#This UI has three different buttons for adding tags?

[apsupmix]

I've seen lots of posts treating tumblr and twitter users like some totally different breeds of people. But ultimately both sites core content is fundamentally same, no value shit-posts. Sure different tools provide different types of shit-posts but that difference is irrelevant.

Also I mean "no value" in the most loving way possible.

[gertlushgaming]

DIG Deep In Galaxies Review (Steam)

 This DIG Deep In Galaxies Review shows a game that is  Kinda like Mario Bros but with guns and explosions. And you can dig, too. It's a roguelike, like most other indie games out there, so if you die you can start over again. And that's not even the best part: you can get super powerful and combo-kick a lot of ass.

DIG Deep In Galaxies Review Pros:

- Beautiful pixel art graphics. - 295.96MB download size. - Steam achievements. - Full controller support. - Remote play together support. - Graphics settings - fullscreen. - Rebind controls for both the keyboard and the controller buttons. - Roguelike survival gameplay. - Encyclopedia fills in as you discover enemies, characters, weapons, etc. - Online leaderboards. - Two ways to play - solo and with friends. - Friends have 3 modes - free the Galaxy, team challenges, and battle mode. - Solo has 2 modes - free the galaxy, and challenge mode. - Opening tutorial area. - The rope is used to help with traversal and climbing. - The environment is fully destructible. - In-game cutscenes. - 2D perspective. - Super attacks are activated when the bar is full, fill the bar by killing enemies. - Hit enemies and jumpers (dots) to gain a jump back allowing triple or more jumps. - Double jumps are standard. - Weapons wise you can have a melee and ranged weapon equipped. - Collect power orbs to increase your stats. - Four stats to upgrade - max HP, melee DMG, ranged DMG, and super. - Can skip cutscenes. - After finishing a planet you get to choose one of three skills/rewards.. - Has a Broforce look and feel to it. - You can see enemy health. - Breakable objects covering the world. - Planet selection is done by you flying your ship around in a top-down solar system map. - The difficulty is tied to the planet and is tagged via a one to the three-star system. - Big boss fights. - Physics plays a huge part especially with the rope swinging and enemies dropping. - Find space stations to buy goods. - Planets show key info before you select it - mission, difficulty, reward, gravity, and material. - Crazy good animations and cutscene vignettes. - Twin stick shooting and also for using the rope. - When on a rope you stay connected until you press jump so you don't need to hold a button down. - Find undiscovered planets and space rocks that house a self-contained event. - Loot chests everywhere. - Very addictive. - A lot of fun to play. - Can mine currency ranging from copper to platinum. - Weapons will have pop-up stats to help you with if it's worth picking up with clear red and green numbers. - You can go to empty planets as they might have loot. - Scratches the Terraria/star itch. - Full inventory management. - Pick up and equip new clothes adding buffs. - Fall damage. - You can hit rockets back. - Icons do some good in guiding you, you are looking to do 3 missions, boss fights then a showdown. - Play how you want. - Boss encounters add higher difficulty ratings. - An end-of-run breakdown showing playtime and kills, gold, and completed missions. - Unlock new characters by progressing the story and rescuing them. Each has unique skills, stats, and inventory. - Every new run has you playing a small area to get the ship key. - The traversal is really fast and kinda cool if you time swings and attack. - Different weather effects and biomes. - Every run is randomized from planets to enemies to missions and loot. - Unlock new difficulties. DIG Deep In Galaxies Review Cons: - No graphics settings. - The rope takes a lot of getting used to, more because it doesn't stick to the side walls, only ceilings. - Fall damage. - You have to unlock new difficulties. - Can get overwhelming. - Melee especially early on is really dangerous. - Twin-stick directions stay and that can make for tedious moments. - The Ui is rather small. - Screen tearing is common. - Can feel a bit aimless. - Unkillable rocket launchers. - Cannot play online with randoms. Related Post: Fernbus Coach Simulator Review (Xbox Series S) DIG Deep In Galaxies: Official website. Developer: Motion Studio Publisher: Raiser Games Store Links - Steam Read the full article

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (1/3)

So first things first, disclaimers! I do not claim nor pretend to know every nook and cranny, ins and outs of the history of FooFan's conception, existence and uncertain future. I do not own the game nor its characters, only the opinions and thoughts stated hereon out.

This was born to vent out my frustrations with how a game like this was abused poorly by its own developer and publisher instead of being nurtured to become its full potential that could have overshadowed and remained better than the likes of Tencent's Tales of Food --I could dream, but it honestly had the potential to be.

Out of respect for the main tag, I personally will not be tagging this post and the following two with the main tag. If you want to tag it yourself with it, that's your choice. Only followers of my blog will see this.

This analysis is divided into three parts: Funtoy, Elex, and the Community. It starts under the cut. Well let's get started.

Funtoy

Ah yes, the creator. The developer. You'd think that with their sudden rise to fame during their global launch, they'd have used the massive profits they earned within the first quarter of 2018 to improve certain things about the game and then trickled it down as quickly as possible towards Global, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

After playing the game since launch, I've seen and experienced way too many things that just hammer in the fact that this is one of the most unfair gacha I've played in years. Some reasons being the following:

(Note: These are experiences ONLY on Global's version, it may also apply to CN being the original server)

⦁ The game's gacha model is aimed towards maximum predation on its players. F2p are forced to either spend some money (and thus tempt them to keep spending after getting a taste of it), or risk not even getting a good ascension of the unit to be useful at all. Paying for the event packs also doesn't guarantee that you would be able to secure a spot in the ranks. In fact, if you can't comprehend how the battle mechanics work, you could even de-rank. Fun way to burn that 800$, huh? At least you have the skin from rebates.

⦁ A little less known thing and probably theoretical at worst, the long joked about spaghetti coding of the game along with an outdated spine technology for the sprites could very well be the reason why a 2D game like this experiences the shittiest lags. Also how easy it is to hack this game with the right know-how.

⦁ Speaking of bad gameplay mechanics, did you know you could spend over fifty Mirrors and not get that final enhancement from +9 to +10 simply because there's absolutely no tangible safety net before +10?

⦁ If you're F2P, this game is terrible in giving you resources to stockpile. Because Funtoy certainly doesn't have a lot of weekly/monthly or even friendly events wherein you can get resources without spending another kind of resource. The Hawthorne event's rewards are lackluster at best, Bingo is severely limited in what it gives, and Recall also doesn't give much for a big event that only happens (supposedly) every 6 months. Did I also mention that daily resource rewards also kinda suck compared to how much you burn in just one event?

⦁ Monthly subs are a scam. Yes, you heard that right. My point of comparison here is Arknights. A monthly in AK allows you to have enough to 10-pull after 30 days, on top of a bit of stamina to help you. In FooFan? You have two monthly subs that do different things and even then, you won't have enough to 10-pull by the end of 30 days, nor is the stamina you get enough to even stockpile and ease the pressure of your need to save for the Gates or that stamina event that suddenly popped up.

⦁ A conga line of 'Must procure this unit at a high ascension to do well in the following events!'. You missed the first Pizza event? Missed the first Turkey event? God forbid, you weren't able to 5* your Beer on his debut? Well sorry, that 5* Black Tea of yours isn't gonna do squat to give you good damage. No, your 2* B-52 also isn't going to do much of anything with his lackluster damage capabilities. If you want a chance to get those event URs again, you have to wait for their pool with laughably limited pulls... and a bloated price to even pull.

⦁ The events starting after the first iteration of Turkey event get even more paywalled. As far as I remember, by the time Minestrone rolled around, an F2P with ample crystal resources can only get 2* at best. 3* and above are paywalled.

⦁ The game has incompetent balancing. The devs themselves likely have little experience in gameplay design and balancing, especially for a game with a growing roster of characters . A prime example of them launching a character not knowing it would pretty much unbalance the game? Look no further than Beer. The guy had to have a couple of nerfs done to him because he was just too meta. You know what's sadder? Before the 'switch' to Brave meta, almost all meta units was built to benefit off the Beer meta.

⦁ Artifacts. Do I even have to explain how the introduction of such a game feature so early into the lifespan of this game essentially fucked over the balance even more? Not to mention, all the more reason you'd be crying with the Gates of Trials demanding so much out of your stamina and crystal resources. F2Ps are again, the ones that suffer in this part. What's their reason? Profit, of course.

⦁ The nerf of resto chests. This was the primary source for people who were saving up stamina for the Gates... until Funtoy decided they were being too generous to their playerbase and dropped the stamina probability rate to 1% or less.

⦁ Terrible UI layout and design. Come on, be honest now, you've lost several thousand of your hard earned crystals buying screws in the fishing shop because you didn't notice that shiny warning in small text and a green button with the crystal image slapped on it, didn't you?

⦁ Look at all these SRs! All of them! Wow, they even outnumber the Rs by at least 80! What's that? There's more URs now too compared to Rs and Ms combined? That can't be real. But seriously, you'd think Funtoy could make some of these SRs into Rs and add them to the perm pool/shard fusion so people aren't stuck pulling Macaron or Dorayaki every time. They could have also populated the Team Up rewards with SRs instead of Rs. But you know... that won't bring them profit. Haha... haha.... Oh and I haven't even told you about the SP class...!

⦁ Lore. Yes, I'm sure by now you're aware that the in-game lore is different from the ones in the non-SP Food Soul bios, in the SP Food Soul bios that sort of ties in with the New World story (that global will never be getting btw). At this point, Funtoy handwaves the confusion away by saying, 'they're all different timelines'. Yes yes, an easy and cliche move to explain how shitty the writing direction went after a while. I don't know what happened, all I know is that lore got weird(er) when they introduced SP Rice.

⦁ They. Keep. Adding. More. Characters! They fail to see that a lot of their earlier players have imprinted on the first few waves of Food Souls and they sadly also fail to properly give some of them more story expansion... or skins. At the moment, they're shelling out so many JP-centric Food Souls because... as I see it? They're pandering to the last bastion of whales they have.

⦁ Merchandise. And I mean a variety of merchandise that isn't using the same official art every time. Like they couldn't afford to commission a couple of artists one or two times to make unique merchandise that would sell. They started too late on that train, and they even made it too hard for anyone not in CN or JP to even procure what already exists. Not to mention, they keep using the same 'popular' set of characters for their merchandise and never really expanding out to making merch for other characters.

These are all the things I can list off at the top of my head why Funtoy as a developer sucks ass. They could sweeten their words all they want, it won't change the fact that they've certainly made way too many bad decisions and found out about it too late, and now they're desperate to keep Food Fantasy alive to keep their profits coming in to make whatever that cat girl game they have and that supposedly 'side-game' FF2 they announced.

There may have been problems out of their control that I or you do not see, but one thing is for sure, they were blinded by greed for the money they were raking in on all their servers at the start, and never actually bothered to invest in more manpower in the right places to improve the game, both gameplay-wise and worldbuilding wise. It's actually saddening that this game could have been so much more with several QoLs and a more fleshed out lore, perhaps even spacing out the number of new units they keep introducing while going back to giving their old units more attention.

That's it for Funtoy. We're moving onto Elex in the next part and boy is that also a trip.

[s-o-s-from-earth]

Nothing Fucks With The Slayer (chapter 1/?)

so im.... starting to write again???? ugh hopefully this goes somewhat well...

Ship: Doomvega (platonic)

Tags: pre-slash, pre-canon, no body!Vega

Summary: Set a few months before the events of Eternal. Flynn and Vega have settled in with their new life and are now working on upgrading the Praetor suit and restoring the Fortress to working condition… and Slayer's communication skills, of course. He's not the only one who has some issues to solve, though… Expect pre-doomvega and a (kinda half-assed) explanation to why an AI can feel stuff. No idea where this is gonna go, but yknow,, hopefully doomvega and also the two bastards figuring out what's wrong with them both at least,,,

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328196/chapters/64112989

Dm or ask to be added to a taglist that will notify you whenever a new chapter comes out!

The Sentinel ship was never truly silent. Various systems were running constantly, an ever-present low humming they emitted being the only sound the ship knew in Slayer’s absence. Vega was quiet as well - there wasn’t anyone to talk to at the moment, so he busied himself scanning various files from a data storage Slayer had retrieved for him some time ago.

That, or he was simply curious if a hundred-year old hard drive would still be functional, let alone have any sort of data on it left intact, he reminded himself as he scanned another text file. He couldn’t deny any possibilities until it was confirmed or denied by the Slayer himself. Perhaps he would ask him when he returns…

A notification popped up. All the text files on the drive had been scanned - books, to be precise. Their metadata indicated they were all written at least a hundred years ago, some dating as far as three centuries back, and collectively covered many different aspects of humanity's existence in that time period - from agriculture to psychology to fiction. Vega made a note to tell the Slayer about them later - perhaps he would be interested in this archive, seeing as how he already had a sizable library in his possession.

Aside from the books and about five thousand corrupted files of various sizes and formats, which took up the majority of the storage, there was a music library. A quick scan identified about 60% of it as corrupted, but the rest was still intact. A more detailed look into the metadata and the structure of the audio revealed it to be of high quality by the standards of when the songs were released. Along with the library was an executable file which turned out to be a music player. Curious to explore its functions as an ordinary user, Vega browsed through the library via the app before pressing the “Randomize” button. The screen shifted to an image with the song’s name and artist beneath it, as well as some buttons that Vega suspected to serve as convenient shortcuts for changing songs.

The image depicted two faces - a male and a female - seemingly smiling. It was almost immediately apparent, though, that those weren’t real humans. Dolls, perhaps? The language wasn’t familiar to him either, but it was clear that the singer was female, rather whispering than singing in the conventional meaning of that word.

The image turned out to be clickable, shifting upwards. Nothing was displayed by the program's UI, however, leading Vega to assume any information on this song was simply missing. He let it play, instead shifting his attention to check Slayer’s location and vitals. Everything was in check - the new upgrades to the configuration of the suit were integrated successfully, to his relief. Or that would be relief, were you to be human, he reminded himself again. Besides, this "mission" wasn’t of the offensive kind - simply to look for some repair bots Vega could use to restore the ship’s condition. That's not how he saw it at first though…

[a few hours earlier.]

The Slayer sat slouched over his desk, a lamp illuminating an arrangement of wiring and tubing on the inside of one of the arm pieces of the Praetor suit. Different details and pieces were scattered on the desk, some visibly worn and some looking good as new. His tools were also in a chaotic arrangement, aside from the beaten up soldering iron he was working with. Eventually he finished tinkering, put all the layers of protective material back into place and straightened up, barely flinching as his spine made a hollow and most certainly unpleasant cracking sound.

“You have been working on upgrading the peripheral systems of your Praetor suit for approximately three hours and twenty minutes now. I suggest taking a break, Slayer”, Vega chimed in, switching to the room camera in case of an answer. He observed him huff as he begrudgingly turned the light off and got up to stretch. He then turned to the camera and made some quick, jagged gestures at it.

“Want… go on a walk.”

“...I see. I’d suggest visiting a discreet place on Earth. Please wait while I find a fitting location”, Vega responded, doing exactly what he said. His old data archives were lost after his last backup, so it took some time to tap into near-Earth satellites and scan the surface for a fitting place - where Vega could safely form a portal and where there would be no one of disturbance.

After several minutes he spoke again:

"I have compiled a list of locations for you. Would like me to narrow it down with additional criteria?"

The Slayer nodded and responded after a moment:

"Forest?"

"There is a forest near what seems to be an abandoned production plant at approximately 63.2 latitude and 65.5 longtitude. Despite the apparent absence of any unwanted witnesses, I suggest you take the necessary precautions - that includes your armor." Too much worry - it's not like you're able to do that.

"Sure", Slayer answered, his expression unreadable, and turned to get the aforementioned suit. Before he did that, however, he turned back and signed some more at the camera:

"You need anything… maybe?"

Vega was caught off guard by the question. Did he need anything? What could an AI, advanced as Vega might've been, even need, per se? After a few moments of thought (only living things think, he reminded himself, in your case it's called processing) he answered:

"While there's no emergent need in any materials, a spare construction bot would be of valuable assistance here. It doesn't have to be in working condition, and it's not absolutely necessary..."

"If I find one, I'll bring here."

"Ah- that would be most appreciated!"

Surely the voice synthesis program needed a maintenance scan, as it clearly was getting harder to operate and control. And not just that - his RAM was getting more and more occupied by unnamed processes that served seemingly no purpose. He focused on shutting them down one by one, but that proved to be of little use, as they just kept starting up again. By the time he stopped trying to close them, Slayer was already fully prepared for departure. Vega ran the portal configuration, setting it just outside the factory.

"I've set the portal near the facility. You should be able to send me a signal through the comms system in your helmet when you're ready to go back."

With a nod, Slayer lowered the panel in front of him to get to the portal, but right before stepping through it, he turned around, raising his hands to sign.

"No need to…" Slayer stood still for a moment, as if trying to find the necessary words, before continuing: "No need to act like a machine, you. Ok? You're a friend."

And before Vega could answer, he was gone.

[now.]

The scan of the data was now complete, save for the music that Vega turned off for now. What remaining knowledge of human culture he still had indicated that music was rarely used as a means to document events, rather serving as an instrument of self-expression, so he wasn't likely to miss any critical information. So instead he focused on resolving that problem with his RAM that he encountered right before Slayer left. He didn't remember any issues like that occurring before - at least not since he woke up in the Fortress, since any previous error logs he had were also lost back on Mars. No matter how many times he shut the strange tasks down, they all came back as if nothing happened. Their function was also not apparent, though they were listed as cognitive processes. No cohesive name, no references, no order. Why did they even appear?

'And why do I keep reminding myself to behave like a machine? My personality module was developed for the very purpose of making AI-human interactions more smooth. Why limit its possibilities? And what did Slayer mean by calling me his friend-?'

[Incoming voice comm: The Slayer.]

Vega put away those ponderings for now, answering the call immediately.

“Hello again. I take it you’re ready to go back?”

“...”

Right. He can’t really answer, Vega figured.

“I’ll set up a portal near your location”, he said instead, watching the rift open up in the main room. A quiet grunt on the other side of the comms sufficed as a ‘sure’, and Vega opened the folder with books again.

He can deal with those strange mishaps later, after he and Slayer discuss their findings.

[hydrus]

Version 375

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a great week. There are a bunch more Qt fixes, and a few other things as well.

Qt

I have fixed a bunch more bugs in the Qt code. We are getting to the end now--this is mostly smaller stuff like an unusual dialog button not working, but I have fixed another important memory leak that was causing some backend not to be deleted correctly when a media viewer closed on a video. This should radically reduce memory use for some heavily used clients.

Some windows that were large, or could expand to be, like the options dialog on some pages, were sizing off the edge of the screen. This should be fixed now, and a variety of child-window initial size calculations should be a bit more accurate--Qt manages window size a little differently than wx, and the additional buffer represented by the window title frame and border was not being taken into account.

The menubar menus should work a little snappier this week. Things like the rapid 'pending (xxx)' menu updates when a downloader is importing files with tags. The whole UI should get a little latency benefit from this during these high-traffic times.

I also gave the layout and scaling another go on clients that use UI scaling (when you tell your OS to display UI at >100% on a monitor) on high dpi displays. The experiment from last week did not go how I wanted, with pixelly scaled-up thumbnails, so I have reworked that and fixed the taglist, which was crunching tags together on these displays.

the rest

For users who have been trying to download from unreliable or tight servers, the network engine now handles connection errors and 'server was busy due to low bandwidth' errors separately, and has separate delay time options for both of these under options->connection.

There's a new danbooru login script. They apparently changed their cookies a little. If you use a danbooru login and have had trouble, please make sure your credentials carried over to the new script and give it another go.

For users who have complicated file storage failures and need some specific recovery options, there are now new jobs under the file maintenance system to quietly delete bad files from storage without affecting the db file record, and also to re-download files that are missing or broken if they have known urls. These jobs are experimental and only useful for certain file recovery scenarios, but if you have been waiting on something like this, please give them a careful go and feel free to ask for help.

full list

qt:

disabled the failed legacy high dpi scaling mode experiment (which was scaling up thumbnails and media in an ugly way) and returned to font-size-based natural ui scaling as set by the OS. a couple of non-font things like bitmap buttons and various layout margins are too small on >100% UI scale, and the splash screen is borked again, but it looks clear again. I'll keep working on this

fixed the custom taglist at >100% UI scale, which was spacing its tags at the wrong text height. this should survive changing ui scale while the program is open and environments with multiple monitors at different ui scale

re-fixed a critical old media-viewer-close-on-video memory leak from wx code to qt code. this was also a cause for some child ffmpeg processes not being terminated

fixed the media viewer not redrawing correctly when the media size completely exceeds the canvas window size

fixed the loading of the shortcut edit panel when the shortcut set a tag

fixed some url class edit path component ui

fixed and cleaned up some 'safe window size/position' calculations that were missing out the total frame geometry, meaning some dialogs were not moving up and left enough to show entirely on screen, and dialogs with parent-dimension gravity were not calculating initial size accurately

fixed focusing on the already-open manage tags text input when you hit 'manage tags' on a canvas with a manage tags dialog already open

fixed the html formula rule edit ui actually rendering html tag labels, lmao

updated boot-password entry to use the normal hydrus text entry dialog, and fixed a hydrus password cancel not setting a 'clean' exit for the next boot

fixed page layout splitter sash positions not resetting nicely from the menu command

fixed keyboard delete in the manage urls dialog

popup message titles are now in bold

popup message titles should now multiline correctly and fill available width

the popup messages manager should now set its min/fixed width more sensibly

subscription popups now will be wider if space is available

wrote a new class to manage better asynchronous updates for future Qt ui presentation

the file, pages, and pending menubar menus, which all require a db hit to generate, now operate on this new update class. all three should update faster when able and more politely and smoothly wait when the db is busy

reduced some accidental blocking in an old ui-update routine that kicked in when it was running hard

if the media_viewer frame type is set not to remember its 'last size', it will now instantiate with a small min size

when pasting new queries into a sub, if there are more than 5 or 50 that are already in or new, they will be rendered in a more compact way in order to stop the notification dialog growing too tall

improved stability of page update, splash screen update, and perhaps pubsub update

.

new file maintenance jobs:

added a new 'check for missing files' file maintenance job, where if the file is missing and has urls, those urls will be queued up in a new url downloader for redownload. the file record is not removed, preserving archive/inbox and import time

added a new 'check for invalid files' file maintenance job that does the same deal as above with an additional expensive byte-for-byte content check if the file is not missing

added a new 'check for invalid files' file maintenance job that only cares about invalidity--if the file is present and invalid, it is moved out but the file record is not removed

.

the rest:

network jobs that receive low-bandwidth error codes from the server now use a separate wait routine (previously, they piggybacked on the connection fail retry system). they have a separate cog-menu action to override these waits

the time delay multiple for connection errors and serverside bandwidth problems are now editable under options->connection. old default was 10 seconds base, now 15 and 60 seconds respectively

updated the danbooru login script

improved the precision of the thumbnail size estimate in database migration

the alphabetisation of a url class's GET paramaters on normalise is now optional. it is a new checkbox on the url class edit panel

when a default object fails to load from a png path, a simple error is now written to the log

misc cleanup

next week

I got hit by some IRL stuff right at the end of this week, including some Thanksgiving surprises, so I couldn't fit in the new downloaders I wanted to, but I have some fixes for pixiv tag search and twitter video download waiting to be added. I also couldn't get to Qt theming again, nor macOS tab DnD! So, I'll focus on those first thing so they definitely get done.

Otherwise, next week is scheduled to be a 'medium size' job week. I would like to get a long-planned overhaul of subscription data handling done. Subs are getting huge and clunky for many users, and I'd like to have them load into their dialog and do their normal work much faster, with much less CPU and HDD involved.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[yasmingoethe-blog]

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[lindsayseidel3-blog]

How To Rip To, Play And Break up One

Begin APE2FLAC Converter. I did attempt to convert utilizing JRiver, but the best way the information end up you must spotlight each monitor to delete individually. Does not seem to be a big deal, but after doing 5 cd's and having 3 of them copy the highlight as a substitute of delete I gave up. I do know that is both person error http://www.audio-transcoder.com/how-to-convert-ape-files-to-flac or finicky keyboard however both means huge amounts of labor versus dbpoweramp that when transformed keeps the original ape files highlighted for easy elimination. As for converting originally did not know and it was all executed.

Some music file sorts, together with WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aiff), and RA (.r) cannot be uploaded to your library utilizing Music Supervisor or Google Play Music for Chrome. Have lots of lengthy podcasts, music, songs in MP3, WAV, APE or FLAC and need to break up or lower them into shorter tracks? In case your audio file have a CUE associated with it, splitting your music files will probably be a lot simpler by the assistance of the good Bigasoft CUE plitter for Mac. When you may have carried out the correct output settings, you can now click on Convert All button and Wondershare Video Converter Final will start changing MP3 to FLAC convert the file instantly. All lossless codecs have similar compression ratio. However, decoding velocity is different: FLAC is nearly three times quicker than WavPack and 6 occasions faster than APE. Although these numbers have been produced by fmedia, ape to Flac converter скачать бесплатно other audio instruments present very comparable decoding efficiency. If you care the quality of the output audio, converting FLAC to Apple Lossless audio is recommended. You possibly can go to this information for changing FLAC to Apple Lossless at - then import FLAC to iTunes for take pleasure in or for sync. Step 4: ape to flac converter скачать бесплатно Set FLAC as output format. MP3 and AAC have such robust footholds that OGG has had a tricky time breaking into the spotlight — not many gadgets help it natively — but it absolutely's getting better with time. For now, it's principally used by hardcore proponents of open software program program. FLAC is better than WAV for 2 causes. First, it does every thing WAV does (lossless audio), but in a quite a bit smaller bundle deal (WAV is extraordinarily inefficient in its use of space). Second, it permits the usage of additional tags (including unlawful" tags in Home home windows) for marking recordsdata. With a view to play APE on more gadgets or audio gamers with losing the audio high quality, we need to convert APE to FLAC. Hereby, we would wish to introduce a reliable APE to FLAC converter-iDealshare VideoGo, with which changing APE to FLAC in lossless method will develop into a straightforward job. Simply drag and drop the audio information you might want to be converted directly into this system, choose an output format, and then start the conversion. Next, select FLAC as your output format. APE to FLAC Converter right here is examined and selected from loads of APE to FLAC changing instrument in the marketplace. This APE to FLAC conversion software is probably the most skilled and splendid tool to solve all APE to FLAC issues.

Open your e-mail and download the newly transformed FLAC file. More superior customers can customize many encoding parameters: audio bitrate, bitrate mode, variety of audio channels, audio sampling frequency, volume, time vary and other. Organize converted information , using info from tags: create folders, apply your individual filename pattern routinely. Flacon is launched under the GNU Library Public License (LGPL) version 2. A replica of the license is obtainable here That is an open source mission. You might be free to obtain and distribute the software beneath the terms of the license.

Update: All2Mp3 has been discontinued, but AudioConverter and Audacity stay alternate options for Mac customers to convert FLAC to mp3. to ape converter can batch-convert audio information from one format to a different. Close to the original query, if storage means less you may wish to contemplate encoding pace. If both are indistinguishable I'd personally go for the fastest encoder. Also look into the parameters the encoders support. Generally you may choose a unique balance between compression and time (I know Flac has something like that).Choose which audio files you wish to merge. These may be added out of your laptop or device, through Dropbox, from Google Drive, or from another on-line source that you just link. You can add multiple files without delay or choose them separately. On the other hand, this APE audio converter helps batch conversion, permitting you to import a number of music within the type ofAPE at a time, and enables you to mix a number of particular person (.ape) audio information into one single audio file through "Merge into one file" choice on the main interface.Having used ape for the primary 20,000 files, I'm now encoding with flac for that reason. If the folder containing an APE file additionally has a CUE file (it is often referred to as (picture+.cue)), the program suggests splitting APE to individual tracks. APE to FLAC Converter can trim or minimize information, cut up recordsdata, modify video or audio codec, bitrate, channel and more. button to start out changing. I think predominant downside is VLC not enable to direct mp3 file convert. You may also have come acrosswv files - that is wave information compressed by Wavepak. UI is command line however it's fast in comparison with Monkey's Audio.fre:ac is a free audio converter with various common audio codecs and encoders, also it is a CD ripper for Mac OS, you not solely can load the FLAC audio information, can also import MP3, WMA, AAC, etc. On the same time, you possibly can rip your audio CDs to MP3 or WMA information. What is the file title of the mac program that wants putting in? I am working debian and can't discover anything in the repositories that appears applicable. Compression Ratio: the difference between uncompressed and compressed file, applies to Lossless solely, the decrease - the better.

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Ubuntu Convert APE Monkey Files To Flac

APE to FLAC Converter offers you a simple and fast solution to convert APE to FLAC audio with top of the range. Limitless video downloading and changing to MP3. As probably the most skilled audio converter, this APE to FLAC converter will also be utilized to convert between audio codecs like MP3, WAV, AIFF, VOC, VOX, AU, FLAC, WMA, M4A, Apple Lossless, OGG, MKA, AAC, AC3, DTS, RA, RAM, APE, AUD, AIF, AIFC, MPC, QCP, SHN, TTA, PCM, AMR, AWB, MPC, and so forth. Ok, right here we go. The APE file is successfully converted to MP3. Now, if you wish to see the local folder containing the file, click on the Find button (the one with the magnifier). The reason is simple: Though they are universally described in the mainstream press as being of "CD quality," MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk don't supply adequate audio high quality for critical music listening. This is not true of lossless-compressed codecs comparable to FLAC , ALAC , and WMA lossless—in truth, it was the discharge of iTunes 4.5, in late 2003, which allowed iPods to play lossless files, that led us to welcome the ever present Apple player to the world of high-finish audio. But lossy files obtain their conveniently small dimension by discarding too much of the music to be worth contemplating. My recommendations, be all ears to FLAC on the house and take heed to mp3 on portables. Audio Converter Plus will enable you to to remodel FLAC album to MP3 If in case you've first charge audio gear in your house, it's possible you'll inform the excellence between FLAC and 320bit MP3 or at least I can with my ears. MP3 appears to destroy the high finish range of frequencies and makes instruments like cymbals sound washed out. Tips: To make sure the APE CUE splitter can split your APE recordsdata, thecue files shall be in the same folder as your APE information. Added changing FLAC to Ogg information. Good and easy media files to MP3 converter app. Recently I've been working on some video samples that have to be transformed to MP3 audio samples for gadget testing and All2MP3 really helps a lot. It doesn't has many confusing terms and offers full capabilities I need. Step 1: Drag your APE files onto this online converter. In the event you care the quality of the output audio, changing FLAC to Apple Lossless audio is advisable. FlicFlac's very simple interface is split into three sections. The large panel to the left lets you choose or drag & drop the audio file(s) you wish to convert. The buttons on the suitable hand side let you choose how the audio file(s) will probably be transformed: to FLAC, to WAV, to MP3, to OGG, to APE. And the panel down on the bottom allows you to entry some settings: delete enter file, all the time on prime, MP3 presets, Shell integration, open INI file, About. After putting in AnyMP4 APE to FLAC Converter software, you'll be able to launch the program and open the main interface, click on "Add Video" button so as to add APE audio file to the program, you can also add a number of APE recordsdata to the program by choosing the "Add Folder" possibility in "Add Video" drop-down listing. Free obtain and install Faasoft APE to FLAC Converter and launch it. Then comply with the three steps to convert APE to FLAC. The technical strengths of FLAC compared to other lossless formats lie in its skill to be streamed and decoded rapidly, impartial of compression stage. The file is being transformed from a compressed format to an uncompressed WAV file. Provides decoding support for Monkey's Audio files (.APE) in addition to APE Hyperlink files (.APL). For many who don't know, APE (Monkey) audio format is used by Windows customers mainly. It's a free lossless audio compression format with an extremely competitive compression algorithm. Though software program is accessible for Linux, Monkey's Audio is as unpopular among the customers of this operating system. Decompression speeds of Monkey's Audio just isn't too quick compared to different lossless audio codecs. Apart from using desktop audio converters, do you know that you could convert MP3 to FLAC utilizing on-line converters? Yes, there are completely different on-line converters that you can use them to avoid wasting your day when you haven't installed a media converter. In this half, we will introduce you three fashionable free MP3 to FLAC Converter. FLAC format, stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, can be a lossless audio format. Compared with APE, FLAC has a decrease compression charge however more options than Monkey's Audio and hardware support to its benefit.

Enter Formats: AAC, AC3, AIF, AIFF, ALAW, DTS, FLAC, M4A, M4B, M4R, MP2, MP3, , WAV, WMA, etc. Besides these principal features Mp3tag provides a variety of different functions and features ranging starting from batch export of embedded album covers, over help for iTunes-particular tags like media kind or TELEVISION Show settings, to combining a number of actions into groups that may be applied with a single mouse click on. Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC for brief, is an audio compression approach. It is a lossless compression type which means that the compression takes place with out knowledge being discarded. FLAC is an open supply codec. FLAC is a format that is advisable to these backing up a CD assortment because the sound quality will keep excessive, whereas MP3 compression will end in a deterioration compared with the unique.Having used ape for the primary 20,000 recordsdata, I am now encoding with flac because of this. If the folder containing an APE file also has a CUE file (it's typically referred to as (image+.cue)), the program suggests splitting APE to particular person tracks. APE to FLAC Converter can trim or cut files, split files, regulate video or audio codec, bitrate, channel and extra. button to begin changing. I believe foremost problem is VLC not allow to direct mp3 file convert. You might also have come acrosswv information - that is wave recordsdata compressed by Wavepak. UI is command line however it's fast compared to Monkey's Audio.So you'll be able to view the sort of conversion as a solution to short-circuit that course of; you do not get one thing that is better than the MP3 it was constituted of, however you are getting something that can be treated as a master" going ahead. For purposes like tape bushes" or stay-present traders where no higher unique" exists that is most likely preferable as a result of additional buying and selling might be carried out in the lossless format assuring that additional degradation has not occurred. Be aware the title says ape and flac, but it will possibly convert any audio codecs (such as m4a, oga) as long as ffmpeg help them.

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Convert Audio To The FLAC Format

Convert FLAC to MP3. The are not any quality settings in the encoder as the format is lossless, however there are levels settings for the amount of file size compression used to losslessly pack the audio knowledge, similar to compression ranges in ZIP recordsdata. The level settings range from 0 to eight. Level 0 is optimized to encode as quick as potential. Stage 8 is optimized to pack as efficiently as attainable, so produces slightly smaller information than degree 0 on the expense of taking longer to encode. Recordsdata encoded at level eight are rarely various % smaller than those encoded at stage 0, but can take three or four occasions longer to encode. TunesKit DRM Audio Converter ( DRM Audio Converter for Mac ) is one of the greatest FLAC converters thanks to its sturdy means to transform not only FLAC audio to MP3, but additionally some other particular audio recordsdata, corresponding to DRM-protected Apple Music, iTunes M4P songs, Audible AA, AAX audiobooks to common MP3, AAC, WAV, and so forth. It allows you to set audio high quality, including codec, audio channel, bit rate, sample rate, and others in response to different necessities. In addition to, it may well preserve the ID3 tags of the original information for you, such as title, album, cover, artist, and so forth. Every audio converter we listing above has its personal salient features, execs and even cons. Hope this text may help discover the proper free FLAC converter for Mac for you. Earlier than you change, click on Preferences to change a couple of choices. You can determine the place the transformed files go, modify the naming scheme, and even delete the original file. Under Sort of consequence? make sure that to vary Format to MP3 because the default is OGG. Beneath this, you'll be able to change the quality. All of the above purposes work effectively in turning a FLAC file into MP3, thus you can select which one to use as you want. Moreover, if you wish to avoid altering or dropping the standard of the audio file it is advisable to record it utilizing Streaming Audio Recorder, and its Mac counterpart.

With rockbox firmware, you may play flac and other formats on all supported audio gamers. Alternatively, you may also drag and drop your audio files to the SoundConverter primary window. Pazera FLAC to MP3 Converter is a free program that converts FLAC recordsdata into MP3 or WAV. The program can even rip audio tracks from Audio CD images primarily based on the CUE sheets. The procedures for converting other codecs to MP3 are identical as changing the FLAC to MP3 format. Just adding the information of different formats to the application in the same means you'll add a FLAC file will work completely. When you add a video file, the program will extract the audio for you. Free obtain and set up the best FLAC to iTunes Converter, then launch this system to start the conversion. The following steps mainly focus on introducing the right way to convert FLAC to iTunes on Mac OS X. Generally you could need to convert FLAC to MP3 immediately but you do not wish to set up any software on your Mac. What you are able to do is put your faith in a web based FLAC to MP3 converter. On-line converter may be very convenient when you will have a secure and fast community connection. All it is advisable do is upload your FLAC file, choose the output format and high quality, convert FLAC to MP3, and download the ensuing file. Bluefox FLAC MP3 Converter is a quick and simple-to-use MP3 FLAC converter device, which may support convert FLAC to MP3 music, and convert MP3 to FLAC music. When the file is done importing, choose MP3 as the output format on the precise facet of the console. @Rocky_H - A lot of my ripped mp3s have been at 128 kbs. I did comply with the sound (heh heh) advice from a number of here and flac2mp3 ripped a couple of songs in FLAC for comparison. It is going to positively be value my while to hunker down and re-rip my music to FLAC information. My journey just keeps getting better. I know it is a quite outdated thread, Flac2Mp3 but I've had the same process, so I created a bit of device for converting FLAC to MP3. (Raspberry pi 3, flac2mp3 with OSMC) Possibly somebody will find this with the identical search, that I did. The primary possibility box on the application UI (consumer interface) is the output format. The MP3 format has been chosen by default. Click on the Format dropdown menu, after which click MP3. It's the one dropdown menu within the Audio Converter menu bar. I've been utilizing your product for a couple years now. I simply needed to inform you folks how a lot I like it. It's completely my goto software program for any media conversion. I haven't got any cash to contribute, however I wished you guys to understand how much I admire your software. Thank you very much.

Click on the Convert button to start converting FLAC audio information to different audio format. When you're ready for the audio end result, you can hearken to the audio at the preview window. You may convert a single flac file, one by one or employ the batch converter to convert a particular variety of recordsdata at once. FLAC must be produced from a very good source like a master or super audio CD to sound good. It is a great, efficient, straightforward-to-use app. Proper on with the threads! My excessive core processor can cut by way of tons of of flac files like butter. It uses LAME (and contains it) for MP3 encodes by default which works nice.I did come acrorss this thread on the FreeBSD mailing checklist but I can't see how to convert flac to wav which is supposed to be step one. A FLAC Fingerprint file is a plain textual content file usually known as that's used to retailer the filename and checksum information that pertains to a specific FLAC file. These are sometimes generated together with a FLAC file. Yes! The free Magic FLAC to MP3 Converter download for LAPTOP works on most current Home windows operating systems. FLAC is a lossless format but you can't play it on sure audio gamers like iPod. Freemore FLAC to MP3 Converter will help convert FLAC recordsdata to standard MP3 format information, that are a lot smaller and have higher support among audio purposes and hardware gamers.All2MP3 converts music files straight into MP3 audio format utilizing AppleScript. After beginning this system, you simply drag and drop files onto this system window and choose the quality of goal information. All it's a must to do is click on the All2MP3 button and the conversion process begins. This system converts MPC, APE, WV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, AIFF and WAV. The next information will show you how to to transform FLAC to iTunes in steps. Right here I'll recommend you to make use of Wondershare Video Converter because I'm having superb experience to convert FLAC files to MP3 files. That is very professional video and audio converter and very straightforward to make use of for users.

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How To Convert FLAC To MP3 Using VLC

If you might want to convert FLAC to MP3 in Mac OS X totally free, one of the best ways to take action is utilizing a utility called All2MP3. Load FLAC recordsdata into SoundConverter. In the main window, click on Add File so as to add a file or Add Folder so as to add a folder of FLAC information. The files are added to the SoundConverter listing. The application starts the conversion the instant you add the FLAC files. You will notice the progress bar which tells you the progress of the present conversion and flac2mp3 how many FLACs are in the queue preparing to be converted. As soon as the conversion is complete, you will be able to search out the converted files within the location folder you have got set or the default authentic folder. In terms of high quality, FLAC vs. MP3, FLAC always wins. What does it really imply? Does higher high quality at all times imply better sound? The answer might be each yes" and no". Effectively, you will notice a clear distinction while you take heed to music in your FLAC information. However, it is solely doable if you use an acceptable sound system and good headphones. However, if somebody does not have any of them (better sound system and headphones) and using low-cost headphones for listening FLAC files, FLAC will sound just like MP3 to them. That's the reason some individuals assume that there is no such thing as a actual distinction between FLAC and MP3 they usually choose over FLAC as measurement of MP3 is smaller and the quality can also be similar! You'll be able to easily understand that there is hardly any distinction between FLAC and MP3 when you're not utilizing a very good sound system and excessive-high quality headphones. As a superb and free FLAC converter, SUPER might be the primary selection, you possibly can convert FLAC to many other audio format, like: AAC, AC3, AMR, flac2mp3 APE, flac2mp3 and so on. At the similar time, you can also load other audio formats and convert them to your required audio format easily. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec , an audio format just like MP3, but lossless, which means that audio is compressed in FLAC with none loss in high quality. This is just like how Zip works, except with FLAC you'll get a lot better compression as a result of it is designed specifically for HD audio. Download AudioConverter Studio setup package to a known location. After download is full, launch this system and follow instructions. WMA information may be encapsulated within an ASF, or Superior Systems Format, container file. ASF gives metadata, much like ID3 tags in MP3 recordsdata, and should include digital rights management to limit your potential to play your music. Step 3 - Choose the Profile" menu button and click the MP3" output option. Then, click the Browse" menu button to pick the vacation spot folder to save converted files. 2. Just select the output recordsdata like MP3. You possibly can add as many FLAC information as you want from the native arduous drive, and all of them can be batch converted once you hit the convert button. File names can be retained, only the file extension adjustments to the selected format. MP3 stands for Movement Image Specialists Group Layer 3, which is a digital compression algorithm for audio file. The mp3 file might be over 10 occasions smaller when compared to a raw supply file. At the moment, the MP3 file format is the preferred musical file formats on the planet. On Home windows and Mac libflac is used to import and export FLAC but on Linux libsndfile is used by default to import FLAC. Importing utilizing libsndfile allows FLAC recordsdata to be imported and operated on more quickly using On-Demand Loading To import using libflac, select the "FLAC information" filter when using Open or Import, or set a rule in Prolonged Import Preferences to all the time use libflac whatever the import technique. Fortunately, audio file compatibility with DJ software program has become less of a priority in recent times, though there are still some things to be careful for. Of the 11 software program titles I looked over—9 deck-model DJ applications plus Ableton Reside and iTunes—7 of them supported all the principle audio codecs. FLAC to MP3 Converter not only converts any FLAC audio file to the very popular MP3 format, but in addition convert WMV, MKV, AVI, 3GP, FLV, SWF, F4V to your need audio format like FLAC, WAV, WMA, AAC, ALAC, AC3, AIFF, AMR, AU, MP3, MP2, M4A, MKA, OGG. Totally free FLAC to MP3 converter immediately converts massive FLAC to MP3 so as to take extra music on the same media. 3After that, click "Convert" to begin to change FLAC to MP3 in your Mac. MP3 is the most used format when it comes to recognition to listen to music and practically all multimedia gamers and audio gadgets help MP3 playback so that the listeners can take pleasure in from anywhere they love to. That's the reason, you may easily convert the FLAC to MP3 format and it is in all probability the perfect resolution, which is able to your music playable in more units and save you space as well. Select the profile with the specified file format from Convert". The default setting is Common, movies for Windows MediaPlayer" which helps all MP3 players, but different predefined profiles are additionally available, for example: WMA or AAC. And so does the time to convert FLAC to MP3. Just think about it for a second. At a time a file is being converted you're literally killing a few of your most favourite artist's work of life. Instead, you may cherish and be respectful towards the sound. It's best to preserve what truly is there as an alternative of creating it even worse by slicing greater frequencies and including digital artifacts to the sound just since you don't wish to wait a minute or two.

The largest drawback to this program is which have to buy the Infinite Pack to transform audio information which might be longer than three minutes. Freemore FLAC to MP3 Converter is totally free to make use of. It comprises no adware, adware or some other malicious parts. It is one hundred% clear and reliable to put in and run. What's more, with the comprehensible UI, anything can be found in seconds. With tutorial instruction, even novices can do the conversion just by clicking buttons. As scottro urged, ffmpeg is probably the device you need, as a result of it normally preserves the metadata from the flac file and transfers it to the mp3-file. Simply be aware of the bit-price setting of ffmpeg, that I believe is lower than optimum by default.For those who solely have just a few small information to convert, we suggest utilizing one of the free packages we reviewed. The benefit of spending $30 on audio conversion software is the ability to convert a large number of information shortly. Audials Tunebite is $40, which is the costliest software we tested, but it will probably report streaming audio and video companies and converts more than forty import formats. Download and run the Movavi Video Converter set up file, and comply with the on-display instructions to set up the app.

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TIMES - Extraordinary Newspaper Magazine Theme

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TIMES - Extraordinary Newspaper Magazine Theme

Briefly about features

TIMES is an extraordinary newspaper / magazine WordPress theme designed to redefine publishing by making content both easier to create and consume. It combines professional looks and unmistaken typography with impressive user experience (UX) and incredible attention to details.

Enjoy your content on mobile devices, tablets and more thanks to a responsive layout, now even faster and better with optimized images and support for high-quality retina screens. This theme supports menus 3 levels deep as more than this is a burden for users to navigate. If you have more questions, please email support.

Changelog

May 12th, 2018 — version 1.4.8

ADDED - Option to show "Unique posts only" on the homepage. While, previously, only posts of the same type were not repeated, with this setting you can choose to skip the same post from the entire homepage. That includes every post on the homepage and inside sidebars/widget areas. Of course, your handpicked posts on the homepage will be displayed as usual and won't be affected by this setting. ADDED - Option to "Copy link" to the article, in the share area below article. We've added yet another way to share your articles, your readers can now simply click the button to copy the post link and share it ony any site, community or platform. ADDED - Option to "Email" article link, in the share area below article. Your readers can also send the article link to a friend or colleague via email. IMPROVED - Visual tweaks and improvements. IMPROVED - Customizer experience.

March 17th, 2018 – version 1.4.7

ADDED - Font Editor - We've added a brand new section to the customizer that will allow you to change every font on the site effortlessly. There are three font families loaded with the theme by default, you can swap them all out with almost 900 fonts offered by Google Fonts or add your custom fonts with a link or code from your font provider. Using Greek, Cyrillic or Vietnamese script with your Google Fonts? Easily add font subsets straight from the customizer! Want to use only one font on the whole page? Sure! Just check the "Use universal font?" checkbox and you're good to go. All that available in the customizer from today! ADDED - Shortcodes can be inserted directly to the homepage as part of Custom Code module. IMPROVED - UX tweaks and improvements for customizer’s publish menu. IMPROVED - Moved the "Font Subset" option from Settings page to customizer. IMPROVED - Front-end, visual tweaks. IMPROVED - Performance.

November 24th, 2017 – version 1.4.6

ADDED - Custom Code module to the homepage builder. You can now insert any HTML, JavaScript code or text to the homepage. Great for adding advertisements, even if your code is not optimized to be responsive, you can use the module's tabs to enter different code for mobile, tablet and/or desktop devices. This module is very similar to WordPress’ Text Widget, once you toggle the "Include basic styling?" checkbox, it allows you to move some of that content from sidebars to the homepage. ADDED - Smart reload to the homepage builder. We think that this feature will greatly increase the productivity of assembling your homepage. The customizer now refreshes the homepage once it detects that you are done making changes, avoiding unnecessary updates and improving the customizer's performance, especially on older devices. ADDED - Compatibility with WordPress 4.9 and it's new features. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks and improvements.

October 28th, 2017 – version 1.4.5

ADDED - Option to change ticker content font type: serif and sans-serif. ADDED - Option to disable/enable opening social media links throughout the site in a new tab, in customizer. ADDED - Checkbox to Social Media widget that allows to disable opening links in a new tab. ADDED - Option to hide posts date on the homepage, articles and across the site. IMPROVED - Social Media widget following count. Results are now loaded asynchronously to improve page loading speed in some cases. IMPROVED - Ticker content is now loaded asynchronously to avoid additional database queries on page load and to improve load speed. IMPROVED - Visual tweaks.

September 29th, 2017 – version 1.4.4

ADDED - Breaking News Ticker - This is a big one, we've actually created the whole ticker system from scratch, we started with creating the best experience by designing an intuitive and familiar UI to customize your ticker content, appearance and behavior. You can either show post: latest, oldest, most bookmarked / commented, from category(ies), handpicked or add your own content right from the customizer. Adjust the appearance and layout to fit your sites style, set your own colors, change the label text or choose the scrolling direction – all that with instant, live preview, which makes customizing a quick and productive task. ADDED - Option to disable rich menu dropdowns (Functionality ON/OFF > Other). ADDED - Option to the Social Media widget to open profile links in a new tab. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

August 24th, 2017 – version 1.4.3

ADDED - New layout for Secondary Menu Bar called "Divider". You can check it out in Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Header Layouts. ADDED - New layout for Secondary Menu Bar called "Shadow". ADDED - New background type for "Boxed" layout in Secondary Menu Bar: "Dark Background" ADDED - New background types for "Boxed" layout in Secondary Menu Bar: "Custom Light & Dark Color" which allows you to set a custom color, light or dark, for the bar’s background. ADDED - Added option to choose amount of padding / space for Secondary Menu Bar: Small, Medium, Large Padding. ADDED - Instant, live feedback in customizer for Showing / Hiding Secondary Menu Bar’s search button, date and social icons.

July 24th, 2017 – version 1.4.2

ADDED - Custom made, light and fast one-click demo importer designed specially for TIMES with clean, simple, intuitive and clutter-free interface. We've written, completely from scratch, brand new demo importer tailored specifically for TIMES, it's fast, light-weight and easy to use, you can add some demo content to your sites in minutes and remove just as fast, all that with a click of one button that conveniently turns into a slick progress bar. In short, it's awesome and to try it out just activate the free bundled Dash+TIMES plugin ADDED - New demo content called "TIMES Starter Pack". Contains everything you need to get started with the theme, a complete and lightweight package, ideal for new sites and easily removable. ADDED - Option to enable or disable "pinch to zoom" on devices with touch screens. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

June 15th, 2017 – version 1.4.1

ADDED - Optional print button in the interaction area. You can enable it or disable it by going to the Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Show/Hide and (un)checking the "Print Button Below Post" checkbox. ADDED - Option to remove all theme's meta tags in case you want to use a third-party plugin for meta tags. Meta tags include Open Graph tags, Twitter tags and meta description tag. ADDED - Updates for WordPress 4.8. IMPROVED - Visual tweaks.

May 31st, 2017 – version 1.4.0

ADDED - Homepage Builder - This is a big one... We've created completely from scratch a tool that allows you to modify any element on the homepage. You can rearrange every sections, have multiple sliders or any module, each with different settings. You can pick certain posts to appear in the section in most modules or, for example, set the post type to display most commented posts from this week. This tool allows for a total flexibility and customization of your homepage, on top of that it is very intuitive, nicely designed, clean and without unnecessary clutter. The builder is very smart and adaptable, for example, if you add two compatible modules that display the same type of posts, the second module will not show the same posts, they will be offseted. There are plenty of unique touches like that and this paragraph is already too long so I would recommend that you give the builder a try by going to the Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Homepage Layout. Oh and don't worry! Every change you've made to the slider or other modules through the customizer will be converted to the builder so you don't have to redo your layout! IMPROVED - Slider section from customizer was moved to the Homepage Layout section and all your settings will be mirrored to the homepage builder. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

April 30th, 2017 – version 1.3.9

IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks. IMPROVED - Main menu experience. IMPROVED - Hero image performance.

April 3rd, 2017 – version 1.3.8

ADDED - New widget called "Category Posts" that allows you to display articles from specific category in any post-excerpt format neatly in the sidebar. You can also pick the number of posts to show as well as set the time-range. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

March 23rd, 2017 – version 1.3.7

IMPROVED - Customizer looks and experience. Biggest customizer redesign to date, we made the customizer much, much more organized, easier to navigate, less cluttered and gave it a more modern look. Every section has it’s own custom made icon and a description for easier navigation, similar settings are now grouped together to make the best use of space and each group has a short explanation to it. Words really can't do a justice once you compare the old customizer with the new one. Make sure to try it out and if find something not working properly, just go to Dashboard > Settings > General and uncheck the "Customizer tweaks" checkbox. ADDED - Dark mode. Yes, your website can now join the dark side. To change the color scheme of your site go to the Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Change Colors and pick a dark color scheme. ADDED - Sepia color scheme. Give your site the old-school look with subtle brown shades. You can change the color scheme in the same section as the dark color scheme. ADDED - Option to change the default sorting for comments.

BUY From ENVATO Marketplace

[hydrus]

Version 492

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

I had a good week mostly cleaning code and adding some things for advanced users.

highlights

If you are in advanced mode, the file sort and collect controls now have a 'tags' button. This lets you determine which tag service that particular sort/collect applies to. If you are this tag-clever, let me know how it works for you. This tag button is the same thing that autocomplete dropdowns use, and I expect it to soon get a 'multiple location' makeover like the file button did with multiple file services.

The archived file delete lock (under options->files and trash) gets a pass this week. If you try to delete files that are currently locked, it now makes a popup with a button to see those specific files, so you can decide what to do. The duplicate filter also handles the different situations (like 'archive both files' + 'delete the worse file') better.

The duplicate filter also now shows if one or both files have an ICC profile.

The shortcut actions to 'move page selection home/left/right/end' now try to stay on the same level if you hit them several times. If you use these actions, try them out through a mix of page of pages and you'll see how it works now. It remembers the current level within three seconds of the last move event. This was requested by several users, and there isn't a nice way to do it so I hacked an answer, so let me know what you think.

full list

sort and collect updates:

for big brain users, the collect control now has a tag domain button. it only shows if you are in advanced mode (issue #572)

the sort control also has a tag domain button hidden behind advanced mode. it applies to system:num tags and namespace sorting

the collect control now appears on all import pages

.

archived file delete lock:

the duplicate processing action code now no longer archives files that are due for deletion right before that deletion. this was hitting the archive delete lock

if archive delete lock is on and the 'other' file in the duplicate filter is archived, the option to 'this is better, delete the other' is now disabled

if you attempt to delete a delete-locked file during normal browsing, or if an automatic system like export folders wants to but fails on some, a popup is now made with a button to show the files that were filtered out so you can review the situation and fix it if you want

I am considering adding a dialog to say 'hey, this is locked, want to send back to inbox?' to fix these situations in a nice way, but I think this is probably a bad idea in terms of workflow, design, and my sanity given all the edge cases and potential future expansions of lock rules. maybe I'll add a simple 'delete and override lock checks' option, but a lock is a lock tbh. for now, I will focus on this better UI feedback of currently delete-locked files and make it simpler for humans to remove any locks

.

misc:

using black magic, I have made it so the shortcuts for 'move left/right one page' 'and 'move home/end' do not dip down to the lowest level of a neighbouring page of pages for the next command. it now stays on the current tab level for three seconds after the most recent move command. this works in testing but may be jank in some IRL situations, so if this matters to you, let me know how it works out

fixed a bug in 'do a full metadata resync' that meant unprocessed row orphans were not being deleted, which lead to lingering 1950/2000-style processed gauges that didn't actually cause any work to be done on 'process now'

the duplicate filter now shows if one or both files have an icc profile. for now the score for this is always 0, neutral

I think I have reduced general lag on some busy clients

.

code cleaning and minor fixes:

refactored file viewing stats management to a new database module

refactored file physical storage management to a new database module

cleaned up an ugly bridge that made inbox/archive work and moved it all to a clean new separate database module

improved some client file physical storage repair code, both in how it repairs and how it recovers in the current boot

updated the yes/no dialog texts when you apply 'not related' or 'alternates' to a selection

added a bunch of tooltips to the 'speed and memory' options panel. also clarified the example image sizes in number of pixels

improved how my grid layout propagates tooltips from the widget to the text when the widget is compound and in its own layout

consolidated where the delete lock test occurs to just one location for db, gui

added infrastructure to filter and report delete-locked files. callers no longer care about specific lock rules, opening this up to future expansion

cleaned and simplified some duplicate action processing code

cleaned up some file collect code, optimised it a bit too

the sort control now only changes sort type on mouse wheel events if the mouse is over that button

renamed 'tag search context' to 'tag context' across the program, mirroring a recent change with the location context, and gave it some bells and whistles. in future, the tag context will hold multiple tag services

wrote a new button to edit tag contexts

next week

Next week is small jobs. I have a bunch of different things piled up that I want to get to, and I'll see if I can catch up with some longer term bug reports too.

[clarencenicholsonata]

7 New Website Design Tips for Ecommerce Stores to Try in 2021

Website design has a critical role to play in the success of an eCommerce store. Consumers can overlook even the world's best products if the design does not back up the presentation (or buying experience).

A great website design inspires visitors to take action, strengthening their trust in the brand and subsequently driving sales and customer loyalty.

This article is for any eCommerce store that wants to polish its website and get it ready for business in for the new year. The seven tips shared below won't disappoint:

1. Focus on Your Storytelling

Anyone can put together an eCommerce website and sell whatever they desire. However, not everyone can create a successful storyline around their product or service. Consumers are more likely to remember your eCommerce site if they feel you are honest and personal, and the best way to make them feel so is by storytelling.

Here is a fantastic example:

Bon Bon Bon, an artisanal chocolate-making company in Detroit, also runs an online store that is as creative and attractive as their chocolates. The website design is fun, and loud yet reinforces how fun and appealing their brand is!

Their "About" page beautifully captures the Bon Bon Bon philosophy.

From the informal and humorous web copy that tells a tale to their aesthetic use of personal photos - it is hard for website visitors (along with chocolate aficionados) not to fall in love with Bon Bon Bon and the team responsible for the delicious offering.

So, while designing your website, ask yourself:

What made you offer your product or service?

How can your offering change lives?

Who is your target audience?

What is your company's long-term vision?

Once you answer these questions, you can effectively structure your eCommerce website design, and inspire your visitors and make them feel like a part of your vision (and journey) similar to how Bon Bon Bon does.

2. Use Colors to Your Advantage

Research states it takes not more than 90 seconds for a consumer to form an opinion about a product or service, and a large amount of that interaction - 62-90% - is determined by colors alone. However, choosing colors for your website is not about saying, "Yellow is my favorite color, so let us turn the site yellow!"

Your choice of colors has to depend on your product or service and the target customers. For instance, if you sell environmental products, the color beige and green will complement the sense of earthiness and nature.

Similarly, have you ever noticed the abundance of blue in the financial sector? That is because blue is the color of credibility, trustworthiness, and security, which consumers want to feel when managing their money. PayPal and Citibank are prime examples.

Different colors can inspire different emotions, feelings, and actions of people. Here is another example: if you want more visitors to make a purchase, color the "buy button" red.

The latter inspires feelings of excitement, desire, and passion - three driving factors behind spending money. A test run by Dmix found out that a red CTA button on the site can increase conversions by 34%. So, if you want to drive some serious sales on the site, you must use colors to your advantage.

Need help marketing your eCommerce store?

Book a free call to learn how our team of eCommerce experts can help you generate leads, boost traffic and drive MORE sales.

3. Ensure to Offer Great User Experience

Convenience is the biggest reason why consumers prefer shopping online. If your eCommerce website is hard to navigate, has a cumbersome checkout process, or a complicated search option, your visitors won't return.

It does not matter whether you want them to buy from you or take targeted action on the site (such as filling a contact form, adding items to the cart, or using the search bar); each step they have to take to complete a task on your website must flow from one point to another.

Shared below is a series of animated interactions in The Gourmet’s web design concept. As you can see, the visitor can easily move through the website, choose different categories and products, and add items to the shopping cart.

If you want to make your eCommerce site convenient for your customers, here are a few changes you must make:

Your brand logo should be hyperlinked to your homepage and always remain visible, irrespective of how deep the visitor goes in your store.

Breadcrumbs must allow visitors to return to parent pages and expand the search field.

The search bar should also help them find a particular product or category easily.

If you need help drawing your navigation structure, use wireframing tools such as Sketch, Omnigraffle, and Photoshop.

4. Pay Attention to Website Accessibility

In addition to a smooth navigation process, your eCommerce site must meet accessibility requirements so that all consumers, including those differently-abled, can easily browse, read, and focus on the website's essential elements.

Having an eCommerce store that every consumer can browse through and interact with is necessary as it can then potentially lead to a larger target audience, better search rankings, and higher conversions.

Start with implementing user-friendly features such as:

Create a strong color contrast between backgrounds and text

Add focus indicators that pop up around the links when using keyboard navigation

Using labels and instructions with form fields

Insert alt-tags for images for more excellent readability

To ensure maximum level of web compliance, test your store by running aCe’s ADA checker to test for elements which are not accessible.

Every customer is unique. Empathetic brands that care about their customer interest and preferences and have a reputation for being authentic and purpose-driven, grow 3X faster than their competitors.

5. Design Creative, Digital Interpretations of Products

The ability to touch and feel a product before purchasing it is essential to many consumers. However, that is not an option while shopping online. A Field Agent survey reported that product images significantly drive purchases for 83% of US shoppers, and just 35% of shoppers are influenced by video while researching for a product.

Therefore, getting professional images clicked of all your products (from multiple angles) will go a long way in building confidence and trust amongst your customers. Let us take an example: the Holstee brand is colorful and fun.

Although you may find its product pages simple, it is not so. Once you go below the fold, you will find more photos, videos, and options to learn more about the product, which further helps the visitor make a decision.

Another example is that of the online jewelry retailer Alex and Ani, which showcases all of their products with up-close high-resolution images so that the potential buyers can see every part of their jewelry in detail.

They also display their bracelets and bangles, paired with different outfits, to inspire style ideas for various occasions. Alex and Ani's product imagery evokes emotion and promotes the brand mission. The key is to be creative about how you can showcase your product.

6. Boost Your UI/UX Design With Formatted Product Descriptions

You could spend days writing lengthy product descriptions for your eCommerce site. But the truth is website visitors read only 20% of the text on any given web page. Instead of reading the copy word-for-word, they skim through the page, focusing only on the vital information.

Therefore, write your product copies in bullet points and use different font sizes and a short paragraph to make them easy-to-scan. Outdoor gear seller Patagonia does a fantastic job with their product descriptions.

The product name is right at the top in bold. The story and highlights of the product are put into a short paragraph. The specifications are in bullet points. There are also enough images of the product for the visitor to make an informed decision.

7. Prioritize eCommerce Security

The sophistication and frequency of cyberattacks have increased manifold in recent years. It is, therefore, important for your website to secure your customers' personal and payment information. An SSL-certificate from a reputed vendor is a must-have.

Your website visitors will typically look for the green lock and the HTTPS sign on the address bar before they input their payment details to complete the transaction. Therefore, put their minds at ease by adding an "SSL secure shopping" icon to the shopping cart page.

Other things to include on your website are two-factor authentication (e.g., fingerprint, OTP, security question), a firewall to block unauthorized site traffic, and a privacy policy link in the footer that clearly explains that you do not share the customer with third-party sites.

You can also boost your eCommerce store's credibility by displaying security badges on the website. Research shows that 76% of respondents will not buy from a site if they don't recognize the security badges. Therefore, go with the most trusted companies, such as McAfee, PayPal, TRUSTe, and Verisign.

Summary

Your eCommerce website offers you the perfect opportunity to build a brand, connect with target customers and sell products or services that add value to their lives - but only if you have got a website design that caters to the preferences of all kinds of customers.

Therefore, take a moment to review your store and identify areas where it can improve and offer an enhanced customer experience. Once you have done that, be ready to:

Focus on your storytelling

Use colors to your advantage

Ensure a great search and navigation experience

Pay attention to website accessibility

Creative, digital interpretations of products

Boost your UI/UX design with formatted product descriptions

Prioritize eCommerce security

These tips are designed to give your eCommerce website an edge and boost sales. So, what are you waiting for? Do not waste a minute and get to work!

About the Author

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content & data-driven SEO. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Digital PR. Get in touch with him on Twitter.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/2M6lywS via IFTTT

[concettolabs]

Slack Vs Microsoft Teams: Which One Is Better For You?

In 2019, the team collaboration software market touched a new height with $9.5 billion globally.

And this COVID-19 pandemic situation has forced everyone to work remotely. During this, remote work, collaboration, and chat tools have played a major role.

To maintain productivity and increase, businesses have started using collaboration software.

If you are into the IT industry, you probably know that there are major two market leaders in the sector: Slack and Microsoft Teams.

That was a rumor that in 2016, Microsoft made the monumental decision to forgo a potential acquisition of Slack for $8 billion and instead expand on their existing Skype for Business model. This led to the creation of Microsoft Teams in 2017, which has changed the game for enterprise collaboration services.

After the launch, in just three years, Microsoft Teams reached 13 million daily active users. On the other hand, it took almost six years for Slack to reach 10 million.

After the launch, in just under three years, Teams reached 13 million daily active users when it took Slack six years to reach 10 million.

Moreover, a few months back, Microsoft has claimed the number of active users has now jumped 50% to 115 million, which is 75 million daily active users.

Even after the announcement, IBM joined hands with Microsoft. They said we would deploy Slack to the workforce of 350,000 employees. Officially, this has made them Slack’s biggest customer yet.

This heated collaboration has brought plenty of questions.

What forces users to use Microsoft Teams over Slack and vice-versa?

However, these two collaboration platforms look the same at the first glance but are completely different in their design and structure.

If you are looking to get an answer to which one would be preferred, we actively used both tools to find out their pros and cons. So, here are some key differences and our review of Slack Vs Microsoft Teams, based on real-world use from our team.

Slack Vs Microsoft Teams: Fast Facts

If you are looking for a quick overview of the two tools, here is everything you need to know.

The fact was that Teams did not have a freemium plan. This changed in July 2018, when Microsoft rolled out a new version of Teams for free, strengthening its potion as a Slack competitor.

However, when we compare Slack with Microsoft Teams, Slack is easier to set up and administrate. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams is designed for large enterprises and its setup is more complex. However, it comes up with excellent integrations with Office 365 applications, which is hard to miss.

So, if the integration is your primary concern for your team chat app, then Slack wins the race as it integrates with every other tool under the sun.

SlackMicrosoft Teams

Pricing ModelFreemium

Standard $6.67 user/month (billed annually)

Plus $12.50 user/month (billed annually)

Freemium

Office 365 Business Essentials

$5 per user/month

(billed annually)

Office 365 Business Premium

$12.50 per user/month

(billed annually)

You can try both paid plans for free for 30 days

Message History Limit10K messages in Free plan, unlimited in Standard and Plus plansUnlimited in all plans

Audio/Video CallsUnlimited 1:1 voice and video calls in Free plan

Conference calls for up to 15 participants in Paid plans

Voice/video calls with

up to 250 people

in a meeting.

Integrations10 integrations limit in Free plan, 800+ integrations in paid plans180+ apps and services (as of July 2018)

File Storage LimitFree plan: 5GB file storage for a team

Standard plan: 10GB per user

Plus plan: 20GB per user

Free plan: 2 GB/user and 10GB of shared storage

Paid plans: 1 TB per organization

Screen SharingUnavailable in Free version, available in Standard and Plus versionsAvailable in all plans

Interface Color OptionsCustom sidebar themes3 themes (light, dark, high contrast)

Conversation ThreadsYesYes

Private MessagingYesYes

Group ChatsYesYes

Pricing Models

Having mentioned earlier, both tools come up with freemium plans. However, if you are looking for all the features, then you will have to pay for it.

In Microsoft Tools, that means you need to have either a Business Premium or Essentials account to access it. In other words, you need Office 365, and Teams comes as an add-on.

Precisely, Business Essentials has the cheapest Office 365 that has Teams. Its cost is $5 per month and you have to choose an annual plan to get started. Honestly, this is quite cheaper than Slack’s cheapest plan, which is Standard and which costs $6.67 per user per month if you calculate annually.

When you realize that $5 spent on Microsoft Teams also gives you access to Office 365. If you are planning to upgrade your plan in Slack or Microsoft Teams, they cost the same, at $12.50 per user per month. However, you will get Office 365 included with Teams.

Microsoft Teams and Slack Free CapabilitiesMicrosoft TeamsSlack

Max users300 per orgUnlimited

File storage2 GB/user and 10 GB of shared storage5 GB total

Guest accessYesNo

1:1 and group online audio and video callsYesYes

Channel meetingsYesNo

Screen sharingYesYes

App integrationUnlimited10

Chat messagesUnlimited10K most recent messages

Two-factor authenticationNoYes

User Interface

Now let’s compare the user interface

Here, we will consider how easy it is for new users to try and use the tool. If you look at the first time, they both look the same. But if you ask a regular user who uses both, they will tell you the complete difference.

The user interface of Slack is sleek and it has become the industry standard.

Moreover, Slack shows a step-by-step tutorial for new users.

(Onboarding experience with Slack)

In this tab, you can easily add new users to your workspace in the “People” tab.

(Slack workspace)

If users are not on Slack, they will receive an invitation by email. If they are already on a Slack, they will be added to their workspace.

You can easily add a Slack channel by clicking the “Add a channel” link in the sidebar menu.

Moreover, you can easily send a message to your team on a channel by typing a message. You can target a message in a channel to a specific person by using @ and their username.

By mentioning their username, it will notify that person.

Now, let’s talk about Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams has the same UI as Slack. The touch and feel of the UI are not different though.

Once you sign up for Microsoft Teams, it offers some guidance in the form of docs and a tutorial video. But it doesn’t include a guide like Slack.

(UI of Microsoft Teams)

Microsoft Teams has replaced the “channels” word with “teams” in the menu section. Each team can have various channels/teams to keep communication separate for different projects.

If you click a button or menu, it comes up with a light-box rather than a completely new page.

In this case, you can create new channels by clicking the “Create more channels” button on any team page.

(New Channel Creation in Microsoft Teams)

Like with Slack, you can also tag someone by mentioning @ to make sure they notice your message.

Both Slack and Microsoft Teams are easy to use, but Slack has a slight edge when it comes to the step-by-step guide and general UX.

Messaging Ability

Booth tools offer a group functionality with threaded messaging, where you can create a group channel for your team.

The text box provides the edit, delete, pin your message, mention someone, start a new thread, attachment sharing, and other features.

When we talk about Slack, it doesn’t just provide users to “like” someone’s message but also leave a variety of other emojis as a reaction. In addition, Slack lets you set reminders on messages.

Here’s a handy comparison of what you can do with messages in both tools.

(Slack/Microsoft Teams)

When it comes to notifications, both offer advanced notification systems that you can set up to your liking.

However, Microsoft Teams comes up with the advanced formatting feature for the messages you send. This allows you to change the color of your font, add bullet points, and make the words bold or italic, etc.

(Formatting Options in Microsoft Teams)

Another cool feature that Microsoft Teams offers is .gif images and emojis. You can easily find an ideal emoji or gif by searching the name in the result box.

(Emoji search by name in Microsoft Teams)

But both apps miss a central notifications hub.

Storage Limits

The freemium of Slack offers 5GB of file storage for a single team. With the paid plan, it can increase to 10GB, 20GB, or 1TB per user, as per your plan. In the free version, you will also get a cap of 10,000 on message history, which disappears for the paid versions.

The freemium of Microsoft Teams offers 10GB of total shared storage for a team. It can increase to 1TB for the entire organization if you choose a Business BAsic, Business Standard, or Office 365 E3 plans. It also offers “plus 10GB per license”. Teams have no message history limits.

Video Conferencing

Both tools provide online audio and video sharing options to users. But Teams was developed under the experience of Microsoft which caters to the needs of every business – large and small. So, naturally, Team rules the video feature when it compares to Slack.

The free plan of Slack offers unlimited one-to-one audio or video calls. However, to add more callers, you will have to buy a plan, which supports up to 15 participants with a screen sharing option.

On the other hand, Teams offers you to host a meeting with up to 300 participants. When you purchase a plan, you can even conduct live events to host large meetings and webinars with up to 10,000 participants inside or outside your organization.

Teams also offer you to record meetings, which Slack doesn’t provide.

Integrated Apps

The free model of Slack offers you an app integration of up to 10. This hassle, you will not face if you upgrade your plan. Therefore, paid Slack offers more than 2200 app integrations possibilities. If you are using any other productivity app at work, there’s a very good chance it’s compatible with Slack.

Whereas, Microsoft Teams has other plans. It offers unlimited integrations with other apps for all pricing tiers but only supports around 250 apps. However, Teams does have the best integration options with Microsoft 365. This will be the most useful feature for businesses that use Microsoft 365.

Which does Collaboration App win?

Both Slack and Microsoft Teams are amazing tools for organizations. And ultimately, the choice between the two depends on your requirements and what you are looking for in a collaboration app. If you are looking for a specific type of app integration, verify with Slack and Teams to see if they are compatible or not.

Microsoft Teams has clearly overtaken Slack as the market leader in terms of active users and is rapidly booming in every organization.

On the other hand, Slack is a bit more familiar, innovative, and a bit more “comfortable” tool. It’s mainly used by many startups and smaller companies.

Slack has many integrations, a better bot, and slightly better usability. When it comes to cost, Microsoft Teams is a bit cheaper. It offers better free plans and integrates natively with Office 365 tools. That’s the reason, Slack is an ideal choice for the majority of businesses.

Which tool is the right choice for your business between Slack Vs Microsoft Teams? But in this heated battle to be the better platform, which one will you choose? Microsoft Team vs Slack?

[xiaoning-pan]

How is Louis Vuitton’s website design? (UX/UI)

www.louisvuitton.com.

The landing Page

The purpose of this specific landing page is to establish an interaction with the customer. As indicated in the top left corner, customers are supposed to choose their countries or region. Choosing a region or their country alone is enough is a good starting point to establish an interaction since everyone is always affiliated to a specific region or country at any given time. In this specific case, visitors are supposed to choose their own language, from the listed 39 languages. For those whose languages or countries do not appear in the list, the landing page has provided an option for "others" at the left bottom corner, and as indicated, the language for that option is international English. Conclusively, Louis Vuitton's landing page is good and effective in serving its purpose for the brand and campaign. It is all-inclusive as it provides an option to access the main page in all the major languages of the world.

The Main Page

At the top of this page are four images each showing a woman with a differently designed Louis Vuitton bag. The images are meant (purpose) to create a connection with female consumers. Right below these images is a “shop now” button. After clicking on the "shop now" button, the customer is directed to the product category which is labeled "women's fall-winter 2020 campaign." There is a video showing women with various LV bags to help the customers chose a bag of their choice depending on their fashion preferences.

In the middle of the main page are three images. The one on the left is showing a woman holding a new product and as indicate it the product comes in different colors “bicolor monogram Empreinte". Below this image is a button "shop the exclusive prelaunch now," which will lead the customers to the said new products. The other two images are on the right side, one is for a woman holding an LV bag and the other one is showing three differently colored LV's bags. Above these images is the "find your local store" button and above it is a note that the customers can now book a virtual in-store appointment. The purpose of the middle part is to introduce the customers to the products as well as, the option of booking a virtual appointment.  After clicking on “shop the exclusive prelaunch now" customers are directed 156 products, the price of each and the colors it comes in are indicated below each product. Notably, to ease the selection, customers can see these products in categorized lists, like "new" "women" 'men" and "art of living." On the other hand, upon clicking on “find your local store,” the customer is prompted to search engine from which they are supposed to find a store near them by entering the name of their countries or region. Upon finding a store nearby, the customer is prompted to book a virtual in-store appointment.

At the bottom are three images showing different products from LV. At the left is a man with a LV bag, in the middle is an image showing a LV branded suitcase with LV's branded perfumes packed inside, at the right is a man wearing a LV's hood. The purpose of this part is to introduce the customers to the company's different products. On clicking on the man with a LV bag, is I directed to the product category where different sizes, colors, and designs of bags are shown. Each bag has a price tag below it. On clicking on “LV branded suitcase with LV’s branded perfumes packed inside”, the customer is directed to 56 perfumes product category. The price of each perfume is indicated along. Upon clicking on “a man swearing a LV’s hood" customers are directed to the hoodies product category and below each product is its respective price.

Overall, the design interface is attractive and easy to navigate. Customers can easily follow product categorization as they are well labeled. On the same note, the main page is not overcrowded thus giving the customer an easy time finding what they looking for. However, after browsing the web as a potential male customer, I feel they should consider how the display of men's product. The men's products appear at the bottom and they are small and just two. Before locating the men's, first-time male visitors might think they are browsing the wrong website. Also, the misrepresentation of men's products might give customer the impression that the company specializes in female products only. Regarding the user experience, the website is well designed. The categorization of products is well thought. Customers can choose to see all products in a particular category, or chose to filter them to either, men’s product or women's product, Also, the website is user friendly, since after clicking on a product, one is promoted to the payment procedure and there are detailed guidelines at each stage. Markedly, the videos on this website are well designed to establish an instant interaction with visitors or to give the customers a clear image of the product. Lastly, there is an option of opening different product in different tabs thus giving a customer an easy time to compare the products. However, the company should consider adding a "back button" such that customers can easily locate some products they saw earlier.

[bloggerjoedoe]

I’ve used Things off and on as my primary task manager for as long as I’ve used Apple devices, which is just over a decade now. During that time the app has been remarkably consistent at supporting new OS features as soon as Apple launches them, and this year is no exception. In its latest update, Things has added new widgets for iOS and iPadOS 14 as well as a unique implementation of Scribble for creating new tasks. Apple Watch users will find a couple useful new complication options too.

On the surface, the update may seem simple and straightforward: new widgets, Scribble support, and new complications. But as the team at Cultured Code has done time and time again, their implementation of new OS technologies is thoughtful and even innovative, especially on iPad.

Widgets

Things’ widgets focus exclusively on displaying lists of your tasks. You can use a small, medium, or large widget for viewing tasks and configure each widget to show only the exact tasks you want; the medium and large widgets also provide a plus button for creating new tasks.

Different sizes and configurations of Things’ widget.

In the widget’s setup mode you can choose which list of tasks to display, such as your Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday, one of your Projects or Areas, or one of your tags. A nice secondary option enables filtering your chosen list down to only display tasks that contain a certain tag within a given list; for example, you can view tasks that have been tagged ‘Writing’ and are in Today, or in a certain Area. I’ve never been a big user of tags in my task manager, but the ability to filter a widget based on tags makes the feature more valuable than ever.

Due to a limitation in Apple’s new widget system in iOS 14, Things’ widget can no longer offer the ability to check off completed tasks. If that functionality is of great value to you, the old widget is still available as a legacy option, it just can’t be added to the Home screen and will be forced beneath all newer widgets in your Today view.

The trade-off of not having large touch targets for checkboxes is that now Things’ widgets can display a lot more tasks at once. For example, the legacy widget is about the same size as iOS 14’s new medium widget, but it can only display two tasks whereas Things’ new widget shows five in the same space. And on iPad, I like how Things’ developers have tried to negate the loss of checkboxes by creating a smooth alternate flow for checking off tasks: tapping a task in Things’ medium or large widget will open the app with that task highlighted, and thanks to the app’s strong hardware keyboard support, a quick Command + K shortcut will check off the task. It may not be as quick as using the old widget, but highlighting the task so it can be quickly marked complete via a keyboard shortcut is a nice touch.

Scribble

Using Scribble to create a new task for a specific day.

Another interesting iPad feature is Things’ implementation of Scribble. In iPadOS 14, Scribble enables writing with an Apple Pencil in text fields to have your handwritten text automatically converted to typed text. Apps that use standard text fields will get this new feature without requiring any work from their developers, so with other apps where I’ve tried Scribble, the implementation has always been the same: write in a text field, and iPadOS converts your text. Things does something unique, however, in that you not only can write into any of the app’s text fields with the Pencil, you can also use Scribble in any open space you see in the UI and your written text will convert into a new task.

I would never have thought of an app enabling Scribble in the open spaces of its UI, but after using Things I’m convinced it’s a brilliant idea. Writing in text fields is nice, for sure, but writing on other parts of the screen feels like you’re unlocking a special power in the app. I suppose you could say it’s the equivalent of keyboard shortcuts, but for the Pencil, offering a quicker way to do something than what the UI itself provides.

The feature works inside any list, and I find it especially useful inside Upcoming or in a project containing different headers, as you can Scribble inside the boundaries of the due date you want, or section you want, to have the new task automatically go there. It’s a really clever feature that Pencil users are sure to love.

Watch Complications

Things’ new complications.

Things already offered some nice Apple Watch complications, but the two additions in this watchOS 7 update are worth highlighting because they cover core task management needs.

The Today complication is designed to fit in the medium rectangular complication slot on Infograph Modular and Modular Compact, two of my favorite faces, and it displays the first three tasks in your Today list. Assuming your Today list is organized properly, the first three tasks should always be the most important tasks to see at any given moment, making this complication a no-brainer.

The New To-Do complication fits the small round slot on Infograph, Infograph Modular, Modular Compact, California, and more. It displays a simple plus button that quickly launches you into the task creation mode of the app, so if you regularly think of new tasks to add throughout the day, this complication can provide the quickest way to do that.

This year at WWDC, Apple stressed to developers that the best iPad experience takes into account the variety of interaction methods the device supports: touch, keyboard, trackpad, and Pencil. Things now does that better than any app I know. If you need to create a new task, you’re not disadvantaged using one interaction method over another. If you’re using touch or a trackpad, the Magic Plus Button makes task creation easy; with a hardware keyboard there’s a Command + N keyboard shortcut; with the Pencil, you can just use Scribble anywhere to write a task.

It’s hard to find another app that does so well taking into account the variety of use modes for the iPad. Things was the first app to bring full keyboard control to iPadOS, and I think this latest update will forge a similar path forward for Apple Pencil use. I’m already wondering how other developers, inspired by Things, might implement Scribble as a form of shortcut for Pencil users.

Things is available on iPhone and iPad as separate apps.

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