2016 brings us new conferences, new topics and most of your favorite conferences from past years. Virtual reality has become a hot topic, with the release of two major VR headsets earlier this year, so look for conferences featuring talks on the subject. The list is quite lengthy, so let's dive in. Well, before we do, as you may or may not know, we also run a few practical conferences every year. Coming up next: SmashingConf New York on June 14th to 15th, SmashingConf Freiburg on September 12th to 13th and SmashingConf Barcelona on October 25th to 26th. Just sayin'!The post Upcoming Web Design Conferences (June-December 2016) appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Nowadays, a lot of businesses are using individual landing pages to sell products via the internet. This one page displays everything about the product and is supposed to turn visitors into paying customers. To make this possible, a sales page has to be well structured and thought out. In this article, we’ll guide you through the essentials of a successful landing page. Today, the question is not whether a product needs a landing page, but rather how it needs to be structured to make the product sell well. The Structure of a Successful Landing Page Build your landing page along the lines of the following tips, and you will be bound to raise your revenue easily. 1 – The Logo The logo makes for recognition value and unites everything the business stands for. It should set itself apart from the competition, as the customer will think of the logo as the sender of the offer. A good logo should also be able to build trust, which is why it is one of the most essential elements of a well-done landing page. 2 – Headline and Subline These two elements will quickly show the visitor whether they are on the right […]

Are you a designer, artist or illustrator looking for the the best notebook available on the market? Look no further.

If you're excited about Hot Reload like me AND you also want an "A" grade from SecurityHeaders.com (really, go try this now) then you will learn very quickly about Content-Security-Policy headers. You need to spend some time reading and you may end up with a somewhat sophisticated list of allowed things, scripts, stylesheets, etc. In DasBlog Core (the cross platform blog engine that runs this blog) Mark Downie makes these configurable and uses the NWebSpec ASP.NET Middleware library to add the needed headers.if (SecurityStyleSources != null && SecurityScriptSources != null && DefaultSources != null){ app.UseCsp(options => options .DefaultSources(s => s.Self() .CustomSources(DefaultSources) ) .StyleSources(s => s.Self() .CustomSources(SecurityStyleSources) .UnsafeInline() ) .ScriptSources(s => s.Self() .CustomSources(SecurityScriptSources) .UnsafeInline() .UnsafeEval() ) );} Each of those variables comes out of a config file. Yes, it would be more security if they came out of a vault or were even hard coded. DasBlog is a pretty large and cool app and we noticed immediately upon Mark upgrading it to .NET 6 that we were unable to use Hot Reload (via dotnet watch or from VS 2022). We can complain about it, or we can learn about how it works and why it's not working for us! Remember: Nothing in your computer is hidden from you. Starting with a simple "View Source" we can see a JavaScript include at the very bottom that is definitely not mine!<script src="/_framework/aspnetcore-browser-refresh.js"></script> Ok, this makes sense as we know not only does HotReload support C# (code behinds) but also Markup via Razor Pages and changing CSS! It would definitely need to communicate "back home" to the runner which is either "dotnet watch" or VS2022. If I change the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT to "Production" (either via launch.json, launchsettings, or an environment variable like this, I can see that extra HotReload helper script isn't there:C:githubwshotreloadtest>dotnet run --environment="Production"Building...info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[14] Now listening on: https://localhost:7216info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[14] Now listening on: http://localhost:5216 Remember: You never want to use dotnet run in production! It's an SDK building command! You'll want to use dotnet exec your.dll, dotnet your.dll, or best of all, in .NET 6 just call the EXE directly! .inDebug et6.0wshotreloadtest.exe in my example. Why? dotnet run will always assume it's in Development (you literally tell it to restore, build, and exec in one run command) if you run it. You'll note that running the actual EXE is always WAY faster as well! Don't ship your .NET SDK to your webserver and don't recompile the whole thing on startup in production! We can see that that aspnnetcore-browser-refresh.js is the client side of Development-time HotReload. Looking at our browser console we see : Refused to connect to 'wss://localhost:62486/' because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "default-src 'self'". Note that 'connect-src' was not explicitly set, so 'default-src' is used as a fallback. That's a lot to think about. I started out my ASP.NET Web App's middle ware saying it was OK to talk "back to myself" but nowhere else. app.UseCsp(options => options.DefaultSources(s => s.Self())); Hm, self seems reasonable, why can't the browser connect BACK to the dotnet run'ed Kestrel Web Server? It's all localhost, right? Well, specifically it's http://localhost not ws://localhost, or even wss://localhost (that extra s is for secure) so I need to explicitly allow ws: or wss: or both, but only in Development. Maybe like this (again, I'm using NWebSpec, but these are just HTTP Headers so you can literally just add them if you want, hardcoded.)app.UseCsp(options => options.DefaultSources(s => s.Self()) .ConnectSources(s => s.CustomSources("wss://localhost:62895"))); But port numbers change, right? Let's do just wss:, only in Development. Now, if I'm using both CSPs and WebSockets (ws:, wss:) in Production, I'll need to be intentional about this. What's the moral? If you start using CSP Headers to tighten things up, be conscious and aware of the headers you need for conveniences like Hot Reload in Development versus whatever things you may need in Production. Hope this helps save you some time! Sponsor: At Rocket Mortgage(R) the work you do around here will be 100% impactful but won't take all your free time, giving you the perfect work-life balance. Or as we call it, tech/life balance! Learn more.(C) 2021 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.     

Discover the best graphics tablets for drawing, art and design and how to choose a tablet that is right for you as an artist, graphic designer or illustrator.

Using images on contemporary websites correctly is not the easiest task. Different devices with different resolutions and pixel densities require much more than just a default image file. Even though high-resolution displays require large images, the files have to be kept as small as possible due to limited data plans, especially on mobile devices. This is not an easy undertaking. However, the cloud-based image management solution Cloudinary turns it into one. Today, you’ll learn how simple image and performance optimization with Cloudinary can be. Cloud-based Image Management Solution Cloudinary Among the many cloud services, Cloudinary has specialized in image management and optimization. The service allows you to upload pictures, and integrate them in your website or blog in different resolutions, formats, and qualities. In addition to that, you can add plenty of effects like vignettes and blurs, and alter contrast, brightness, and saturation on the fly. You can edit images from the Cloudinary interface, and then tie them into your web project via a generated URL. Extensive Ways of Altering and Optimizing Images The URL contains all information like image resolution, format, as well as all effects that you applied. Thus, you can also make adjustments directly via the URL. http://res.cloudinary.com/demo/image/upload/c_fill,e_sepia,q_80,h_425,r_30,w_640/demo.jpg The example […]

In a recent post to his site, Sergey Zhuk walks through the process for building a REST API with ReactPHP and MySQL and a bit of help from a simple routing package to handle the requests. Today we will be looking at creating a RESTful API using ReactPHP, MySQL and nikic/FastRoute. Let's look at the API we want to build and what it can do. He then steps through the development of the REST API: showing the file structure of the resulting application installing dependencies the code to set up the HTTP server for handling requests (using React) building out the database with a user table He then gets into the main part of the tutorial, showing the build out of each of the routes for the CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete). He provides both the code to make the endpoint work and examples of the requests they handle.

For those out there that are new to using the Laravel framework and are a bit lost in trying to figure out its structure, Laravel News has just the article for you. In this new tutorial they give you an overview of the Laravel codebase and how you should structure your applications to keep everything organized. Getting started in a new codebase can be very overwhelming, even more so if you are new to programming. So where do you start? Where are the places to look to learn the most about a codebase? Let's take a look at few common areas for Laravel. They start by talking about project documentation and how it can play a vital role in the on-boarding of developers new to the application. From there the post goes on to talk about the composer.json configuration, route configurations, service providers, tests and some additional tooling. For each item there's a paragraph or two explaining its place in a Laravel application and, in some cases, links to other resources for more information.

It's that time again. Black Friday. November 26, to be exact. And the many enticing deals you've been looking forward to at this time of the year are here as well. There are three types of Black Friday shoppers. Those who are successful because they have prepared. Those who are successful because they got lucky. […] The post Live Now: Top 10 Black Friday 2021 Deals for Designers and Agencies first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Someone who uses your app or website has a particular goal. Often, the one thing standing between the user and their goal is a form. Forms remain one of the most important types of interactions for users on the web and in apps. In fact, forms are often considered the final step in the journey of completing their goals. Forms are just a means to an end. Users should be able to complete them quickly and without confusion.The post Designing Efficient Web Forms: On Structure, Inputs, Labels And Actions appeared first on Smashing Magazine.