resources should undergo. Risks that might be involved during the testing process. A schedule of tasks and milestones to be achieved. Determine test deliverables. 3. Test Case Development In this phase, the QA team will start designing the test cases (How to test) for the selected test scenarios (What to test) of the real-world scenarios for the application. Test cases will enable the software test engineers to perform a sequence of steps to be followed to ensure that a software product is bug-free and the functionality of the software is working as expected from the end-user point of view. 4. Test Environment Setup It is a test bed where the software and hardware environment come into picture on which the test cases will be executed by the testing team. This test includes hardware and software configuration, operating system settings, test terminals, and other supported tools (which may vary depending upon projects). The test environment consists of real-world business and end-user environments. As this is the most crucial aspect of the testing process, we’ll make sure that the product works fine and meet the needs of end-users on all environments which have been set up. 5. Test

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The Detailed Guide on How to Develop an App like TikTok

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TikTok has become an unmatched and major revolution in the world of entertainment. This engaging multi-faceted mobile application is present on both iOS and Android. It has not just dominated the world of the billions of users globally but also thousands of businesses that are enhancing their presence in the platform for reaping lots of benefits that the application has to provide. This article will help you develop an immersive short video-creation app like TikTok. We will check out the monetary and technical side of the application and ultimately, the cost it takes to build an app like TikTok. Before going on with the article and looking at the technical aspects of the app and its costing element, let us first look at what this app is about, how it works, and how it managed to become one of the most popular applications worldwide. What is TikTok App? It’s a short video making and sharing application that enables users to shoot and share a 3-15 seconds video with its robust effects and filters. You can give a message, fun, comedy, dance, or everything else with these short videos. In short, it’s a complete entertainment application. It’s all about showcasing your talent to the people worldwide. TikTok is the international version of Douyin, the Chinese hit platform. It took very little time in entering and dominating the mobile entertainment industry. It enables users to re-enact their preferred scenes and lip-sync dialogs from various music videos and films. TikTok has become a handy entertainment platform for nearly every pre-teen and teen on the globe. TikTok has AI that enables its every single move and wins over a range of popular businesses globally with its revenue and engagement numbers. Let’s have a look at the key stats that prove how popular and massive the TikTok market is and how you can develop a app like TikTok. How TikTok Works? TikTok is a video making and sharing platform that helps users make and share videos on the web. It allows users to upload short videos and film content. On top of this, users can edit their videos as the app offers several filters, editing effects, and so forth. Furthermore, TikTok is an ideal platform to showcase talents and share knowledge with a broad audience. You can change a video into a live wallpaper using TikTok. Also, you can save your videos in the settings. After downloading the app, users can start using it without logging in. Countless videos will welcome you. You can register yourself for following people and watching their videos. Since the app is used a lot, it has included a remainder after 90 minutes of watching constantly. TikTok will give you notification that you have been watching videos for ninety minutes for offering you a timely reminder. The app knows that it will make you lost in it and you will watch continuously its alluring content for many more hours. Key Statistical Facts about TikTok Users spend almost 52 minutes daily on TikTok. TikTok’s has about 100 million US users actively using this app. 1 billion+ videos are watched daily on TikTok. Worldwide TikTok revenue reached $75 million in the first half of 2019. In-app purchases are the main revenues and these bring $3.5 million every month. By now, it is the most downloaded app of 2020. Almost 40 TikTok stars have over 10 million followers. This showcases how much the app community is developing. Now, let’s have a closer look at how this video-creation works and why it has become so famous! Major Features to Include When Developing an App like TikTok What makes TikTok so popular and exclusive? Here are some essential features that help you make an application like TikTok: 1. Creating Profiles Users should register and make profiles for using TikTok. The app allows the user to sign in using other social platforms. 2. Creating & Uploading Videos Creating and uploading videos are the basic features of this app. Videos are the most alluring content as users can watch, hear, and feel the content living that experience. And this is what TikTok used appropriately. It not just allows users to make videos but also be the stars. 3. Editing Videos TikTok also allows users to edit their videos easily. So, you don’t have to download other video editing apps and do the editing. The editing is easy so that you can make your video appear as if it was shot by an expert in only a few minutes. In just half an hour, you can have the ultimate product with you. 4. Effects and Filters Normal videos always look dull. Hence, TikTok enables users to use some excellent effects like reverse, slo-mo, zoom, and others for making a video with special effects. 5. AR Filters You can add this feature to your TikTok-like video app also. Add an object in a video and you can add characters, change the video background, and even interact with all characters. Moreover, you can use AR filters for shooting ad videos. This will help in creating brand awareness. 6. Adding Soundtracks The use of this feature helps you showcase your dancing and acting talent worldwide. You can use the theme song of a film or add some great background music to the videos. 7. Social Shares and Likes This feature makes TikTok a popular social channel. Every artist seeks love and encouragement and this feature does the same. Users can use the heart button for liking a video and the sharing button for sharing videos with others. 8. Making Slideshows TikTok is not just about making videos but also you can use your images for creating a great slideshow. Moreover, you can use different effects, filters, and background music. 9. Duet Videos Video creators can be connected with the help of this feature. TikTok helps you create a video with somebody who lives far away. You can use the duet feature for sharing half the screen with your partner, so

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Common UX Button Types and Best Design Practices to Follow in 2022

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While people don’t notice them if they are executed inappropriately, buttons are an important element that creates a productive and positive user experience. UX buttons are usually styled links to attract users and drive them in a specific direction. Through buttons, we can link to other pages or finish tasks like a form submission or buying online. Sometimes we use them as CTA (Calls to Actions) when we need our users to finish their actions on our website. If you are thinking about enhancing your button design for making it simpler for your users to click through, take a look at this guide to learn the most common types of UX buttons and best practices of button design. This will help you keep your user journey seamless and hassle-free on your website. What is a Button? Being an engaging and interactive element, a button allows getting the interactive feedback that is expected from the system following a specific command. It’s a control that enables users to communicate directly with a digital product and sends important commands for accomplishing a specific objective. Modern UX buttons are popular due to their effective imitated interaction with the physical objects and user-friendliness. These buttons have different functions to meet different purposes. They present an interactive zone that is generally marked out for having a specific geometric shape and visibility. Designers must utilize significant time and effort for designing noticeable and effective buttons. Common Types of UX Buttons Buttons enable users to make choices and take action, with just one click. Users can take the actions communicated by buttons. Usually, they are placed throughout the website UI and buttons must be recognizable and easily findable while signifying clearly the action they enable a user to finish. Here are the major and common types of UX buttons: 1. Dropdown Button When you click the dropdown button, it shows a drop-down list of unique products. Sometimes, you can see the same type in the settings button. If a user selects an option in the list, it is generally labeled as active, for instance by color. 2. Text Button These buttons are text labels that happen outside of a text block. The text must explain the action that will happen in case a user taps or clicks a button. These buttons comprise a low level of stress and users use them for less crucial actions. Since text buttons have no container, they cannot distract from adjacent content. 3. Hamburger Button This button hides the hamburger menu. So, if you click on it, the menu extends. It’s an extensively used engaging element of mobile and web layouts these days. Moreover, hamburger menus free the space creating the UI more airy and minimalist. It saves lots of space for other essential layout elements. There are arguments against the hamburger menu depending on the fact that it can make people confused if they don’t use websites frequently. So, it may impact badly on navigation and can result in poor user experience. Hence, do proper user research before applying the hamburger button. 4. Toggle Button Toggle buttons enable users to change the settings between 2 or more states. These buttons can be utilized as the On/Off button. Moreover, you can use them to group associated options. But make sure to arrange your layout in a way to convey that specific toggle buttons are part of a group. There must be at least 3 toggle buttons in a group. Moreover, toggle buttons need label buttons with icons, text, or both. Icons are required for toggle buttons that enable one option to be chosen or not chosen, like adding or removing a star to a product. Icons are usually found in toolbars, app bars, toggles, or action buttons. 5. Floating Action Button This button is a part of Google Material Design. This is a circular material button that showcases and lifts an ink reaction if you press it. You can use this button for a promoted action. A circled icon floating above the user interface makes this button remarkable. This button has motion behaviors incorporating a transferring anchor point, launching, and morphing. 6. CTA Button A CTA (Call to Action) button is another engaging element of UI the main objective of which is to encourage users for taking a particular action. And this specific action presents a conversation for a certain screen or page. In short, it converts a passive user into an active one. Thereby, technically this button can be any type that is supported using a call-to-action text. Its interactive nature is its prime difference from all other buttons on the screen or page. It grabs attention and encourages users for taking the necessitous action. 7. Ghost Button Ghost buttons, also known as outlined buttons are a boost in the emphasis and complexity from the text button in button design. Basically, they signify important actions, which are not the main action on a page. These buttons precisely must be an outline without fill the surrounding text that signifies an action. 8. Raised Button Contained or Raised buttons are basically rectangular shaped and they lift from the screen surface by using a drop shadow. This shadow signifies that you can press, or click the button. These buttons mostly add a dimension to flat layouts and they mainly feature functionality on wide, busy, or crowded spaces. 9. Share Button With the immense popularity of social platforms, emailing and chatting, share buttons ease the process of connecting a website or app content to the social profiles of users. This kind of button allows users to share their content or accomplishment straight on social hubs. These buttons are presented with icons for making the connection clear. These icons highlight a brand sign of specific social channels that is identifiable easily. In case the sharing is not the primary activity done by the user on a page, this is not anyway marked as a button (no color marking, extra shapes, underlining, etc.) – you only find

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Top Android App Development SDKs, Libraries, and Frameworks to Use in 2022

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Since Google showed us Android the very first time in 2007, it has been the biggest whale of the smartphone OS market. It has been growing leaps and bounds with a plethora of different devices, which comes in hardware ranging from budget Android phones to Flagship state of the art devices and not just phones but it has a presence on our watches and TVs too. At MindInventory, we always brainstorm on how we can make apps that meet all the expectations, take all the loads without giving a damn about anything, How can we make apps that do a lot without a single hiccup? Here are a set of best Android app development frameworks and libraries and when they make sense to use. Frameworks to Use for Android App Development There are a plethora of frameworks available for the Android platform, which includes many cross-platform frameworks like Flutter, React Native to ones like Ionic. Let’s talk about each one with its ups and downs, starting with the default one. Kotlin and Android SDK Kotlin is an excellent language to work with. It has first-class features like Extension functions, null safety, Coroutines and Lambda expressions. Developers love the reduced boiler plate code they have to write compared to Java and the optional semicolon(;) at the end of each line is a delight. If one has to deal with different types of devices like Google TV, Wear OS wearable devices then they might not have any choices and have to go with Native development kits only as almost none of the cross-platform SDKs give support for these devices. On the other end, you can only develop for a single platform while using Kotlin. In the best case, one can try using KMM for logic and API calling while it doesn’t provide anything for the cross-platform UI design which needs to be done using the native development kits only. Flutter Flutter has been introduced in 2017, which is fairly recent when compared to other cross-platform SDKs. But it’s not that way for Dart, the language Flutter uses. Dart is quite a mature programming language. It’s a modern typesafe programming language with features like Null safety, Extension methods and Higher Order functions which is handy and useful in tackling modern app development challenges. Flutter allows developers to make great UI experiences using its composable and declarative approach which simply works on Android, iOS and Web seamlessly with surprising performance in all the platforms. Flutter is poised to be available for Desktop too soon. Google ran a contest named Flutter Clock Challenge to make clock faces using Flutter. Choosing Flutter would be no brainer for apps, it can be even added to existing apps using Flutter add-to-app. Flutter is quite easy to get started but it can be challenging to tackle complexity for developers who have a functional programming mindset. On the other hand, Flutter does not support Wear OS and Apple Watch as of now. If you want to utilize your code in different form factors like TV and Wearables then Flutter doesn’t work on them just yet. Also, Flutter won’t get any latest functionality or UX update as soon as Google or Apple releases it as Flutter does not use the first party UI toolkits provided by Apple and Google instead it does render its own widgets. Rendering its own widgets helps Flutter to achieve the same level of accuracy and performance on different platforms although as mentioned above it won’t be first for the UI/UX updates released by the respective ecosystem owners. React Native After Android and iOS, React Native is the third largest platform on which developers have built apps. Undoubtedly, it is the leading cross-platform SDK for mobile apps. It is the preferred choice of a large community of JavaScript developers due to the use of JSX. Unlike Flutter, React Native uses real native platform specific components, which assures native appearance and performance. For which developers need to write code only once while getting support for both Android and iOS platforms. React Native is a tried and tested SDK with a number of well-known apps from Facebook. React developers do complain about long times for building binaries, at the same time you can not use the same code for web and other platforms. There is React.js for that on the other end UI made with Flutter simply runs on different platforms without much hiccups. Libraries for Android App Development Libraries play a major role in the development of any framework. It reduces the efforts to develop the things we use most often during the development. Thanks to authors and a large developer community, we have countless libraries available with us. It is being said that the number of libraries available for frameworks shows its popularity in the community. Let’s discuss the library that we are using here at MindInventory. At Google I/O 2018, Google has announced a collection of libraries for native Android app development. It helps us follow best practices, reduce boilerplate code, and write code that works consistently across Android versions and devices. Below is the chart of libraries we are using most often while developing an Android app. Dependency Injection Frameworks Dagger2/Hilt When it comes to dependency injection, Dagger2 is at the top of the queue. Recently the Android team has released the newer version of it as Hilt. Dagger is a static dependency injection framework that works on the basis of annotations. Koin Koin is developed in Kotlin. It takes less configuration compared to Dagger2. It supports lazy injection and ViewModels and it generates much less boilerplate code than Dagger 2. Network Retrofit It’s one of the best type safe HTTP-clients for Android and Java. It is very easy to implement a common choice of developer. It also supports popular serialization libraries so we can choose according to our requirements. Volley Volley is developed by Google. It supports the scheduling of network requests. If you are looking for a network client for all the

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Top IDEs and Tools for Golang Development

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Since its introduction in 2007, Golang, Google’s Go Programming Language has been encountering immense popularity among common users. It’s a new language, considering modern architectures, and made to be effective, competitive, and simple. Generally made for building low-level monoliths for Google, Golang has ultimately proved especially best suited to service-oriented architectures due to its easy deployment, productivity, and scalability. Voluntarily, it’s a minimalist language, which has just 25 keywords that will possibly not evolve. Every new function is included in the standard library, as new functionality and not added to the language itself. As an open-source, compiled programming language, Golang makes it simple for developers to create dependable, easy, and proficient software. Golang reduces the amount of code typing and writing unique APIs without compromising its performance. Made for concurrency and scalability, the Go helps in optimizations. In this blog, you will get a list of Golang tools and IDEs for your rapid choice. Explore them whenever you plan for working with Go! Top Golang IDEs Golang IDEs are becoming popular these days. In case you are involved in a large-scale project with a broad codebase, IDEs can help you streamline your code and navigate it easily. Moreover, IDEs help examine a code and edit them as per your preference. Here is the list of the best Golang IDEs to be used for Go development: 1. Visual Studio Code Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is an open-source, full-featured code editor and IDE that supports numerous types of programming languages. It boasts a robust completion with IntelliSense, call stacks, in-built Git integration, debugging with breakpoints, hierarchical file and folder explorer, and an interactive console. Being a famous IDE, it has a supportive Go developers’ community that contributes regularly. Visual Studio Code helps increase functionalities using different plugins. 2. LiteIDE This open-source, cross-platform, and simple Go IDE is available for Windows, MacOSX 10.6 or more, FreeBSD 9.2 or more, Linux, and OpenBSD 5.6 or more. LiteIDE offers many useful features, such as a code editor, configurable build commands, MIME-type management, system environment management, expandable Golang support, plug-in system, the support for file search, revert, and replace, and fast open files, commands, and symbols. 3. Goland A software development firm named Jetbrains launched this Golang IDE. Goland is a commercial yet sophisticated Golang IDE. It features amazing tool integration and coding support. Goland helps assess code creation, smart code completion, fast navigation, tabbed interface, and source code; highlight function exit points; display any kind of expression; inspections and rapid solutions; and refactoring. Being a commercial IDE, Goland provides developers with an ergonomic, unique environment. It boasts an extensive ecosystem as a reputed organization built it. This ecosystem offers extra tools when you require more. 4. Wide Wide is a web-based Golang IDE that is created for cooperative development. This IDE works great for web development teams and companies. Its extensive features incorporate debugging, code highlighting, Git integration, and so forth. Since a Chinese developer built and maintained this Golang IDE, its maximum assistance and documentation are in Chinese. 5. Vim Vim is an open-source IDE for Golang developers and programmers. It is configured and tailored with different plugins. To build a seamless environment for Go developers, it installs all necessitous binaries automatically. Its features incorporate source code assessment, rapid file executions, Go-to definition, multiple third-liner assistance, adding and deleting import paths, and more. 6. Eclipse with GoClipse Since Eclipse is a famous IDE, many plugins have been made for it. And GoClipse is one of the plugins for Eclipse, which provides Go source code editing along with automatic indentation, configurable syntax highlighting, and brace completion. Moreover, GoClipse works as a project builder and wizard that creates errors immediately and reports syntax. Other features of this plugin incorporate code support and debugging functionality. 7. Komodo Komodo is a full-featured Golang IDE supports other programming languages like Python, Node.js, Perl, Ruby, and so forth. Using Komodo, developers can write clean code with ease. Its features incorporate intelligent code completion, an advanced code editor, unit testing, version control, syntax checking, and a Golang Code Intelligence that enables code hinting and browsing. Komodo works well for team cooperation as several developers can edit a document at the same time. You need to use only one license to install this Go IDE on Windows, Mac, or Linux. 8. Sublime Text with GoSublime Sublime Text is another advanced text editor that has a large community of developers and contributors. An extensive array of plugins has already been made for this Golang IDE. GoSublime is a plugin for Sublime Text 3. It provides code completion from Go Code, syntax check when you are writing code, automatic removal and addition of package imports, and so forth. 9. IntelliJ IDEA These days, most developers use this popular and strong integrated development environment. A Golang support plugin should be installed for IntelliJ IDEA to assist Go language. This IDE uses a rapid indexing method that offers import suggestions for the IDE and contextual hints on auto-completion object members. Its basic features incorporate on-the-fly error identification and refactoring. As an ergonomic and competent IDE for JVM, each feature of this IDE is made to boost developers’ productivity and coding experience. 10. Atom with Go-plus Plugin Use Go-plus open-source package to enhance your code editing experience in Golang in case you are already employing Atom. Using the Go-plus package, you get real-time, immediate feedback on your syntax and create errors. The Go-plus package provides nearly all Golang assistance in Atom. Moreover, you can utilize it for tools, linters, building flows, coverage tools, and vets. Additionally, Go-plus incorporates different code snippets and features like auto-completion with Go Code, Go Returns, and code formatting with GoFMT, Go Imports, and more. Topmost Golang Development Tools Developers can use Golang development tools for many types of web apps and projects. With these useful Golang tools, they can write code and develop apps as fast and easily as possible. Here is a list of the best Golang development tools: 1.

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Top UX Design Challenges and Their Solutions

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The user experience is not just an essential attribute of a website but also the most important deciding factor for making a purchase. According to studies, with an enhanced customer experience, 33% of businesses encounter more satisfied consumers, 42% report increased retention, and 32% experienced an increase in revenue. Website designers are always effortlessly working on solving the puzzle of cracking the UX code. Although new tools, systems, and technology help boost their efforts, there are still many difficulties and UX design challenges that hinder a better user experience for consumers. Luckily, I have some solutions for these problems. Common UX Design Challenges and Their Solutions UX design brings several challenges for designers; however, there are solutions for every obstacle. Designers just need to recognize them as early as they come. Let’s have a look at some common UX design challenges and their solutions! 1. Reducing the Gap between Design and Development Both developers and designers play essential but different roles in a product building procedure. Design is of no use without development, while development is also useless without design. So, there must be collaboration between the two. Design to development exchange is one area that can be particularly difficult. A UX designer’s way of solving issues is not the same as the developers. While the designer thinks about the user’s journey, the developers try to find out what will be technically convenient for them. If developers and designers have no alignment, both the product and process can suffer. Knowledge gaps and lack of communication are the prime issues that result in extra feedback loops, unpredicted quality assurance problems, and various interpretations of similar targets. Solution The best solution is to communicate soon and often for abstaining from the discord between development and design. Engage developers ASAP, which will help them recognize every possible problem. Knowledge sharing is another solution. Take some time to understand how developers work and face challenges if you don’t want to learn to code. 2. Budget and Time Restrictions Budget and time are two main factors that impact not just design but the entire development cycle and these two are associated. If a designer is underpaid or offered little time, he/she will do poor work. Sadly, many clients don’t value the designers’ input as they think that creating a button or changing a gradient is easy enough and can be done in a few minutes only. Everything is connected in good design and even color layers also cater to different purposes. Hence, designers need more time and extra work or costs for introducing even a small change. When designers are forced to do something in hurry, they cannot properly focus on what clients need and thereby, deliver less creative input. Solution Business analysts and project managers can help in this regard. They can negotiate T&C (terms and conditions) for UX designers who then can freely give a good performance in a specific time. 3. Confused and Complex Chatbots Over the last few years, the utilization of chatbots has highly increased as they are very useful for improving conversions and solving client service problems. Although these virtual assistants have been helpful for several organizations by offering immediate assistance, they have not always been very user-friendly. Studies say that 73% of clients who have experienced a defective chatbot won’t use them further and 61% of customers found them more annoying to handle and would rather prefer a human executive. In case chatbots are not enough smart or sophisticated to fix client issues, they can cause annoyance, wrong answers, or conflicting messages – and all these can harm the user experience. Solution Chatbots should be focused on conversational UX, instead of only trying to fix a problem fast or providing a smart response. And this can be done by including smarter AI systems that employ machine learning to get emotional intelligence and interaction cues. This technology virtually helps chatbots learn the responses that are useful and relevant for different situations so they can enhance with every interaction. 4. Lack of Understanding about Your Role This is another challenge faced by a UX designer. Sometimes, UX’s multidisciplinary nature is underestimated. Many people think that UX design is all about making things look great. Simultaneously, you might find that the user experience’s business value is also neglected. If basic stakeholders are unaware of your role, it can become difficult. UI/UX design is a collective role, which needs buy-in from almost everybody in a business. You must meet with company representatives to know their vision and you may depend on the client service team for important user insights. And if your role and its importance are not clear, you cannot engage the right people. Solution UX designers need to establish expectations very soon. Begin every new project with a stakeholder launch, describing your role and its purpose. While moving through a project, give daily updates and scopes for your co-workers to ask questions. Moreover, control the eagerness of guarding your work. Invite others for understanding your role, whether through a lunchtime workshop or a casual chat at your desk. You can clear all misconceptions about what you do by encouraging an open-door culture. 5. Product Display In terms of online product selling, the main disadvantage is that you don’t actually know what you will get until it appears. With the availability of several online sales options, brands should always try to build confidence and communicate why customers must use their products. Only depending on product images and ratings from previous buys may not be sufficient, particularly since all retailers use these strategies these days. Solution Technology and slightly creativity can help in this matter. Online sellers are now using VR and AR tools for making 3D product models for a virtual primary buying experience that was tough before. Using this type of technology, consumers can see precisely how a product would look in real by just using their mobile phone. This type of product showcasing brings the best elements of

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Value Stream Management – a Sureshot Way to Improve the Software Delivery from Idea to Production

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The rapid creation of digital products using DevOps, DevSecOps, and Agile practices, as a rule, guarantees the best performance. However, the high speed of software development does not always lead to the desired results. The search for new ways to help achieve goals not only for individual teams but for the entire business led to the discovery of Value Stream Management – a method of managing the value stream that combines the culture, tools and methodologies of Agile, Lean, DevOps, and DevSecOps. Value Stream Management (VSM) solutions, when used for software development; perform the same function as, for example, a GPS navigator for drivers. They provide complete information about the process, including the point of departure, destination, and context (a general understanding of the situation), show the current location, give a forecast of arrival time, and also provide recommendations for optimizing the route. That is, they control and help to improve the software creation process from start to finish. VSM is designed to control the stream of creating value. From a business perspective, value is something that can be used by the consumer and bring profit to its creator. A value stream consists of steps that add value. Value stream and value stream map are not new concepts. They are borrowed from lean manufacturing (Lean) and are widely used in various types of production and project management, where they have proven their effectiveness. The production of a digital product is intangible and is a “black box” for business owners. A digital product moving along the development pipeline cannot be touched and reviewed until its final release. The list of the developer’s tasks looks like an ancient manuscript to an ordinary business owner. Without deep understanding and visualizing the entire end-to-end stream, it is hard not only to optimize the development process but also to manage it. VSM allows you to see the entire value stream, identify unnecessary activities and reduce costs. In other words, VSM allows you to implement the principles of lean manufacturing in the production of intangible products like software. VSM solutions help define and organize the value stream at the fastest possible speed along the shortest route by consolidating data from various DevSecOps tools and displaying it in a single form on a single dashboard. These solutions enable businesses to see: At what stage is the product development now? What is slowing down the release of a product? With what strategic goals of the company is this or that task consistent? What is the current interdependence between teams and projects? VSM solutions provide tremendous benefits for large teams building complex products. Solutions of this class are designed to optimize the development process and its relationship with the business’s strategic goals. VSM allows you to manage software projects so that each action adds value to the product; thus, you can make the most of all available resources – labor force, time, equipment. Let us take a look at what the Value Stream Management solution consists of. Planning Planning the development process with the help of VSM allows you to manage releases using Agile best practices across the entire enterprise: when many teams are involved and a huge number of projects, and when there are intricate interdependencies between projects and teams. If you go back to our example with a GPS navigator, you get a map of a large city with traffic lights, highways, and one-way streets. Orchestration The orchestration of development tools, when you track the status of each project, allows you to: Detect bottlenecks in the pipeline. Unify and standardize processes. Integrate security into the production cycle to avoid possible cyber attacks in the future. Integrate compliance. Automate the steps required to release applications, including manual production steps. Analytics Analytics helps to understand the infinity of events and reveal hidden trends in the production cycle. DevOps tools generate a large amount of data that is consolidated and visualized in the form of metrics, reports, etc. Advanced analytics provided by VSM uses machine learning algorithms to predict the arrival time (our GPS analogy) and make recommendations for route optimization. Software development is economically justified if the final product is valuable to the consumer who finds benefit in certain functionality. It is particularly important to be able to quickly prioritize new product features and therefore redirect investments if needed. As an Agile-based tool, the VSM solution allows you to: View data on how team members are distributed between business tasks and projects. Organize interaction between teams. Track dependencies. Continuously track progress and performance, both at the team and project levels, with metrics, reports, and analytics generated from DevOps tools and planning roadmaps. As a result of the adoption of a VSM solution, the company acquires the ability to identify weaknesses in the software development process, find reasons why deadlines are sometimes not met, and also receives metrics on how the value is delivered to customers. Value Stream Management is a useful navigator needed to improve the management of software development process that offers accurate data visualized in a simple and understandable way. Blog Source- https://www.mindinventory.com/blog/value-stream-management/

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