50 Useful Android Apps for Designers (2018)

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/android-apps-designer/

Long list of Android apps that are useful for designers including photo editing and sharing, and social media apps along with others.

The post 50 Useful Android Apps for Designers (2018) appeared…

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

Should Freelancers Join a Professional Network?

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/07/should-freelancers-join-a-professional-network/

One of the biggest concerns that freelancers have is that they can be isolated from others in similar fields. So can a professional network offer the additional resources you need to succeed?

The answer is yes if you find the right group. Here are reasons why you should join a professional network and how to find one that’s right for you.

You’ll Build Relationships

The No. 1 reason to join a professional organization is to develop personal and business relationships. This can be vitally important to freelance web designers and developers because you most often work in isolation.

A professional group can help you stay fresh in the design community as well as work with people who have different skills and strengths. You might find someone that you can refer work to when you are busy or a person that will serve as a mentor to you. Professional groups often include members from all different career levels and that have varying experience. There’s a lot to learn from each other.

Professional groups of a more general nature—not field specific—can also come with benefits. These groups are also good for cultivating relationships, but rather than staying on top of design trends and changes, you might actually develop new clients with these connections.

Get Access to Development and Training

Affiliation with a professional group often comes with perks such as free or discounted training opportunities. From live training sessions and speakers to webinars and online training, this is often a major benefit of a professional group.

Professional organizations at a local level are often part of a larger, national organization, which provides many of these opportunities to members. Many groups also include large national directories and access to discounts – from health insurance to web hosting – for members, depending on the organization. These opportunities can often make training and tools that might seem expensive more accessible and affordable (even free in some instances).

Development and training can also extend to national events. Most bigger organizations have local, regional and national gatherings. These conferences are a breeding ground for training and large-scale networking. Often the most active members of an organization at the local level have easy access to these events (and the parent organization often will help foot the bill for participants).

“Free” Promotion for Your Brand

Think of professional networking as “free” promotion for your brand or freelance design or web development business. The more people you meet and talk with about work, the more opportunities you have to generate new business.

Whenever meeting with members of a professional organization, you should always be networking. Engaging in projects with the group will also show others how well you collaborate and what you are good at. (This can result in more freelance work and referrals from group members.)

Make sure to take advantage of opportunities to show off as well. Most professional organizations have some type of honors or awards each year. Make sure to enter your work. Whether you win or not, it puts your name and projects in front of your full organization and a panel of judges. (There’s no better opportunity to show the work you do to a wide – and industry connected – audience.)

Get Involved in the Community Locally and Nationally

A linkage to a professional organization is an easy way to get involved in the design community locally and nationally. You’ve got an immediate network and connection to an established group with events, public service projects and common goals. While not all groups are part of larger organizations, many are. Look for local or affiliated chapters of organizations such as these:

AIGA, the professional organization for design
Freelancers Union
International Web Association
International Council of Design
Graphic Artists Guild
Association of Registered Graphic Designers
The HTML Writers Guild
Interaction Design Association

How to Find a Professional Group That Fits You

Finding the right professional group can take a little time.

Start by looking for organizations that are rooted in things you believe in. What is the mission of the organization? What do they support or promote and is that in line with your goals?
Then look at the meeting and event schedule. Does it work with your calendar? There’s no point in joining an organization if you know you’ll never make any of the meetings.
Attend with a friend. Do you know someone already involved with a specific group? Most organizations allow potential members to visit an event or meeting without a financial commitment; ask a friend if you can tag along.
Think about the budget. Can you afford dues or costs associated with the organization? Costs to join professional networks range from free to hundreds of dollars annually.
Look at the big picture. Does the group have ties to a bigger national organization? It’s almost like interviewing for a job; do you see the potential for personal/professional growth?

When Not to Join a Professional Group

Professional networking groups are not one size fits all. Don’t feel like you have to be a member of a group just because it relates to your field. Professional networking groups and associations only help your resume if you are active and involved. Don’t join a group if:

You don’t connect with current members. Just like workplaces, professional groups have a culture of their own. Find people who feel like part of your tribe.
You don’t believe in the mission or projects the group takes on.
The organization has a bad reputation in your community.
You don’t plan on actually participating.
You don’t get value from membership. (This can happen with the best professional groups over time and sometimes you need to “phase out” of a current role and move on to something else.)

Conclusion

When making a choice to join a professional networking group, look for an organization with ties or a chapter where you live. You’ll almost always get more out of an organization where you get actual face time with other members than an organization that’s all online.

While there are benefits to both kinds of groups, make sure to pick a group that you actually benefit from personally or professionally and that you want to be a part of. You should want to go to meetings and events and spend time working with other members. That’s the true test as to whether a professional networking group is right for you.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

Collective #430

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/oII1mpjoJwY/

C430_WOTW

Inspirational Website of the Week: An Interesting Day

No animations but a brilliant layout and a unique design with some nice details. Our pick this week.

Get inspired

C430_optin

Our Sponsor
Bloom: eMail Opt-In And Lead Generation Plugin For WordPress

Bloom gives you the power to display opt-in forms using integrations of the most popular email marketing systems available.

Check it out

C430_cms

Publii

Publii is a static-website-building tool for every skill level with a GUI to build a safe, fast and stylish website.

Check it out

C430_IEGrid

CSS Grid in IE: CSS Grid and the New Autoprefixer

Daniel Tonon’s three-part series on CSS Grid in Internet Explorer. In this second part he tackles the common misconception that the IE implementation of CSS grid is extremely difficult.

Read it

C430_feature

Introduction to Feature Policy

Learn everything about “Feature Policy” which allows web developers to selectively enable, disable, and modify the behavior of certain APIs and web features in the browser. By Eric Bidelman.

Read it

C430_subgrid

CSS Grid Level 2: Here Comes Subgrid

Rachel Andrew explains the new features of CSS Grid Level 2.

Read it

C430_cssdoodles

CSS Doodles

A lovely set of CSS doodles by Agathe Cocco.

Check it out

C430_generative

The Mutable Gallery

A collection of generative artworks by Heydon Pickering.

Check it out

C430_text

Textalytic

Textalytic is a free Natural Language Processing service that handles pre-processing, analyzing, and visualization in an easy to use web interface.

Check it out

C430_iconsystems

The guide to integrating and styling icon systems?- SVG sprites, SVG symbols and icon fonts

The second part in a two-part series on icon systems with focus on SVG image sprites, SVG symbols and icon fonts. By Sebastiano Guerriero.

Read it

C430_physics

Physics-Based Background Scroll Effects

In case you missed it: a tutorial on how to create an animated background effect with Matter.js.

Read it

C430_loading

Infinitely drawing icons

A great loading animation of icons by Mikael Ainalem.

Check it out

C430_clocks

Clock Shop

A collection of beautiful and unusual clock demos.

Check it out

C430_ab

The Link Bar, an Ecommerce Mobile Homepage Navigation Alternative (to the Hamburger Menu)

Some interesting AB test results of using the link bar navigation pattern in mobile sites.

Check it out

C430_forms

Beyond Likert scales: how we made boring form-filling more fun

Read how the team at JotForm made their forms more fun to use.

Read it

C430_cssart

picCSSel Art

A tool to create CSS pixel art made by Kushagra Gour.

Check it out

C430_ghost

Ghost Mouse

A fantastic demo by Liam Egan where a blob like element moves with the mouse/finger.

Check it out

C430_brads

Brad’s Homelab

Brad Fitzpatrick’s home lab setup for highly-available internet.

Check it out

C430_clearfix

Clearfix: A Lesson in Web Development Evolution

Jason Hoffman takes a look at the history of the famous CSS clearfix hack.

Read it

C430_svgterm

termtosvg

A Linux terminal recorder written in Python that renders your command line sessions as standalone SVG animations.

Check it out

C430_font

Free Font: Akrotiri

A playful rounded font made by Ilya Zakharov.

Get it

Collective #430 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

Super Clean Brand Identity for Das Flash

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/wu6oqAlwfWk/super-clean-brand-identity-das-flash

Super Clean Brand Identity for Das Flash
abduzeedo
Jul 05, 2018

Das Flash It is a mini-magazine about the art of tattoo in Poland. Grzegorz Leśniewicz was responsible for creating a concept, name, brand’s philosophy, logotype and all brand identity materials along with a digital image. The final design was further modified in the direction of a more raw and underground appearance. The interesting thing for me is that the term raw and underground bring me different concepts in my head and when I saw this project I was amazed by the clean and simple aesthetics alongside with very organized compositions. Nevertheless, I love the outcome and it’s definitely worth checking it out.

Not paying attention to mainstream, we focus on the underground of the modern tattoo scene in Poland. We document its dynamic development, showing recognized artists and discovering local legends. 

Credits
Design: Concept, Naming, Branding, Web design 
Date: 2018 
Art direction: Grzegorz Leśniewicz 
Brand Identity

 

branding


Using Puppeth, the Ethereum Private Network Manager

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/puppeth-introduction/

We’ve previously written about Geth, one of the most popular Ethereum nodes.

Download screen

When you install Geth with helper tools, it comes with a handy tool called Puppeth, which you can use to maintain and install various helper tools for managing and deploying your private blockchain. Puppeth can also be installed independently if you have Go installed, with the following command:

go get github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/cmd/puppeth

Let’s take a look at the tool.

Note: this tutorial will require you to have two remote machines at your disposal. Whether that is a virtual machine like Homestead Improved or an actual server on your network, or a combination of the two, doesn’t matter. We’ll go through the setup procedure with VMs in this tutorial.

Note: due to a bug in Puppeth, this approach might not work if your virtual machines (see below) are too small. Either make bigger VMs (more RAM) or wait for a fix if that’s not an option.

Bootstrapping

We’ll follow this process to get two virtual machines up and running. We need two machines because we’ll be running two Ethereum nodes, each on its own IP address.

Note: This is a limitation of Puppeth, as it’s not possible to deploy a sealing node on the same machine using this tool.

If you don’t know what Vagrant is, and what tools we’re using here, we recommend you read this introduction to Vagrant, which breaks it down in a newbie-friendly way.

mkdir my_project; cd my_project
git clone https://github.com/swader/homestead_improved hi_puppeth1
git clone https://github.com/swader/homestead_improved hi_puppeth2

Change the IP address of the second clone by going into the hi_puppeth2 folder and modifying the IP address field to be 192.168.10.11 instead of 192.168.10.10.

Next, open up some ports on the VMs by modifying each clone’s Homestead.yaml’s final section, like so:

ports:
– send: 8545
to: 8545
– send: 30301
to: 30301
– send: 30302
to: 30302
– send: 30303
to: 30303
– send: 30304
to: 30304
– send: 30305
to: 30305
– send: 30306
to: 30306

Don’t forget to add these virtual hosts into your host machine’s /etc/hosts file as well. Otherwise the VMs won’t be accessible by their domain name!

192.168.10.10 homestead.test
192.168.10.11 puppethnode.test

Note: change the IP addresses if the addresses of your VMs differ.

Finally, run vagrant up; vagrant ssh to boot each machine and SSH into it. Remember to run this from two separate tabs so you can keep both machines open and running.

Prerequisites

Now let’s install the prerequisite software on each machine.

Puppeth runs helper applications and Ethereum nodes for you in Docker containers, so we need Docker. It’s also useful to install Geth itself.

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install
apt-transport-https
ca-certificates
curl
software-properties-common
ethereum
docker.io
docker-compose

All other prerequisites will be pulled in by Puppeth through docker itself, but we need to make sure the current user is allowed to operate Docker commands first:

sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER

On the host machine (outside the VMs), we should create new Ethereum accounts in the folder where we’re running our project.

If you’re using the VMs as suggested above, that can be in myproject if myproject is the parent folder which contains hi_puppeth1 and hi_puppeth2.

mkdir node1 node2
geth –datadir node1 account new
geth –datadir node2 account new

Make a note of the addresses generated by this process:

$ mkdir node1 node2
$ geth –datadir node1 account new
INFO [05-20|10:27:20] Maximum peer count ETH=25 LES=0 total=25
Your new account is locked with a password. Please give a password. Do not forget this password.
Passphrase:
Repeat passphrase:
Address: {aba88be2dc16eaed464e3991eed5a1eaa5e7b11b}
$ geth –datadir node2 account new
INFO [05-20|10:27:35] Maximum peer count ETH=25 LES=0 total=25
Your new account is locked with a password. Please give a password. Do not forget this password.
Passphrase:
Repeat passphrase:
Address: {655a6ea9950cdf9f8a8175fda639555f17277bdf}

We need two accounts because at least two signers are needed in a Proof of Authority blockchain (more on that later).

Puppeth

Now that our VMs are running and our accounts are initialized, let’s see what Puppeth offers. With the remote servers/VMs still running, in a new tab on your host machine run Puppeth with puppeth.

The first thing it’ll ask for is the network name. This is useful for identifying various blockchains if you’re running several on your local machine. We’ll use “puptest” here.

Please specify a network name to administer (no spaces or hyphens, please)
> puptest

Sweet, you can set this via –network=puptest next time!

INFO [05-20|10:32:15] Administering Ethereum network name=puptest
WARN [05-20|10:32:15] No previous configurations found path=/Users/swader/.puppeth/puptest

Now let’s connect to our “remote” servers so that Puppeth has them in the list and can do operations on them.

The post Using Puppeth, the Ethereum Private Network Manager appeared first on SitePoint.

Collective #428

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/XzJuKjYpdOw/

C428_WOTW

Inspirational Website of the Week: 2018 Foosball World Cup

A fantastic table football implementation for this year’s soccer world cup. Our pick this week.

Get inspired

C428_Udemy

Our Sponsor
Need a course to broaden your skill set?

From web dev beginners courses to accelerated JavaScript training, Udemy has something for everyone. Learn basically anything and discover new skills and passions.

Pick your course

C428_face

face-api.js

A JavaScript API for face detection and face recognition in the browser implemented on top of the Tensorflow.js core API.

Check it out

C428_gradients

Drawing Images with CSS Gradients

An in-depth tutorial on how to use CSS gradients to draw complex shapes by Jon Kantner.

Check it out

C428_currentstate

Current state of webdesign

Will you realize what this is about in less than 3 seconds? ?

Check it out

C428_gobelins

Heraclos

The magical final WebGL project by students of GOBELINS Paris.

Play it

C428_layoutlab

The Experimental Layout Lab

Jen Simmons relaunched her labs section and added some more demos that show the possibilities of CSS Grid.

Check it out

C428_backspace

Backspace Rethought

Louis Anslow shares a brilliant idea for backspace using the drag interaction.

Read it

C428_babel

On Consuming (and Publishing) ES2015+ Packages

A very interesting article by Henry Zhu how the community might move to a “post-ES5” package ecosystem.

Read it

C428_menu

CodePen Challenge: Menu

A fun, bouncy menu created by Adam Kuhn.

Check it out

C428_audiovis

Plexus Shaders

A futuristic WebGL music visualizer made with Three.js together with Vertex Shaders and Fragment Shaders.

Check it out

C428_mkcert

mkcert

A simple tool for making locally-trusted development certificates without requiring any configuration.

Check it out

C428_sass

How and Why We Unit Test Our Sass

Lindsey Wild shares how unit testing Sass code is done at Sparkbox.

Read it

C428_font

Free Font: Kalpazan

Vladimir Fedotov shares one of the styles of his new font family “Kalpazan”.

Get it

C428_ml5js

ml5.js

A library that aims to make machine learning approachable for a broad audience of artists, creative coders, and students. It provides access to machine learning algorithms and models in the browser, building on top of TensorFlow.js with no other external dependencies.

Check it out

C428_shapesdesandro

Solids

Some 3D magic by Dave DeSandro using the <canvas> drawing API.

Check it out

C428_painting

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimus Bosch

A beautiful, interactive documentary that provides an in-depth tour though “The Garden of Earthly Delights” painting.

Check it out

C428_icons

150 Free Vector Icons

A great set of beautifully designed and versatile vector icons in three different styles. By Elmira Gokoryan.

Get it

C428_truchet

Truchet

Amazing experiments in GLSL Truchet tiling and patterns by Liam Egan.

Check it out

C428_stationary

Stationery Branding & Identity Mockup (PSD)

A modern stationery and identity branding mockup by the folks of GraphicPear.

Get it

C428_500

Thank You

Liam Egan celebrates his 500 Codepen followers mark with this beautiful demo.

Check it out

C428_RevealSlideshow

From Our Blog
Triple Panel Reveal Slideshow

A fullscreen image slideshow with lateral image previews and a reveal animation using TweenMax.

Check it out

Collective #428 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

Collective #429

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/VZrxaI__Y-c/

C429_mockup

Shotsnapp

A fantastic tool for creating mockup presentations for your design. Made by Gaddafi Rusli.

Check it out

C429_Be

Our Sponsor
Use pre-built websites to avoid making unforgivable design mistakes

Even the best web designers make mistakes. A solution to this problem is using pre-built websites. Be Theme offers over 350 of them, each of them at one click away from being installed on your website.

Check them out

C429_access

Designing for accessibility is not that hard

Pablo Stanley shows us seven easy-to-implement guidelines to design a more accessible web.

Read it

C429_tenori

Tenori-off

A smart music sequencer that uses Machine Learning to try to match drums to a synth melody. Made by Monica Dinculescu.

Check it out

C429_scrollgradient

Scrolling Gradient

Mike Riethmuller created this demo where a background gradient changes according to the scroll position.

Check it out

C429_tree

Reduce JavaScript Payloads with Tree Shaking

Jeremy Wagner explains how to use tree shaking, a form of dead code elimination, to improve JavaScript performance.

Read it

C429_doodle

SVG Pattern Doodler

Niklas Knaack created this fantastic demo where a simple algorithm draws patterns and doodles into an SVG element.

Check it out

C429_array

An adventure in sparse arrays

Remy Sharp explores sparse arrays and shares some common pitfalls when dealing with them.

Read it

C429_singlie

Singlie

A progressive and minimal implementation of the circular and linear singly linked list data structures in modern ES6.

Check it out

C429_leira

Free Font: Leira

A playful brush font designed by Evita Vilaka.

Get it

C429_interneting

Interneting Is Hard

In case you missed it: A resource of friendly web development tutorials for complete beginners.

Check it out

C429_scroll

fakeScroll

A lightweight and robust custom-looking HTML scrollbar script.

Check it out

C429_react

React From Zero

A simple yet comprehensive React tutorial.

Check it out

C429_ch

What is the CSS ‘ch’ Unit?

Eric Meyer explains the ch unit in CSS.

Read it

C429_generative

Generative WorldCup

An experiment with the world cup statistics API and canvas to generate abstract patterns for each soccer match.

Check it out

C429_fontsize

Pixels vs. Ems: Users DO Change Font Size

An interesting article with data on how many users actually change the font size in their browsers. By Evan Minto.

Read it

C429_chart

ChartGen

An SVG chart generator that utilizes the Box-Muller transform to generate random trending data for realistic SVG line and bar charts.

Check it out

C429_transemails

Everything You Need To Know About Transactional Email But Didn’t Know To Ask

Some advanced best practices for transactional emails by Garrett Dimon.

Read it

C429_fittext

Fitting Text to a Container

Chris Coyier explores the different ways of making a text size itself to fill a container.

Read it

C429_css4

Where is CSS4? When is it coming out?

Jen Simmons explains why CSS4 does not exist.

Watch it

C429_firejs

‘Fire’ visual effect in JavaScript

A short tutorial on how to create a pixel fire effect in JavaScript with just about 20 lines of code.

Read it

C429_more

More

A nice link animation made by Chris Gannon.

Check it out

C429_svgiconsystems

The guide to integrating and styling icon systems?- inline SVG and icon components

In this two-part series, Claudia Romano explains integration techniques for icon systems using practical code examples.

Read it

C429_vue

The Vue Handbook

A guide to Vue written by Flavio Copes. Free for a subscription.

Check it out

C429_gridtut

The simpleton’s guide to CSS Grid

An easy-to-follow guide to CSS Grid by Dennis Gaebel.

Read it

Collective #429 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

How to Plan a Website Overhaul in 2018

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/HCRVANLXSI4/how-to-plan-a-website-overhaul-in-2018

It’s 2018, and you know what that means. Time for a website overhaul! Sure, if you’ve been building, managing, and growing websites long enough, then the thought of a website or a logo redesign will probably scare you away. Overhauling a website is just one of those things that cause more headaches and ruins by adding a […]

The post How to Plan a Website Overhaul in 2018 appeared first on designrfix.com.

Performance Auditing: A Firefox Developer Tools Deep Dive

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/performance-auditing-a-firefox-developer-tools-deep-dive/

In this article, we’ll cover Firefox Web Developer Tools (“DevTools”) — a set of tools designed to help developers inspect, debug, profile and optimize the performance of websites and web applications. We’ll particularly look at the tools related to performance, but we’ll also see how to get started using DevTools in general, and learn about some useful settings.

You can access DevTools in different ways:

click on the hamburger menu at the right of the navigation toolbar, click on Web Developer, then choose the sub-tool you want to use
use keyboard combinations, such as Shift+F5 (Windows and macOS) for the Performance tool and Ctrl+Shift+E (Windows) or Cmd+Option+E (macOS) for the Network tool
right-click anywhere in the page a choose Inspect Element.

DevTools Settings

The Firefox DevTools have many options that help developers customize their experience, such as the option to Enable time-stamps in the Web Console, or to Disable HTTP Cache, which is used to simulate first-load performance in all pages that have DevTools open.

You can access the DevTools Settings panel in different ways:

Start by opening DevTools, next:

either click the Settings button in the toolbar
press F1 to show the Settings panel on top of any current tool
press Ctrl+Shift+O (Windows and Linux), Cmd+Shift+O (macOS) to show the Settings panel.

The Firefox DevTools settings

Here you can choose your default tools, the buttons you want to show in the toolbox, themes (dark-light-Firebug) and other advanced settings.

Performance-focused Tools

When analyzing the performance of a web application, you need to differentiate between load-time performance and run-time performance.

Load-time performance answers questions like “what resources are taking too much time to load?” When dealing with run-time performance, we need to focus on JavaScript and CSS (CSS animations in particular) so we’re able to see where the code spends most of its time and what’s causing bottlenecks.

Let’s look at the Network Monitor and the Performance Tool.

The Network Monitor

The Network Monitor

The Network Monitor shows you a tabular view of all network requests that Firefox made (for example, when it’s loading a page, or sending XMLHttpRequests, Fetch API requests etc.).

It can also display request-related HTTP headers, HTTP responses and cookies, and let you search through them. You can also use it to perform, display and save a performance analysis of the current page load.

In a nutshell, this tool can be used to determine how long the browser takes to download different assets of a web page.

You can also use this tool to monitor and single out requests that are slowing or blocking the web page’s fast loading. The Network panel shows you when principal events are fired (DOMContentLoaded and load).

Request Timeline

Each request in the network list has a timeline column which displays timing information related to the request, such as the total time taken to load the resource.

DevTools marks major life-cycle events in the report, like DOMContentLoaded, and page load. The blue refers to the time when the event DOMContentLoaded is fired; the purple line refers to the time when the page’s load event is fired.

Major life-cycle events

DOMContentLoaded vs Load Events

The DOMContentLoaded event fires right when the HTML document is completely loaded and parsed, not including CSS style sheets, images, and frames.

The event load fires when the HTML document and all associated style sheets, images and frames are completely loaded.

Request Details Panel

Once you click on a request in the requests list, you can a see right-docked details pane which has many different tabs such as headers, params, response, timings and security.

For performance, we’ll particularly look at the timing information.

Network Timings

In this pane, there are many timing metrics related to each request:

Network Timings

Blocked is the time spent in a queue waiting for a network connection.

Sending is the time taken for sending the request to the server.

Receiving is the time taken to receive the response from the server or (if it’s cached) to read it from the cache.

Waiting is the total time waited by the client before the first byte has been received. In other performance analysis tools like WebPageTest.org or Chrome’s DevTools, this is called TTFB or Time to First Byte.

There’s also DNS resolution, which is the time taken to resolve the host name of the server, and Connecting, which is the time taken to open a TCP connection.

How to analyze the load time performance

The Network Monitor integrates a performance analysis tool that can be used to analyze the load-time performance of your web page.

To start analyzing the load-time performance, you can:

click the Analyze icon in the bottom status bar
reload your page or make a network request while your Network monitor is open (actually this is going only to show tabular information about requests not do a load-time performance analysis).

Analyzing the load-time performance

The final report shows a pie chart and a corresponding table for the received resources by types: JavaScript, CSS, images and fonts etc. and a summary with the following details:

number of cached responses
total requests
size
transferred size
loading time

Final report

The web page is tested with an empty cache, and with a primed cache.

First load performance

Firefox’s DevTools allow you to analyze the performance of your web application in two different situations:

Without caching, which emulates the first-time visit when assets are still not cached.
With caching, which emulates the second-time visits. The browser has already cached the app’s assets, eliminating many round-trips to the server.

You can also use the Disable Cache setting to emulate the first-time load of a web page when the DevTools are open on any tab.

The post Performance Auditing: A Firefox Developer Tools Deep Dive appeared first on SitePoint.

The Best Image Compression Tools for the Web

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/07/the-best-image-compression-tools-for-the-web/

It’s no real secret that the size of web pages is increasing. We’re adding more and more assets, slowing down sites, and ruining user experience.

But even though we’ve identified the problem, we still won’t take responsibility. Instead, we lean on coders to streamline their output—we ask then to drop useful libraries like jQuery, just because it saves us 80kb. Meanwhile, we’re designing layouts with 1mb images.

If we’re serious about making our sites fast (and we should be), if we’re serious about improving UX (and we should be), if we’re serious about boosting SEO (and we should be), then we need to do something about the real culprit: images.

Images are by far the biggest bloat on sites. And due to the type of images they suit, JPGs are the biggest bloat on the web.

Today we’re going to introduce 14 of the best JPG compression tools, and publish the results of our tests to find the best.

If you just want to know which of these services performs best, scroll to the bottom.

14 Top JPG Compression Tools

We’re comparing these tools for their ability to compress JPGs, because JPGs feature the most complex data, and so are most likely to contribute to site bloat. Some of these tools will also compress other file formats, like PNG.

1. Compress JPEG

Limitation: Maximum 20 files at a time
Cost: Free

Compress Jpeg is a pretty standard service that’s making its money out of advertising. There’s very little feedback as you compress images, it gives you a percentage, and when complete tells you how much it saved as a percentage, but progress isn’t obvious which can be difficult if you’re compressing a lot of images.

2. Compress Photos

Limitation: Maximum 50Mb per image
Cost: Free

Compress.photos is another free site that supports itself with advertising. You have to be careful not to get hijacked by a dark-pattern advert. Click “Add Files” then “Start Upload”. A good range of progress bars gives you the original size of the image you’re compressing and the change in filesize.

Compressor

Limitation: Maximum 10mb per image
Cost: Free

Compressor offers more options—it can handle JPG, PNG, GIF, and SVG, and features lossless or lossy compression. Compressor has a 10mb max file size limit, so it failed to compress two of our test files. The UI is nice to use, but it’s one file at a time, which makes it very slow to use for batches of files. Looking very closely at one of our files there’s a small amount of noise generated that isn’t evident in images optimized by the other tools.

GiftOfSpeed

Limitation: One file at a time
Cost: Free

GiftOfSpeed offers numerous tools for compressing your website, but for comparison purposes we’re only interested in the JPG compression tool. Again, this is a manual tool, meaning you’ve got to manually compress each individual image one at a time. It offers a nice option of changing the level of compression, but unless you’re experienced it’s a case of trial and error to find the best setting.

iLoveImg

Limitation: None
Cost: Free

iLoveIMG is another free tool that’s offering more options than just image compression. You can resize, crop, or rotate images. You can also turn different formats into JPG, or convert JPGs into PNGs or GIFs. iLoveImg feels like a tool for amateurs that want to make changes to snaps from their phone.

ImageRecycle

Limitation: None
Cost: From $10 per 10,000 images

ImageRecycle is a paid tool, so we expected it to be better than the free options. (We tested using the free trial.) It was a little buggy when we tried the multiple file upload—it may be better to upload one file at a time—but you can download them together as a batch. ImageRecycle wouldn’t allow us to compress the final file as the tests exceeded their trial quota, considering how many of these tools are free, that’s unfortunate.

ImageResize.org

Limitation: Up to 20 images
Cost: Free

ImageResize.org is a free tool that’s ideal for people who want to edit images but don’t have an app like Photoshop. You can drag and drop images onto ImageResize.org’s UI, or supply an online URL for the image you want to compress.

ImageSmaller

Limitation: Max 50mb per image, one at a time
Cost: Free

ImageSmaller is a simple script that allows you to compress JPG or PNG images. There is a maximum file upload of 50mb, and you can only upload one image at a time. ImageSmaller also supports itself with advertising, and you have to be careful not to click on a dark pattern advert when using the UI.

JPEGMini

Limitation: Maximum 128mb per image
Cost: Free (with premium options)

JPEGMini is geared towards an Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop plugin. There’s a free online version that enables whole album uploads, which is what we tested. You have to wait for a while, and there’s no visual feedback on progress, and we found the UI confusing. One surprisingly useful feature is that JPEGMini emails you when your files are ready, so you can go do something else while it works.

Kraken

Limitation: None
Cost: from $9

Kraken is one of the most professional feeling tools in this list. The free version has plenty of options, and the pro version of Kraken has even more. Every pro version of Kraken comes with 100mb of trial data, (which is what we used to test). The UI was easy to use, and well designed. It feels like a premium service.

Optimizilla

Limitation: 20 images at a time
Cost: Free

Optimizilla is a really simple site. Just drag your photos onto the drop area, and then watch them upload. Click the download all button at the end to download a zip. Of the free options on this list, Optimizilla feels like the best user experience.

Shortpixel

Limitation: Maximum 50 images at a time
Cost: From free

Shortpixel is geared towards its WordPress plugin that automatically compresses any images that you upload to your media library. There is a 10mb image restriction unless you create an account, once you do the restriction is lifted. The free account has a 100 image quota, and premium options are available. Unexpectedly, in our test, the image with the smallest image dimensions resulted in a larger file size than the next size up!

TinyJPG

Limitation: Maximum 5mb per image, maximum 20 images at a time
Cost: Free

Who doesn’t love a Panda? TinyJPG has a companion TinyPNG site, which is nice to know. There is also the Go Pro option, for just $25 per year, that will upgrade you to a 25mb limit, plus you’ll get hugs from George the Panda.

toolur

Limitation: Maximum 25 images, maximum 30mb per file
Cost: Free

Toolbar is an interesting tool, because despite being free, it has a lot of options. You can specify 7 different compression methods, alter image quality, change the compression type, or resize the images. When testing, we left everything at the default but it’s good to know that you have some flexibility. Unfortunately they decided to include some weak blackhat SEO on their page.

The Results

To test out these services we used three free stock images that you can download here, here, and here. At 100% scale the images are all 2480px by 1860px.

We exported them as JPGs from Adobe Photoshop and used the export feature to create five different versions of each image: 33% scale, 50% scale, 100% scale, 200% scale, and 300% scale. This simulates saving different file sizes for responsive web designs.

When exported straight out of Photoshop, the size of the images are:

Valley – 33% (317kb), 50% (718kb), 100% (2.5mb), 200% (6.2mb), 300% (10.8mb)
Bike – 33% (412kb), 50% (905kb), 100% (2.9mb), 200% (6.9mb), 300% (12.1mb)
Beach – 33% (257kb), 50% (538kb), 100% (1.6mb), 200% (4.1mb), 300% (7.3mb)

Size Tests

The first test is how small the outputted files are. It’s important to remember that large images have lots of room for compression, but small images have less. So we’ve compared the images as percentages.

It’s also important to know that some tools allow you to be more or less aggressive with your compression. For these tests we used the default settings.

Click on the image to see the results in full.

Speed Tests

The second test is how long it takes the various services to compress the whole set of 15 images. This probably doesn’t matter if you’re squashing down one image, but it matters a lot if you’re compressing dozens, or even a whole website’s worth.

When we ran the tests, they were run consecutively, and nothing other than background processes were running at the same time. (The conditions for each test were as identical as possible, but there may have been some minor network variations.)

Click on the image to see the results in full.

Conclusions

The first thing that leaps out at us, is that the JPG compression in Photoshop is terrible. Every single one of the services we tested improved what Photoshop spat out. So if there’s one thing we can learn from this testing, it’s to always compress your images.

Some of the tests were failed (marked in red in the results). With one exception (when the trial account ran out of capacity) this was because some images don’t support very large files. So if you’re compressing small images only, you might find those services useful. Having said that, the results weren’t affected because none of the services that failed were category leaders in any case.

There was no real difference between paid services and free tools. Many of the free options out-performed the paid options.

Compress JPG and Optimizilla produced near-identical files, at identical sizes, and completed the task within fours seconds of each other. So these two different services appear to be the same service skinned with different frontends.

Best General Compression

The very best compression came from Shortpixel, which was consistently the best service in our tests for everything except our smallest images. Strangely, the size of the 33% image was actually larger than the 50% image—so strange that we tested this several times to be sure. Shortpixel struggles when it comes to smaller images, but where Shortpixel really struggles is speed, it took 2 minutes 35 seconds to complete the task, and only looks acceptable on the graph because Compress Photos performed so slowly and distorted the results.

Best Small File Compression

The best small JPG compression came from ImageResize, which produced the smallest 33% file for each of the images. What’s more, ImageResize was close behind ShortPixel for the other image sizes. ImageResize ran through the files in 30 seconds, just 9 seconds slower than the fastest.

Fastest Compression

The speed test is a tie between Kraken, and TinyJPG. Both services ran through all of the files in just 21 seconds. However, TinyJPG failed to compress six of our largest files. So the award for the fastest service goes to Kraken.

Recommendations

If you’re looking for the most aggressive compression, Shortpixel is our recommendation. If you need to compress smaller images then switch to ImageResize. And if you’re compressing lots of images, you value a premium experience, and you’re prepared to pay for the privilege, then use Kraken.

It helps to have access to a variety of services, because they all excel in one way or another. And it’s always worth running your own tests.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}