Archive for month: May, 2020

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/freelancers-saving-the-internet/

The freelancer is the job archetype for the new millennium. Much like artists were to the Renaissance and engineers to the mechanical revolution, the tech (and more recently, the mobile) revolution…

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Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/free-fonts/?utm_source=rss

I firmly believe that, in order to strike the optimal balance between minimalism and visual appeal, a user interface should display no more than what’s absolutely necessary while making those necessary elements look visually appealing.

Keep it simple, but make the simple look amazing.

But, what does simple look like exactly?

Well, strip away all of the over-the-top marketing gimmicks, redundant features, and cluttering visuals, and most of what’s left is the UI copy and text content. As boring as this sounds, let’s be honest: this is the most important aspect of any app or website. Information and the ability to navigate it is the entire reason users are using our app or website.

So with the right typeface coupled with the right font styles (see “Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide”), we can create designs that are quite simple and yet visually appealing at the same time. This emphasizes the most important aspects of the design while using fewer resources and also inducing the least amount of unwanted cognitive load.

Typography can be very powerful.

But what are the best free font websites?

Where not to look for free fonts

Dribbble, Behance, Gumroad, and so on are home to a ton of hidden gems, but this involves sieving through a lot of digital resources, some of which are incomplete side ventures and “lite” versions. That being said, make sure that you bookmark awesome resources if you do happen to come across any. Even Instagram might surprise you, and Twitter shouldn’t be overlooked either.

That aside, let’s take a look as the best free font websites.

1. Google Fonts

Number one on this “best free fonts” list is obviously Google Fonts, which goes above and beyond what most free font websites offer. First of all, Google Fonts offers a fast and convenient CDN (content delivery network), making it super easy to embed webfonts into websites without having to actually host them.

Google fonts can be subsetted by script and weight, and we can also control how they’re loaded on the Web by setting the font-display CSS property from the embed code’s query string, which improves website loading times. (The CSS-Tricks article on “Google Fonts and font-display” explains how.)

Mind you, self-hosting fonts is better for privacy (because it’s cookieless) and speed (because it offers developers more control). Either way, Google Fonts has a humungous repertoire.

2. Creative Market

I know what you’re thinking: “Creative Market isn’t free, Daniel!”

Ahhh, but what about the Free Goods section? What’s interesting about Free Goods is that these are actually premium fonts that are temporarily free. While the section isn’t that huge, and isn’t guaranteed to include fonts specifically, each and every week it’s refreshed with six new design assets (plus three more if you sign up and another three if you spend X amount on assets).

I’ve been checking the Free Goods section on Creative Market every week for years, and I’ve built up a large repository of high-quality fonts that cost literally nothing. Font Bundles runs a similar deal.

Continue reading
6+ Best Websites for Free Fonts in 2020
on SitePoint.

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/web-app-prototype-django-vue/?utm_source=rss

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could prototype a custom web application that’s responsive (mobile-ready), reactive (light-speed fast), with a full-featured admin interface to manage the content — all in no time? Actually, using Django and Vue.js, you can! ?

0. Introduction: Full Stack Development 101

I’ll cover how to prototype a custom web app, and to keep it as short and sweet as possible, the context information here will be rather brief. However, I will provide — hopefully — enough resources so that you know where to go should you need more information.

To this end I’ll fully mash up data management, presentation, and routing between Django and Vue.js — so get ready!

About Django

You may know of Django, the Python-based web framework for perfectionists with deadlines that’s ridiculously fast, reassuringly secure, and exceedingly scalable. But if you don’t know much about it, this article will serve as an extremely fast hands-on introduction.

About Vue.js

Same deal with Vue.js, the progressive JavaScript framework that’s approachable, versatile, and performant. If you aren’t familiar with it, here you’ll get a quick-and-dirty introduction.

I’ll also cover two official Vue.js libraries:

Vue Router for route/view mapping
Vuex for state management

Python + JavaScript = WIN!

For this article, we’ll set a publishing project with a basic database schema to save authors and articles, and a minimal user interface (UI) to interact with them.

Hopefully, this will serve as a toy program to understand how to integrate Django using Python code on the back end with a JavaScript framework on the front end, that you can adapt later to your own needs.

1. Setting Up a Django Project

Very quickly, we’ll set up a project from scratch. If you already know how to handle Django projects, you can skip this section. We’ll assume you already have Python installed.

For a more in-depth guide, see How to install Django on the Django documentation site.

Python Virtual Environment

Let’s open a console and create a virtual environment (see Virtual Environments and Packages for more info):

$ virtualenv myenvironment

Using base prefix ‘c:\users\luzdealba\appdata\local\programs\python\python37’
New python executable in C:UsersluzdealbaDevelopmentmyenvironmentScriptspython.exe
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel …
done

Don’t mind the paths, as these will change from system to system.

Let’s access and activate the virtual environment.

On Windows:

$ cd myenvironment
$ Scriptsactivate

On macOS and Linux:

$ cd myenvironment
$ source bin/activate

Django Package

Let’s install Django:

(myenvironment) $ pip install django

Collecting django
Downloading Django-3.0.3-py3-none-any.whl (7.5 MB)
Collecting sqlparse>=0.2.2
Downloading sqlparse-0.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (40 kB)
Collecting pytz
Using cached pytz-2019.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl (509 kB)
Collecting asgiref~=3.2
Downloading asgiref-3.2.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl (18 kB)
Installing collected packages: sqlparse, pytz, asgiref, django
Successfully installed asgiref-3.2.3 django-3.0.3 pytz-2019.3 sqlparse-0.3.1

One more time, don’t mind about program versions and file sizes as these will vary.

The Project

Let’s start a project called myproject:

(myenvironment) $ django-admin startproject myproject

Let’s access the project:

(myenvironment) $ cd myproject

The App

Start an app called myapp:

(myenvironment) $ django-admin startapp myapp

And add myapp.apps.MyappConfig to the INSTALLED_APPS constant list in myproject/settings.py to enable the app.

2. Setting Up the Database with Django

Here we’ll define the back-end database with Django, which we’ll later integrate with a front-end storage with Vuex.

Django Models

Models are Django’s way to implement an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). In other words, plain text files where you can define database tables and fields, and from where these will propagate to the application layer and the DB engine.

Let’s code the following models for our app in myapp/models.py:

from django.db import models

class Article(models.Model):
“””Table schema to store articles.”””
name = models.CharField(max_length=64)
author = models.ForeignKey(‘myapp.Author’, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
content = models.TextField()
slug = models.CharField(default=”, max_length=64)

def __str__(self):
return ‘%s’ % self.name

class Author(models.Model):
“””Table schema to store auhtors.”””
name = models.CharField(max_length=64)
slug = models.CharField(default=”, max_length=64)

def __str__(self):
return ‘%s’ % self.name

Notice that we implemented a URL slug for both articles and authors.

For more information, see Model API reference on the Django documentation site.

Django Admin

Before we can manage these models through the admin site, we’ll first need to register them so that Django makes them available to us.

Let’s simply edit myapp/admin.py so that it looks like this:

from django.contrib import admin

from .models import Article
from .models import Author

# register models to use in admin site
admin.site.register(Article)
admin.site.register(Author)

Read more about the Django admin site on the Django documentation site.

Django Migrations

From the Django’s Migrations documentation:

Migrations are Django’s way of propagating changes you make to your models (adding a field, deleting a model, etc.) into your database schema.

In short: migrations do everything; no SQL commands required.

First, let’s create the migration files:

(myenvironment) $ python manage.py makemigrations

Migrations for ‘myapp’:
myappmigrations001_initial.py
– Create model Author
– Create model Article

Now let’s use that information to update the database:

(myenvironment) $ python manage.py migrate

Operations to perform:
Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, myapp, sessions
Running migrations:
Applying contenttypes.0001_initial… OK
Applying auth.0001_initial… OK
Applying admin.0001_initial… OK
Applying admin.0002_logentry_remove_auto_add… OK
Applying admin.0003_logentry_add_action_flag_choices… OK
Applying contenttypes.0002_remove_content_type_name… OK
Applying auth.0002_alter_permission_name_max_length… OK
Applying auth.0003_alter_user_email_max_length… OK
Applying auth.0004_alter_user_username_opts… OK
Applying auth.0005_alter_user_last_login_null… OK
Applying auth.0006_require_contenttypes_0002… OK
Applying auth.0007_alter_validators_add_error_messages… OK
Applying auth.0008_alter_user_username_max_length… OK
Applying auth.0009_alter_user_last_name_max_length… OK
Applying auth.0010_alter_group_name_max_length… OK
Applying auth.0011_update_proxy_permissions… OK
Applying myapp.0001_initial… OK
Applying sessions.0001_initial… OK

Don’t mind the long list. That’s because that was our first migration, so not only our Author and Article tables were created, but also all of Django’s default schemas.

For more info, see Migration operations in the Django documentation site.

3. A Basic Interface with Vue Components in a Django Template

Here’s one of the most interesting parts of the mashup, as we’ll mix closely related tools from different technologies.

Django View

Django goes by the model–view–controller (MVC) software design pattern, which divides the related program logic into three interconnected elements.

We’ll code the following view in myapp/views.py:

Continue reading
How to Prototype a Web App with Django and Vue.js
on SitePoint.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/_uUVs4PgW3c/apple-sale-may-2020

What with Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Pro 2020 released earlier this month, we're now seeing some great deals on last year's version of the awesome laptop. The best deal right now is from B&H Photo, where it has the 256GB 13-inch MacBook Pro reduced to $1,199 – an impressive $300 off.

A slightly lower priced deal is on 2019's 128GB model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro on sale for $1,149. That's an impressive $150 saving, and currently the lowest price around. 

The MacBook Pro is one of the most powerful laptops, something that makes it a favourite for creatives. It's 13.3-inch Retina display allows you to see and show off design work in all its glory, and the 8th Gen Intel Core processor can handle even the most complex of creative tasks. 

Over at B&H Photo there are also some great discounts on iPads. The best deal sees a late 2018 11-inch iPad Pro on sale for just $799 (a $150 saving). These deals are only on until stocks lasts, so don't delay. Also, if you love a good deal, be sure to bookmark our Amazon Prime Day 2020 hub, where we hope to see even more great Apple offers. 

Browse MacBooks and iPads at Apple.com
MacBook deals:
iPad deal:

Outside the US? Here are the best offers on these and similar devices in your area:

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/nAqhbJibgSE/foldable-iphone-flip

An avalanche of iPhone 12 leaks has got everyone talking this week, and the specs for the new models are pretty exciting, to say the least. But one noticeable omission from Apple's proposed plans is the intention to follow in the footsteps of its rivals and release a foldable phone. 

YouTube account iOS beta news wondered what that might look like, and created a sleek concept video to give us an idea of a foldable iPhone 12 design. Enter, the iPhone Flip. The concept applies the leaked iPhone 12 design specs (including that super-charged new camera that will definitely make this phone one of the best camera phones) to the real-life Samsung Galaxy Z flip or the rebooted Motorola Razr. Check out the video below.

iOS beta news' video shows the handset closing into a tidy little square, with the hinge sitting on the horizontal, just like the Samsung Galaxy Z. But unlike the Z, there is no crease present on the screen. We're not quite sure how that would work, to be honest, but we're happy to glide over it in much the same way the video glides over showing us the screen in a half-folded state.

A new camera is on the back of the handset, with a pin-hole mounted lens rather than the usual notch, and below it (or on the front when the phone is folded) is a secondary screen – for notifications, the time and so forth. This means you wouldn't have to flip open your iPhone to find out if you had a new message, for example.

The concept iPhone Flip (left) next to the Samsung Galaxy Z (right)

Samsung, Motorola and Nokia are a few of the brands that have already brought the flip phone out of the vault. In fact, YouTube user SkullCandy091 points out that Apple is often somewhat late to the party with certain new features, and "it'll take three years before they catch up and make a folding phone. The same thing happened with Face ID and swipe keyboard."

But are foldable smartphones here to stay? Some commenters on the video seem to think they're a novelty that don't stand up to current user needs, which may be why Apple hasn't leapt at the idea. It is true that they aren't all that convenient – now that we perform most of our daily tasks on our phones, do we really want to be opening and closing them all the time? 

And, although the best flip phones certainly have their uses, and do have good capability – especially as a second phone – they come with some inherent design flaws (namely, fragile hinges) that mean the handsets can't yet house all the high-tech features users want from their phones nowadays. Perhaps Apple is waiting for the technology to create something as truly special as this concept model, or maybe it predicts the new rise of the flip phone will swiftly, well, flip away.

Read more:

Is this skateboard with Apple's Mac Pro wheels as ridiculous as it sounds?The best Apple Watch apps in 2020The 14 best iPad apps for designers