Category Archives: UI

7 Things Every UI Developer Should Have

7 Things Every UI Developer Should Have

To be a successful UI developer in today’s world there are a few things that every aspiring developer should probably take into consideration. From problem-solving skills to a efficiency in HTML and CSS, this article will explore the seven basic skills every UI developer either has or is working towards developing.

PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS

UI developers should have exceptional problem-solving skills. In the world of coding, programming and web design; UI developers see lots of things in the project that go wrong. It is important that UI developers hone their abilities to solve problems quickly and efficiently in order to solve any type of issue they may face. They should have analytical and logical thought process. When problems are bit more complex or require some work to solve, they should be able to comprehend requirements, analysis, understand and fix them in a short time duration. Solving problems can be amazing learning experiences and will make developers even better at whatever they do.

CODING AND APPLICATION DESIGN PROGRAMS

Every UI developer should have proficient or advanced knowledge in the following tools and technologies – HTML, Graphic design knowledge, CSS, javascript, Jquery, Adobe Photoshop, and CMS (like wordpress /Adobe CQ5). Again these are not all the programs a typical UI developer may know, but they would set you off to a great start. Aspiring UI developers who are not proficient in these programs should master these skills before thinking about moving forward. Typical UI duties on the job would require knowledge of these, as they are important for the overall look, feel, and behaviour of a product or a design.

COMMUNICATION

Communication skills may be just as important as problem-solving skills. It is very useful to avoid requirement mismatch or communication gap errors. If a UI developer is able to communicate through a wide range of mediums, orally, written, through animation, or through coding, whatever that medium may be its vital that aspiring UI developers know how to communicate effectively using it. As always communicating effectively is not just about being able to confidently express your ideas or issues about a certain product. It’s also about being completely receptive to criticism and feedback and using it as a tool of motivation to improve upon your skills and overall yourself.

RESEARCHING SKILLS

UI developers typically should have a solid set of researching skills in their back pockets. Researching and understanding users is something UI developers frequently do while working on a product or design. Creating an accessible application is not just the responsibility of developers. Rather, they need to keep an eye on new techniques, frame works, and tools to improve the application. They should be able to quickly experiment a new framework by creating a POC (Proof of concept) to see if such new framework/library fits their application. This helps UI developers focus on the key development issues to get the details of application improvement & scalability.

COLLABORATION

Collaboration skills are the next set that are crucially important for all those aspiring to be a great UI developer. At times UI designing can be incredibly challenging and is difficult, if they have no support. Collaborating with others, whether it be co-workers or other established UI designers at other companies, can be a significant help to UI developers to do the job better or faster than a lone worker. Collaborating with backend team or any other cross functional teams is turning out to be a key part of UI developer job duties. Improves project team morale, spirit and enthusiasm. Happy workers are more productive As developers collaborate, they get to know each other better, and they gain a better understanding of individual working style which saves time and energy. It also allows them to solve problems together, thus speeding the process of finishing a task.

HUMAN FACTOR & EYE FOR DESIGN.

This is a basic skill that every aspiring UI developer should have. There are many human factors that should be considered for the design of a successful user interface websites in terms of development factors, visibility factors and acceptance factors. Here is the list of things that must be taken into consideration: human abilities, clear conceptual model, navigation, page layout, typography, headings, links, text appearance, color and texture, images, animation, audio and video effects etc. By taking care of these characteristics, UI developers can effectively improve the performance of the website. Ease of information presentation by reducing number of clicks will effectively help increase the site productivity, while maintaining a consistent, appealing brand image.

PORTFOLIO

As a UI developer or designer, portfolio is an essential piece to show up actual samples of their work. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate a curated selection of their best pieces of work. If done right, UI-developers portfolio will give a huge advantage among rest of applicants. This allows employers and client’s know more about UI developers work ing standard and quality of their work. Overall, the portfolio should reflect UI developers professionalism and creativity to capture viewers attention.

These are the few findings that a UI developer should at least be aware of when programming user interfaces. Thus, creating a good User Interface is a preplanned, well-determined, usercentric and purposeful process which needs keen attention to place everything right. Many developers have seen tremendous benefit particularly in development time savings and reduced UI defects. This will help UI-developers to effectively set them off on the right path.

What is “use strict”;? what are the advantages and disadvantages to using it?

What is “use strict”;? what are the advantages and disadvantages to using it?

This statement indicates that the code should be executed in “strict mode”. It is only declared at the beginning of a function/script.Strict mode will help save developers from errors they didn’t even know that existed in their code.

Advantages:
i) It will catch common coding errors, which will throw exceptions.
ii) When vulnerable actions are performed, it throws errors.
iii) It will show,let us know and disable the features that are poorly coded.

Disadvantages:
i) It will not allow us to use the “with” statement. This statement will causes security and performance problems.

ii) It will not allow us to use the “arguments.caller” property, due to security concernsWe do not have an alternate to this property, but we can hard code an additional parameter.

How do you serve a page with content in multiple languages?

How do you serve a page with content in multiple languages?

To serve a page with content in multiple languages, there are four steps:

1.You must have translated/localized pages on the server for each language you intend to support.
2.Your server must recognize the browser’s language request.
3.You must carefully name the files for the localized pages, so the server has a systematic way of locating them.
4.You need a method for serving a generic page when you don’t have the requested language.

The browser writes a value for the Accept-Language request header field that it sends to the web server. You can set this value in Preferences (Mozilla) or Internet Options (Internet Explorer). If you choose multiple languages, they are sent to the server as a comma-delimited list in your preferred order.

Deciding which page to serve is called content negotiation. Tim Berners-Lee’s discussion of generic web pages and their language variants describes two different naming conventions, index.fr.html and index.html.fr. The Apache Web Server 2.0 compiles in content negotiation (the mod_negotiation module) by default. It postpends the two-letter language code to the URL and looks for files to serve. For example, if you set your browser preferred language to French and browse to http://www.openinternetlexicon.com, an Apache server would look for the file www.openinternetlexicon.com/index.html.fr.

Web servers do not normally handle multi-lingual requests automatically. The web server must have multiple language versions of a web page in order to serve them. It needs to know how the language-variant web pages are named. Besides naming them with a URI (index.fr.html), it may be possible to transmit the language variance as metadata in the HTTP header. This is the direction of the WebDAV protocol being developed by the IETF.

Full Stack Development is a Myth

Why full stack developer is a myth?

Full stack developer is one who specializes in everything from front-end to back-end; to a developer who has a general knowledge in all steps from concept to finished product; with a virtually unattainable skill set. Up until few years ago, full stack developers were enough to tackle the whole project from start to finish as there weren’t much emphasis on UI (Web & Mobile). But with new technologies emerging, pushing the limits of virtually all areas of software technologies from full stack developers is a myth.

Reasons why Fullstack is myth:

  • With enhanced browser features, today many sr. Management architects have been pushing developers to shift to client side solution to build rich web apps.
  • And also backend is wrapped in the form of SOA architecture using Rest services.
  • More and more single page apps are coming into existence.
  • High volume websites are looking towards node.js to handle their backend processes.

Handling these entire technology stacks has become virtually impossible to find a skilled person with every facet of project development. If you are not using one, you are either not building a cutting edge technology application or you are just missing out on something. Each facet of new emerging technology was so complex that a specialist was often required, sometimes one for different tiers (e.g. front-ends, databases, application servers, etc.)

Full stack developers what they lack:

Full Stack Development

Many Sr.Managers have the opinion that Full stack developer’s work toward a singular goal to either design or develop a site. They found to be always scary smart, and scary employable. Few companies in Los Angeles and other Bay area’s also found that not all full stack developers are aspiring programmers, some simply looking to add a skill. There are also the entrepreneurs who noticed them to broaden their experience to different contexts rather than deepening their experience in the same context learning more fundamental and transferable skills. At times, 60% time was spent to try out their best to make that project happen.

The Full-Stack Market:

The challenge most companies face is committing themselves to the desired outcome they like to have. As soon the project begins, obstacles and hurdles come up, many start-ups companies look for full stack developers and unfortunately they are ending up the project with less productivity. It might be a great way to cut costs, especially in the beginning stages of a business, but does not work at a corporate level. Hiring the right people for your start-up is essential, but conducting the process efficiently is just as important. Very large and profitable companies gather experts from each field in their teams with a view to create the best-ever-possible web products of the world.

UI developers focus on various design constraints such as different browsers, resolutions, and different interaction methods. They put together the principles of design to create rich and intuitive site. Whereas backend developers focus on running a site effectively , working with languages specific to the web like Java, PHP, ASP, Ruby, Python, etc. They concentrate much on programming concepts and concerns, like security and structure. All of differences are two very different jobs and roles. They have different viewpoints, which aren’t suited to critical projects. But rather can perform at reasonable level at all necessary layers to make the project development happen.