Archive for month: July, 2020

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/07/responsive-dashboard-angular-material-ng2-charts-schematics/

Create A Responsive Dashboard With Angular Material And ng2-Charts

Create A Responsive Dashboard With Angular Material And ng2-Charts

Zara Cooper

2020-07-27T10:00:00+00:00
2020-07-27T17:34:36+00:00

Creating a dashboard from scratch is often pretty complicated. You have to create tools to collect data on items of interest. Once collected this data has to be presented in an easy to understand and meaningful way to your users. It involves intricate planning of what data to include and how to display it effectively. Once you have a plan, implementing the design is a massive task especially since it involves building multiple components.

With Angular Material and ng2-charts, you can take advantage of schematics to cut down the effort and time you may spend building a dashboard. Angular Material ships with a number of schematics that you could use to generate a dashboard. Similarly, ng2-charts provides schematics for generating multiple chart components. In this article, I’ll illustrate how to use both ng2-charts and Angular Material to set up a dashboard fairly quickly.

An Example

To illustrate how to build a dashboard, we’ll take the example of an online store selling leather goods like bags, wallets, key holders, and so on. The store owner would like to track information such as where customers come from to their online store, how their products sell, how traffic sources relate to sales, among other things.

We’ll build a dashboard to display this information and help the store owner analyze it. The dashboard will contain four small summary cards, four different kinds of charts, and a table listing most recent orders made. The four summary cards will display information such as total revenue from sales, average order value, the total number of orders, and number of returning customers. The charts will display the number of units sold for each product, sales by traffic source, online store sessions over time, and sales for the week.

Prerequisites

To follow along, you’ll need to have Angular CLI installed. If you do not have it installed, you can find out how to get it at cli.angular.io. If you’re not starting from a pre-existing Angular project, you need to generate one by running ng new <your project name>. For instance, to create an admin panel for the aforementioned store, we’ll run:

ng new store-admin-panel

Your project also needs to have routes configured for it. If you’re starting from a new app, select yes when prompted on whether to add an Angular Routing module during your project setup above.

Add Angular Material And Ng2-Charts To Your Project

Angular Material ships with various schematics for generating a variety of useful components like address books, trees, tables, navigation, and so on. To add Angular Material to your project, run:

ng add @angular/material

Pick a theme from the options provided in subsequent prompts. Next, you’ll be prompted to choose whether to add Angular Material typography styles and browser animations. You do not need these and could just respond no.

Next, you’ll need to install ng2-charts. ng2-charts requires charts.js as a dependency. To install ng2-charts run:

npm install ng2-charts –save

Then install charts.js:

npm install chart.js –save

To access the charts, add the ChartsModule to the AppModule’s imports.

import { ChartsModule } from ‘ng2-charts’;

@NgModule({
imports: [
…
ChartsModule,
…
]
})

Lastly, install ng2-charts schematics as a dev dependency because they do not ship with ng2-charts by default.

npm install –save-dev ng2-charts-schematics

Generating A Navigation Component

First off, we’ll need to add a navigation component to help users maneuver through the app comfortably. The navigation should contain links to the dashboard and other pages that will be part of the admin panel. Angular material provides a schematic that generates a navigation component. We’ll name this component nav. Adding a side nav to the application is accomplished by running:

ng generate @angular/material:navigation nav

To link other routes in the navigation, use the routerLink directive and change the page name in the toolbar depending on what route a user is on.

// nav.component.ts
…
menuItems = [‘dashboard’, ’sales’, ‘orders’, ‘customers’, ‘products’];

<!–nav.component.html–>
…
<mat-nav-list>
<a *ngFor=”let item of menuItems” mat-list-item [routerLink]=”‘/’+item”> {{item | titlecase}} </a>
…

To see this component, add it to app.component.html.

<!–app.component.html–>
<app-nav></app-nav>

This is what the NavComponent looks like.

Navigation component (Large preview)

Since the nav will be displayed alongside other components, adding a router-outlet to it would help switch between the other different components. In the nav.component.html template, just after the closing </mat-toolbar>, replace the <!– Add Content Here –> comment with <router-outlet></router-outlet>.

<!–nav.component.html–>
<mat-sidenav-container>
…
<mat-sidenav-content>
<mat-toolbar>
…
</mat-toolbar>
<router-outlet></router-outlet>
</mat-sidenav-content>
</mat-sidenav-container>

In the screenshots that follow in this article, this nav component will be omitted to better highlight the dashboard we’ll be generating for the sake of the tutorial. If you’re following along while building this dashboard, the nav will still appear as pictured above in your browser with the dashboard within it.

Generate The Dashboard

The most important part of the dashboard is its layout. It needs to hold all the components mentioned earlier and be responsive when displayed on different devices. To generate the dashboard layout, you’ll need to run the @angular/material:dashboard schematic. It will generate a responsive dashboard component. Pass the preferred name for your dashboard to the schematic. In this instance, let’s name it dash.

ng generate @angular/material:dashboard dash

To view the newly generated dashboard within the nav component, add a route for it to the router.

// app-routing.module.ts
import { DashComponent } from ‘./dash/dash.component’;

const routes: Routes = [{ path: ‘dashboard’, component: DashComponent }];

@NgModule({
imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
exports: [RouterModule]
})

Once done, to see the results, run npm start and head on over to localhost:4200/dashboard. You should see this:

Generated dashboard component (Large preview)

The schematic generates four cards in the template and displays them in a responsive grid. The Angular Material CDK uses the Layout package to style this responsive card grid. The BreakpointObserver utility of the Layout package assesses media queries and makes UI changes based on them. There are various breakpoints available but within the generated component, only two categories are catered for. The Breakpoints.Handset and other queries that do not match it. The Layout package specifies 14 breakpoint states that you can use to customize the responsiveness of your dashboard.

// dashboard.component.js
…
cards = this.breakpointObserver.observe(Breakpoints.Handset).pipe(
map(({ matches }) => {
if (matches) {
…
}
…
})
);

Going back to the dashboard, since four summary cards, four charts, and a table will be on the dashboard, we need nine cards in total. Breakpoints.Handset and Breakpoints.Tablet matches will display in a one-column grid where:

The four summary cards will span one row.
The charts will span two rows.
The table will span four rows.

Non-Breakpoints.Handset and non-Breakpoints.Tablet matches will display in four columns where:

The four summary cards will span one row and one column.
The charts will span two rows and two columns.
The table will span four rows and four columns.

It should look something like the screenshot below in non-Breakpoints.Handset and non-Breakpoints.Tablet matches. On Breakpoints.Handset and Breakpoints.Tablet matches, everything will just display in one column.

Dashboard component with additional cards (Large preview)

Create A Card Component

In the dashboard component, all the cards are generated through iteration. To prevent repetition, when adding all the new components, we’ll create a reusable card component. The card component will accept a title as input and use ng-content to dynamically add the rest of the content. To create the card component, run:

ng g c card -m app –style css

From the dashboard component template, we’ll just take the markup enclosed within the <mat-card> tag and place it In the card template:

<!–card.component.html–>
<mat-card class=”dashboard-card”>
<mat-card-header>
<mat-card-title>
{{title}}
<button mat-icon-button class=”more-button” [matMenuTriggerFor]=”menu” aria-label=”Toggle menu”>
<mat-icon>more_vert</mat-icon>
</button>
<mat-menu #menu=”matMenu” xPosition=”before”>
<button mat-menu-item>Expand</button>
<button mat-menu-item>Remove</button>
</mat-menu>
</mat-card-title>
</mat-card-header>
<mat-card-content class=”dashboard-card-content”>
<ng-content></ng-content>
</mat-card-content>
</mat-card>

To add the title as input to the card:

// card.component.ts
import { Component, Input } from ‘@angular/core’;

…

export class CardComponent{
@Input() title: string;

…
}

To style the card:

/*card.component.css*/
.more-button {
position: absolute;
top: 5px;
right: 10px;
}

.dashboard-card {
position: absolute;
top: 15px;
left: 15px;
right: 15px;
bottom: 15px;
}

.dashboard-card-content {
text-align: center;
flex-grow: 1;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
align-items: center;
max-height: 100%;
justify-content: center;
align-items: stretch;
}

mat-card {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
}

Adding Cards To The Dashboard

Since the dashboard elements will be added individually and not through iteration, the dashboard component needs to be modified to account for this. In dashboard.component.ts, remove the cards property and replace it with a cardLayout property instead. The cardLayout variable will define the number of columns for the material grid list and how many rows and columns each of the dashboard cards will span. Breakpoints.Handset and Breakpoints.Tablet query matches will display in 1 column and those that do not match will display in 4 columns.

// dashboard.component.js
…

cardLayout = this.breakpointObserver.observe(Breakpoints.Handset).pipe(
map(({ matches }) => {
if (matches) {
return {
columns: 1,
miniCard: { cols: 1, rows: 1 },
chart: { cols: 1, rows: 2 },
table: { cols: 1, rows: 4 },
};
}

return {
columns: 4,
miniCard: { cols: 1, rows: 1 },
chart: { cols: 2, rows: 2 },
table: { cols: 4, rows: 4 },
};
})
);

…

In the dash.component.html template, replace the colspan and rowspan values of mat-grid-tile elements and the cols property of the mat-grid-list element.

<!–dash.component.html–>
<div class=”grid-container”>
<h1 class=”mat-h1″>Dashboard</h1>
<mat-grid-list cols=”{{ ( cardLayout | async )?.columns }}” rowHeight=”200px”>
<!–Mini Cards–>
<mat-grid-tile *ngFor=”let i of [1, 2, 3, 4]” [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.miniCard.cols”
[rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.miniCard.rows”>
<app-card title=”Card {{i}}”><div>Mini Card Content Here</div></app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<!–Charts–>
<mat-grid-tile *ngFor=”let i of [5, 6, 7, 8]” [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols”
[rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Card {{i}}”><div>Chart Content Here</div></app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<!–Table–>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.table.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.table.rows”>
<app-card title=”Card 9″><div>Table Content Here</div></app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
</mat-grid-list>
</div>

The dashboard will end up looking exactly like the most recent screenshot linked above.

Generating The Charts

The four charts that we need for the dashboard are:

A radar chart of products by unit sold.
A pie chart of sales by traffic source.
A bar chart of online store sessions.
A line chart of sales across the year.

Similar to creating the dashboard, generating chart components involves running a schematic. Using the ng2-charts schematics, generate the four different charts. We’ll place them in a folder called charts. Run ng generate ng2-charts-schematics:<chart type> <chart name>.

ng generate ng2-charts-schematics:radar charts/product-sales-chart
ng generate ng2-charts-schematics:pie charts/sales-traffic-chart
ng generate ng2-charts-schematics:line charts/annual-sales-chart
ng generate ng2-charts-schematics:bar charts/store-sessions-chart

After running these commands, all four chart components are generated and are populated with sample data ready for display. Depending on what data you’d like to show, pick charts that most suit your data visualization needs. For each of the charts generated above, add the chartContainer class to the divs that enclose the canvas element in the chart templates.

<div class=”chartContainer”>
<canvas baseChart width=”400″ height=”400″>
…

Next, add this styling to styles.css so that they could be accessible to all the chart components.

/*styles.css*/
…

.chartContainer canvas {
max-height: 250px;
width: auto;
}

.chartContainer{
height: 100%;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
}

Adding Data To The Charts

The generated chart components come with sample data already plugged in. If you have pre-existing services that provide your own data, you can add this data from them to the chart components. The charts take labels for the x-axis, data or data sets, a chart type, colors, a legend as well as other customization options. To provide the data and labels to the charts, create a service that will fetch data from a source of your choice and return it in a form that the charts accept. For instance, the AnnualSalesChartComponent receives its dataset and labels from the SalesService’s getSalesByMonth method which returns an array of sales for each month for the current year. You can find this service here and data it returns here. Inject the service as a private property to the AnnualSalesChartComponent constructor. Call the method that returns the required chart data from the service within the ngOnInit lifecycle hook.

// annual-sales-chart.component.ts
import { SalesService } from ’src/app/sales/sales.service’;

…

export class AnnualSalesChartComponent implements OnInit {
public salesChartData: ChartDataSets[] = [
{ data: [], label: ‘Total Sales’ },
];

public salesChartLabels: Label[] = [];
…

constructor(private salesService: SalesService) { }
ngOnInit() {
this.salesService.getSalesByMonth().subscribe({
next: salesItems => {
salesItems.forEach(li => {
this.salesChartData[0].data.push(li.revenue);
this.salesChartLabels.push(li.month);
});
},
…
});
}
}

Adding Charts To The Dashboard

The next step involves adding the charts to the dashboard, in dash.component.html. Here’s what that looks like:

<!–dash.component.html–>
…

<!–Charts–>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Monthly Revenue”>
<app-annual-sale-chart></app-annual-sale-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Product Sales”>
<app-product-sales-chart></app-product-sales-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Sales by Traffic Source”>
<app-sales-traffic-chart></app-sales-traffic-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Online Store Sessions by Traffic Source”>
<app-store-sessions-chart></app-store-sessions-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>

…

This is what the resultant responsive dashboard looks like.

Dashboard with charts (Large preview)

Generating A Table

We’ll add an orders table to give the shop owner an overview of the most recent orders placed and their status. To generate the orders table component, run the schematic:

ng generate @angular/material:table orders-table

This will generate a table component that will look like this.

Table generated by Angular Material schematic (Large preview)

Tables with many columns may be difficult to make responsive for handset and tablet views. When adding the table to a card, make it horizontally scrollable so that all the data can be viewed properly and is not obstructed. You can do this by adding the styling below to your table component:

<!–table.component.html–>
<div class=”mat-elevation-z8 small-table”>
<table mat-table class=”full-width-table” matSort aria-label=”Elements”>
…

/*table.component.css*/

…

.small-table{
overflow-x: scroll !important;
}

To add the table to the dash component:

<!– dashboard.component.html>
…
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.table.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.table.rows”>
<app-card title=”Latest Orders”>
<app-orders-table></app-orders-table>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
…

Adding Data To The Table

Like with charts, you can add data to the table in the ngOnInit method from a service. Additionally, you will need to modify your table’s generated data source to consume data from the service. To start off, inject the service in the table’s class constructor. Let’s take the example of a table listing the latest orders for this dashboard. To get data for the table, let’s inject the OrderService in the OrdersTableComponent constructor, change the MatTable type assertion of the table view child, and amend the list of displayed columns to reflect an order interface. If you’re interested in the data being added to the table, you can find it here. The last thing involves getting the total length of the data items available to be used to set the total in the table’s <mat-paginator>.

// orders-table.component.ts
import { OrderService } from ‘../orders.service’;
import { Order } from ‘../order’;
…
export class OrdersTableComponent implements AfterViewInit, OnInit {
…
@ViewChild(MatTable) table: MatTable;
dataLength: number;

displayedColumns = [
“id”,
“date”,
“name”,
“status”,
“orderTotal”,
“paymentMode”,
];
…
constructor(private orderService: OrderService){}

ngOnInit() {
this.datasource = new OrdersTableDataSource(this.orderService);
this.orderService.getOrderCount().subscribe({
next: orderCount => {
this.dataLength = orderCount;
},
…
});
}
…
}

Next, we’ll need to modify the OrdersTableDataSource class to accept the OrderService as a parameter in its constructor. We’ll have to modify its connect and destroy methods as well. The connect method connects the data source to the table and updates the table when new data items are emitted from the stream it returns, in this case, an orders array observable. The dataMutations constant combines the first data load, pagination, and sorting events into one stream for the table to consume. Pagination and sorting are handled by the OrderService server-side. So we need to pass the offset and page size from paginator and the active sort field and sort direction of the sort property to the getOrders method of the OrderService. The disconnect method should be used to close any connections made and release resources held up in the connect method.

// orders-table.datasource.ts
…
export class OrdersTableDataSource extends DataSource<Order> {
paginator: MatPaginator;
sort: MatSort;

constructor(private orderService: OrderService) {
super();
}

connect(): Observable<Order[]> {
const dataMutations = [
of(‘Initial load’),
this.paginator.page,
this.sort.sortChange
];

return merge(…dataMutations).pipe(mergeMap(() => {
return this.orderService.getOrders(
this.paginator.pageIndex * this.paginator.pageSize,
this.paginator.pageSize,
this.sort.active,
this.sort.direction
);
}));
}

disconnect() {}
}

In the orders table template, insert the new columns and bind the length property of <mat-paginator> to the dataLength property. For the status column, use a <mat-chip> element for better visualization of the order status. To have access to <mat-chip>, add the MatChipsModule as an import to AppModule.

<!– orders-table.component.html –>
<div class=”mat-elevation-z8″>
<table mat-table class=”full-width-table” matSort aria-label=”Elements”>
<!– Id Column –>
<ng-container matColumnDef=”id”>
<th mat-header-cell *matHeaderCellDef mat-sort-header>Id</th>
<td mat-cell *matCellDef=”let row”>{{row.id}}</td>
</ng-container>

<!– Date Column –>
<ng-container matColumnDef=”date”>
<th mat-header-cell *matHeaderCellDef mat-sort-header>Date</th>
<td mat-cell *matCellDef=”let row”>{{row.date | date }}</td>
</ng-container>

<!– Name Column –>
<ng-container matColumnDef=”name”>
<th mat-header-cell *matHeaderCellDef mat-sort-header>Name</th>
<td mat-cell *matCellDef=”let row”>{{row.name}}</td>
</ng-container>

<!– Order Total Column –>
<ng-container matColumnDef=”orderTotal”>
<th mat-header-cell *matHeaderCellDef mat-sort-header>Order Total</th>
<td mat-cell *matCellDef=”let row”>{{row.orderTotal | currency}}</td>
</ng-container>

<!– Payment Mode Column –>
<ng-container matColumnDef=”paymentMode”>
<th mat-header-cell *matHeaderCellDef mat-sort-header>Payment Mode</th>
<td mat-cell *matCellDef=”let row”>{{row.paymentMode}}</td>
</ng-container>

<!– Status Column –>
<ng-container matColumnDef=”status”>
<th mat-header-cell *matHeaderCellDef mat-sort-header>Status</th>
<td mat-cell *matCellDef=”let row”>
<mat-chip-list>
<mat-chip color=”{{ row.status == ‘delivered’ ? ‘primary’ : ( row.status == ’shipped’ ? ‘accent’ : ‘warn’ ) }}” selected>
{{row.status}}
</mat-chip>
</mat-chip-list>
</td>
</ng-container>

<tr mat-header-row *matHeaderRowDef=”displayedColumns”></tr>
<tr mat-row *matRowDef=”let row; columns: displayedColumns;”></tr>
</table>

<mat-paginator #paginator [length]=”dataLength” [pageIndex]=”0″ [pageSize]=”5″ [pageSizeOptions]=”[5, 10, 15, 20]”>
</mat-paginator>
</div>

Once data has been added to the table, this is what the dashboard will look like:

Dashboard with charts and table (Large preview)

Creating A Mini Card Component

All that’s left to complete the dashboard is to populate the four small cards that sit at the top. Having smaller summary cards as part of the dashboard makes it easy to highlight brief pieces of information that do not need whole charts or tables. In this example, the four mini cards will display total sales, average order value, the total number of orders, and the number of returning customers that visited the store for the day. This is just an example. These mini cards cannot be generated like with the navigation, dashboard layout, charts, and the table. They have no schematics. Below we’ll briefly go through how to create them. Although we’re going to add data specific to the example, you can add whatever you want to them or decide to do away with them altogether. To start off, generate the mini-card component, run:

ng g c mini-card -m app –style css

You can find the template for the component linked here and its styling here. This component has eight input properties that you can find out how to add here. To get data to the mini card components, inject the service that provides data to them in the DashComponent constructor. Assign data received from the service to a property of the DashComponent. In this instance, we’ll get data from the StoreSummaryService and assign it to the miniCardData property. Here’s how:

// dash.component.ts
export class DashComponent implements OnInit{
…
miniCardData: StoreSummary[];

constructor(private breakpointObserver: BreakpointObserver, private summaryService: StoreSummaryService) {}

ngOnInit() {
this.summaryService.getStoreSummary().subscribe({
next: summaryData => {
this.miniCardData = summaryData;
}
});
}
}

To add the mini-cards to the dash component and have them populated with data from the service:

<!–dash.component.html–>
…

<!–Mini Cards–>
<mat-grid-tile *ngFor=”let mc of miniCardData” [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.miniCard.cols”
[rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.miniCard.rows”>
<app-mini-card [title]=”mc.title” [textValue]=”mc.textValue” [value]=”mc.value” [color]=”mc.color” [percentValue]=”mc.percentValue”></app-mini-card>
</mat-grid-tile>

…

The screenshot below is what the dashboard will look like with the mini cards populated.

Dashboard with charts, tables, and mini-cards. (Large preview)

Putting All Together

In the end, the dashboard component template should contain:

<!– dashboard.component.html –>
<div class=”grid-container”>
<h1 class=”mat-h1″>Dashboard</h1>
<mat-grid-list cols=”{{ ( cardLayout | async )?.columns }}” rowHeight=”200px”>
<!–Mini Cards–>
<mat-grid-tile *ngFor=”let mc of miniCardData” [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.miniCard.cols”
[rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.miniCard.rows”>
<app-mini-card [icon]=”mc.icon” [title]=”mc.title” [value]=”mc.value” [color]=”mc.color” [isIncrease]=”mc.isIncrease” duration=”since last month” [percentValue]=”mc.percentValue” [isCurrency]=”mc. isCurrency”></app-mini-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<!–Charts–>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Monthly Revenue”>
<app-annual-sale-chart></app-annual-sale-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Product Sales”>
<app-product-sales-chart></app-product-sales-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Sales by Traffic Source”>
<app-sales-traffic-chart></app-sales-traffic-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.chart.rows”>
<app-card title=”Online Store Sessions by Traffic Source”>
<app-store-sessions-chart></app-store-sessions-chart>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
<!–Table–>
<mat-grid-tile [colspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.table.cols” [rowspan]=”( cardLayout | async )?.table.rows”>
<app-card title=”Latest Orders”>
<app-orders-table></app-orders-table>
</app-card>
</mat-grid-tile>
</mat-grid-list>
</div>

Here’s what the resultant dashboard contains.

Completed dashboard (Large preview)

Conclusion

Creating dashboards involves a fair amount of work and planning. A way to make building them faster is to use the various schematics provided by Angular Material and ng2-charts. With these schematics, running a command will generate a wholly complete component and can result in having a dashboard up and running fairly quickly. This leaves you a lot more time to focus on creating data services and adding them to your dashboard components.

If you want to learn more about some of the schematics provided by Angular Material, visit material.angular.io, and for those provided by ng2-charts, visit their site linked here.

(ra, yk, il)

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/LROo5HHoMXI/raw-design-inspiration-hand-picked-dribbble

Raw Design Inspiration: Hand-picked on Dribbble

AoiroStudio07.26.20

We are back with another abdz. ‘Raw Design Inspiration’ No theme, absolutely ‘raw’ inspiration. As you may have been aware, inspiration is one of the biggest fuels in my everyday life. Whatever it is for life and work balance, it comes in many shapes and forms. For me, I do appreciate a good surf on Dribbble. It’s all about how we consume our feeds, I noticed a shift of change from designers on sharing their work on social media platforms like Instagram. I might be an old-timer but I am not too keen on sharing work for likes and shares, I do enjoy the good ‘old’ Dribbble. It’s always gratifying and you usually do find something to spark your mind and inspiration.

The concept of ‘Raw’ is to randomize what inspires me to kick off my week, maybe it could have the same effect on you. This is reasonably an homage to abdz. daily inspiration series. It’s an experiment, and we’ll see how it goes. If you do have a suggestion, you can submit your work.

More on https://dribbble.com

By Jona Dinges

By DStudio™

By Yoga Perdana

By Udhaya Chandran

By Anton Zaderaka

By Craftwork

By MonpixDesign

By Asish Sunny

By Lelevien

By B®andits

By Farzan Faruk ?

By Sèrgi Mi

By catalyst

By Laura Lhuillier ⎪ Arual ☺︎

By MD Mahfuj

By David Kovalev ◒

By UI8

By Benjamin Oberemok

By Fabio Sasso

By Nathan Riley

 

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/weird-and-unusual-usb-products/

That USB port on your PC is not just for connecting USB flash drives or USB data cables. It can also power some mini gadgets. From mug warmers and mini sewing machines to mini washing machines, you…

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/iEQq6exLie0/fun-games-bullpen

Fun & Games by Bullpen

abduzeedo07.22.20

Bullpen, an independent creative studio based in NYC creating engaging content through design & animation, shared an awesome motion design project with us. Fun & Games, is a tongue in cheek look at the games we design and give our children. It’s all fun & games. Until it isn’t. Developed over the course of a year, this piece is inspired after time spent playing with our own children. While we certainly take things to an extreme, we believe there is an underlying truth that is interesting to think about. We hope you enjoy it!

Credits

Direction: Bullpen
Design: Elliot Lim
3D: Aaron Kemnitzer
Music: Lullatone “how I broke my parent’s record player (when I was five)”
Stills

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2020/07/in-memory-of-flash-1996-2020/

We are gathered here today….

Today I write in memory of Adobe Flash (née Macromedia), something that a bunch of people are actually too young to remember. I write this with love, longing, and a palpable sense of relief that it’s all over. I have come to praise Flash, to curse it, and finally to bury it.

We’ve been hearing about the death of Flash for a long time. We know it’s coming. December 2020 has been announced as the official timeframe for removal, but let’s be real about this: it’s dead. It’s super-dead. It’s people-are-selling-Flash-game-archives-on-Steam dead.

That last bit actually makes me happy, because Flash games were a huge part of my childhood, and the archives must be preserved. Before I’d ever heard of video cards, frames per second, and “git gud”, I was whiling away many an hour on disney.com, cartoonnetwork.com, MiniClip, Kongregate, and other sites, looking for games.

I think we’ve established in my previous work that even as a missionary kid, I did not have a social life.

The Internet itself gave me a way to reach out and see beyond my house, my city, and my world, and it was wonderful. Flash was a part of that era when the Internet felt new, fresh, and loaded with potential. Flash never sent anyone abuse, or death threats. Flash was for silly animations, and games that my parent’s computer could just barely handle, after half an hour of downloading.

I even built my first animated navigation menus in Flash, because I didn’t know any better. At all. But those menus looked exactly like the ones I’d designed in Photoshop, so that’s what mattered to me, young as I was.

That was a part of Flash’s charm, really.

What Flash Got Right
Flash Brought Online Multimedia into the Mainstream

Funny story, JavaScript was only about a year old when Flash was released. While HTML5 and JS are the de-facto technologies for getting things done now, Flash was, for many, the better option at launch. JS had inconsistent support across browsers, and didn’t come with a handy application that would let you draw and animate whatever you wanted.

It was (in part) Flash that opened up a world of online business possibilities, that made people realize the Internet had potential rivalling that of television. It brought a wave of financial and social investment that wouldn’t be seen again until the advent of mainstream social networks like MySpace.

The Internet was already big business, but Flash design became an industry unto itself.

Flash Was Responsive

Yeah, Flash websites could be reliably responsive (and still fancy!) before purely HTML-based sites pulled it off. Of course, it was called by other names back then, names like “Liquid Design”, or “Flex Design”. But you could reliably build a website in Flash, and you knew it would look good on everything from 800×600 monitors, to the devastatingly huge 1024×768 screens.

You know, before those darned kids with their “wide screens” took over. Even then, Flash still looked good, even if a bunch of people suddenly had to stop making their sites with a square-ish aspect ratio.

Flash Was Browser-Agnostic

On top of being pseudo-responsive, the plugin-based Flash player was almost guaranteed to work the same in every major browser. Back in a time when Netscape and Internet Explorer didn’t have anything that remotely resembled feature parity, the ability to guarantee a consistent website experience was to be treasured. When FireFox and Chrome came out, with IE lagging further behind, that didn’t change.

While the CSS Working Group and others fought long and hard for the web to become something usable, Flash skated by on its sheer convenience. If your site was built in Flash, you didn’t have to care which browsers supported the <marquee> tag, or whatever other ill-conceived gimmick was new and trendy.

Flash Popularized Streaming Video

Remember when YouTube had a Flash-based video player? Long before YouTube, pretty much every site with video was using Flash to play videos online. It started with some sites I probably shouldn’t mention around the kids, and then everyone was doing it.

Some of my fondest memories are of watching cartoon clips as a teenager. I’d never gotten to watch Gargoyles or Batman: The Animated Series as a young kid, those experience came via the Internet, and yes… Flash. Flash video players brought me Avatar: The Last Airbender, which never ever had a live action adaptation.

Anyway, my point: Flash made online video streaming happen. If you’ve ever loved a Netflix or Prime original show (bring back The Tick!), you can thank Macromedia.

What Flash Got Wrong

Obviously, not everything was rosy and golden. If it was, we’d have never moved on to bigger, better things. Flash had problems that ultimately killed it, giving me the chance, nay, the responsibility of eulogizing one of the Internet’s most important formative technologies.

Firstly, it was buggy and insecure: This is not necessarily a deal-breaker in the tech world, and Microsoft is doing just fine, thank you. Still, as Flash matured and the code-base expanded, the bugs became more pronounced. The fact that it was prone to myriad security issues made it a hard sell to any company that wanted to make money.

Which is, you know, all of them.

Secondly, it was SEO-unfriendly: Here was a more serious problem, sales-wise. While we’re mostly past the era when everyone and their dog was running a shady SEO company, search engines are still the lifeblood of most online businesses. Having a site that Google can’t index is just a no-go. By the time Google had managed to index SWF files, it was already too late.

Thirdly, its performance steadily got worse: With an expanding set of features and code, the Flash plugin just took more and more resources to run. Pair it with Chrome during that browser’s worst RAM-devouring days, and you have a problem.

Then, while desktops were getting more and more powerful just (I assume) to keep up with Flash, Apple went and introduced the iPhone. Flash. Sucked. On. Mobile. Even the vendors that went out of their way to include a Flash implementation on their smartphones almost never did it well.

It was so much of a hassle that when Apple officially dropped Flash support, the entire world said, “Okay, yeah, that’s fair.”

Side note: Flash always sucked on Linux. I’m just saying.

Ashes to Ashes…

Flash was, for its time, a good thing for the Internet as a whole. We’ve outgrown it now, but it would be reckless of us to ignore the good things it brought to the world. Like the creativity of a million amateur animators, and especially that one cartoon called “End of Ze World”.

Goodbye Flash, you sucked. And you were great. Rest in peace. Rest in pieces. Good riddance. I’ll miss you.

 

 

Featured image via Fabio Ballasina and Daniel Korpai.

Source

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