#sure some do but typing and using a mouse are skills unique to computers

[moths-in-a-coat]

i honestly thought working at a college (in a sector dominated by customer service) that the people/students i’m helping are

i don’t really know? able to follow directions? or have some intuitive sense of how things work?

i just thought that people in college would make customer service easier compared to like working at a store or something

but, alas, if you tell a student to go to a website, often times you need to tell them explicitly, with clear instructions, that they need to open a browser like chrome, make sure a new tab is opened, to click onto the search bar, to type in the url, and explain that when i say ��dot com” i do not mean type in “dot” but to actually use the period on the keyboard

i get that having access to computers consistently enough is sometimes a privilege for many households, but at the same time, schools have chromebooks or mandatory computer time, and, in my school growing up, mandatory computer classes AND robotics/progaming classes despite being from a poorer school district

i just don’t think i’ll be able to explain that, no, when i say click on something using a mouse, that you cannot click and drag it. you have to hold the mouse still and click it while holding it still one more time without losing my mind in some capacity more than i already have

[britcision]

So I wanna talk a little more about this concept of digital natives and also tie a little into learned behaviour, because this is fun to me

First: this idea of kids these days being “digital natives” and having some kind of innate understanding of technology has actually seriously fucked the younger generations over

They are not being taught computer skills

Your bell curve around 40 of computer competence are because the kids who were taught how to use a computer in school are generally 30-50 now (for the very lucky ones who learned early)

We used to have classes on this; on how to type, how to set up files and folders, how to actually make a computer do the basic tasks you need to know to use it well, not just how to code

There’s jokes about kids not knowing why the floppy disk icon means save, or why the call button on phones looks like that, but it’s not because the kids have done anything wrong or are uniquely ignorant

They have no frame of reference, and are not being given one

Sure, some kids will poke around and learn anyway, but young adults are entering workplaces not knowing how to sort and nest folders to organize files, or how to find anything stored that way

They’re struggling with the exact same tasks “old folks” used to struggle with, because growing up on a tablet or a smart phone or even a gaming laptop does not prepare you for a workstation

They do fundamentally different things, but because people assume they’re “digital natives”, they are expected to know all the inner workings by magic, just because the technology is older than they are

(I have touched and held a floppy disk - the smaller, solid, not floppy ones. And I think the last time I put one in a computer for serious reasons I was 5)

This is actually relevant to AO3 in particular because while AO3 has fantastic optimization for mobile (means: looks good on small screen all buttons work), it is not designed like a mobile app

AO3 is very plainly still set out as a website, meant to be accessed through a monitor with mouse and keyboard

When you open AO3 on mobile or on laptop or desktop, it looks almost exactly the same, including the layout. This is an intentional choice (and in my opinion, always the right one; you don’t want users to get confused by how different your site looks based on the device you’re using)

This feels very intuitive to some older users because it is what we grew up with, and yeah, like otnf says, it’s how a lot of fandom and especially fic spaces have been set up since this was the hot new tech; we’re used to this kind of layout, and having to click a couple times to get our filters set the way we like

For anyone who is experiencing AO3 as their very first fanfic platform, their expectations are gonna be shaped by the other media they’ve seen up til now

The search bar is… just a search bar. A text box in the top menu

And sure, once you hit “search” you get buttons for filters another refinement, but the thing they teach you first in web design is that if you want users to see a feature, it must be glaringly obvious and maybe a weird colour because your brain filters out one fuck of a lot of background noise in everything you look at

That’s not what you want to see when you’ve just run a search; presumably, you want to focus on the results, and if you’re already planning to filter, congrats! The button’s right there at the top

If you have no reason to know or expect the button to be there, the search box is all there is, and it is super easy to just scroll on past to your results and filter slowly and laboriously

There is no web design that can fix this

AO3 is right not to prioritize it; there is not a magic right answer. A text field above the “Edit Your Search” button might help? So might a pop up for a logged in user, that they can close and never see again once they know the secret

But the primary goal of the search page is to show you the results of the search you just did

And this is where learned behaviour comes into play!

Cuz you see, we can’t change the AO3 interface; we can just get better at using it, and finding our own ways to get what we want

The websites we use a lot train us to look at other websites in a similar way, exactly like a mouse learning the best path through a maze

If you are used to using another button to filter search results, you are more likely to look for one

If you’re used to features being big and flashy and attention grabbing, you are less likely to look at anything that isn’t

AO3 inherited a lot of its structure from fic platforms that came before, because the people who built it were used to using that structure, which felt natural and intuitive to them

Once you have learned to use a system well, there’s a pretty quick tail off where you forget you had to learn anything at all; it’s super easy, just click these three buttons and bam! Here’s a spreadsheet!

(This is in fact a major part of my job in business analysis; breaking down old systems and simplifying them so that they are actually easier to train new staff on. Old staff are generally reluctant to bother and want to use their older “intuitive” systems until they get a look at how simple the new system can be, and realize how much actual training time they could just avoid

Then it’s pretty popular, so long as it still feels “intuitive” to people used to the old system - things like keywords and similar placement of buttons, but if you can cut out four steps in the process? Hell yeah)

So, once you get used to how AO3 works, you forget you had to learn. And it seems so very silly to see all these new people in the notes, afraid of clicking buttons

(Absolutely click every button you don’t immediately understand on a trusted site, it’s break testing the code and if you can do anything seriously damaging it’s better you a benevolent user find out than someone Planning Evil)

But if they are used to very different site structure, or even used to using apps instead of browsers, or even just haven’t used a similar site before (and be honest; how many others are there in your daily lives?) they have no reason to even assume there could be a button there to look for

“Edit Your Search”? Well I can do that by typing a different thing in the text box, why would I need a button?

(Note: there is no magic phrasing that will prevent this)

In the burgeoning days of the internet, we had no fan sites and a lot of people at least started making their own; we have insider knowledge on how sites are built, structured, and the language for what everything on a site does comes from these times

It used to be much more bare bones, so we know where to generally look for filters and things like that

And then we forget we needed to be told, and it all just seems so obvious

Tl;dr: AO3 features like search filters seem obvious to you because you know they’re there. Give everyone else a year with them and they too will also consider them obvious

There’s always gonna be an onboarding period, and reworking AO3 to cater to that would only make it frustrating for long term users… including the ones who would initially benefit from the redesign

How many times do you want to scroll past or dismiss a “Filter Your Search Here! You can use And, Or, and other operators!……..” bubble?

But it does.

[ghastghoul]

I actually have more than I thought I did 😭! Didn't even realize it until I saw this post and gathered up some of my better sketches for them!

My first OC that I designed while watching the G1 cartoon and Transformers: Animated for the first time in forever was Shift Click.

G1 Design:

I'm not too great at drawing vehicles so I decided to make a minibot that became a computer mouse to make up for that. I'd like to think that his favorite ally would be Blaster since he was actually my favorite side character from the Autobot roster, along with Jazz. He's the type to take up human culture like a sponge but isn't very open about it and he enjoys humanity's various takes on robots in media.

Transformers: Animated Design:

In TFA I see him as more open, but he never sees Earth. He hates Sentinel whenever he sees the mech and he's honestly a bit isolated by what he does. When his skills aren't being used to get intel on the enemy then he's not doing much as he's on the lazy side. I'm not sure if his alt. mode is the same as his G1 counterpart (computer mouse), honestly.

Then I have another TF:A OC named Pulldown:

His alt. mode is a drive-in theater projector. He's an ex-Decepticon that used to work with Swindle, his projection abilities once being used to show off products Swindle tried selling before having a falling out. Pulldown tries very hard to hide his past but he honestly sucks at it, poor fella. He also lies when he ends up on Earth and claims to be part of Autobot intel, but that's debunked fast and it forces him to be honest.

Now we've got my wonderful ✨️babygirl✨️, my ✨️pookie✨️, my love - the Beast Wars OC I designed named Shatter Fang:

Shatter Fang's beast mode is a Moray Eel. His protoform was thought to be lost to the sea after the Predacons dropped his pod into the salty waters below their battle ground, devastating the Maximals trying to salvage him. Cheetor later finds a moray eel swimming oddly close to the water's edge and realizes what happened, that the protoform had not only survived but had taken on a beast mode, and he's elated when he gives Primal the good news.

His processor is a bit wonky as he often confuses similar words with eachother when speaking (Ex: instead of saying "My apologies," he may say "My sorries"), but he has a respectable spark and (later on) the passion of a warrior. When he meets the Maximals he's wary and afraid. Optimus Primal decides to let Dinobot act as his mentor, teaching him how to fight in this war; but when Shatter Fang encounters a Pred for the first time he fumbles and attempts to run from combat, at least until Dinobot accuses him of being a total coward unworthy of respect. After helping his new allies win the fight he decides to dedicate all his energy toward earning the respect of his mentor as well as his other Maximal brethren.

And finally, my newest OC named Wavewader:

Since he's so new I don't have too much on him at the moment, but his submarine alt mode was actually inspired by one of these:

And the unique designs for submarines or ships that you may see in animation.

If I had to give any feel for his personality so far, it's very calm and easy to be around. He gets down to business as it's needed.

Reblog this and show me your Transformers OCs, please and thank you

PLEASE I love seeing people's transformers OC's so much

And feel free to absolutely info-dump about them, I will read all of it. ALSO if anyone has sparkling oc's theyre willing to share (whether from canon or oc characters) I will die of happiness.

[ck90]

I Fell into a rabbit hole...

The Kastle rabbit hole. And of course, decided to do some follows because - pretties! I even made a playlist! Then I saw the post about #kastleweek2k19 and saw that day 2 was au-palooza. I knew it had probably been done (haven’t found it yet tho - lots of great fics to read) but wouldn’t it be cute if Karen was the bodyguard protecting Frank.  I saw the post last Thursday and thought, sure I can make a “quick’ fluff fic. It was supposed to be 5K. Then plot happened.

I See Heroes

AO3

Chapter 1: Bad News and Worse News

Click. Click. Click.

Very Special Agent, Karen Page, Level 6, but off the books a Level 8, took a long sip of her second cortado in an hour and willed the caffeine to refuel her empty tanks. It had been a flat white, macchiato, cold brew, cold brew, latte, cortado times two type of day. It wasn’t a bad day, per se. At least it wasn’t the flat white, espresso, double espresso, triple espresso and keep it coming, chocolate covered espresso beans all day, “I said triple espresso!”, “That was a triple!”, “I need more coffee!”, “Behold, Black Insomnia,” and she didn’t sleep for the next 73-hours, type of day.

“You’re thinking about Black Insomnia, aren’t you?”

Karen glanced at the pretty - no, that was too small of a word, too nice - stunning, yeah, that was better, the stunning woman beside her. Special Agent Crystalia Amaquelin, also officially a Level 6 but in reality a Level 8, was out of this world. Literally.

“Never,” Karen’s eyes narrowed, “demon-spewing portal of a hell dimension or not, give me that again.” She shuddered. “I still get the jitters.”

“That was six months ago, you drama-llama.”

They looked at each other and smiled. Good times.

“Okay.” Karen brought the cortado to her mouth again, absently rubbing the ten-inch scar on her thigh. “Maybe only for demon-spewing portals.”

Talia snorted, kicking her size ten tactical boots onto the table and leaning so far back that Karen was sure she was going to tip backward, but didn’t, and clicked on the mouse nearest to her.

Click. Click. Click.

Karen glanced at her own size tens on the other end of the table, it was why she knew Talia’s size. They’d worn each other shoes more times than she could count. It had doubled her shoe collection overnight. She now had Guccis and Louboutins, and Talia had Miu-Mius and Manolos. They'd ended up sharing a house for that reason alone. The fabulous shoes. Except they’ve been practically living in their tactical boots for the last month.

Karen bit off a sigh and ignored the various screens that surrounded them, focusing solely on the one in front of her. They were in a sub-sub-basement of one of S.T.A.K.E.’s subsidiary offices watching the world unfold in front of them. She swiped at the tablet on her lap, and the image changed.

Click. Click. Click.

Who names an organization STAKE anyway?

“Stark.” Another image flashed in front of Karen. “Special Threat Assessment for Known Extranormalities. Howard Stark’s idea of a joke because he stumbled onto Vlad, himself.”

Talia turned to Karen. “Was I thinking too loud?”

“What? Oh.” Karen blinked and shook her head. “No. Sometimes we are just on the same vibe. Versus the times you purposely shout images of your latest conquest.”

“One of us has to have fun.”

Click. Click. Cli—

Talia pushed the mouse away and eyed the other tablet near Karen’s foot. In the blink of an eye, the tablet was in Talia’s hands. Karen was jealous of that little skill.

“Sorry. You should have said something.”

“I would have. Sooner rather than later.” She grabbed the coffee again, sipped, then extended the cup towards Talia. “Would you mind?”

Talia touched the cup. “Hot, scalding or volcano?”

“More than hot but not quite scalding.” In half a breath, the steam swirled up and out of the container. Karen brought it to her lips and savored the fiery jolt of caffeine. She looked at her coffee. “Is 32oz still considered a cup?”

Talia picked up her own vat of caffeine. “It is in my book.”

“It’s perfect, thank you.”

“We all have our lots in life,” Talia said. “Mine is to heat up your coffee and share my shoes.”

“They are really nice shoes.”

“They are, aren’t they?” They shared fond memories of their shoe collection. “What are we trying next?”

Karen worried her lip for one long breath, tapped on her tablet and then pointed at one of the screens now showing a variety of shoes. “Prada?”

“That’s so last year. How about stilettos?”

“You would need seven inches to be taller than Thor and four to go eye to eye with Rumlow. And the last time you went higher than three, you nearly broke your ankle.”

“I still think I can lift Mew-Mew, given half a chance.”

“Me-awl-nir.” Karen’s hands enunciated each syllable like a conductor. There was a wicked sparkle in Talia’s eyes. “You do that on purpose, don’t you?”

“Mew-Mew.”

Karen chewed the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. It would only encourage the incorrigible woman. “And Rumlow? Reeaally?”

Talia’s eyes grew unfocused. Lost in a thought or a memory. Karen geared up for more salacious imagery to burst out of her partner. But none came.

“Talia?” Karen reached out of habit. She was a hugger. Always had been even as a child. A comforting touch. A gentle squeeze. Always tactile. It was part of her skill set. Who she was. In her nature to console and reassure. To soothe. Her fingers brushed against the bunched sleeve on Talia’s elbow.

The problem was that Karen’s power was dangerously out of kilter. She couldn’t control it or replicate the circumstances. It had happened under stress - her nails had dug into a meaty forearm of a hellspawn who grabbed her neck with the intention of separating it from her body - and in perfect calm - her hand had bumped against Mac’s when they were getting coffee.

It had happened six months ago when some idiot opened a hell-portal in Kandahar. And it had happened yesterday morning in New York. The hellspawn had dropped dead. As had any of its brethren that came into contact with her skin. Mac had only been knocked out cold. Luckily.

She got the hellspawn. It could've just been a surge of adrenalin. Fight or die. It wasn’t uncommon for some of the higher powered operatives to develop extra skills in the heat of a battle. But yesterday, there’d been no danger. She had just felt a sense of determination. Of right and wrong. Of honor and dishonor. Of exhaustion.

Weird.

Talia blinked and eyed the long fingers on her elbow. Karen flinched her hand back, but Talia grabbed it and put it on her bare forearm.

“Talia!” Karen tried to pull her hand back, but the other woman was having none of it and held on tight.

“We’re going to figure this out, Kare.”

Karen yanked her hand back. “I’m not taking any chances. Don’t do that again.” She couldn't control the fear in her voice. She couldn’t bear if something happened to her best friend or any of their team just because they touched her by accident. She couldn’t go through that terror again. The picture of a crumbling Mac would forever be forged into her memory.

She was not going through that again. Even if she never touched another friend for the rest of her life.

Karen grabbed the full-length gloves that had been discarded because of the ridiculous warmth of the sub-sub-basement. Shaking fingers buried themselves into the unique fabric that Simmons had initially designed for Daisy. It had been meant as a temporary fix, but had become a permanent fixture on her body after Kandahar. Except for yesterday morning. Except for now.

“You're lucky I didn’t put you in a coma. Or worse.” Her fists clenched to stem the shaking. She refused to look at Talia. The wave of sympathy and love hit her like a comforting blanket. For someone who tried to personify a chaotic neutral personality, Talia Amaquelin was too consistent when it came to the people closest to her. She’d go through hell and back for her teammates. And she’d risk death to comfort a friend that was slowly dying inside from being so touch-starved.

Gloved fingers covered her lips in an attempt to quelch a strangled sob. Her hand fisted against her mouth.

I’m not lonely, Karen.

It was a fleeting thought. A will-o’-wisp. A hushed whisper from far away. So much emotion. So much left unspoken. But she heard it.

Again.

“Kare.”

Her whole body turned towards Talia. Blue eyes met green eyes like the old friends they were. Words were unnecessary. They’ve known each other for over five years. Worked together for over four and lived under the same roof for almost as long. A look was worth a thousand words. Talia grabbed a gloved hand and squeezed.

Yeah. They'd figure it out. But in the meantime, Karen wasn’t taking any chances. Gloves or not. She pulled her hand away.

“As for Rumlow,” Talia shrugged, “it’s complicated.”

Karen bit back a smile. Talia’s default distraction topic: Sex. “Complicated?”

“What can I say,” Talia turned her attention to one of the screens, tilted her head to the side, then moved on to the next screen, “I like living on the edge.”

Karen snorted. “That’s one hell of an edge.”

“I know right?” Talia rested the tablet on her lap and put her hands behind her head. “Sometimes I scare myself.”

Karen did not want to know the details. Of all of the dangerous men and women at SHIELD, Brock Rumlow was scary with a capital D for deadly. She was not going to ask. It was none of her business, and she didn't want to know the particulars that would make her blush anytime she was in the same room as that man.

Besides, Talia was a talker, and she’d spill it anyway. Any minute now. She tended to brag. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. It was almost charming. And one of them should have some fun. Especially now.

Except there was nothing but silence. Other than the low white noise hum of the computers. Talia was just looking at the screens in front of her.

Karen was not going to ask. Nope. Not gonna happen. She was just going to work. Her index finger tapped absently against her thigh.

Goddammit.

Karen dropped the tablet on the table and turned to Talia. “Spill. Details. Say it now so I can school my reaction next time I see the man. Rather than just having you spring it on me before a meeting.” Karen counted to three. “Wipe that self-satisfied grin off your face or so help me I’ll tell Coulson it was you who scratched Lola.”

Talia laughed. “We can’t talk about Rumlow, we’d fail the Bechdel Test.”

“Do you even know that is?”

“Of course I do,” Talia said. “I’ve lived with your nerdgasm for five years. It was bound to rub off.”

“Well, we can’t talk about work.” Karen gestured at the screens. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“What is Fury trying to find here?” Talia tapped on her tablet, and the screens changed. “I get that this is the new hub for vigilantes, but there’s no way that he doesn’t know the identity of the Devil. And that private investigator sure isn’t hiding. Neither is that big smoking hot dude in Harlem.”

The screens showed pictures of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and the glowing fist boy. But the images of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen were all dark and blurry. Only fleeting captures by surveillance cameras. No way to tell anything other than his suit was red, and it had horns. Ha. What’s next? Yellow spandex and gold armor? But Fury was Fury and Karen wouldn't put it past him that he knew exactly who it was under those horns.

“Maybe he’s looking for Spider-Ham.”

Silence. Even the computers stopped humming.

“Spider. Ham.”

It was the tone. Karen always looked at Talia when she pulled out that tone. “You know, the man-child dressed in red and blue who always hams it up for CCTV then realizes he probably shouldn't and throws that spider gunk at it as if it would magically erase the feed.”

Talia bit her lip. “Spider. Ham.” She tasted the words slowly. “I’m totally putting it on the next report.” She pulled out her phone and typed into it.

“Hello? Is this thing on?” A curly blond-brownish haired man tapped on a screen. “Oh, there you are. Can you hear me now? Can you see me?” He looked down, and suddenly all of the screens now had a real close up his face on them. “Is that better?”

“Not really,” Talia said.

“You’re on all of our screens, Fitz.” Karen bit off a smile.

“Oh,” Leo Fitz looked down again. “Is that better?” The image panned out to show more of the lab, but now only covered four screens.

“Not re—”

“It’s fine, Fitz.” Karen glared at Talia. “What’s up?”

“I have good news,” he said.

Karen straightened. Fitz and Simmons had been working on what the hell was going on with Karen’s power. Simmons from a biochemist angle and Fitz from the ‘engineering can’t hurt’ angle.

“Not really,” a disembodied voice pointed out.

Oh. Karen tried to hide her disappointment.

“Oh,” Fitz rubbed his head, “yeah.” He looked at Karen and deflated. “Sorry, Karen. It’s not about the—” he wiggled his hand, “sorry.”

Talia grabbed Karen’s hand and lifted it in a victory pose. “The gloves are totally working though. Not dead. Not even a little nap.”

Karen snatched her hand away.

“That’s great!”

“Fitz,” Karen said calmly, “What news?”

“Maybe it’s more bad news and worse news?” He looked at them worriedly.

“What’s the bad news, Fitz?” Karen had to wonder if it was bad news from Fitz’s perspective or hers. After all, what could possibly be worse than being stuck in a sub-sub-basement watching the world go by and not being able to touch another person because you’re afraid to kill them?

“Hi guys,” Jemma Simmons appeared on the screen and waved. “Don’t forget to bring some samples of that Hell’s Kitchen water.”

“We’re bringing it in us,” Talia answered.

Jemma smiled, then her eyes widened. “NO! Don’t drink it! You don’t know what’s in it.”

Karen bit the inside of her cheek.

“Nice one Jem,” Fitz said.

“It sounded normal in my head.” Jemma’s face contorted in embarrassment. Sorry, she mouthed.

“Why don’t you tell them Jemma?”

Simmons’ head snapped towards Fitz’s direction. “Noooo,” her head moved side to side until the last extended vowel. “He told you to do it.”

“But why would he tell me to do it?”

Jemma thought for a moment. “Because you were the closest to the door.”

“Oh.”

Karen loved them. Would stand in front of any hex or curse for them, face a horde of demons or gaggle of ghouls for either one without hesitation. They were an integral part of their team. Invaluable. But sometimes they drove her bonkers.

“Fitz. Simmons. Spill it.”

They both jumped.

“They are afraid to tell you that you’re still on Fury’s Shit List.” Daisy Johnson came into view.

“Still?” Talia made a face.

“If you know,” Fitz said, turning to Daisy, “then why don’t you tell them?”

“Nooooo.” Daisy held up her hands and took a half-step backward.

“It was an accident.” Four heads turned at the same to look at Karen who shrugged. “It was.”

“The two of you were playing keep the Tesseract away from the Flerken.” Karen resented the lack of understating in Daisy’s tone. It hadn’t been ‘keep away’ as much as how many tentacles does a Flerken really have.

“And he swallowed it,” Fitz said. “Again.” It’s not like it was the first time that “cat” had swallowed something he probably shouldn’t have.

“And we’d just gotten it back!” That sounded like an accusation coming from Jemma. As if it had been their fault SHIELD has lost the Tesseract in the first place. Again. For the fifth time?

Karen turned to Talia, who’s head disappeared between her shoulders as she dipped lower in her chair. “He gave it back.”

“Hurled, Talia,” Daisy said. “Hurled is not the same as give.”

“On the Director’s desk,” Fitz said. “Again.”

“And on his chair. And the floor. And that rug Fury brought back from Istanbul.”

It hadn’t been pretty.

Daisy turned to Jemma. “I think he had to burn it.”

“The smell.” They all said at the same time.

Yeah. That had been surprising. In a toxic dump, even the hazmat suits had come out of the room looking green in the gill, sorta way. You could smell it down the hall.

“He…also returned…some other stuff.”

It was surprising how much stuff could fit into such a little body.

“Hurled, Karen,” Daisy said. “Hurled is not the same as returned.”

“I think that huge mass of goo was a Chitauri,” Jemma said. “Or what was left of one.”

“Jemma, that’s not possible. The Chi—”

Karen tuned out the arguing scientists. She knew they’d figure it out. Her problem that is. If anyone could, it would be them. She just hoped it wouldn’t be another six months. Or longer.

“We knew this, though,” Talia’s voice was low and conversational. “It’s why we’ve been banished to Purgatory.” She waved at the screens. “To contemplate our misdeeds.”

Right. Karen nodded. “If Fury was really angry, he’d send us back to San Francisco.” Bad news and worse news. “Fitz. Fitz! What’s the worse news?”

Fitz picked up a tablet and started typing. One of the screens went black, then two pictures came up, side by side. Two men in Marine officers uniform. It must have been their file portraits. More images came up. The same men, but this time in fatigues, sitting and standing, but always together.

“He’s hot,” Daisy said.

Jemma nodded. “It’s the classic bone structure. The visual cortex recognizes that near-perfect symmetry. Rather pretty actually.”

Karen wouldn’t call him pretty. Not by a long shot. Not with a nose that looked like it had been broken more times that he could possibly remember. Not pretty, but there was something striking about those dark eyes, even in a photograph, that felt like they could see right through her. She couldn’t stop staring.

You were never in any danger …I wanted you to know that.

“Shh! Neither of you wanted to tell them so…shh. Perfect symmetry,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Are we assassinating United States Marine officers, now?”

Karen stiffened.

“What?” Fritz looked down at his notes, then back to Talia. “No. Not at all. Quite the opposite, actually.”

This guy is a war hero.

Karen started to relax. It would be a shame - a crime against mother nature - to have to destroy such a fine specimen of the male species.

“No. Nononononono!”

It was the repetition that unraveled whatever connection that was trying to materialize into this reality. Karen blinked and looked at Talia, whose face was now buried in her hands. She made herself replay the conversation she’d tuned out because of those devastating eyes she was now purposely avoiding. Then it clicked. Her eyes widened.

“NO!”

“Yes.” There was sympathy from Jemma.

“Yeah. Sorry.” And Fitz.

“You’re on babysitting duty.” Not from Daisy. Not even a little bit.

[abroadeducation]

Top 6 Tips to Prepare For GRE Exam (2023)

Introduction

GRE is a standard test that is used to measure your verbal, quantitative, and analytical writing skills. It also helps you determine if you have enough knowledge to pursue graduate studies.

1. Create a GRE Study Plan

If you are going to take the GRE test, it is important that you create a study plan after taking proper GRE training. You should set aside time on a regular basis to study, practice and take the exam.

The first thing that you need to do is figure out how much time each week and month you can dedicate to preparing for this test. Then make sure that this amount of time gives yourself enough space between sessions so that when one session ends, there is enough time before starting another one (e.g., if one session lasts two hours then try not doing another session until at least 24 hours later). This will help avoid burnout which could lead to frustration and anxiety during testing days!

Once these requirements have been met then go ahead with creating your own customized study plan based on what type(s) of prep material best suits YOUR needs (i.e., whether they're online courses versus books).

2. Find the Best GRE Prep Books for You

If you are looking for the best GRE prep book, the first thing you need to do is find one that is easy for you. There are many different types of books available and all of them have their own unique style. Some books may be too hard or too easy, so make sure that you choose one that suits your needs perfectly!

Make sure that there are lots of reviews out there about each specific title before purchasing anything--this way we'll know whether or not others agree with our opinions regarding certain topics within these texts (like whether they're good at explaining concepts). Choose the best GRE coaching center in Hyderabad.

3. Take Practice Tests

Taking practice tests is a great way to get used to the format of the test and see how you are doing. You can find free practice tests online, which will give you an idea of what kinds of questions are on it and how much time each section takes. Practice tests are an important part of your preparation for GRE because they help build familiarity with the structure, question types and difficulty level that you'll encounter during actual exam day.

Take at least one full-length (4 hour) test before taking any other practice exams or quizzes so that you know exactly how much time each section takes up in real life conditions--and then use this information when planning out your own schedule!

4. Look at GRE Sample Questions

When you look at sample questions, you should pay close attention to the different types of questions that are asked in GRE practice tests. You can use this information to prepare yourself for what's coming up during your exam.

The most common question types are:

Quantitative Comparison Questions - these are multiple-choice questions with two answer choices and one correct answer. The answers will be expressed as numbers or algebraic expressions, but unlike Data Interpretation questions (see below), they won't require any special knowledge about statistics or geometry.

Numerical Entry Questions - these will require you to enter an answer as a decimal number into an on-screen calculator window before submitting it using your computer mouse or trackpad/keyboard arrow keys (depending on whether you're taking an online or paper test).

Data Interpretation Questions - these ask you questions about data sets provided within reading passages; often these passages contain graphs and charts rather than simply paragraphs of text explaining concepts such as mathematical functions

(Read more: CRACK GRE WITH HIGH SCORES, DONT SETTLE FOR AVERAGE)

5. Learn How to Deal With Stress on Test Day

Learn how to manage stress. If you're feeling nervous about the test, try some relaxation techniques such as yoga or meditation. You can also practice taking a break during the test by going for a walk outside or listening to music.

Don't get distracted by other students. During the exam, make sure that you focus on yourself and don't get distracted by what other people are doing in their exams!

Don't panic if something doesn't make sense right away--it might later on in your essay! The GRE is very flexible and allows time for questions that require deeper thinking than others; don't rush through these questions so quickly that they become impossible for you (or worse: incorrect).

6. Make Sure You Understand All the Question Types Found in Your Exam (Analytical Writing, Quantitative Section, Verbal Section)

Make sure you understand all the question types found in your exam (Analytical Writing, Quantitative Section, Verbal Section).

Analytical Writing: This section requires you to write two essays that are scored by two different readers. One essay will be based on an argument and one will be based on an analysis of an issue or argument.

(Read more: 7 simples Tips to ace Great GRE Argument Essay)

The GRE test is not easy to prepare for and there are many ways to study for it successfully.

Preparing for the GRE exam requires a lot of time, effort, and discipline. The best way to prepare for this test is by setting aside at least 3 months in advance so that you can practice as much as possible with all types of questions that appear on the actual test.

Preparing for this exam requires self-discipline because it takes discipline and determination to keep yourself motivated when studying seems like an uphill battle.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the GRE exam is one of the most important exams that you can take to get into a good college. It's not easy to prepare for this test but with some practice and hard work, you can do it! Good luck with your GRE exam!

[blockchain-games]

Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game - A New and Exciting Adventure!

Introduction

Introduction: Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game is a new and exciting adventure for players of all levels! With new monsters, quests, and items to explore, it’s sure to be an exciting journey. If you’re looking for an exciting game to play, then Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game is a perfect choice!

Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game - A New and Exciting Adventure.

Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game is a free-to-play online game that allows players to navigate their way through an ever-changing dungeon. The game has an exciting and unique story which players can explore with friends or alone. Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game is set in the world of Norse mythology and features a large variety of enemies, items, and areas to explore.

What is the Gameplay of Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game

The gameplay of Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game is based on real-time strategy (RTS) games.players are able to control their units in order to defeat enemies and complete quests. The goal of the game is to destroy all the enemies in order to rescue the hostages and return home safe. There are many different unit types which players can choose from, including warriors, bowmen, magic users, mages, etc. In addition, players can use items in order to improve their units’ abilities or stats. Players can also chat with other players in order to share strategies or tips for defeating enemy units or completing quests.

What are the In-game Benefits of Playing Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game

The in-game benefits of playing Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game include increasing your level up speed and gaining new skills as you progress through the game; earning rewards for your completed quests; and sharing your results online with other players who have joined you on your journey through the dungeon! Some of the more important benefits include: increased experience points earned when fighting against enemies; increased treasure chests found throughout the game; and more powerful allies available at lower levels!

How to Play Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game.

First and foremost, you should begin by downloading the Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game from the website. After installation is complete, open up the game and click on the “initialize” button to begin playing.

Once the game has initialized, you will be directed to a new screen where you will need to input your username and password. Once these are in place, you can start playing.

The first thing you’ll want to do is choose a difficulty level. There are three different difficulty levels available: easy, medium, and hard. You can also choose between two different languages: English or Spanish.

Your first task will be to explore your surroundings and find helpful items for your party. Once you have collected all of the necessary supplies for your party, head back into the dungeon and start fighting against the enemies!

You can save data by winning battles or completing side quests. When saving data, make sure to name your saved data file something unique so that it cannot be used again by another player without permission!

If you run out of space on your computer when saving data, you can always upload it later using FileZilla or another online storage service.

How to Save Data

To save data, first create a new file in the Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game directory called “RagnarokLabyrinthData” and then enter in all of your graphical information such as your character’s name, stats (including health points and magic points), locations (where they are located within the game world), etcetera.

Next, press play and enjoy yourself!

Tips for Playing Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game.

When playing the Ragnarok Labyrinth Online game, it is important to use the mouse to navigate the game. To do this, use your left hand and hold down the mouse button as you move around the virtual world. The right hand should be used to play the keyboard.

How to Use the Keyboard

To play the Ragnarok Labyrinth Online game on a computer or laptop, use a keyboard instead of a mouse. Place your cursor on top of the text or icon in front of you and type in what you want to do (e.g., click on an enemy). When you have finished typing, release the key and hit “enter”.

Conclusion

Playing Ragnarok Labyrinth Online Game can be a great way to enjoy an exciting adventure. However, there are a few things you should take into account before starting the game. First, make sure you have enough data saved up so that you can continue playing even if your computer goes offline. Second, be sure to use the mouse and keyboard to play the game properly. Third, don't forget to try out different strategies in order to see what works best for you. Finally, remember that tips like these can help you get ahead in the game and reach your goals faster.

[suzanneshannon]

How to Think Like a Front-End Developer

This is an extended version of my essay “When front-end means full-stack” which was published in the wonderful Increment magazine put out by Stripe. It’s also something of an evolution of a couple other of my essays, “The Great Divide” and “Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.”

The moment I fell in love with front-end development was when I discovered the style.css file in WordPress themes. That’s where all the magic was (is!) to me. I could (can!) change a handful of lines in there and totally change the look and feel of a website. It’s an incredible game to play.

Back when I was cowboy-coding over FTP. Although I definitely wasn’t using CSS grid!

By fiddling with HTML and CSS, I can change the way you feel about a bit of writing. I can make you feel more comfortable about buying tickets to an event. I can increase the chances you share something with your friends.

That was well before anybody paid me money to be a front-end developer, but even then I felt the intoxicating mix of stimuli that the job offers. Front-end development is this expressive art form, but often constrained by things like the need to directly communicate messaging and accomplish business goals.

Front-end development is at the intersection of art and logic. A cross of business and expression. Both left and right brain. A cocktail of design and nerdery.

I love it.

Looking back at the courses I chose from middle school through college, I bounced back and forth between computer-focused classes and art-focused classes, so I suppose it’s no surprise I found a way to do both as a career.

The term “Front-End Developer” is fairly well-defined and understood. For one, it’s a job title. I’ll bet some of you literally have business cards that say it on there, or some variation like: “Front-End Designer,” “UX Developer,” or “UI Engineer.” The debate around what those mean isn’t particularly interesting to me. I find that the roles are so varied from job-to-job and company-to-company that job titles will never be enough to describe things. Getting this job is more about demonstrating you know what you’re doing more than anything else¹.

Chris Coyier Front-End Developer

The title variations are just nuance. The bigger picture is that as long as the job is building websites, front-enders are focused on the browser. Quite literally:

front-end = browsers

back-end = servers

Even as the job has changed over the decades, that distinction still largely holds.

As “browser people,” there are certain truths that come along for the ride. One is that there is a whole landscape of different browsers and, despite the best efforts of standards bodies, they still behave somewhat differently. Just today, as I write, I dealt with a bug where a date string I had from an API was in a format such that Firefox threw an error when I tried to use the .toISOString() JavaScript API on it, but was fine in Chrome. That’s just life as a front-end developer. That’s the job.

Even across that landscape of browsers, just on desktop computers, there is variance in how users use that browser. How big do they have the window open? Do they have dark mode activated on their operating system? How’s the color gamut on that monitor? What is the pixel density? How’s the bandwidth situation? Do they use a keyboard and mouse? One or the other? Neither? All those same questions apply to mobile devices too, where there is an equally if not more complicated browser landscape. And just wait until you take a hard look at HTML emails.

That’s a lot of unknowns, and the answers to developing for that unknown landscape is firmly in the hands of front-end developers.

Into the unknoooooowwwn. – Elsa

The most important aspect of the job? The people that use these browsers. That’s why we’re building things at all. These are the people I’m trying to impress with my mad CSS skills. These are the people I’m trying to get to buy my widget. Who all my business charts hinge upon. Who’s reaction can sway my emotions like yarn in the breeze. These users, who we put on a pedestal for good reason, have a much wider landscape than the browsers do. They speak different languages. They want different things. They are trying to solve different problems. They have different physical abilities. They have different levels of urgency. Again, helping them is firmly in the hands of front-end developers. There is very little in between the characters we type into our text editors and the users for whom we wish to serve.

Being a front-end developer puts us on the front lines between the thing we’re building and the people we’re building it for, and that’s a place some of us really enjoy being.

That’s some weighty stuff, isn’t it? I haven’t even mentioned React yet.

The “we care about the users” thing might feel a little precious. I’d think in a high functioning company, everyone would care about the users, from the CEO on down. It’s different, though. When we code a <button>, we’re quite literally putting a button into a browser window that users directly interact with. When we adjust a color, we’re adjusting exactly what our sighted users see when they see our work.

That’s not far off from a ceramic artist pulling a handle out of clay for a coffee cup. It’s applying craftsmanship to a digital experience. While a back-end developer might care deeply about the users of a site, they are, as Monica Dinculescu once told me in a conversation about this, “outsourcing that responsibility.”

We established that front-end developers are browser people. The job is making things work well in browsers. So we need to understand the languages browsers speak, namely: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript². And that’s not just me being some old school fundamentalist; it’s through a few decades of everyday front-end development work that knowing those base languages is vital to us doing a good job. Even when we don’t work directly with them (HTML might come from a template in another language, CSS might be produced from a preprocessor, JavaScript might be mostly written in the parlance of a framework), what goes the browser is ultimately HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so that’s where debugging largely takes place and the ability of the browser is put to work.

CSS will always be my favorite and HTML feels like it needs the most love — but JavaScript is the one we really need to examine The last decade has seen JavaScript blossom from a language used for a handful of interactive effects to the predominant language used across the entire stack of web design and development. It’s possible to work on websites and writing nothing but JavaScript. A real sea change.

JavaScript is all-powerful in the browser. In a sense, it supersedes HTML and CSS, as there is nothing either of those languages can do that JavaScript cannot. HTML is parsed by the browser and turned into the DOM, which JavaScript can also entirely create and manipulate. CSS has its own model, the CSSOM, that applies styles to elements in the DOM, which JavaScript can also create and manipulate.

This isn’t quite fair though. HTML is the very first file that browsers parse before they do the rest of the work needed to build the site. That firstness is unique to HTML and a vital part of making websites fast.

In fact, if the HTML was the only file to come across the network, that should be enough to deliver the basic information and functionality of a site.

That philosophy is called Progressive Enhancement. I’m a fan, myself, but I don’t always adhere to it perfectly. For example, a <form> can be entirely functional in HTML, when it’s action attribute points to a URL where the form can be processed. Progressive Enhancement would have us build it that way. Then, when JavaScript executes, it takes over the submission and has the form submit via Ajax instead, which might be a nicer experience as the page won’t have to refresh. I like that. Taken further, any <button> outside a form is entirely useless without JavaScript, so in the spirit of Progressive Enhancement, I should wait until JavaScript executes to even put that button on the page at all (or at least reveal it). That’s the kind of thing where even those of us with the best intentions might not always toe the line perfectly. Just put the button in, Sam. Nobody is gonna die.

JavaScript’s all-powerfulness makes it an appealing target for those of us doing work on the web — particularly as JavaScript as a language has evolved to become even more powerful and ergonomic, and the frameworks that are built in JavaScript become even more-so. Back in 2015, it was already so clear that JavaScript was experiencing incredible growth in usage, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, gave the developer world homework: “Learn JavaScript Deeply”³. He couldn’t have been more right. Half a decade later, JavaScript has done a good job of taking over front-end development. Particularly if you look at front-end development jobs.

While the web almanac might show us that only 5% of the top-zillion sites use React compared to 85% including jQuery, those numbers are nearly flipped when looking around at front-end development job requirements.

I’m sure there are fancy economic reasons for all that, but jobs are as important and personal as it gets for people, so it very much matters.

So we’re browser people in a sea of JavaScript building things for people. If we take a look at the job at a practical day-to-day tasks level, it’s a bit like this:

Translate designs into code

Think in terms of responsive design, allowing us to design and build across the landscape of devices

Build systemically. Construct components and patterns, not one-offs.

Apply semantics to content

Consider accessibility

Worry about the performance of the site. Optimize everything. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Just that first bullet point feels like a college degree to me. Taken together, all of those points certainly do.

This whole list is a bit abstract though, so let’s apply it to something we can look at. What if this website was our current project?

Our brains and fingers go wild!

Let’s build the layout with CSS grid. 

What fonts are those? Do we need to load them in their entirety or can we subset them? What happens as they load in? This layout feels like it will really suffer from font-shifting jank. 

There are some repeated patterns here. We should probably make a card design pattern. Every website needs a good card pattern. 

That’s a gorgeous color scheme. Are the colors mathematically related? Should we make variables to represent them individually or can we just alter a single hue as needed? Are we going to use custom properties in our CSS? Colors are just colors though, we might not need the cascading power of them just for this. Should we just use Sass variables? Are we going to use a CSS preprocessor at all?

The source order is tricky here. We need to order things so that they make sense for a screen reader user. We should have a meeting about what the expected order of content should be, even if we’re visually moving things around a bit with CSS grid.

The photographs here are beautifully shot. But some of them match the background color of the site… can we get away with alpha-transparent PNGs here? Those are always so big. Can any next-gen formats help us? Or should we try to match the background of a JPG with the background of the site seamlessly. Who’s writing the alt text for these?

There are some icons in use here. Inline SVG, right? Certainly SVG of some kind, not icon fonts, right? Should we build a whole icon system? I guess it depends on how we’re gonna be building this thing more broadly. Do we have a build system at all?

What’s the whole front-end plan here? Can I code this thing in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Well, I know I can, but what are the team expectations? Client expectations? Does it need to be a React thing because it’s part of some ecosystem of stuff that is already React? Or Vue or Svelte or whatever? Is there a CMS involved?

I’m glad the designer thought of not just the “desktop” and “mobile” sizes but also tackled an in-between size. Those are always awkward. There is no interactivity information here though. What should we do when that search field is focused? What gets revealed when that hamburger is tapped? Are we doing page-level transitions here?

I could go on and on. That’s how front-end developers think, at least in my experience and in talking with my peers.

A lot of those things have been our jobs forever though. We’ve been asking and answering these questions on every website we’ve built for as long as we’ve been doing it. There are different challenges on each site, which is great and keeps this job fun, but there is a lot of repetition too.

Allow me to get around to the title of this article. 

While we’ve been doing a lot of this stuff for ages, there is a whole pile of new stuff we’re starting to be expected to do, particularly if we’re talking about building the site with a modern JavaScript framework. All the modern frameworks, as much as they like to disagree about things, agree about one big thing: everything is a component. You nest and piece together components as needed. Even native JavaScript moves toward its own model of Web Components.

I like it, this idea of components. It allows you and your team to build the abstractions that make the most sense to you and what you are building.

Your Card component does all the stuff your card needs to do. Your Form component does forms how your website needs to do forms. But it’s a new concept to old developers like me. Components in JavaScript have taken hold in a way that components on the server-side never did. I’ve worked on many a WordPress website where the best I did was break templates into somewhat arbitrary include() statements. I’ve worked on Ruby on Rails sites with partials that take a handful of local variables. Those are useful for building re-usable parts, but they are a far cry from the robust component models that JavaScript frameworks offer us today.

All this custom component creation makes me a site-level architect in a way that I didn’t use to be. Here’s an example. Of course I have a Button component. Of course I have an Icon component. I’ll use them in my Card component. My Card component lives in a Grid component that lays them out and paginates them. The whole page is actually built from components. The Header component has a SearchBar component and a UserMenu component. The Sidebar component has a Navigation component and an Ad component. The whole page is just a special combination of components, which is probably based on the URL, assuming I’m all-in on building our front-end with JavaScript. So now I’m dealing with URLs myself, and I’m essentially the architect of the entire site. [Sweats profusely]

Like I told ya, a whole pile of new responsibility.

Components that are in charge of displaying content are almost certainly not hard-coded with data in them. They are built to be templates. They are built to accept data and construct themselves based on that data. In the olden days, when we were doing this kind of templating, the data has probably already arrived on the page we’re working on. In a JavaScript-powered app, it’s more likely that that data is fetched by JavaScript. Perhaps I’ll fetch it when the component renders. In a stack I’m working with right now, the front end is in React, the API is in GraphQL and we use Apollo Client to work with data. We use a special “hook” in the React components to run the queries to fetch the data we need, and another special hook when we need to change that data. Guess who does that work? Is it some other kind of developer that specializes in this data layer work? No, it’s become the domain of the front-end developer.

Speaking of data, there is all this other data that a website often has to deal with that doesn’t come from a database or API. It’s data that is really only relevant to the website at this moment in time.

Which tab is active right now?

Is this modal dialog open or closed?

Which bar of this accordion is expanded?

Is this message bar in an error state or warning state?

How many pages are you paginated in?

How far is the user scrolled down the page?

Front-end developers have been dealing with that kind of state for a long time, but it’s exactly this kind of state that has gotten us into trouble before. A modal dialog can be open with a simple modifier class like <div class="modal is-open"> and toggling that class is easy enough with .classList.toggle(".is-open"); But that’s a purely visual treatment. How does anything else on the page know if that modal is open or not? Does it ask the DOM? In a lot of jQuery-style apps of yore, yes, it would. In a sense, the DOM became the “source of truth” for our websites. There were all sorts of problems that stemmed from this architecture, ranging from a simple naming change destroying functionality in weirdly insidious ways, to hard-to-reason-about application logic making bug fixing a difficult proposition.

Front-end developers collectively thought: what if we dealt with state in a more considered way? State management, as a concept, became a thing. JavaScript frameworks themselves built the concept right in, and third-party libraries have paved and continue to pave the way. This is another example of expanding responsibility. Who architects state management? Who enforces it and implements it? It’s not some other role, it’s front-end developers.

There is expanding responsibility in the checklist of things to do, but there is also work to be done in piecing it all together. How much of this state can be handled at the individual component level and how much needs to be higher level? How much of this data can be gotten at the individual component level and how much should be percolated from above? Design itself comes into play. How much of the styling of this component should be scoped to itself, and how much should come from more global styles?

It’s no wonder that design systems have taken off in recent years. We’re building components anyway, so thinking of them systemically is a natural fit.

Let’s look at our design again:

A bunch of new thoughts can begin!

Assuming we’re using a JavaScript framework, which one? Why? 

Can we statically render this site, even if we’re building with a JavaScript framework? Or server-side render it? 

Where are those recipes coming from? Can we get a GraphQL API going so we can ask for whatever we need, whenever we need it?

Maybe we should pick a CMS that has an API that will facilitate the kind of front-end building we want to do. Perhaps a headless CMS?

What are we doing for routing? Is the framework we chose opinionated or unopinionated about stuff like this?

What are the components we need? A Card, Icon, SearchForm, SiteMenu, Img… can we scaffold these out? Should we start with some kind of design framework on top of the base framework?

What’s the client state we might need? Current search term, current tab, hamburger open or not, at least.

Is there a login system for this site or not? Are logged in users shown anything different? 

Is there are third-party componentry we can leverage here?

Maybe we can find one of those fancy image components that does blur-up loading and lazy loading and all that.

Those are all things that are in the domain of front-end developers these days, on top of everything that we already need to do. Executing the design, semantics, accessibility, performance… that’s all still there. You still need to be proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and how the browser works. Being a front-end developer requires a haystack of skills that grows and grows. It’s the natural outcome of the web getting bigger. More people use the web and internet access grows. The economy around the web grows. The capability of browsers grows. The expectations of what is possible on the web grows. There isn’t a lot shrinking going on around here.

We’ve already reached the point where most front-end developers don’t know the whole haystack of responsibilities. There are lots of developers still doing well for themselves being rather design-focused and excelling at creative and well-implemented HTML and CSS, even as job posts looking for that dwindle.

There are systems-focused developers and even entire agencies that specialize in helping other companies build and implement design systems. There are data-focused developers that feel most at home making the data flow throughout a website and getting hot and heavy with business logic. While all of those people might have “front-end developer” on their business card, their responsibilities and even expectations of their work might be quite different. It’s all good, we’ll find ways to talk about all this in time.

In fact, how we talk about building websites has changed a lot in the last decade. Some of my early introduction to web development was through WordPress. WordPress needs a web server to run, is written in PHP, and stores it’s data in a MySQL database. As much as WordPress has evolved, all that is still exactly the same. We talk about that “stack” with an acronym: LAMP, or Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Note that literally everything in the entire stack consists of back-end technologies. As a front-end developer, nothing about LAMP is relevant to me.

But other stacks have come along since then. A popular stack was MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular and Node). Notice how we’re starting to inch our way toward more front-end technologies? Angular is a JavaScript framework, so as this stack gained popularity, so too did talking about the front-end as an important part of the stack. Node and Express are both JavaScript as well, albeit the server-side variant.

The existence of Node is a huge part of this story. Node isn’t JavaScript-like, it’s quite literally JavaScript. It makes a front-end developer already skilled in JavaScript able to do server-side work without too much of a stretch.

“Serverless” is a much more modern tech buzzword, and what it’s largely talking about is running small bits of code on cloud servers. Most often, those small bits of code are in Node, and written by JavaScript developers. These days, a JavaScript-focused front-end developer might be writing their own serverless functions and essentially being their own back-end developer. They’ll think of themselves as full-stack developers, and they’ll be right.

Shawn Wang coined a term for a new stack this year: STAR or Design System, TypeScript, Apollo, and React. This is incredible to me, not just because I kind of like that stack, but because it’s a way of talking about the stack powering a website that is entirely front-end technologies. Quite a shift.

I apologize if I’ve made you feel a little anxious reading this. If you feel like you’re behind in understanding all this stuff, you aren’t alone.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to a single developer who told me they felt entirely comfortable with the entire world of building websites. Everybody has weak spots or entire areas where they just don’t know the first dang thing. You not only can specialize, but specializing is a pretty good idea, and I think you will end up specializing to some degree whether you plan to or not. If you have the good fortune to plan, pick things that you like. You’ll do just fine.

The only constant in life is change.

– Heraclitus     – Motivational Poster         – Chris Coyier

¹ I’m a white dude, so that helps a bunch, too. ↩️ ² Browsers speak a bunch more languages. HTTP, SVG, PNG… The more you know the more you can put to work! ↩️ ³ It’s an interesting bit of irony that WordPress websites generally aren’t built with client-side JavaScript components. ↩️

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How to Think Like a Front-End Developer published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[siliconwebx]

The Widening Responsibility for Front-End Developers

This is an extended version of my essay “When front-end means full-stack” which was published in the wonderful Increment magazine put out by Stripe. It’s also something of an evolution of a couple other of my essays, “The Great Divide” and “Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.”

The moment I fell in love with front-end development was when I discovered the style.css file in WordPress themes. That’s where all the magic was (is!) to me. I could (can!) change a handful of lines in there and totally change the look and feel of a website. It’s an incredible game to play.

Back when I was cowboy-coding over FTP. Although I definitely wasn’t using CSS grid!

By fiddling with HTML and CSS, I can change the way you feel about a bit of writing. I can make you feel more comfortable about buying tickets to an event. I can increase the chances you share something with your friends.

That was well before anybody paid me money to be a front-end developer, but even then I felt the intoxicating mix of stimuli that the job offers. Front-end development is this expressive art form, but often constrained by things like the need to directly communicate messaging and accomplish business goals.

Front-end development is at the intersection of art and logic. A cross of business and expression. Both left and right brain. A cocktail of design and nerdery.

I love it.

Looking back at the courses I chose from middle school through college, I bounced back and forth between computer-focused classes and art-focused classes, so I suppose it’s no surprise I found a way to do both as a career.

The term “Front-End Developer” is fairly well-defined and understood. For one, it’s a job title. I’ll bet some of you literally have business cards that say it on there, or some variation like: “Front-End Designer,” “UX Developer,” or “UI Engineer.” The debate around what those mean isn’t particularly interesting to me. I find that the roles are so varied from job-to-job and company-to-company that job titles will never be enough to describe things. Getting this job is more about demonstrating you know what you’re doing more than anything else¹.

Chris Coyier Front-End Developer

The title variations are just nuance. The bigger picture is that as long as the job is building websites, front-enders are focused on the browser. Quite literally:

front-end = browsers

back-end = servers

Even as the job has changed over the decades, that distinction still largely holds.

As “browser people,” there are certain truths that come along for the ride. One is that there is a whole landscape of different browsers and, despite the best efforts of standards bodies, they still behave somewhat differently. Just today, as I write, I dealt with a bug where a date string I had from an API was in a format such that Firefox threw an error when I tried to use the .toISOString() JavaScript API on it, but was fine in Chrome. That’s just life as a front-end developer. That’s the job.

Even across that landscape of browsers, just on desktop computers, there is variance in how users use that browser. How big do they have the window open? Do they have dark mode activated on their operating system? How’s the color gamut on that monitor? What is the pixel density? How’s the bandwidth situation? Do they use a keyboard and mouse? One or the other? Neither? All those same questions apply to mobile devices too, where there is an equally if not more complicated browser landscape. And just wait until you take a hard look at HTML emails.

That’s a lot of unknowns, and the answers to developing for that unknown landscape is firmly in the hands of front-end developers.

Into the unknoooooowwwn. – Elsa

The most important aspect of the job? The people that use these browsers. That’s why we’re building things at all. These are the people I’m trying to impress with my mad CSS skills. These are the people I’m trying to get to buy my widget. Who all my business charts hinge upon. Who’s reaction can sway my emotions like yarn in the breeze. These users, who we put on a pedestal for good reason, have a much wider landscape than the browsers do. They speak different languages. They want different things. They are trying to solve different problems. They have different physical abilities. They have different levels of urgency. Again, helping them is firmly in the hands of front-end developers. There is very little in between the characters we type into our text editors and the users for whom we wish to serve.

Being a front-end developer puts us on the front lines between the thing we’re building and the people we’re building it for, and that’s a place some of us really enjoy being.

That’s some weighty stuff, isn’t it? I haven’t even mentioned React yet.

The “we care about the users” thing might feel a little precious. I’d think in a high functioning company, everyone would care about the users, from the CEO on down. It’s different, though. When we code a <button>, we’re quite literally putting a button into a browser window that users directly interact with. When we adjust a color, we’re adjusting exactly what our sighted users see when they see our work.

That’s not far off from a ceramic artist pulling a handle out of clay for a coffee cup. It’s applying craftsmanship to a digital experience. While a back-end developer might care deeply about the users of a site, they are, as Monica Dinculescu once told me in a conversation about this, “outsourcing that responsibility.”

We established that front-end developers are browser people. The job is making things work well in browsers. So we need to understand the languages browsers speak, namely: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript². And that’s not just me being some old school fundamentalist; it’s through a few decades of everyday front-end development work that knowing those base languages is vital to us doing a good job. Even when we don’t work directly with them (HTML might come from a template in another language, CSS might be produced from a preprocessor, JavaScript might be mostly written in the parlance of a framework), what goes the browser is ultimately HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so that’s where debugging largely takes place and the ability of the browser is put to work.

CSS will always be my favorite and HTML feels like it needs the most love — but JavaScript is the one we really need to examine The last decade has seen JavaScript blossom from a language used for a handful of interactive effects to the predominant language used across the entire stack of web design and development. It’s possible to work on websites and writing nothing but JavaScript. A real sea change.

JavaScript is all-powerful in the browser. In a sense, it supersedes HTML and CSS, as there is nothing either of those languages can do that JavaScript cannot. HTML is parsed by the browser and turned into the DOM, which JavaScript can also entirely create and manipulate. CSS has its own model, the CSSOM, that applies styles to elements in the DOM, which JavaScript can also create and manipulate.

This isn’t quite fair though. HTML is the very first file that browsers parse before they do the rest of the work needed to build the site. That firstness is unique to HTML and a vital part of making websites fast.

In fact, if the HTML was the only file to come across the network, that should be enough to deliver the basic information and functionality of a site.

That philosophy is called Progressive Enhancement. I’m a fan, myself, but I don’t always adhere to it perfectly. For example, a <form> can be entirely functional in HTML, when it’s action attribute points to a URL where the form can be processed. Progressive Enhancement would have us build it that way. Then, when JavaScript executes, it takes over the submission and has the form submit via Ajax instead, which might be a nicer experience as the page won’t have to refresh. I like that. Taken further, any <button> outside a form is entirely useless without JavaScript, so in the spirit of Progressive Enhancement, I should wait until JavaScript executes to even put that button on the page at all (or at least reveal it). That’s the kind of thing where even those of us with the best intentions might not always toe the line perfectly. Just put the button in, Sam. Nobody is gonna die.

JavaScript’s all-powerfulness makes it an appealing target for those of us doing work on the web — particularly as JavaScript as a language has evolved to become even more powerful and ergonomic, and the frameworks that are built in JavaScript become even more-so. Back in 2015, it was already so clear that JavaScript was experiencing incredible growth in usage, Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, gave the developer world homework: “Learn JavaScript Deeply”³. He couldn’t have been more right. Half a decade later, JavaScript has done a good job of taking over front-end development. Particularly if you look at front-end development jobs.

While the web almanac might show us that only 5% of the top-zillion sites use React compared to 85% including jQuery, those numbers are nearly flipped when looking around at front-end development job requirements.

I’m sure there are fancy economic reasons for all that, but jobs are as important and personal as it gets for people, so it very much matters.

So we’re browser people in a sea of JavaScript building things for people. If we take a look at the job at a practical day-to-day tasks level, it’s a bit like this:

Translate designs into code

Think in terms of responsive design, allowing us to design and build across the landscape of devices

Build systemically. Construct components and patterns, not one-offs.

Apply semantics to content

Consider accessibility

Worry about the performance of the site. Optimize everything. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Just that first bullet point feels like a college degree to me. Taken together, all of those points certainly do.

This whole list is a bit abstract though, so let’s apply it to something we can look at. What if this website was our current project?

Our brains and fingers go wild!

Let’s build the layout with CSS grid. 

What fonts are those? Do we need to load them in their entirety or can we subset them? What happens as they load in? This layout feels like it will really suffer from font-shifting jank. 

There are some repeated patterns here. We should probably make a card design pattern. Every website needs a good card pattern. 

That’s a gorgeous color scheme. Are the colors mathematically related? Should we make variables to represent them individually or can we just alter a single hue as needed? Are we going to use custom properties in our CSS? Colors are just colors though, we might not need the cascading power of them just for this. Should we just use Sass variables? Are we going to use a CSS preprocessor at all?

The source order is tricky here. We need to order things so that they make sense for a screen reader user. We should have a meeting about what the expected order of content should be, even if we’re visually moving things around a bit with CSS grid.

The photographs here are beautifully shot. But some of them match the background color of the site… can we get away with alpha-transparent PNGs here? Those are always so big. Can any next-gen formats help us? Or should we try to match the background of a JPG with the background of the site seamlessly. Who’s writing the alt text for these?

There are some icons in use here. Inline SVG, right? Certainly SVG of some kind, not icon fonts, right? Should we build a whole icon system? I guess it depends on how we’re gonna be building this thing more broadly. Do we have a build system at all?

What’s the whole front-end plan here? Can I code this thing in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Well, I know I can, but what are the team expectations? Client expectations? Does it need to be a React thing because it’s part of some ecosystem of stuff that is already React? Or Vue or Svelte or whatever? Is there a CMS involved?

I’m glad the designer thought of not just the “desktop” and “mobile” sizes but also tackled an in-between size. Those are always awkward. There is no interactivity information here though. What should we do when that search field is focused? What gets revealed when that hamburger is tapped? Are we doing page-level transitions here?

I could go on and on. That’s how front-end developers think, at least in my experience and in talking with my peers.

A lot of those things have been our jobs forever though. We’ve been asking and answering these questions on every website we’ve built for as long as we’ve been doing it. There are different challenges on each site, which is great and keeps this job fun, but there is a lot of repetition too.

Allow me to get around to the title of this article. 

While we’ve been doing a lot of this stuff for ages, there is a whole pile of new stuff we’re starting to be expected to do, particularly if we’re talking about building the site with a modern JavaScript framework. All the modern frameworks, as much as they like to disagree about things, agree about one big thing: everything is a component. You nest and piece together components as needed. Even native JavaScript moves toward its own model of Web Components.

I like it, this idea of components. It allows you and your team to build the abstractions that make the most sense to you and what you are building.

Your Card component does all the stuff your card needs to do. Your Form component does forms how your website needs to do forms. But it’s a new concept to old developers like me. Components in JavaScript have taken hold in a way that components on the server-side never did. I’ve worked on many a WordPress website where the best I did was break templates into somewhat arbitrary include() statements. I’ve worked on Ruby on Rails sites with partials that take a handful of local variables. Those are useful for building re-usable parts, but they are a far cry from the robust component models that JavaScript frameworks offer us today.

All this custom component creation makes me a site-level architect in a way that I didn’t use to be. Here’s an example. Of course I have a Button component. Of course I have an Icon component. I’ll use them in my Card component. My Card component lives in a Grid component that lays them out and paginates them. The whole page is actually built from components. The Header component has a SearchBar component and a UserMenu component. The Sidebar component has a Navigation component and an Ad component. The whole page is just a special combination of components, which is probably based on the URL, assuming I’m all-in on building our front-end with JavaScript. So now I’m dealing with URLs myself, and I’m essentially the architect of the entire site. [Sweats profusely]

Like I told ya, a whole pile of new responsibility.

Components that are in charge of displaying content are almost certainly not hard-coded with data in them. They are built to be templates. They are built to accept data and construct themselves based on that data. In the olden days, when we were doing this kind of templating, the data has probably already arrived on the page we’re working on. In a JavaScript-powered app, it’s more likely that that data is fetched by JavaScript. Perhaps I’ll fetch it when the component renders. In a stack I’m working with right now, the front end is in React, the API is in GraphQL and we use Apollo Client to work with data. We use a special “hook” in the React components to run the queries to fetch the data we need, and another special hook when we need to change that data. Guess who does that work? Is it some other kind of developer that specializes in this data layer work? No, it’s become the domain of the front-end developer.

Speaking of data, there is all this other data that a website often has to deal with that doesn’t come from a database or API. It’s data that is really only relevant to the website at this moment in time.

Which tab is active right now?

Is this modal dialog open or closed?

Which bar of this accordion is expanded?

Is this message bar in an error state or warning state?

How many pages are you paginated in?

How far is the user scrolled down the page?

Front-end developers have been dealing with that kind of state for a long time, but it’s exactly this kind of state that has gotten us into trouble before. A modal dialog can be open with a simple modifier class like <div class="modal is-open"> and toggling that class is easy enough with .classList.toggle(".is-open"); But that’s a purely visual treatment. How does anything else on the page know if that modal is open or not? Does it ask the DOM? In a lot of jQuery-style apps of yore, yes, it would. In a sense, the DOM became the “source of truth” for our websites. There were all sorts of problems that stemmed from this architecture, ranging from a simple naming change destroying functionality in weirdly insidious ways, to hard-to-reason-about application logic making bug fixing a difficult proposition.

Front-end developers collectively thought: what if we dealt with state in a more considered way? State management, as a concept, became a thing. JavaScript frameworks themselves built the concept right in, and third-party libraries have paved and continue to pave the way. This is another example of expanding responsibility. Who architects state management? Who enforces it and implements it? It’s not some other role, it’s front-end developers.

There is expanding responsibility in the checklist of things to do, but there is also work to be done in piecing it all together. How much of this state can be handled at the individual component level and how much needs to be higher level? How much of this data can be gotten at the individual component level and how much should be percolated from above? Design itself comes into play. How much of the styling of this component should be scoped to itself, and how much should come from more global styles?

It’s no wonder that design systems have taken off in recent years. We’re building components anyway, so thinking of them systemically is a natural fit.

Let’s look at our design again:

A bunch of new thoughts can begin!

Assuming we’re using a JavaScript framework, which one? Why? 

Can we statically render this site, even if we’re building with a JavaScript framework? Or server-side render it? 

Where are those recipes coming from? Can we get a GraphQL API going so we can ask for whatever we need, whenever we need it?

Maybe we should pick a CMS that has an API that will facilitate the kind of front-end building we want to do. Perhaps a headless CMS?

What are we doing for routing? Is the framework we chose opinionated or unopinionated about stuff like this?

What are the components we need? A Card, Icon, SearchForm, SiteMenu, Img… can we scaffold these out? Should we start with some kind of design framework on top of the base framework?

What’s the client state we might need? Current search term, current tab, hamburger open or not, at least.

Is there a login system for this site or not? Are logged in users shown anything different? 

Is there are third-party componentry we can leverage here?

Maybe we can find one of those fancy image components that does blur-up loading and lazy loading and all that.

Those are all things that are in the domain of front-end developers these days, on top of everything that we already need to do. Executing the design, semantics, accessibility, performance… that’s all still there. You still need to be proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and how the browser works. Being a front-end developer requires a haystack of skills that grows and grows. It’s the natural outcome of the web getting bigger. More people use the web and internet access grows. The economy around the web grows. The capability of browsers grows. The expectations of what is possible on the web grows. There isn’t a lot shrinking going on around here.

We’ve already reached the point where most front-end developers don’t know the whole haystack of responsibilities. There are lots of developers still doing well for themselves being rather design-focused and excelling at creative and well-implemented HTML and CSS, even as job posts looking for that dwindle.

There are systems-focused developers and even entire agencies that specialize in helping other companies build and implement design systems. There are data-focused developers that feel most at home making the data flow throughout a website and getting hot and heavy with business logic. While all of those people might have “front-end developer” on their business card, their responsibilities and even expectations of their work might be quite different. It’s all good, we’ll find ways to talk about all this in time.

In fact, how we talk about building websites has changed a lot in the last decade. Some of my early introduction to web development was through WordPress. WordPress needs a web server to run, is written in PHP, and stores it’s data in a MySQL database. As much as WordPress has evolved, all that is still exactly the same. We talk about that “stack” with an acronym: LAMP, or Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Note that literally everything in the entire stack consists of back-end technologies. As a front-end developer, nothing about LAMP is relevant to me.

But other stacks have come along since then. A popular stack was MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular and Node). Notice how we’re starting to inch our way toward more front-end technologies? Angular is a JavaScript framework, so as this stack gained popularity, so too did talking about the front-end as an important part of the stack. Node and Express are both JavaScript as well, albeit the server-side variant.

The existence of Node is a huge part of this story. Node isn’t JavaScript-like, it’s quite literally JavaScript. It makes a front-end developer already skilled in JavaScript able to do server-side work without too much of a stretch.

“Serverless” is a much more modern tech buzzword, and what it’s largely talking about is running small bits of code on cloud servers. Most often, those small bits of code are in Node, and written by JavaScript developers. These days, a JavaScript-focused front-end developer might be writing their own serverless functions and essentially being their own back-end developer. They’ll think of themselves as full-stack developers, and they’ll be right.

Shawn Wang coined a term for a new stack this year: STAR or Design System, TypeScript, Apollo, and React. This is incredible to me, not just because I kind of like that stack, but because it’s a way of talking about the stack powering a website that is entirely front-end technologies. Quite a shift.

I apologize if I’ve made you feel a little anxious reading this. If you feel like you’re behind in understanding all this stuff, you aren’t alone.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to a single developer who told me they felt entirely comfortable with the entire world of building websites. Everybody has weak spots or entire areas where they just don’t know the first dang thing. You not only can specialize, but specializing is a pretty good idea, and I think you will end up specializing to some degree whether you plan to or not. If you have the good fortune to plan, pick things that you like. You’ll do just fine.

The only constant in life is change.

– Heraclitus     – Motivational Poster         – Chris Coyier

¹ I’m a white dude, so that helps a bunch, too. ↩️ ² Browsers speak a bunch more languages. HTTP, SVG, PNG… The more you know the more you can put to work! ↩️ ³ It’s an interesting bit of irony that WordPress websites generally aren’t built with client-side JavaScript components. ↩️

The post The Widening Responsibility for Front-End Developers appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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My Animation Journey: Thomas van Kampen

Hey everyone! It’s been a VERY long time since I updated my blog, huh?

So for this post I thought I would do something a little different. For those who don’t know, I’m a professional animator. I have been for about two years now. I’ve worked on shows like Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic and Curious George. I’ve also been a part of a few other projects before that like the crowdfunded feature film Dawgtown. Reason I bring all of this up is I figured it might be helpful to some folks if they knew how exactly I got to this position. Nowadays it feels like if you throw a rock you’ll more than likely hit an aspiring professional artist, but for as many as there may be a lot of them aren’t actually sure if they can make it due to a number of doubts. Maybe they can’t afford schooling. Maybe they aren’t in a region where the industry is prominent. Maybe they just don’t know what they have to do to get studio attention. I personally feel that the story of how I broke in to the industry is pretty unique so my hope is that reading it might help many an aspiring artist gain confidence and maybe even fill in the blanks for their own story. So without further ado, let’s start at the beginning.

Part 1: The Beginning

My entire life I’ve always been a storyteller. When I was in elementary school I used to make little comic books out of stapled pieces of printer paper and hand them out to my classmates. In high school I wrote a 100 page fantasy novel and wrote/directed a play in drama class. My grades were never all that good, but I always scored high in art and creative writing projects. Here’s a comedy skit I put together back in high school with my friends (warning: incoming cringe):

As a testament to my love for storytelling, I thought for a very long time my destiny lied in live action film making. But that didn’t exactly pan out the way I hoped. For one, I was rejected from my nearby institute’s video production course 3 times. For another, I didn’t exactly have all the skills necessary to direct a production involving multiple people. Film proved to be a difficult path for me because I couldn’t work around peoples’ schedules and I couldn’t find the locations I wanted for the types of stories I wanted to tell. Best I could ever do was comedy skits. All this compounded failure left me drifting for a little while after high school.

But then, on my 18th birthday, my dad pulled me aside to give me a proposal. He said that since 18 is such a milestone, he and my mom wanted to do something extra special for my gift. He told me I have two options: I can either get $100 dollars to spend on whatever I want . . . or, if I had something in mind for starting a career, he would spend as high as $800.

Obviously I wanted to take the latter. But I wasn’t sure what to do. Film wasn’t panning out. My mom and dad at the time tried to pressure me into app development and computer coding because they seemed like safe ventures, but I couldn’t entertain something like that. Whatever it is I chose, it had to allow me to tell the stories that I wanted to tell.

Then, it hit me. I suddenly remembered hearing about this animation program called “Toon Boom” back in high school comm tech. So I thought “why don’t I do animation?”. After all, I could already draw. Plus, with animation you don’t have ANY of the limitations of live action. You can create anything you can imagine with animation and you can make everything yourself from the comfort of your room. I knew it was going to be a time consuming thing, but after a bit of soul searching I knew this is what I wanted for myself. So I told my dad about it and he managed to find a student copy of toon boom animate for cheap on Ebay (back when it didn’t go by Harmony). So I got that for my birthday and got to work. I still have my very first cartoon here:

Oh yeah, it’s awful. I had a VERY rudimentary understanding of how animation worked. I drew everything haphazardly with my mouse. I didn’t know how to use motion tweens all that well so in some places I just copy pasted assets and rotated the drawings slightly. I stole copyrighted music (which miraculously I haven’t been caught for yet). I recorded the dialogue on my phone. Worst of all, I didn’t even know how to properly compress my video. Believe it or not, this took me a month and a half to make.

But you know what? Everyone I knew loved it. My feed blew up and everyone made a point to tell me how funny they thought it was. I remember my dad saying “toon boom seems like a good investment!” Needless to say, the positive reinforcement was very encouraging. 

I’m hoping the takeaway here is two things:

1. Knowing what you want in life is a deep, soul searching process, but once you find it, committing to it isn’t all that hard, even if it’s tedious as hell.

2. The best way to get started in anything is to just, well . . . get started. Make something. ANYTHING. even if it’s not that great. For as poorly as this cartoon has aged, it resulted in me getting my very first commission from my brother where he asked me to make a music video for his band. It also resulted in me getting a drawing tablet for Christmas later that year. Even bad content is better than having nothing in your repertoire at all. Try getting your ideas out no matter what.

This boost in confidence eventually resulted in me going for making long form content. I wrote, animated, edited, voice acted and directed TWO episodes of a show featuring the character you see in my very first cartoon. The first episode took me half a year to create and the second took me a WHOLE YEAR. But you know what? I was showing clear signs of improving all the way.

Here are the episodes:

Part 2: Making connections

So at this point, my motivation to break my way into the arts was in full throttle. I was SURE that animation is what I wanted to do in life. Making little shorts was cool and all, but I still needed to learn how to get professional attention. So there’s a number of things I did:

For starters, I needed to know what employers were looking for when I apply for a job. I remember way back, around the time i was halfway through making episode 2 of the Peacock, I was talking to a friend of my brother’s at his birthday party. I told him I wanted to pursue animation professionally (I believe this was after we were talking about the music video I made for my brother) and he said that he knew a guy in Vancouver who was doing 3D animation. I asked for his name and then later that night looked him up on Facebook. Once I was sure I was talking to the right guy, I wrote him a lengthy message about how much breaking into animation would mean to me. He told me that he was visiting my home town for a little while anyway and he generously donated his time to answer my questions about the industry over coffee. He told me all about demo reels and how I would need to structure it and what kind of knowledge that studios were looking for and all that type of stuff. I was also recommended to talk to another professional in my home town and she told me to get started on a portfolio website. So I took everything they were telling me and started applying it.

my niece told me about this organization in my hometown that she found out about through the grapevine. This place called the “Quickdraw Animation Society”. It was this organization dedicated to helping local artists find their voice and gain the skills necessary to make their own animated films. I thought this was perfect!! College was sort of off the table for me since my dad highly encouraged getting an education at this trade school and he told me he wouldn’t pay for an education that didn’t guarantee a job at the end (and looking back knowing the kind of debt i could have fallen into, I kind of side with him on that one). But Quickdraw was offering animation courses for cheap! Even i could afford it on my part time retail salary! So I took Quickdraw’s classes and used them as a vehicle to start making even more of my own projects.

Here’s just one of several short animations I made while studying under Quickdraw:

But my involvement with Quickdraw didn’t stop there. I made a point to volunteer for them  in their move and their fundraising efforts and their little animation showcases. I made a point to REALLY get involved with their community. That ended up being arguably the most instrumental decision in my career. After a while I got done making my very first Demo Reel. I was ready to start officially applying for jobs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx5OHGfYz-4

I know this reel doesn’t seem like much, but believe it or not, with the help of the Quickdraw Animation Society, this reel ended up getting me my first two major animation gigs.

The takeaway here is: get involved with a community. Reach out to people. Get yourself out there. Don’t be afraid to ask professionals questions and accept that a lot of this is going to involve relying on the kindness of strangers. Nobody gets anywhere without somebody helping them.

Part 3: Thomas the Freelancer

After I completed my very first demo reel, as fate would have it Quickdraw began emailing me among others about new job opportunities popping up. The first time they informed me of a job post, it was somebody looking for an artist to create animated backgrounds for a stage play performance of “Curious George”. I was among the very first to send my application and this was the very first time I used my demo reel to try and land a job. The next day, their recruiter contacted me on the phone and started with “thank you for including a demo reel instead of putting the illness on me to track down your work like other applicants”. See how important a demo reel is? I ended up creating every background for every scene of that play, which was projected onto the screen behind the performers as they did their thing. 

After that, Quickdraw informed me of ANOTHER job post. This time it was a children’s book author in Edmonton looking for an animator to help her win an animated film pitch contest. The winners of this contest would get a grant of $10,000 to create their animated short which would then be featured on Telus’ Storyhive platform. I sent her my demo reel and she brought me on to help put together the assets we needed to make the cut. And guess what? We were among the few who were selected to earn the $10,000. This resulted in me flying for the VERY FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE to Vancouver, where we would attend a workshop detailing the conditions of the contest. I also happened to meet even more animation friends on the plane (they were sitting right across from me and were other winners of the Storyhive competition). 

In the following months I would dedicate almost ALL my free time to this short film. I even quit my part time job so i could commit to it full time (a decision my dad was thrilled about, I’m sure). I did all the storyboarding, background design, character design and animation BY MYSELF. If anything in the development cycle was visual related, I was the guy that did it, taking notes from my directors all along the way. In hindsight, I definitely should have asked for more help since the final product has a few flaws, but this is still a milestone achievement in my career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmTuwIeEoqA

At this point, I had somewhat made a name for myself. I had credentials. I had recommendations from clients. Gerry Mouse would go on to be featured in multiple film festivals: My film festival debut in fact. As you can imagine, my ego was at an all time high. After the film released I updated my demo reel again and felt like I was ready to officially start applying for full time studio work in the industry.

As I would come to find . . . it wouldn’t be that easy.

Part 4: The Dry Spell

Gerry Mouse was the last big success of mine for quite some time. What followed was an entire year of doing ‘freelance work’ . . . .which is a polite way of saying I was mostly unemployed with only a few small gigs inbetween. I was relentlessly applying for studios all over Canada, hoping SOMEBODY would give me the time of day. In some places, a few studios even offered me the chance to do a test . . . but due to circumstances that I’m honestly embarrassed about in retrospect, I either failed them or couldn’t complete them at all. My dad eventually started pressuring me to get any kind of employment I could get my hands on, but even trying to find work in low requirement fields was proving to be fruitless. I was getting depressed, which was compounded on by the fact that I had gone through a hard break up around that time as well. it wasn’t ALL bad though. Around that time I made another short film called “A Lovely Stroll”, which would later be featured in both the Florida Animation Festival AND the Open World Animation Festival (which is kind of like my debut as a writer and director, not just the crews animation lead). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afN2v3pBiqQ

It was also around this time where I got a month long remote gig from a studio in Toronto that was . . . honestly? Best paying gig I ever got to this day. It’s too bad that never amounted to anything bigger. I also started doing a wee bit of animation for Dawgtown too, but that eventually ran dry due to production complications. The bulk of that time was just spent by me being depressed and uncertain about the future, earning what ever money I could with small commissions here and there.

Then, within my endless pushing of applications hoping for any studio in all of Canada to notice me, I happened to send an application to Copernicus Studios in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The human resources department responded to my application saying that they weren’t hiring at the time, but they were gearing up to recruit for something that summer and may contact me again with the opportunity to do a test months down the line.

And that’s exactly what they did.

When I received the animation test from Copernicus, I was more determined than ever. I was going to dedicate as much time as I possibly could to making this test look the best it could be. I remember spending VERY late nights being very paranoid about every little detail and frantically looking up whatever I didn’t know about Toon Boom at the time. After I submitted my test, I was counting down the days for their response.

They got back to me in a reasonable amount of time and asked if I would be interested in a video interview. I was freaking out and wanted to make ABSOLUTELY sure I could impress. I cleaned up as well as I could and made sure to answer all their questions honestly and concisely.

And then . . . they officially offered me a role on the production. You can’t imagine the rush of joy that went through me when I first read that email. After years of grinding and twiddling my thumbs I finally broke my glass ceiling. The idea of a random kid from Alberta breaking into a niche industry like that with no college education was unheard of. They told me in the video interview that the contract was for a Netflix animated adaptation of a classic adult Canadian sitcom. At the time I thought it was going to be Corner Gas. It turned out to be Trailer Park Boys. Once we got the news, I celebrated with all my family and friends and my dad and I planned my move to Halifax; a city on the complete opposite side of the country.

This next bit has nothing to do with the animation stuff, I just think it’s an interesting tidbit to share:

At first, my dad and I were struggling to find a place for me to live in the city. The problem was that my new contract wanted me to start in late May, but every lease of every apartment naturally wants you to start living there the first of the month. But, the biggest stroke of luck in the universe would happen to me. My dad happened to call one apartment’s office and explained to them what my situation was and they said

“funny you should mention that . . .I have two tenants here in my office RIGHT NOW that are looking for somebody to sublease for them and they need to be moved out by May 25th. If Tom subleases for them he can be in there before June no problem.”

WHAT. ARE. THE. CHANCES. OF. THAT??????

My apartment’s previous tenants were super nice too. for a thousand dollars they gave me their double sized bed, their microwave, their working desk, their couch, their vacuum cleaner and a bunch of other things to help me get started. They also went out of their way to get me nice things like a laundry card with $20 on it, a map of Halifax, a cupboard stocked up with insta-noodles, some cheap cutlery and bowls. . . . they went super out of their way to be nice to me on my first move and I’ll never forget that.

At the time I thought a stroke of luck like that was a sign from God that I was pursuing my destiny. To this day I think that still might be true. My takeaway here is don’t give up no matter what. Even if things seem uncertain at times, perseverance and tenacity will pay off in the end.

So with that, I said goodbye to my family and friends and moved to Halifax to begin my adult life as a full time PROFESSIONAL animator. I felt like I could take on anything.

And that . . . wasn’t 100% true.

Part 5: Growing Pains

I was very excited to work on my first studio production in house and it was through this contract that I met some of my closest friends ever. I learned more about toon boom and animation in 3 months than I did in 3 years of freelancing. But it wasn’t all fun and games. In fact, a lot of it was VERY VERY stressful and I ended up making more mistakes than I care to admit. In retrospect it’s easy to forgive myself because that’s just what happens when you’re that green, especially with a journey as unorthodox as mine, but at the time I did NOT take it well at ALL. See, at this point I was 100% motivated to be the best artist I could possibly be. As far as I was concerned not much else in life mattered that much. And that made me toxic. I had a hard time emotionally with taking criticism for my work. I started getting argumentative with my friends. I overworked myself. I tried to have a sense of humor for my problems but the self deprecating jokes only made me feel worse. What followed was nearly 2 years of feeling what the industry pros call “imposter syndrome”. I had it BAD. But luckily, I get by with a little help from my friends. I started opening up about what I was going through and luckily the people around me have been very reassuring about my right to be where I am. But the feelings of inadequacy DID end up leaving a dent in my work at the time and by the time Copernicus was recruiting for another toon boom show, I was not one of the few selected. But there WAS an alternative. They had just opened up some positions for their flash show (which was Care Bears: Unlock the Magic). They gave me the opportunity to do the flash test and I accepted. At the time I didn’t know very much about Flash . . . like, at all . . . but I sat down to learn as much about it as I could in the week that I had and I had done JUST well enough on the test to get myself another contract. From then on I spent nearly a year mastering Flash. Then, I was eventually brought on to Curious George to help on shadows and revisions. Then, shortly after, Copernicus asked me if I’d be interested in doing the builds test. I said yes, learned a bunch of stuff on the fly and got that job too. That’s what I’m doing right now.

The takeaway here is more an important lesson for when you DO make it rather than your journey to that point. When you break into the industry, you’re going to be met with a LOT of challenges. this industry is highly competitive and highly demanding. It’s not enough to be a skilled artist; you also have to have the grit to be a dependable team member. Matter of fact, at a time when my skill wasn’t cutting it, my grit was what helped keep me from washing out. And also, don’t be afraid to try new things. In an industry as volatile as animation being a jack of all trades is a HUGE selling point.

My advice is stay determined and, more importantly . . .try not to let failure get to your heart. keep your head up, allow yourself to heal, and forgive your mistakes. You’re not always going to stick the landing, but that’s okay. If you stick with it, you’ll still come out of that situation with more than when you entered.

Conclusion:

So why did I share all of this? I shared it because I know a lot of young, aspiring artists out there are uncertain about their future. I know you might feel like you can’t do it because you don’t know everything or you don’t have all the right credentials or you might screw things up if you try. I want you to listen to your heart and pursue what you want anyway. If I can make it, you can too. And take pride in the story of your journey. If you succeed, even given your circumstances, your story will be valuable in a way that mine couldn’t possibly be. I know a lot of my success has to deal with inordinate luck and I will forever be grateful for that, but I will always be just as grateful that I had the fortitude for when times were at their toughest. Go out there. Make what you want to make. Do whatever you can to learn the basics even if you can’t go to college. Ask for help. Get as involved with a community as you can. Whatever you start, stick with it. Be patient. Embrace challenge. Take those leaps of faith. Finally . . . forgive yourself for the times that you fail.

To finish off this post, here is a montage representing my animation journey from 2014-2020. Best of luck, all you artists out there

https://www.facebook.com/tom.vankampen/posts/10221173577866185

[randomisedgaming]

Steel Strider - Review - Vol 21

Format: Windows PC Publisher: Nyu Media Developer: Astro Port Release year: 2015 Genre: Run & Gun Shooter / Platformer

Randomised Gaming reviewed the Steam digital download version of Steel Strider on a Windows 7 PC.

To some the words budget title, can conjure the images of some horrible looking cheap and broken game with a cover art that closely resembles a well-known franchise from a more famous company. In other cases it might mean a re-release of a classic game from yesteryear covered in a new unpleasant sliver packaging, designed to taunt the owner that they didn't buy the game when it first came out.

These days, thanks to services like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and the rise and return of small interdependent developers. The price of the game doesn't in the slightest reflect the quality and that budget game you just bought, for £1.99 can be every bit as good as that £49.99, big budget title, if not better.

Which is a good thing, as for us at Randomised Gaming the price of the title means nothing it's what's under the hood that counts. The only factor that really comes into play on cost is the length of a game, as you don't expect a hundred hours epic story adventure if you are paying £4.79 for a title.

The second world has a very sci-fi feel and the look is a real throwback to the days of the Amiga home computer

Steel Strider is a run and gun shooter crossed with a platformer, much like Konami's Contra series, but nowhere as hard. Developed by Astro Port, a studio who has made a name for themselves on producing retro themed arcade games with a modern look and feel. The game itself is a sequel to Astro Port's previous title Gigantic Army with Steel Strider taking place a number of years after Gigantic Army finished. Other nods include the SALADIN mech from the first game appearing as the boss at the end of the first world and the second mission sees you returning to the planet Ramulon from Gigantic Army to stop another outbreak of war. The plot from the third mission is directly linked to another space shooter from Astro Port called SATAZIUS.

As the name would suggest the game is packed full of giant robots, mechs or mechas pending which name you prefer. It's also packed with lots of guns too, as you will be blasting just about everything in sight. Added to that you have a nice Gundam / Star Wars inspired beam saber just in case anything gets to close for comfort.

That description may well conquer up images of Masaya's Assault Suit/s series (Target Earth / Cybernator for us in the west) in your head and you would be spot on. As Steel Strider clearly homages these games. This is a perfect example of a modern shooter and when you're not gunning down the rank and file infantry. Which come in all shapes and sizes, from small bomb carrying droids to large walker with mount rockets and laser cannons. You can expect to see plenty of full screen world destroying boss units.

Huge boss battles really are one of Steel Strider's highlights

Steel Strider is fast and frantic, for skilled run and gun player's like myself I was able to finish the game on normal in around two and a half hours. Steel Strider offers four difficulties and if you want to see everything the game has to offer, then you will have to at least finish the game on hard or insane, to see the true final boss. The higher difficulties also change up some of the enemies seen in each level.

Steel Strider is about 80% shooting mixed with about 20% platforming. Most of the shooting action is very much point, click and fire. There isn't a huge amount of tactics involved as most of the standard units can be blasted anywhere. They also normally attack in huge numbers, so it's best just to clear the enemies as quickly as you can. There's the odd shielded enemy and some of the bosses have to be damaged via a weak point, but most of them can be damaged anywhere.

Much of the gameplay involves picking your favourite gun and blast anything in slight while dodging their fire, nice and simple. You have full 360 degree fire control so you can shoot enemies from any angle you choose. Speaking of guns there's eight different weapons to find over the course of the game. While the default handgun is designed as a last resort weapon, owning to having unlimited ammo, its damage is very weak.

A shotgun down a narrow corridor, is a sure way to clear robot mobs

You will be quickly looking to use alternative weapons like the assault rifle or shotgun, later weapons include rockets and the all powerful railgun. Each weapon performs differently and learning in which situation to use each weapon is a vital skill. The shotgun is great for hitting rapidly moving enemies, while the rocket launcher is perfect for dealing high damage to bosses.

Limited ammo for these weapons, however, means they should be used sparingly as you don't want to walk into a boss fight with just the beam sword and handgun, unless you're testing your gaming skills. Later stages include upgrades to the various weapons, but these upgrades don't change the balance much and as you are given them wholesale as the game progresses, they don't really feel like a reward for good performance or exploring a level.

The game supports both mouse & keyboard and joypad options, the controls themselves are very straightforward and easy to learn. While normally I would prefer to use a joypad for this type of game, I found the joypad controls on Steel Strider rather twitchy and a bit unresponsive, when using an official Xbox 360 pad. In the end I found the game easier to control with the mouse & keyboard. As this set up controlled faster and was more responsive, even if this wasn't my preferred choice of controls.

The opening section of stage 3 sees you taking to the skies

Steel Strider included four unique worlds, each made up of a number of stages. Each world has its own setting the first is on a mountain planet, second a yellow mining world, you have a green gas world for the third and an urban city for the final one. The art direction of Steel Strider is one of the weaker areas of the game as the interior stages all look the same and largely the colour scheme uses far too many grey textures. Making the game very bland looking and it subtracts from the great design work done for some of the mech units in game. On the whole the mech sprite are far more colourful and very contrasting with the background, perhaps this was intended so you could easily see the incoming enemy fire clearly. It ends up making the game feel rather drab as you explore each world.  

The level design in part managed to make up for this, as each stage has its own theme. World two adds in a few stealth sections and includes an impressive chase along a train. While world three sees you boosting through the clouds to board a stolen cruiser. These add a nice touch to each of the worlds. However, these extra sections are often over a bit too quickly and then it's back to shooting robots down a long corridor. Still nothing in this game lasts that long and you quickly move from stage to stage. While the level design isn't quite to the quality of Cybernator / Assault Suits Valken, Steel Strider's design is well paced with enough new twists along the way to keep you playing until the end.

Even this train doesn’t stand a chance against this giant circular saw robot, don’t stop moving

When you're not shooting, there's a fair amount of jumping nothing too taxing, in part due to the huge jetpack mounted on your back, which allows you to hover and glide over platforms. There are few bottomless pits to watch out for that kill you instantly, but with checkpoint at every section, you rarely have to replay more than a minute or two. The main use of the jetpack is to primarily time your jumps to avoid the onslaught of enemy fire directed your way. The odd saying “anything you can do, I can do better” springs to mind, as for every weapon you have, the enemies have, a fast, longer and bigger version. So expect to jump, duck and dive, out of the way of rockets, bombs, missiles, lasers and much much more. Just remember hazard pay isn't included.

Story wise there's not a huge amount apart from the mission briefings you encounter before and during each level. Asides from a few very short in-game cutscenes. It mainly boils down to the fact you are a special force unit, guided by an operator, running shadow operations to prevent wars. There's a slightly interesting moral twist at the end of the game, but that's for you the reader to discover. However, the quality of the English script and text, leaves a lot to be desired. It's functional, but doesn't flow at all well.

These bland mission briefings are pretty much it for the story

The music fits the steel theme of the game nice, with a nice section of techno music perhaps a nod to the music from the 16bit era. Nice to listen too as you play, but very forgettable stuff and nor is it going to rouse emotions like the superb soundtrack for Front Mission on Super Nintendo. A decent soundtrack, but not a great one.

Audio wise the sound effects are what you expect in this type of game with mechanical noises and explosions going off everywhere. Which more than suffices, as you don't really need to listen to detailed affects, when you're constantly blowing up everything in sight.

There is a scoring system included and Steel Strider also keeps a record of your playthrough time, if you decide you want to improve on your personal best time. The scoring system did seem fairly basic and the highest score awards seemed to be for just finishing a stage without take a hit.

The final forth mission gets very hectic in places

That just about covers everything there is to say, performance on out test unit was perfect and the game has fairly low minimum specs for modern PC titles. Option are very limited and the game only has 640x480 and 1024x768 resolution support. There is a wide screen aspect option, but this didn't work for me and just put the game into a tiny window. The lack of options was somewhat of a let down as most gamers would expect at least 1440x1080 support in-game and ideally 1920x1080p.

Unstoppable robot soldier or twisted and broken scrape metal?

Taken as a whole the gameplay of Steel Strider is fairly standard for the genre, it's a run and gun and these games always tend to get pretty repetitive at times. While Steel Strider is far from the best example of the genre it does a good job of capturing the spirit of more well-known games, if not quite putting it altogether correctly. The bland nature of some of the levels is ultimately what stops Steel Strider from reaching greater heights.

Even in some of the boss battles, you have to watch your footing to avoid falling off!

As a veteran of the genre, it kept me playing all the way to the end, even if it did only take two hours to finish. While it might not offer a huge amount of replay value you can't complain at the budget price it was launched at and there's at least enough to keep you coming back for a second playthrough on hard to see the true final boss. Even the great classic that is Cybernator / Assault Suits Valken wasn't exactly a long game to finish either.

Is Steel Strider as good as the big classics like Contra, Metal Slug, Metal Warriors, Front Mission Gun Hazard, Assault Suits Valken & Leynos 1 and 2. Short answer is no, is it worth your money, however, well yes! Both Steel Strider and its prequel Gigantic Army can be found in a bundle with most of Astro Port's other games on Steam, at a very reasonable price, well worth the cost of admission.

While picking up original copies of games like Cybernator aren't that cheap, digital options are available. (time of writing Virtual Console is still up on Wii & Wii U, just) Where as Metal Warriors on SNES is very hard to find these days and very expensive. The Metal Slug series on the other hand is available on just about every post mid 90s console going.

The Trafalgar from SATAZIUS helping out the player, in a cameo role

It's fair to say, you should aim to purchase and plays the mentioned titles first, before looking at Astro Port's offerings. If you have played all the latter games and want something new to try out, then these budget games by Astro Port should be right up your street. You can certainly pay a lot more for far worse, Contra: Legacy of War or Scud: The Disposable Assassin, anyone?

Minimum Spec on Steam: OS: Windows 2000, XP, 7, or 8 Processor: Pentium 4 1.4GHz or better Memory: 512 MB RAM Graphics: NDIVIA Geforce series, AMD(ATI) Radeon series Storage: 100 MB available space Sound Card: DirectSound-compatible Sound Card

Astro Port Official website: http://www.interq.or.jp/saturn/takuhama/dhc.html Nyu Media website: http://nyu-media.com/category/astro-port/

Review by Random Gamer Riven.

Twitter: RDGamerRiven

Email: randomgamerriven@gmail.com

Follow Randomised Gaming on Tumblr, for video game, art, reviews, features, videos and more. You can also follow us on twitter and subscribe to us on YouTube for even more Randomised Gaming content.

[marvelduelguide-blog]

Marvel Duel Cheats

Marvel Duel Guides

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[7hrconsultancyuk-blog]

Recruitment Process in Graphics and Animation Industry

Graphic Animation is a variation of stop motion and possibly more conceptually associated with traditional flat cel animation and paper drawing animation, but still technically qualifying stop motion consisting of the animation of photographs in whole or in parts and other non-drawn flat visual graphic material, such as newspaper and magazine clippings. Animation recruitment agencies in London is providing jobs in this sector. Animation has been around for a long time. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry and many of our cartoons are animated. To become an animator, you have to possess a basic understanding of how body parts work in a given space. Those who are entirely new to the field of animation, the process involve creating some sort of movement by showing a series of pictures in quick succession to give the illusion of movement. Animation recruitment agency in UK is doing a great job in this sector. They are guiding candidates /students in this field.

Some of the most well known styles of animation: -

1.  Traditional Animation – Traditional Animation is a long process. Each frame is painstakingly drawn. Whether the frame showcases the movement of a finger or change in facial expressions, each movement has a set of frames. This tedious process is used in old- school animated movies.

2.  2D Animation (Vector Based) – The vector based 2D animation is similar to traditional animation. This style is created using the computer programs like Flash. They can opt to move a body part or object in the frame to show movement.

3.  3D Animation (Computer) – 3D Animation requires a unique set of technical skills. This technique is essentially like showing the movement of a puppet on screen, rather than showing movement through frames.

4.  Motion Graphics Animation – This animation method is different from the entire lot since it involves moving around graphical elements. Animated Logos, film titles, ad commercials and educational videos employ this method. Motion graphics involve using pieces of text to create an animation. Graphic design recruitment agency in London is making candidates do all the above practices so that they can perform well.

5.  Stop Motion Animation – Stop motion requires photographing an object in a sequence of pictures. The slightest movement has its own shot. To ensure that there is fluidity in animation and no hard breaks, the animator has to ensure that each movement is captured in a proper order.

Graphic Designer Hiring Process:

There are two main types through which hiring is done for Graphic Designer -

1.  Freelancing: - As a freelancer, you’ll typically stitch together an income through contracts with multiple clients. Freelancing jobs can be found on Glassdoor, Upwork and Fiverr. Submit resumes, portfolios to companies far and wide. Send out freelance applications; make sure you’re comfortable with charging your work, so negotiation metric needs to be strong.

2.  Full- Time: - Companies and independent design firms are hiring full time in-house graphic designers. Opportunities can be found on different job websites. Submit your resume, portfolio or sometimes your cover letter. You can be invited for an in-person interview, where you can showcase you skills on a take-home assignment. Graphic design recruitment agency in UK is hiring graphic designers on behalf of the big firms and companies.

Graphic Design Temp Agency in London is also providing temporary staff i.e. freelancers for certain companies who require them only when they have a project in hand and don’t want a full time employee. Graphic Design Temp Agency in UK gives a very good opportunity to the freelancers. They give them a platform to perform and show their skills.

Some Interview Tips for a Graphic Designer: -

If invited to an in-person interview, it’s important to prepare all your materials ahead of time. A few tips to nail the interview.

1.  Bring a copy of your design material to show it to the interviewer.

2.  Showcase your profile digitally, like bringing your work in a flash drive or a tablet or laptop where you can show them.

3.  Dress Sharp - Graphic Designers don’t have to adhere to corporate dress code. Your dressing can project your vibes you wish to give off as a future employee, like edgy, laid-back, depending on what you wear.

4.  Research the Company – Learn what you can about the Company, any recent news, their website or any other online articles about them.

Best Manpower Recruitment Agency in London is providing service in the Graphics and Animation Industry. This manpower Recruitment Agency in London gives a good opportunity to candidates and helps them with the placement in the best graphic designer firm or companies.

[specialistpracticegeorgesmith]

Personal Specialist Field: What is it [Task 1]

01.03.19

What is your specialism? Are there common materials and techniques involved in the practice of this spectrum?

My specialism would be digital illustration. For a while, I think I would have said that it was 2D animation, but I have since changed over the past half a year or so, and now devote my skills to illustration. I prefer drawing digitally, though drawing traditionally is also something that I enjoy sometimes. 

In terms of the common materials which are used in illustration, there’s a lot of them. For digital illustration, there are graphic tablets which are incredibly helpful. They let you draw onto a screen instead of using a mouse to draw. Wacom Cintiq is arguably the best brand of graphic tablets. You’d also need a digital pen to go with this. There is also the iPad Pro and Apple pencil. A good computer/laptop also helps when it comes to drawing digitally. Some of the best drawing programs are Clip Studio Paint, which I personally use. I used to use a program called Paint Tool Sai, which is also good. Procreate is a really good program for the iPad. Of course, Photoshop is also an excellent program which you can use for drawing or editing. In these programs, there are many different types of brushes that you can either import, or create yourself.

When it comes to traditionally drawing, there’s a myriad of tools at your disposal. Firstly, there are many different paper types which can affect how you draw. If you don’t use the right materials on the right types of paper, it can potentially hinder how your drawing looks. A sketchbook is essential for traditional art, which you can take with you wherever you go. There are also many different types of pencils, which have different levels of contrast. A mechanical pencil is a great tool, which is what I tend to use whenever I draw traditionally. The other tool that I use commonly when I draw is a ball point pen, along with copic markers. The reason I like mechanical pencils is because they act like ball point pens, but are erasable. Ball point pens are good for me because I just enjoy how inky they are. Then copic markers are very good—I use them whenever I want to go over a good pencil drawing. Materials that I don’t use very much range from graphite, coloured pencils, chalk and charcoal, crayons and mixing media. Though I understand that they are incredibly useful for getting different types of lines and shading and highlights. 

Whenever I draw digitally, I make sure that I always consider lighting and colour. I would say that I have a decent understanding of both of these, more so colour however. The type of thing that I tend to draw are characters and people, and in order to do this I also have to improve on my anatomy skills. For both traditional and digital, there are also many different drawing techniques that are unique to the artist. Mark-making is an excellent method of creating detail and shading in your art. I tend to use lines a lot as mark-making in my drawings, in order to create more details.

[midassourcecodes-blog]

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The Widening Responsibility for Front-End Developers

This is an extended version of my essay “When front-end means full-stack” which was published in the wonderful Increment magazine put out by Stripe. It’s also something of an evolution of a couple other of my essays, “The Great Divide” and “Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.”

The moment I fell in love with front-end development was when I discovered the style.css file in WordPress themes. That’s where all the magic was (is!) to me. I could (can!) change a handful of lines in there and totally change the look and feel of a website. It’s an incredible game to play.

Back when I was cowboy-coding over FTP. Although I definitely wasn’t using CSS grid!

By fiddling with HTML and CSS, I can change the way you feel about a bit of writing. I can make you feel more comfortable about buying tickets to an event. I can increase the chances you share something with your friends.

That was well before anybody paid me money to be a front-end developer, but even then I felt the intoxicating mix of stimuli that the job offers. Front-end development is this expressive art form, but often constrained by things like the need to directly communicate messaging and accomplish business goals.

Front-end development is at the intersection of art and logic. A cross of business and expression. Both left and right brain. A cocktail of design and nerdery.

I love it.

Looking back at the courses I chose from middle school through college, I bounced back and forth between computer-focused classes and art-focused classes, so I suppose it’s no surprise I found a way to do both as a career.

The term “Front-End Developer” is fairly well-defined and understood. For one, it’s a job title. I’ll bet some of you literally have business cards that say it on there, or some variation like: “Front-End Designer,” “UX Developer,” or “UI Engineer.” The debate around what those mean isn’t particularly interesting to me. I find that the roles are so varied from job-to-job and company-to-company that job titles will never be enough to describe things. Getting this job is more about demonstrating you know what you’re doing more than anything else¹.

Chris Coyier Front-End Developer

The title variations are just nuance. The bigger picture is that as long as the job is building websites, front-enders are focused on the browser. Quite literally:

front-end = browsers

back-end = servers

Even as the job has changed over the decades, that distinction still largely holds.

As “browser people,” there are certain truths that come along for the ride. One is that there is a whole landscape of different browsers and, despite the best efforts of standards bodies, they still behave somewhat differently. Just today, as I write, I dealt with a bug where a date string I had from an API was in a format such that Firefox threw an error when I tried to use the .toISOString() JavaScript API on it, but was fine in Chrome. That’s just life as a front-end developer. That’s the job.

Even across that landscape of browsers, just on desktop computers, there is variance in how users use that browser. How big do they have the window open? Do they have dark mode activated on their operating system? How’s the color gamut on that monitor? What is the pixel density? How’s the bandwidth situation? Do they use a keyboard and mouse? One or the other? Neither? All those same questions apply to mobile devices too, where there is an equally if not more complicated browser landscape. And just wait until you take a hard look at HTML emails.

That’s a lot of unknowns, and the answers to developing for that unknown landscape is firmly in the hands of front-end developers.

Into the unknoooooowwwn. – Elsa

The most important aspect of the job? The people that use these browsers. That’s why we’re building things at all. These are the people I’m trying to impress with my mad CSS skills. These are the people I’m trying to get to buy my widget. Who all my business charts hinge upon. Who’s reaction can sway my emotions like yarn in the breeze. These users, who we put on a pedestal for good reason, have a much wider landscape than the browsers do. They speak different languages. They want different things. They are trying to solve different problems. They have different physical abilities. They have different levels of urgency. Again, helping them is firmly in the hands of front-end developers. There is very little in between the characters we type into our text editors and the users for whom we wish to serve.

Being a front-end developer puts us on the front lines between the thing we’re building and the people we’re building it for, and that’s a place some of us really enjoy being.

That’s some weighty stuff, isn’t it? I haven’t even mentioned React yet.

The “we care about the users” thing might feel a little precious. I’d think in a high functioning company, everyone would care about the users, from the CEO on down. It’s different, though. When we code a <button>, we’re quite literally putting a button into a browser window that users directly interact with. When we adjust a color, we’re adjusting exactly what our sighted users see when they see our work.

That’s not far off from a ceramic artist pulling a handle out of clay for a coffee cup. It’s applying craftsmanship to a digital experience. While a back-end developer might care deeply about the users of a site, they are, as Monica Dinculescu once told me in a conversation about this, “outsourcing that responsibility.”

We established that front-end developers are browser people. The job is making things work well in browsers. So we need to understand the languages browsers speak, namely: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript². And that’s not just me being some old school fundamentalist; it’s through a few decades of everyday front-end development work that knowing those base languages is vital to us doing a good job. Even when we don’t work directly with them (HTML might come from a template in another language, CSS might be produced from a preprocessor, JavaScript might be mostly written in the parlance of a framework), what goes the browser is ultimately HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so that’s where debugging largely takes place and the ability of the browser is put to work.

CSS will always be my favorite and HTML feels like it needs the most love — but JavaScript is the one we really need to examine The last decade has seen JavaScript blossom from a language used for a handful of interactive effects to the predominant language used across the entire stack of web design and development. It’s possible to work on websites and writing nothing but JavaScript. A real sea change.

JavaScript is all-powerful in the browser. In a sense, it supersedes HTML and CSS, as there is nothing either of those languages can do that JavaScript cannot. HTML is parsed by the browser and turned into the DOM, which JavaScript can also entirely create and manipulate. CSS has its own model, the CSSOM, that applies styles to elements in the DOM, which JavaScript can also create and manipulate.

This isn’t quite fair though. HTML is the very first file that browsers parse before they do the rest of the work needed to build the site. That firstness is unique to HTML and a vital part of making websites fast.

In fact, if the HTML was the only file to come across the network, that should be enough to deliver the basic information and functionality of a site.

That philosophy is called Progressive Enhancement. I’m a fan, myself, but I don’t always adhere to it perfectly. For example, a <form> can be entirely functional in HTML, when it’s action attribute points to a URL where the form can be processed. Progressive Enhancement would have us build it that way. Then, when JavaScript executes, it takes over the submission and has the form submit via Ajax instead, which might be a nicer experience as the page won’t have to refresh. I like that. Taken further, any <button> outside a form is entirely useless without JavaScript, so in the spirit of Progressive Enhancement, I should wait until JavaScript executes to even put that button on the page at all (or at least reveal it). That’s the kind of thing where even those of us with the best intentions might not always toe the line perfectly. Just put the button in, Sam. Nobody is gonna die.

JavaScript’s all-powerfulness makes it an appealing target for those of us doing work on the web — particularly as JavaScript as a language has evolved to become even more powerful and ergonomic, and the frameworks that are built in JavaScript become even more-so. Back in 2015, it was already so clear that JavaScript was experiencing incredible growth in usage, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, gave the developer world homework: “Learn JavaScript Deeply”³. He couldn’t have been more right. Half a decade later, JavaScript has done a good job of taking over front-end development. Particularly if you look at front-end development jobs.

While the web almanac might show us that only 5% of the top-zillion sites use React compared to 85% including jQuery, those numbers are nearly flipped when looking around at front-end development job requirements.

I’m sure there are fancy economic reasons for all that, but jobs are as important and personal as it gets for people, so it very much matters.

So we’re browser people in a sea of JavaScript building things for people. If we take a look at the job at a practical day-to-day tasks level, it’s a bit like this:

Translate designs into code

Think in terms of responsive design, allowing us to design and build across the landscape of devices

Build systemically. Construct components and patterns, not one-offs.

Apply semantics to content

Consider accessibility

Worry about the performance of the site. Optimize everything. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Just that first bullet point feels like a college degree to me. Taken together, all of those points certainly do.

This whole list is a bit abstract though, so let’s apply it to something we can look at. What if this website was our current project?

Our brains and fingers go wild!

Let’s build the layout with CSS grid. 

What fonts are those? Do we need to load them in their entirety or can we subset them? What happens as they load in? This layout feels like it will really suffer from font-shifting jank. 

There are some repeated patterns here. We should probably make a card design pattern. Every website needs a good card pattern. 

That’s a gorgeous color scheme. Are the colors mathematically related? Should we make variables to represent them individually or can we just alter a single hue as needed? Are we going to use custom properties in our CSS? Colors are just colors though, we might not need the cascading power of them just for this. Should we just use Sass variables? Are we going to use a CSS preprocessor at all?

The source order is tricky here. We need to order things so that they make sense for a screen reader user. We should have a meeting about what the expected order of content should be, even if we’re visually moving things around a bit with CSS grid.

The photographs here are beautifully shot. But some of them match the background color of the site… can we get away with alpha-transparent PNGs here? Those are always so big. Can any next-gen formats help us? Or should we try to match the background of a JPG with the background of the site seamlessly. Who’s writing the alt text for these?

There are some icons in use here. Inline SVG, right? Certainly SVG of some kind, not icon fonts, right? Should we build a whole icon system? I guess it depends on how we’re gonna be building this thing more broadly. Do we have a build system at all?

What’s the whole front-end plan here? Can I code this thing in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Well, I know I can, but what are the team expectations? Client expectations? Does it need to be a React thing because it’s part of some ecosystem of stuff that is already React? Or Vue or Svelte or whatever? Is there a CMS involved?

I’m glad the designer thought of not just the “desktop” and “mobile” sizes but also tackled an in-between size. Those are always awkward. There is no interactivity information here though. What should we do when that search field is focused? What gets revealed when that hamburger is tapped? Are we doing page-level transitions here?

I could go on and on. That’s how front-end developers think, at least in my experience and in talking with my peers.

A lot of those things have been our jobs forever though. We’ve been asking and answering these questions on every website we’ve built for as long as we’ve been doing it. There are different challenges on each site, which is great and keeps this job fun, but there is a lot of repetition too.

Allow me to get around to the title of this article. 

While we’ve been doing a lot of this stuff for ages, there is a whole pile of new stuff we’re starting to be expected to do, particularly if we’re talking about building the site with a modern JavaScript framework. All the modern frameworks, as much as they like to disagree about things, agree about one big thing: everything is a component. You nest and piece together components as needed. Even native JavaScript moves toward its own model of Web Components.

I like it, this idea of components. It allows you and your team to build the abstractions that make the most sense to you and what you are building.

Your Card component does all the stuff your card needs to do. Your Form component does forms how your website needs to do forms. But it’s a new concept to old developers like me. Components in JavaScript have taken hold in a way that components on the server-side never did. I’ve worked on many a WordPress website where the best I did was break templates into somewhat arbitrary include() statements. I’ve worked on Ruby on Rails sites with partials that take a handful of local variables. Those are useful for building re-usable parts, but they are a far cry from the robust component models that JavaScript frameworks offer us today.

All this custom component creation makes me a site-level architect in a way that I didn’t use to be. Here’s an example. Of course I have a Button component. Of course I have an Icon component. I’ll use them in my Card component. My Card component lives in a Grid component that lays them out and paginates them. The whole page is actually built from components. The Header component has a SearchBar component and a UserMenu component. The Sidebar component has a Navigation component and an Ad component. The whole page is just a special combination of components, which is probably based on the URL, assuming I’m all-in on building our front-end with JavaScript. So now I’m dealing with URLs myself, and I’m essentially the architect of the entire site. [Sweats profusely]

Like I told ya, a whole pile of new responsibility.

Components that are in charge of displaying content are almost certainly not hard-coded with data in them. They are built to be templates. They are built to accept data and construct themselves based on that data. In the olden days, when we were doing this kind of templating, the data has probably already arrived on the page we’re working on. In a JavaScript-powered app, it’s more likely that that data is fetched by JavaScript. Perhaps I’ll fetch it when the component renders. In a stack I’m working with right now, the front end is in React, the API is in GraphQL and we use Apollo Client to work with data. We use a special “hook” in the React components to run the queries to fetch the data we need, and another special hook when we need to change that data. Guess who does that work? Is it some other kind of developer that specializes in this data layer work? No, it’s become the domain of the front-end developer.

Speaking of data, there is all this other data that a website often has to deal with that doesn’t come from a database or API. It’s data that is really only relevant to the website at this moment in time.

Which tab is active right now?

Is this modal dialog open or closed?

Which bar of this accordion is expanded?

Is this message bar in an error state or warning state?

How many pages are you paginated in?

How far is the user scrolled down the page?

Front-end developers have been dealing with that kind of state for a long time, but it’s exactly this kind of state that has gotten us into trouble before. A modal dialog can be open with a simple modifier class like <div class="modal is-open"> and toggling that class is easy enough with .classList.toggle(".is-open"); But that’s a purely visual treatment. How does anything else on the page know if that modal is open or not? Does it ask the DOM? In a lot of jQuery-style apps of yore, yes, it would. In a sense, the DOM became the “source of truth” for our websites. There were all sorts of problems that stemmed from this architecture, ranging from a simple naming change destroying functionality in weirdly insidious ways, to hard-to-reason-about application logic making bug fixing a difficult proposition.

Front-end developers collectively thought: what if we dealt with state in a more considered way? State management, as a concept, became a thing. JavaScript frameworks themselves built the concept right in, and third-party libraries have paved and continue to pave the way. This is another example of expanding responsibility. Who architects state management? Who enforces it and implements it? It’s not some other role, it’s front-end developers.

There is expanding responsibility in the checklist of things to do, but there is also work to be done in piecing it all together. How much of this state can be handled at the individual component level and how much needs to be higher level? How much of this data can be gotten at the individual component level and how much should be percolated from above? Design itself comes into play. How much of the styling of this component should be scoped to itself, and how much should come from more global styles?

It’s no wonder that design systems have taken off in recent years. We’re building components anyway, so thinking of them systemically is a natural fit.

Let’s look at our design again:

A bunch of new thoughts can begin!

Assuming we’re using a JavaScript framework, which one? Why? 

Can we statically render this site, even if we’re building with a JavaScript framework? Or server-side render it? 

Where are those recipes coming from? Can we get a GraphQL API going so we can ask for whatever we need, whenever we need it?

Maybe we should pick a CMS that has an API that will facilitate the kind of front-end building we want to do. Perhaps a headless CMS?

What are we doing for routing? Is the framework we chose opinionated or unopinionated about stuff like this?

What are the components we need? A Card, Icon, SearchForm, SiteMenu, Img… can we scaffold these out? Should we start with some kind of design framework on top of the base framework?

What’s the client state we might need? Current search term, current tab, hamburger open or not, at least.

Is there a login system for this site or not? Are logged in users shown anything different? 

Is there are third-party componentry we can leverage here?

Maybe we can find one of those fancy image components that does blur-up loading and lazy loading and all that.

Those are all things that are in the domain of front-end developers these days, on top of everything that we already need to do. Executing the design, semantics, accessibility, performance… that’s all still there. You still need to be proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and how the browser works. Being a front-end developer requires a haystack of skills that grows and grows. It’s the natural outcome of the web getting bigger. More people use the web and internet access grows. The economy around the web grows. The capability of browsers grows. The expectations of what is possible on the web grows. There isn’t a lot shrinking going on around here.

We’ve already reached the point where most front-end developers don’t know the whole haystack of responsibilities. There are lots of developers still doing well for themselves being rather design-focused and excelling at creative and well-implemented HTML and CSS, even as job posts looking for that dwindle.

There are systems-focused developers and even entire agencies that specialize in helping other companies build and implement design systems. There are data-focused developers that feel most at home making the data flow throughout a website and getting hot and heavy with business logic. While all of those people might have “front-end developer” on their business card, their responsibilities and even expectations of their work might be quite different. It’s all good, we’ll find ways to talk about all this in time.

In fact, how we talk about building websites has changed a lot in the last decade. Some of my early introduction to web development was through WordPress. WordPress needs a web server to run, is written in PHP, and stores it’s data in a MySQL database. As much as WordPress has evolved, all that is still exactly the same. We talk about that “stack” with an acronym: LAMP, or Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Note that literally everything in the entire stack consists of back-end technologies. As a front-end developer, nothing about LAMP is relevant to me.

But other stacks have come along since then. A popular stack was MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular and Node). Notice how we’re starting to inch our way toward more front-end technologies? Angular is a JavaScript framework, so as this stack gained popularity, so too did talking about the front-end as an important part of the stack. Node and Express are both JavaScript as well, albeit the server-side variant.

The existence of Node is a huge part of this story. Node isn’t JavaScript-like, it’s quite literally JavaScript. It makes a front-end developer already skilled in JavaScript able to do server-side work without too much of a stretch.

“Serverless” is a much more modern tech buzzword, and what it’s largely talking about is running small bits of code on cloud servers. Most often, those small bits of code are in Node, and written by JavaScript developers. These days, a JavaScript-focused front-end developer might be writing their own serverless functions and essentially being their own back-end developer. They’ll think of themselves as full-stack developers, and they’ll be right.

Shawn Wang coined a term for a new stack this year: STAR or Design System, TypeScript, Apollo, and React. This is incredible to me, not just because I kind of like that stack, but because it’s a way of talking about the stack powering a website that is entirely front-end technologies. Quite a shift.

I apologize if I’ve made you feel a little anxious reading this. If you feel like you’re behind in understanding all this stuff, you aren’t alone.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to a single developer who told me they felt entirely comfortable with the entire world of building websites. Everybody has weak spots or entire areas where they just don’t know the first dang thing. You not only can specialize, but specializing is a pretty good idea, and I think you will end up specializing to some degree whether you plan to or not. If you have the good fortune to plan, pick things that you like. You’ll do just fine.

The only constant in life is change.

– Heraclitus     – Motivational Poster         – Chris Coyier

¹ I’m a white dude, so that helps a bunch, too. ↩️ ² Browsers speak a bunch more languages. HTTP, SVG, PNG… The more you know the more you can put to work! ↩️ ³ It’s an interesting bit of irony that WordPress websites generally aren’t built with client-side JavaScript components. ↩️

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