Amazing games that are only Created with web Technologies

JavaScript and HTML5 are quite powerful these days. Increasingly more games are built exclusively with these web technologies, and believe it or not, they’re quite entertaining. A couple of years back, developers were compelled to use Flash to create a game. Right now, Flash has nearly disappeared; WebGL has taken the lead. Here are a few amazing games that were crafted with web technologies.

Sinuous

One of the coolest games built with web technology; Sinuous packs sleek graphics, fluid frame rates, and an engaging gameplay. All you have to do is avoid collision with the red dots that are present in the game. Some dots however, give you power-ups, so make sure to grab those. For some additional points, move around as much as possible and steer clear of as many red dots as possible.

HexGL

HexGL is an incredibly futuristic racing game that was built by Thibaut Despoulain. It is fast-paced, fun, and interactive. Created with WebGL, JavaScript and HTML5, HexGL brings homage to F-Zero and Wipeout. The maker of this racing game – a computer science student - made it with a lot of enthusiasm and devotion, and believe it or not, it’s not the easiest racer you ever played. Do you have what it takes to make it to the finish line?

Entanglement

Who doesn’t love a well-crafted puzzle game? Entanglement was crafted with HTML5 and it has players create lengthy paths through the insertion of all kinds of segments on specific grids. With plenty of levels at your disposal, this web tech game features lots of tricky levels you’ll surely appreciate. Compete with friends and fight for the highest score. Last but not least, relish the background music sounds as they’re quite enthralling.

Cube Slam

Superbly colored and beautifully crafted, Cube Slam is a 3D arcade classic. Built in HTML5, players must defeat Bob, and they have 3 lives to do it. First few levels are easy, but as you advance you’ll see how Cube Slam becomes increasingly more challenging. The web tech game has a multiplayer mode too; this allows players to ask friends to join in.

Elevator Saga

If you’re an avid programmer, then you’ll grow very fond of this coding game. In Elevator Saga players must transport people in the most efficient way using encoding elevator moves. JavaScript is being used for every move, so programmers should prepare themselves for the ultimate challenge.

Olympia Rising

Fight with all your powers and make your way through the infinite pits of the Underworld. In this 2D action-adventure platformer, you play Iola who navigates a wealth of Ancient Greek regions in the hopes of getting out of the Underworld and becoming a person with a normal life once again. Featuring the most fluid animations and lush graphics, Olympia Rising is a 16-bit styled web game where players must slash, jump, climb and blast their way to move onto the next stage.

Escape from XP

RIP to Windows XP! Whether you loved or hated XP, this action arcade game made with HTML5 will definitely draw your attention. Basically, it celebrates the death of the famous operating system, and surprisingly it’s quite engaging. Players are in charge of saving XP’s last developer, who’s somewhere trapped and can’t get out. A must-play for all XP fans!

Out of the numerous games built with JavaScript and HTML5, it’s impossible for avid gamers not to find something to exceed their expectations. The ones we mentioned above are fun, lively, entertaining, and challenging enough to keep players busy for hours in a row. Which one’s your favorite?

This is the guest post by Fredrick Cameron and Make Up Games 365!

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10 Remarkably Unmissable Wordpress Code Snippets

Every Wordpress website owner continuously strives to improve the website's efficiency and productivity to achieve the best possible results.

Typically, we set off on a plugin installing spree when we start to feel our website needs some extra dose of functionality to boast. We start to look for the list of best plugins for either SEO, social media, for custom widgets, having a more personalized menu, playing around with the website's style and so on. So far so good, but it is no hidden fact that too many plugins only end up bloating our websites and severely affect their performance in terms of multiple areas.

This is where the small code snippets come in handy. Wordpress, for being as user friendly as it is, lets you edit the core files of your themes with utmost ease. There are several such snippets already doing the rounds. And in this post, I will introduce you to some that can really let you refine your website thoroughly.

1. For a Login Screen that Perfectly Demonstrates Your Brand Character

The login screens are unarguably the most ignored aspects of any websites, particularly in terms of styling. We go to great lengths to make sure no one unauthorized gets their way around them, but we hardly pay attention to make this page interesting for our viewing pleasure, or for making it very relevant to our brands, especially in scenarios where we have a number of authors and editors on our website.

So, in order to give the screen a more personalized touch, you can try out this code:

function loginLogo() { echo ''; } add_action('login_head', 'loginLogo');

2. Add Extra Contact Methods to User Profiles

Contact forms have indispensable importance building a loyal list of followers is on your agenda. When you have more users signing up and creating their profiles on your website, you are actually enlisting more and more potential buyers.

But, truth be told, Wordpress makes the whole exercise extremely mundane with its old-age contact forms and methods. So, here is a small code snippet that can be used to add more contact methods to your Wordpress website, just to make things more interesting for those who are interested:

add_filter('user_contactmethods', 'my_user_contactmethods');

function my_user_contactmethods($user_contactmethods){
 
  $user_contactmethods['twitter'] = 'Twitter Username';
  $user_contactmethods['facebook'] = 'Facebook Username';
 
  return $user_contactmethods;
}

All you got to do from hereon is give the methods personalized name and labels.

3. Making More Space for the Widgets

There is already a truckload of literature dedicated to the importance of the Wordpress widgets. They way let you add more versatility to your website is unparallel and thus, making enough room for them to snug in is of very high significance.

Here is a code for you to create the space with the right frame size so that they fit in naturally:

if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
     register_sidebar(array(
      'name' => 'Social Widget Area',
      'id'   => 'social-widget-area',
      'description'   => 'Social Widget Area',
      'before_widget' => '
',
      'after_widget'  => '
',
      'before_title'  => '
',
      'after_title'   => '
'
     ));
    }

4. Getting Rid of the Default Widgets

Talking of widgets, there is a lot of default fluff that Wordpress swings at us, and this is how we get rid of it:

// unregister some widgets
 function unregister_default_widgets() {
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Pages');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Links');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Categories');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Recent_Comments');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud');
     unregister_widget('WP_Nav_Menu_Widget');
 }
 add_action('widgets_init', 'unregister_default_widgets', 11);

5. For echoing Shortcode in Template

Shortcodes are a revelation on the website. And for you to echo shortcode in the template, here is the smallest code for it:

6. To Register the Menu

Registering menu on the Wordpress website is something many webmasters are eyeing. Instead of looking for a plugin for the same, here is a code that you can use:

function register_my_menus() {
  register_nav_menus(
    array(
      'header-menu' => __( 'Header Menu' ),
      'extra-menu' => __( 'Extra Menu' )
    )
  );
}
add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );

7. For the If Have Posts, While Have Posts, The Post for Extracting Database Content

The following code snippet is perfect when you need to extract some content from the database:

8. For Arranging the Content in Vertical Order

When you want the content to look organized and free of clutter, aligning it vertically serves the perpose just right. Here is the code for the same:

.element {
  position: relative;
  transform: translateY(-50%);
  top: 50%;
}

9. Disable the Automatic Update of Plugins

while there is no doubt over the fact that we should continually update our Wordpress theme and all the plugins, but there is a flip side to it. Many times, updates lead to certain uninvited errors ad put our website in a fix.

Thus, it is better to keep the rein in our hands and disable the updates from happening automatically:

add_filter('site_transient_update_plugins', 'dd_remove_update_nag');
function dd_remove_update_nag($value) {
 unset($value->response[ plugin_basename(__FILE__) ]);
 return $value;

10. Displaying Notifications on Dashboard

There are several occasions when you wish to have a feature that displays some notifications or messages on the dashboard. Here is the code for the same:

function showMessage($message, $errormsg = false){
    if ($errormsg) {
        echo '
‘; } else { echo ‘
‘; } echo “$message
“; } function showAdminMessages() { showMessage(“YOUR MESSAGE HERE”, true); if (user_can(‘manage_options’) { showMessage(“Hello admins!”); } } add_action(‘admin_notices’, ‘showAdminMessages’);

These 10 snippets cover a host of facets and functions you can add to your Wordpress website. Do let us know if you find these useful for your website.

About the Author: Amanda Cline is a dedicated PHP developer for hire & she is currently serving as a senior most developer with Xicom Technologies Ltd. You can hire her for successful execution of varied web development projects, both simple as well as complex ones. Get in touch with her via Twitter or Google+.

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7 Prolific Design and Development Tools That Are In Vogue

The absolute hard work and extensive brainstorming results in high end products upon which we are so dependent.

To ensure the ultimate user experience, its imperative to integrate latest design aspects and stand up to the current market demands. Whether one is designing an app or a website, there are several different key factors that need to be considered and dealt with utmost proficiency for sure-fire results. Hence, if we will observe the complete workflow that has to be accomplished in delivering a worthy product, the designers and developers really need to make special efforts. Precisely, it can be said that from designing to deployment of an app, an app or website development is not a job of a day; rather it involves numerous days and night efforts.

However, with the advent of high quality, proficient design and development tools, expert's job have become more convenient. And thus, it is essential for them to stay updated with the newfangled tools available out there.

Here in the below list I have jotted a few of the latest tools that are highly highly admired by designers and developers.

View Source

This iPad/iPhone application is developed by Paul Hudson and it offers a great solution to review the source code different languages including, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of any web page. It thus facilitates web development and offers custom syntax highlighting, so that users can set a desired format. Moreover, this tool can be accessed as both extension and application.

Adobe Color CC

Creativity or innovative thoughts are the finest form of entropy, it often hits mind when it is least expected. It just happens and you can get creative at any time. This handy tool is a beautiful creation of Adobe is focused to help designers create colorful themes as and when an innovative idea knock their doors. It offers an overwhelming list of features to help designers with their job.

Gerstnerizer

Grid view is quite significant for app and web designs. This tool offers designers the freedom of designing a preferred grid layout. You may create grids as simple square, triangles or complex appearing hexagons, and define desirable spacing. For creating a grid, you just need to join the available dots.

Appsee Mobile Analytics

No matter what kind of application you are developing, for optimizing an application, you will always need an analytic tool or other the task will be quite daunting. You can efficiently measure, comprehend and optimize your app UX with this advanced mobile tool. This tool works perfectly with both popular platforms iOS and Android. It offers fabulous features that help developers improve conversion rates, profits with enhanced user engagement in-app monetization and more.

Unlike traditional tools that provides numerical data, this tool basically allows developers to review their from user's perspective and visually determine how their users are actually interacting with their app. Thus, it will offer a complete picture of your app.

Font Family Reunion

To ensure that your used font will work smoothly on all your targeted platforms, you can use Font Family Reunion. With this tool, you will get a table that represents which local font will work on the major platforms. Moreover, you can type a particular font name and determine whether that font is aliased, supported or available in the targeted platform.

Chrome DevTools Tips

Google not only offers utile and high-tech products and services to the users, but also offers a great contribution to the development of quality apps and websites. Google Chrome is popular among mass as a browser only, but in deed, it facilitates developer's job with its resourceful features. This tool not only includes set of several proficient tools, but also helps developers by offering them beneficial tips and tricks to efficiently perform development. Its posts and other offerings are updated every to ensure increased productivity and efficiency to developers with the latest approaches.

FX Photo Studio - pro effects & filters, fast camera plus photo editor

Images are absolute visual elements that enhances the complete look and feel of the website. Textual content with relevant images help generate incredible user experience (UX) and enhance user engagement. Therefore, it is quite imperative to ensure a high quality image. This free app offers incredible features that help one efficiently edit and improve image quality. It facilitates a plethora of filters, fabulous effects and a blend of amazing sub features that help create professional images. Hence, this powerful app will always be a great choice for designers and developers.

These are the top-of-the-funnel tools that can augment the efficiency and productivity of developers and designers. You can bet on any of the aforementioned tools, they are curated to deliver sure-fire results. Use these tools and complete your project with utmost precision and absolute performance.

Author Bio: Jason Roiz is qualified web development professional who brings to the table a quantum of knowledge around software development services. He meets expectations for OSSMedia, a CMS development company giving proficient Magento, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress improvement administrations.

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BuddyPress - A Guide for converting WordPress site into social network

Being familiar with the commendable offerings by social media, who wouldn't want to take an advantage of the same? Yes, social media is indeed one of the most powerful online platforms for gaining the spotlight you've always dreamt of. Well, if you've settled on WordPress as your website's CMS and are planning to convert your portal into a social network then choosing from a collection of WP plugins is perhaps the route you need to take.

Over the past couple of years, WordPress community has been busy developing plugins that can serve as handy tools for WordPress users who intend to migrate to a full-fledged social network status for their existing website. One such WordPress plugin which has received immense appreciation from global WP users is BuddyPress. Today, through this post, I intend to share with you the features and strengths of BuddyPress which allows you to build a social network with your WordPress portal.

An overview on BuddyPress

Specially designed for WordPress.org powered websites, BuddyPress serves as an excellent plugin that allows you to take your site/blog to a whole new level via incorporation of impressive social network features such as: user groups, activity streams, user profiles and many more. Just like WordPress, BuddyPress is also free to download and install. So, if you're thinking about setting up an internal communication tool for your enterprise, a focused social network for a newly launched product/service or a niche social network for a particular topic of interest; installing BuddyPress plugin would help you achieve your goal faster and effectively.

Some amazing features boasted by BuddyPress

1. Over 330 BuddyPress plugins are available for download

BuddyPress has been a regular favorite among the WordPress Plugin Development community. Today, there are more than 330 BuddyPress plugins which can be conveniently installed on the WordPress dashboard to take complete advantage of BuddyPress features.

2. BuddyPress offers collaborated power of social network and protection of a private network

If you're a business owner struggling to share information about your current/upcoming projects and campaigns via emails and intranets, then installing BuddyPress in your website can turn to be the right step. With BuddyPress, you can share all the business information via a password-protected approach, offering access to team members only. To put it simply, you can serve threaded articles, comments and status updates, while maintaining complete confidentiality of every piece of data that you choose to share.

3. BuddyPress supports internal messaging

With BuddyPress installed in your WordPress blog, you can easily send and receive private emails from members who have been registered in the friends list available within your private messaging panel. All members within your friend list will have their own Inbox, Sentbox and Drafts folder and they will be notified about a newly received message via a new message count and/or email notifications.

4. BuddyPress supports user groups

BuddyPress offers you the flexibility of gathering friends by creating a private, public or a hidden group. By becoming the group admin, you can invite friends to join your group, approve requests to join a private/hidden group and also incorporate innovative features into the existing group.

5. BuddyPress offers eight absolutely stunning widgets

BuddyPress is equipped with eight handy widgets which allow you to perform vital tasks in a convenient manner. To activate a widget(s), just go to your WordPress admin dashboard-> Appearance-> Widgets. The eight useful widgets available with BuddyPress include:

• Members- This widget allows you to view the list of members as per three categories viz: recently active, popular and newest members.
• Recently Active Members- This widget when installed in your site will display the avatars of all the members who have performed some or the other activity on your blog cum social network.
• Who's Online- With this widget installed in your WP site, you'll be able to view the avatars of all the members who are currently online.
• Groups- This is a widget which allows you to view a dynamic list of newest groups, recently active groups and the most popular groups for your WordPress website/social media platform.
• Recent Networkwide Posts- With this widget activated for your BuddyPress enabled WP site, you can view a list of all the recently published posts from all the network.
• Friends- Installing this widget in your WordPress blog will let you see a dynamic list of newest friends, recently active friends and popular friends for a particular user. Do note that this widget is visible only while viewing a member profile.
• Sitewide Notices- As the website administrator, you might feel the need to share some important information with everyone who's listed in your friends list. It is here that the Sitewide Notices widget plays its role. Just install it in your site and you can easily publish notices that can further be displayed across the website.
• Log In- With this widget activated for your WordPress site/blog, you can show a 'Log In' form to all those users who've logged out of your website/blog. Plus, you can also display a 'Log Out' link for all the logged in visitors members of the website.

6. Extensive Theme Compatibility

If you're about to delve into integrating BuddyPress with your WordPress website, then you'll be delighted to know that this WP plugin is compatible with nearly all WordPress themes. The best part of BuddyPress is that you can easily override its templates just the same way as you do it for your WP theme via a WordPres child theme. With BuddyPress, you're provided with a base template file which can be further customized to enhance the visual appearance of your WordPress website as per your specific requirements.

Wrapping Up

It's hard to deny the fact that BuddyPress has indeed played a vital role in helping WordPress blogs evolve from a mere online portal to an eye-appealing and fully-functional social network. Here's hoping the BuddyPress details covered above would have encouraged you to install this very cool and trendy plugin in your WP blog/site right away.

This post is brought to you by Samuel Dawson, working as front-end developer for Designs2HTML Ltd. a leading PSD to HTML conversion company and he shares concrete information, latest trend on conversion of worpdress into social platform & tips on front-end development technologies.

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A Closer Look At Integrating Gravity Forms With Mail Chimp

As a WordPress site owner with the sole goal of lead generation, equipping your web pages with specific forms is unavoidable. Serving as the number one solution for creating fully-functional online forms, Gravity Forms plugin is a must-install for your WP site. In addition to this, if you're seeking complete peace of mind in terms of conducting email-marketing via your site then a definitive integration of Gravity forms with MailChimp( the next big thing after Gravity Forms) serves as the right approach.

What you'll find in this tutorial?

This tutorial speaks about some remarkable features of the two most recommended WordPress solutions viz: Gravity Forms and MailChimp alongwith some lesser-known benefits of integrating them. As you continue reading, you'll also get to know about the simple steps that mark collaboration of Gravity Forms and MailChimp.

A glimpse at WordPress' Gravity Forms plugin

Whether you intend to create simple contact and support forms or want to go way beyond by building surveys, reader polls etc; Gravity Forms plugin will let you do all this and much more. Some of the interesting features available with this WordPress plugin include a drag and drop interface, lead capture, advanced notification routing, flexibility to create posts via external forms and conditional logic fields. Simple go to this gravityforms and start building and publishing WordPress forms within a few minutes. All you need to do is simply select the fields for form, configure the options and embed the form within your WordPress site/blog via easy-to-use built-in tools.

Now, let me throw some light on MailChimp

Since email marketing has become a vital component of every business vertical, you can't ignore its significance even for your WordPress powered corporate website/blog. Built by some professionals in Atlanta, MailChimp is a popular web-based email marketing service that allows you to design email newsletters that can further be shared on varied social networking websites and/or integrated with the 'active' services for your website. Some of the commendable features available with MailChimp include the following:

• Greater deliverability
• Professional styling
• Fully compatible with a range of email readers and other devices
• Approved bulk mailer
• Complete adherence to privacy policy

Go to www.mailchimp.com today and sign up for a free account. Once you're done with creating the account, integrate it with your WordPress website to start with sending up to 500 million emails everyday.

A few lesser-known advantages of integrating Gravity Forms plugin with your MailChimp account

The seamless integration of Gravity Forms plugin and MailChimp account is definitely seen as a great add-on for your WordPress enriched website. Here's a list of few benefits that can be availed, post integrating Gravity Forms with MailChimp:

• Automatic addition of new subscribers to your site's email lists; each time a form is being submitted
• Ability to control opt-in and addition of subscribers only when a certain condition is fulfilled
• Automatic firing of double opt in messages for ascertaining that only legitimate subscribers are being added
• Flexibility in populating MailChimp custom fields via the form field data stored in the site's database

Finally, let's understand the process of integrating Gravity Forms with MailChimp account

With the MailChimp add-on, you get an instant access to a suite of hooks, filters and added capabilities which work as the best tools for modifying/extending the default functionality of your WordPress site. Here is the list of hooks and filters which are fired every time a Gravity form loaded with MailChimp feed is being submitted:

• gform_mailchimp_allow_resubscription

  By default, every user available in your email list has a status of re-subscribed. You can use this filter for altering the user status from 'Resubscribed' to 'Unsubscribed' on your list.

• gform_mailchimp_keep_existing_groups

  By default, all the original newsletter subscriber groups are preserved and new ones are added. If you plan to modify that an already subscribed user has his/her group updated while submitting the newsletter subscription form for the second time, then using this filter will be handy.

• gform_mailchimp_field_value

  If you modify any value for the newsletter subscription form fields, prior to sending the same to the MailChimp API then simply opt for using this filter.

  All the above mentioned hooks are fired within the settings and feed configuration page for your MailChimp account. That's it from me for now!

Summing it all up

Integrating Gravity Forms with MailChimp means integrating all your online forms(registration form, subscription form, survey form etc.) with an absolutely stunning e-mail marketing service which has more than 7 million people on-board. Doing it for your WordPress website will allow you to reap the benefits in no time.

If you too have some points popping up in your mind(regarding this post) please don't hesitate in sharing them with us via the comments box provided right under this post.

Author Bio : Sophia Phillips has been working as a professional in WordPress Theme Customization Company and loves sharing information about leveraging multiple benefits of WordPress CMS in the best possible manner. Currently, she has an impressive count of WordPress web development-related articles under her name.

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How to Shapes Navigational Structure of Mobile Designs?

With more and more users leaning towards mobile devices than desktop systems, creating mobile first designs has become a necessity for web designers. When creating designs for the mobile, most of us, pay attention to improving the look and functionality of the design and making it simple enough for users to understand. However, we overlook how the navigation works. Remember, providing navigational aids is equally important to offering great mobile first designs.

In essence, rather than just craving for visual simplicity we need to ensure that our visuals are easy to navigate. Wayfinding is an excellent technique that helps inspire us to introduce navigation to our designs.

Understanding the Significance of Wayfinding

Wayfinding, as the name suggests, inform about our surroundings and how we can navigate in the virtual space around us.

We all depend on hints in our environment, to figure out where we’ve been and where we should head to next. For instance, if you have taken a flight to a place, you can recall your experience to know what you need to do when boarding a flight in an unfamiliar airport.

Similar to the way we find directions in real life, we also look for information when browsing the web via our mobile. And, probably we are bound to experience the same frustration and struggle we went through while searching for our intended destination.

A Look At Wayfinding Concepts

There are three different wayfinding concepts that can be implemented into mobile and responsive designs for making navigation easier for the users:

1. Circulation systems

It represents an infrastructure allowing people to move around inside a fixed space. In simple words, they help define the navigation path to users. It facilitates users diversified options to reach to their intended destination. When it comes to designing for the web, circulation systems acts as navigational structures like the hierarchical tree menu, nested doll navigation used in mobile web applications, etc.

2. Spatial cues

Circulation systems shows the path, determining people where they need to move further. Spatial clues, on the other hand, determines the observable qualities of a space, making people know their surroundings. Web designers depend on the spatial clues to help users locate the path they need to navigate. There are two form of spatial clues: landmark and edges.

Landmark: In terms of UI design, a landmark are elements placed in a fixed position that helps visitors know about their position relative to those elements. Let's take a look at some elements (the ones that are visible throughout a site):

• Logo
• Guide us to return to the home screen
• Primary navigation
• Provide access to landing pages, helping users to explore other sections quickly.
• Breadcrumbs
• It serves as a ladder that enable users to traverse up the site map
• Search

It provides an alternate way to users to find out about the required information.

Edges: As the name implies, tell us about the boundaries where we can tap targets (i.e. area of clickable links and buttons). When we talk about UI design, defining the edges of the objects as well as regions of mobile device help users become acquainted with its interface quickly.

3. Signage

This concept is about incorporating instructional signs, symbols and iconography guide people how to navigate in their mobile devices. In mobile design elements such as menus, labels, buttons, etc., serves as signage. Since symbols take less space compared to text, they're massively used in UI designs. Considering the fact that, people make use of images and text in a different manner, it becomes needful for designers to keep certain factors in mind, when determining: how and when an image or text should be used. Here are a few ways that will let you know how you can utilize icons effectively.

Using Icons: Icons are considered to be one of the most effective means that enables people to communicate information. In addition, they even help highlight navigation options of a mobile device screen. One downside to using icons is that they can be misinterpreted, as users often find some icons that are hard to understand. But icons work in an excellent way when they people are familiar to them. Let's take a look at some of the most common icons:

• + (Plus): Adds or expands
• - (Minus): Remove item
• x (Cross): Close or Exit a window and more..

Text Labels: Well-written text labels compared to icons are more easier to understand. In mobile designs, text makes it easier for users to scan and process different options. Especially, text helps you understand the meaning behind icons that you might not be aware of. For example, as you can see in the below screen shot there are a lot of symbols in the web design that you might be able to relate to, however the text written beneath those symbols clearly define what they're meant for.

Wrapping Up!

There exists a lot of difference between the physical and digital space, however, there is a similarity between them in the manner how we familiarize and determine where we need to move in both those spaces. Just like we depend on cues in our surroundings to know where and how we need to go to our destination, similarly there are visual cues using which we can understand how we can navigate smoothly in a mobile design. This can be done effectively with help of wayfinding assistance.

About the author: Lucie Kruger is an application developer working with Mobiers Ltd, the leading mobile app development company. She provides concrete information on latest technologies like iOS, Android mobile apps development.

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AngularJS - Why every web developer should know it better ?

Are you about to build your next web app? Have you heard a lot about AngularJS but are still unsure whether to choose it or not? If your answer to both these questions is a 'Yes' then you're on the right post. Here, I'll be making you familiar with some compelling reasons why knowing AngularJS and using it during your forthcoming web app development project is a 'Win-Win' situation, both for you(as a web app developer) and for your client. So, let's take a closer look at these reasons which make AngularJS a must-know framework for web developers across the globe.

AngularJS uses HTML for defining app's user interface

As a declarative language, HTML is being utilized for defining the use interface of web applications. Unlike the hassles associated with defining the app interface via a procedural approach in JavaScript, HTML offers you the convenience of framing an interface that can be easily reorganized as and when required. Plus, the special attributes of HTML allows you to determine “what” gets loaded. This plays a vital role in simplifying the web app development via the WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) method. Instead of spending time and efforts on defining the program flow along with the things that should be loaded first, all you need to do is just define what you expect the app to do and AngularJS will take care of everything else.

Cuts down the need for writing lengthy code

The Data-binding feature available in AngularJS saves you from putting data into the views using a manual approach. Rather, the view is being defined using HTML, making it simpler to write the data models without facing any kind of issues. In addition to this, the in-built filters enable you to manipulate all the data that has been stored inside the view, without the need for altering controllers. With such brilliant utilities in hand, you can save yourself from worrying about writing lengthy and complex code.

Open for Unit Testing

It is the Dependency Injection(DI) feature of AngularJS which makes it ready and available for unit testing. This DI asset allows it to manage the scopes and controllers. With unit testing for AngularJS, you can opt for injecting mock data into the controllers, thereby measuring the behavior and output in a fuss-free way.

Services available with AngularJS aid in manipulating the scope of web design project

AngularJS comes loaded with services which offer an outward API which is further utilized for exposing components you intend to expose for your web application. By synchronizing with your server, AngularJS works as the best option for maintaining an offline data backup for your app. Also, you can opt for creating a separate resource sharing service which would allow your multiple controllers to share a specific set of resources. All the services available with AngularJS serve as standalone objects which have been separated from the web application and enable your controller to stay lean. Therefore, you need not configure any third-party services for your controller as all the complexities would be well taken care of by these default services.

Data models available in AngularJS are plain old JavaScript objects(POJO)

Since all the data models defined in AngularJS are POJO, you need not create any additional functions for tweaking the web application. You are free to add and modify the properties, followed by looping over the arrays and objects in accordance to your specific preferences. Doing this will make your code look a lot more crisp, clean and intuitive. Unlike the conventional data models, AngularJS's data models work in close proximity to the controller and view. All the changes made to the properties are being keenly observed by AngularJS, which further updates the review via an automatic approach.

Wrapping it all up

I'm sure the aforementioned reasons would have given you an idea of what makes AngularJS a powerful and robust web app development framework. Irrespective of the purpose behind building an application, AngularJS would turn to be the right fit for your specific domain. Leveraging features of AngularJS will undoubtedly enable you to come with a web application that is loaded with flawless functionalities and visual assets worth receiving numerous remarks.

Author Bio: Maria Mincey is qualified web development outsourcing professional who is great at delivering focus in her writings. She works for Xicom Technologies, a software development company which delivers most comprehensive web applications and solutions for different industry verticals.

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How jQuery Mobile and HTML 5 Can Impact Your Mobile App Development

Whether you are interested in developing a mobile website or application, implementing an appropriate framework can help you accomplish your project in a more efficient manner. There are numerous frameworks available out there that helps one improve their productivity with the resourceful features of the development tools.

The jQuery Mobile is one such mobile framework with which you can develop your simple, cross-platform web application with utmost precision and convenience. This framework is basically a HTML 5 based UI system that allows developers to beautifully integrate both JavaScript and HTML 5 for creating a flexible mobile web app that stand up to the UI expectations of numerous devices like Smartphones, tablet, iPad, desktop, etc.

The incredible community contribution has added numerous utile plugins and other useful features that makes jQuery Mobile a viable framework. However, there are certain merits and demerits of implementing this UI system for mobile web app development. Let's have a glimpse over some of them.

Valuable Merits of jQuery Mobile and HTML 5:

• Supports Cross-Platform And Cross-Device App Development – Today, when there are truckloads of mobile devices featuring distinct shapes and sizes, and numerous mobile platforms are available out there, the task of developing an app to target a whopping number of mobile users has become a bit cumbersome. Thus, following an approach that facilitates developers to effortlessly and efficiently develop cross-device and cross-platform app not only minimizes the overall complexity but also offers a prolific solution.
• No App Approvals are Needed Even for iOS Devices – Seeking Apple App store approval for launching an app publicly is one of the factors that makes the platform rank low under the preference chart. However, if you have developed a web app for your website using jQuery Mobile framework, you won't need to wait for approval from the app store even if your app is targeting an iOS device. This helps you save your valuable time and efforts.

  Moreover, the jQuery Mobile app users are not required to update their app manually, rather they will get an updated version, as soon as they reload your website.

• Faster Turnaround Time – You can accomplish your application development task by implementing this framework at a faster rate as compared to that while implementing any platform natively. That is so even if you don't possess any prior knowledge about HTML 5 or jQuery Mobile, as the learning curve for this framework is comparatively low.
• Customizable Themes – The visual appearance of your application is quite imperative as it helps attract users. With this framework, you can easily customize a desirable look and feel to your app. And, modify it as and when desired.
• Platform-agnostic UI widgets – Since currently, the mobile market trends are greatly focusing over touchscreen devices, the touch-optimized widgets for UI elements makes the jQuery a viable choice for developers.

Demerits of jQuery Mobile and HTML 5:

• Can't Access All Device's Features – Since, it runs JavaScript in the browser, it doesn't facilitate access to all native features of mobile devices. However, if you consider this aspect, native apps stand ahead of the jQuery Mobile web apps.
• Not Apt For Multimedia And Gaming Apps – The framework is preferred only for simple, data entry types applications. Native app development approach is considered much better than this approach, if one is interested in creating feature-rich, complex application like Gaming or multimedia apps.

• No MVC Architecture Support – Model View Controller (MVC) offers different views of the software. It helps separate presentation from the logic and facilitates greater efficiency. Unlike other mobile app development tools like PhoneGap, this framework doesn't support MVC architecture.

It is essential to review the benefits and drawbacks of using a framework beforehand. Because, this helps one easily streamline their choice for preferred framework. Review the aforementioned merits and demerits of the jQuery Mobile web app framework before beginning app development. If your need a simple and efficient application for performing task like data entry, you must deploy this tools and integrate HTML 5 and JavaScript is an absolute manner. Your app will surely deliver remarkable performance.

About the author: Addison Cohen is an application developer for Appsted Ltd, an iPhone app development services provider. He loves sharing latest information on mobile technology.

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How to Create and Add Custom Widgets to WordPress Theme?

WordPress comes with some amazing built-in functions. “Widgets” is one such default function that helps to add functionality to your theme’s sidebar, also known as widget-ready areas. However, default widgets always might not match up to your expectations of coming up with a website that functions according to your wants and needs. Besides, with time, eventually you may need new things which might not be available with default WordPress widgets. In that case implementing and using custom widget area will be a more viable solution.

There are plenty of tutorials and resources available online dedicated to help you learn about the process of creating custom WordPress widgets and how you can add them up to your theme. But, you may find those materials hard to understand. Especially, newbies often find them insufficient to implement, so as to add custom widgets to their website.

So, to help you out, I will be discussing about a basic tutorial on creating a custom sidebar widget that even the novices can understand easily. But, before that let’s first discuss about the most common concern among users!

What are WordPress Widgets?

Widgets allows you to add static and dynamic content to your WordPress posts and page. They are also called executable scripts that you can drag and drop in your theme’s sidebar or other widget-ready areas to embed custom content and functions. The available widgetized areas will vary from one theme to another. You can find several types of widgets. WordPress comes packed with built-in widgets like post categories, tag clouds, navigation menu etc.

Adding a Custom Widget to Your Pages/Post

For implementing your custom widget and widget-ready areas in your WordPress theme, you will have to first get it registered. In our example, we are creating a sidebar widget. And so, let us take a look at the code that will help register our widget. For this purpose, you’ll need to add the following code in your theme’s functions.php file.

register_sidebar(array(
'name' => __('My first Custom Widget'),
'description' => __('You describe your widget here.'),
'id' => 'first-custom-widget',
'before_widget' => '
',
'after_widget' => '
',
'before_title' => '
',
'after_title' => '
'
));

As you can see in the above code, we’re registering only a single sidebar “my first Custom Widget”. Next, an array is declared with different values that are needed to create the custom widget. Let's talk about those values one by one:

Name: This helps to assign name to our custom widget. You can change this name to your Widget name.

Description: This is another parameter that helps to identify what will come in your theme’s sidebar.

id: This parameter is used to call the custom widget that you would like to display in your WordPress widgetized area.

before_widget: It places HTML before your custom widget.

after_widget: It places HTML after your custom widget.

before_title: This argument places your HTML before your custom widget title.

after_title: This argument positions your HTML after your custom widget title.
Once your custom widget is registered, you just need to drag and drop that widget into your WP theme. For this purpose, you will have to go to Appearance -> Widgets screen. Remember that your custom Widget won’t be visible on your theme until it is being called from the place you want to display it.


In order to use your custom widget in your WordPress website, simply copy and paste the following function in your functions.php file:

 //my-first-custom-widget is the id of your widget  

Next, go to your widgets panel and you’ll notice that your newly created “My first Custom Widget” will be visible in your WordPress back end (as you can see in the screenshot below). Finally, you can drag-and-drop the elements in your custom widget area that you want to display in your theme

Summing Up!

Widgets are powerful tools that help to embed additional functionality into your WP theme. You can add them to your WordPress posts/page, however usually they get added to WordPress theme’s widget-ready areas including sidebar, header or any other widgetized regions. WordPress comes with default widgets, but you might feel the need to create a custom one tailored to fit your needs.

Reading this post will help you learn how you can create and add custom Widgets to your WordPress pages or posts.

About Author:

Emily Heming is a professional WordPress developer for a leading PSD to WordPress company. She also provides conversion services like HTML to WordPress theme and many more. She has served many companies helping them in developing user-friendly website. So feel free to contact her.

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