Task runners are the heroes (or villains, depending on your point of view) that quietly toil behind most web and mobile applications. Task runners provide value through the automation of numerous development tasks such as concatenating files, spinning up development servers and compiling code. In this article, we'll cover Grunt, Gulp, Webpack and npm scripts. We'll also provide some examples of each one to get you started. Near the end, I'll throw out some easy wins and tips for integrating ideas from this post into your application.The post How To Harness The Machines: Being Productive With Task Runners appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Today, we will try to help you identify your weaknesses as a designer. The goal is to help you figure out areas of concern, as well as those that you might want to ignore. The post Identifying and Improving Your Weaknesses as a Web Designer appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Stefan Koopmanschap: To Exception or not to Exception SitePoint PHP Blog: Getting to Know and Love Xdebug Nikita Popov: PHP 7 Virtual Machine Zend Framework Blog: Manage your application with zend-config-aggregator NetTuts.com: How to Create a Laravel Helper QaFoo Blog: How You Can Successfully Ship New Code in a Legacy Codebase SitePoint PHP Blog: Building a Social Network with Laravel and Stream? Easy! Laravel News: Learn How to Send an Email on Error Exceptions Zend Framework Blog: Caching middleware with Expressive PHPUgly Podcast: Episode 56 - Johnny Apple Seed(er) Fabien Potencier: Symfony 4: Contributing Recipes Laravel News: An Introduction to Laravel Authorization Gates Sound of Symfony Podcast: Episode 17 - Symfony 4 TutsPlus.com: Building Your Startup With PHP: Bootstrap Your Home Page Adam Culp: Easy Docker dev environments for PHP with CloudEstuary Laravel News: Manage your Laravel Forge Sites and Servers through Alfred

Introduction For me, even after having pushed the deploy button many times, deploying to production keeps being dreadful. Accidentally pushing an unwanted feature that sneaked in somehow is one of the many things I am afraid of. In this blog post I show you how we reduced our deployment anxiety with a script using git log for listing all the features that go live after pushing that deploy-to-pro button. In this blog post I first introduce you to the way we work and provide you with the necessary information to… The post Know what you deploy – a script using git log for listing all features that go live appeared first on bol.com Techlab.

You already know that the SVG format can do much more than displaying vector-based shapes. Today, I want to show you how text effects can be created with SVG. Patterns, masks and clipping paths allow you to implement a plethora of creative ideas. You can realize unusual and unique text effects that can’t even be done with the help of the many features of CSS3 or that at least don’t work in every popular browser. Patterns as Text Background The ,,<pattern>" element allows you to create any pattern you want via SVG and set it as the background for shapes, and also for texts. This can be repeating lines, circles or squares. Defining two squares with the length of one pixel each is enough to create a two by two-pixel chess board pattern. Even a simple line can become an interesting pattern for texts. &lt;defs&gt; &lt;pattern id="muster" x="0" y="0" width="5" height="5" patternUnits="userSpaceOnUse"&gt; &lt;line x1="0" y1="0" x2="5" y2="5" stroke="#a62121" /&gt; &lt;/pattern&gt; &lt;/defs&gt; ,,<pattern>" elements, as well as other elements, that are not directly displayed, but are referenced, should be placed withing the ,,<defs>" container. An ID has to be assigned to the pattern for it to fill an element. Afterwards, this […]* You might also be interested in the following articlesSVG: How to Work With Text and FontTextures.js: SVG Textures in All Shapes and ColorsDrawSVG for jQuery – Animated SVG Enlivens Your WebsiteSurviving the Zombie Apocalypse with HTML5 and SVGCSS3: InDesign-Like Text Formatting with Exclusions and RegionsSVG Fallback in Older Browsers: Alternatives to JavaScript

Adopting and scaling a design system is challenging. You must get buy-in from the entire organization, which means evangelizing your design system to persuade stakeholders, product managers, development teams, and designers of its value. Building a design system is just the first step; scaling and reaching optimal design system maturity costs a lot of time The post How to Evangelize a Design System appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Learn how to build an interactive line graph using the D3 JavaScript library and CSS custom properties to create different color schemes. The post Building an Interactive Sparkline Graph with D3 appeared first on Codrops.

It has already become a tradition that each September we cling to the screen and enjoy Apple’s annual fall keynote. The event where the Goliath of the IT industry presents its new, skillfully upgraded and re-imagined gadgets. This year was no exception. Everyone was eager to see the flagship device in the iPhone series, aka iPhone7, which has been long talked about. The rumors around it were incredible; surprisingly, some of them turned out to be true, like the absence of the headphone jack that evoked mixed feelings; or the water-resistant body that was actually a long hoped-for improvement. While the enhancements mostly have touched on the functionality, capabilities and user experience, the design and cosmetic part almost stayed the same. Iphone7 shamelessly takes after its predecessors iPhone6 and iPhone6 Plus, so there were no surprises except for some minor changes in exterior and official color range (here we should say goodbye to Space Grey and welcome Jet Black). Last but not least, it comes with the latest release of the iOS operating system that brings some changes to system features. If you are into all that and look forward to dealing with the new product but still waiting for […]

Google is ditching Material Design components on iOS in favour of Apple's own UIKit. Material Design was introduced by Google in 2014 with the aim of unifying the company's products across platforms and form factors. It uses tactile surfaces, bold graphic design, and fluid motion to create beautiful, intuitive experiences for users. According to Jeff... Read more » The post Google is ditching Material Design components on iOS appeared first on Developer Tech News.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I came of age during the 90s. It’s also when my design career started. So sometimes I find it rejuvenating (and somewhat amusing) to... The post Nostaligic Code Snippets That Bring Back the 1990s appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.