Icons8

icons8

Figma, a frontrunner in the design software arena, offers a plethora of plugins tailored to amplify its functionality and cater to the diverse needs of designers. These plugins, whether they're streamlining complex tasks or ushering in groundbreaking features, can be truly transformative in the design landscape. Dive into our curated list of the best Figma plugins that are making waves in the design community and discover how they can elevate your design process to new heights. : Enhancing Content Quality in Design Grammar Checker & Rewriter It's crucial that content is not only visually captivating but also grammatically accurate and clearly articulated. This is where the "Grammar Checker & Rewriter" plugin for Figma, developed by Linguix, steps in. It offers not just a multilingual grammar checker but also a rewriter, optimizing content in various languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish. What sets this plugin apart is its real-time ability to detect grammatical errors and rewrite content to enhance it immediately. Writing mistakes or sentences that could be improved within a given Figma object are underlined. Users can apply corrections with a single click or expand them for more context. With such a tool by your side, you can ensure that your designs are top-notch, not just aesthetically but also in terms of content quality. : Elevate Your Designs with Stunning Imagery Unsplash Graphic content holds a crucial position in design, frequently determining the ambiance and feel of the entire endeavor. Acknowledging the significance of top-tier visuals, this tool for Figma surfaces as a revolutionary asset for designers. Crafted in partnership with Unsplash, this plugin grants users immediate entry to an extensive collection of stunning, high-definition images that are complimentary to utilize. No longer do designers need to toggle between multiple platforms or download images separately; with the Unsplash plugin, a plethora of stunning visuals is just a click away, right within the Figma workspace. This seamless integration not only streamlines the design process but also inspires creativity, allowing designers to experiment with different visuals effortlessly. By leveraging the power of Unsplash's diverse photo collection, designers can ensure that their projects stand out with unparalleled visual appeal. : Bridging the Gap Between Design and Development Figma to Code The transition from a visual prototype to functional code can often be a challenging process. Figam to Code offers a revolutionary tool that seeks to simplify this transition and foster a more collaborative environment between designers and developers. This powerful plugin allows designers to convert their Figma designs directly into usable code for various platforms, including HTML, Tailwind, Flutter, and SwiftUI. Gone are the days of tedious manual coding or misinterpretations of design elements. With Figma to Code, designers can ensure that their original vision is accurately translated into the final product, maintaining design integrity. Moreover, by automating the code generation process, this plugin not only speeds up project timelines but also reduces potential errors, ensuring a smoother and more efficient workflow. : Taking Design Demonstrations a Notch Higher Mockup In the domain of design, display is vital. It's not merely about crafting a captivating design, but also about presenting it in a manner that seizes its core and practicality. The Mockup plugin for Figma emerges as an invaluable tool in this context, enabling designers to transform their flat designs into beautiful, realistic mockups within seconds. With a vast library of device frames, from smartphones to desktop monitors, designers can effortlessly select the most suitable frame for their design, ensuring that their presentations are both visually appealing and contextually relevant. The plugin's intuitive interface and seamless integration with Figma make it a breeze to use, eliminating the need for external tools or software. : Streamlining the Process of Isolating Subjects Icons8 Background Remover For designers, the ability to seamlessly remove backgrounds from images is invaluable. The Icons8 Background Remover plugin for Figma offers users this precise capability, ensuring that designers can focus on their creative process without getting bogged down by the often tedious task of manual background elimination. By integrating advanced AI technology, this plugin can efficiently isolate subjects in images, making it a must-have tool for designers aiming for a cleaner and more professional look in their projects. Whether you're working on web designs, marketing materials, or any other visual content, the Icons8 Background Remover can significantly enhance the quality and clarity of your designs. : Infusing Creativity with a Vast Array of Artistic Assets Illustrations Having access to a diverse range of illustrations can be the difference between a good project and a great one. The Illustrations plugin for Figma steps in to fill this need, providing designers with a rich library of artistic assets right at their fingertips. This plugin boasts a collection of high-quality illustrations, spanning various styles and themes, ensuring that designers always have the perfect visual element for their projects. Whether you're looking to infuse a hint of playfulness, expertise, or anything in between, the Illustrations plugin presents a wealth of choices. It's a crucial instrument for those aiming to uplift their design endeavors and enchant their viewers with striking images. : Extracting the Essence of Visuals through Colors Image Palette Colors play a pivotal role in design, often setting the mood, tone, and overall feel of a project. The Image Palette plugin for Figma is a designer's ally in this realm, allowing for the extraction of dominant colors from any image seamlessly. By simply selecting an image within Figma, this plugin generates a palette that captures its core hues, providing designers with a harmonious set of colors to work with. This not only ensures visual consistency but also saves valuable time that would otherwise be spent manually picking colors. For designers aiming to create cohesive and visually appealing designs, the Image Palette plugin is an indispensable tool, bridging the gap between imagery and color theory. ** Figma has emerged as a go-to platform for designers worldwide. Its adaptability, supported by a plethora of extensions, guarantees that designers possess all the resources they require within reach. As the design realm keeps evolving, it's thrilling to ponder the upcoming potentials and improvements these extensions will introduce. For now, leveraging these tools can undoubtedly transform your design process, making it more efficient, collaborative, and impactful.

Top 7 Figma Plugins to Invigorate Your Design Process

Icons are small images that represent a bigger, more complex idea. They’re all over the internet and can be helpful for many different purposes, but sometimes it’s hard to find good ones that are free to use. If you’re looking for icons for your design project and don’t want to pay for them, this is the article for you! We’ve compiled a list of 25+ free resources where you can find free icons that anyone can use in their projects (with or without crediting). Are you maybe thinking the title was for 50+ Free Icons, right? But this list has only 25+ Free Icons, let me share with you something I made, and it has 70+ Free Resources for Icons. See Below. 50+ 600+ Free Design Resources Resources. Freebies. Learn. We’re making things easier on the Internet. Visit — 600+ free design resources What are icons? You might be wondering, what exactly is an icon? At its most basic level, an icon is a visual representation of something. It could be a person or place, or it could be an object or action. In the digital world, icons are used in design to replace text and make content easier for people to understand. For example, if you wanted to show someone how many steps they needed to take in order to reach their destination on their way home from work each day, you could replace those words with an image of stairs (or walking shoes). This would help them understand what they need to do without having to read anything at all! Icons also serve as navigational elements within websites and mobile apps, as well as branding elements for companies around the world — and that’s why we have so many free resources available today! Do I have to give credits? You can use the icon without giving credit. Just don’t do that, please! It’s always nice to know where you get your icons from, especially if you are using them for commercial purposes. That’s why it’s best practice to include a reference to the author in some way. You can do this either in the footer or by linking to their website on a source file (documents containing an image or multiple image files). But there are some resources below where giving credits is not mandatory. Futuramo Futuramo offers a suite of work management tools for teams working on digital projects. Foster collaboration between teams, clients and businesses. Visit — https://futuramo.com/apps/icons/ FindIcons Download Free Icons and Free Icon Packs. More than 500,000 icons in PNG, ICO and ICNS icons for Mac! +2000 icon pack for free use. Visit — https://findicons.com/ Shape Shape lets you customize the style, colors and border of static & animated icons and illustrations. You can export to React, SVG and Lottie code. Visit — https://shape.so/ PhosphorIcons A flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really. Visit — https://phosphoricons.com/ EverIcons For your next project, Evericons is a collection of more than 460 carefully crafted icons.It’s free to use for personal or business purposes. Visit — http://www.evericons.com/ Free UX/UI Design Playbook Kickstart your UI/UX journey by following this playbook crafted with the insights from world's best designers. Learning the Skill Get Familiar with Design Concepts Familiarize yourself with UI principles Develop your eye for Design 🎨 Keep yourself updated with UX Design Blogs Learn the creative UX process It’s actually priced at $50, but if you sign up at you get free access. Fueler.io Flaticon Download Free Icons and Stickers for your projects. Resources made by and for designers. PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats Visit — https://www.flaticon.com/ IconFinder Iconfinder is the largest marketplace in the world for SVG, AI, and PNG icons, illustrations, and 3D illustrations. Visit — https://www.iconfinder.com/ StreamLine Figma has chosen Streamline as the best graphic resource for 2022. The world’s largest collection of icons, illustrations, emoji, and element sets. Visit — https://www.streamlinehq.com/ FontGoogle Material Symbols are our newest icons consolidating over 2,500 glyphs in a single font file with a wide range of design variants. Visit — https://fonts.google.com/icons?selected=Material+Icons/ Iconshock-Free Icons Fully editable vector icon sets, including free SVG and PNG icons, are available for download as a free icons pack. Use them for all of your social media, web, and app projects. Incorporating well-liked designs like Flat and Material. Visit — https://www.iconshock.com/free-icons/ Icons8 Free access to design elements: music, images, icons, and vector illustrations for your videos. Consistent quality across all of the assets designed Visit — https://icons8.com/ Iconstore The IconStore is a collection of high-quality vector (SVG) icons that can be downloaded for commercial use for free. Visit — https://iconstore.co/ Icomoon You can easily search for vector icons, download them, and create fonts (icon fonts) with IcoMoon. Icon set management is another application for this instrument. It can make sprites, SVGs, PDFs, PNGs, and icon fonts. Visit — https://icomoon.io/app/#/select/ TheSquidInk 6,000+ Handcrafted Flat Icons, Line Icons, Glyph Icons. Easy to customize and scalable. Designed for applications, iOS and Android. Include Photoshop, Illustrator and SVG files. Visit — https://thesquid.ink/flat-icons/ Fontawesome The world’s most popular and easiest-to-use icon set just got an upgrade. More icons. More styles. More Options. Visit — https://fontawesome.com/ Uxwing The world’s most popular and easiest-to-use icon set just got an upgrade. More icons. More styles. More Options. Visit — https://uxwing.com/ IconFactory The world’s most popular and easiest-to-use icon set just got an upgrade. More icons. More styles. More Options. Visit — https://freeware.iconfactory.com/icons/ TheNounProject Noun Project features the most diverse collection of icons ever. Download SVG and PNG. Millions of free icons or unlimited royalty-free icons with NounPro. Visit — https://thenounproject.com/icons/ Iconmonstr Free simple icons for your next project Visit — https://iconmonstr.com/ Softicons Free icon sets. The catalog allows users to download icon sets free of charge (at least for personal use) and renders additional icon-related services, such as favicon generator, image to icon converter. Visit — https://www.softicons.com/ Fontello Tool to build custom fonts with icons. Visit — https://fontello.com/ Veryicon 100,000+ Free vector icons in SVG, PNG, EPS format or as ICON FONT. Thousands of free icons in the largest database of free vector icons! Visit — https://www.veryicon.com/ Boxicons Boxicons is a free collection of carefully crafted open source icons. Each icon is designed on a 24px grid with the material guidelines Visit — https://boxicons.com/ Feathericons Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open-source icons. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency and readability. Visit — https://feathericons.com/ PixelBuddha We bring free and premium design resources of the highest quality to the professional community. Visit — https://pixelbuddha.net/ Pixeden Web icon sets to download for your web design project. Each premium and free icon set comes in PNG format from 16x16 to 512x512 and depending on the icon set with its fully layered adobe photoshop psd in vector shape. Visit — http://www.pixeden.com/icons-set/ Icojam UI assets for creatives. Grab their free icons and illustrations for your next project! Visit — https://www.icojam.com/ Conclusion I hope this post has given you some ideas of where to look for free icons. Please let me know in the comments below if you have any other suggestions or resources that I haven’t included here! Originally published . here

Get Over 50+ Free Icons for Your Projects Here

In this article, we will look at the process of building a diagram with the help of Elkjs and React Flow libraries. We hope our tutorial will be useful for you and will shed some light on using React Flow and Elksj. We will be (a library for creating apps based on nodes) for visualization (rendering). And we will for calculating the elements’ positions. Before starting the actual process of building a diagram, let’s first review the main concepts and terminology that we will be using in this article. using React Flow use Elkjs Dependencies required for the project: react react-dom react-flow-renderer elkjs First, we need to create an empty React project and install the abovementioned dependencies. The main terms used in React-flow: — a draggable unit that can be connected to other nodes. Node — a connection between two nodes. Edge —  a sort of a node port that is used for connecting nodes. You start the connection with one handle and end it with another. Handles Getting back to the initial topic, say, we need to build the following diagram: The diagram consists of eight nodes of three types: a circle - elements that are used to indicate start and end (circleNode) a rectangle - elements that are used to describe a certain process (rectangleNode) a rhombus - an element of choice (rhombusNode) Now let’s create a Flow.js file where we will describe the Flow component. It will be responsible for rendering the elements of the diagram. We will import the <ReactFlow /> component from 'react-flow-renderer' import ReactFlow from 'react-flow-renderer';

function Flow() {
 return (
   <ReactFlow
     nodes={nodes}
     edges={edges}
  />
  
 );
} In order for everything to function properly, you will need to pass over nodes and edges to <ReactFlow>. Below you can see the initial data that we will use in our app ( the initialData.js file) export const initialNodes = [
 {
   id: "1",
   type: "circleNode",
   data: { label: "Request PTO" },
   position: { x: 250, y: 25 }
 },

 {
   id: "2",
   type: "rectangleNode",
   data: { label: "manager reviews data" },
   position: { x: 240, y: 125 }
 },
 {
   id: "3",
   type: "rhombusNode",
   data: { label: "Pending manager approval" },
   position: { x: 250, y: 250 }
 },
 {
   id: "4",
   type: "rectangleNode",
   data: { label: "PTO request approved" },
   position: { x: 150, y: 350 }
 },
 {
   id: "5",
   type: "rectangleNode",
   data: { label: "PTO request denied" },
   position: { x: 400, y: 350 }
 },
 {
   id: "6",
   type: "rectangleNode",
   data: { label: "Notify teammate1" },
   position: { x: 150, y: 450 }
 },
 {
   id: "7",
   type: "rectangleNode",
   data: { label: "Notify teammate2" },
   position: { x: 400, y: 450 }
 },
 {
   id: "8",
   type: "circleNode",
   data: { label: "End" },
   position: { x: 250, y: 550 }
 }
];

export const initialEdges = [
 {
   id: "e1-2",
   source: "1",
   target: "2"
 },
 {
   id: "e2-3",
   source: "2",
   target: "3"
 },
 {
   id: "e3-4",
   source: "3",
   target: "4"
 },
 {
   id: "e3-5",
   source: "3",
   target: "5"
 },
 {
   id: "e4-6",
   source: "4",
   target: "6"
 },
 {
   id: "e5-7",
   source: "5",
   target: "7"
 },
 {
   id: "e6-8",
   source: "6",
   target: "8"
 },
 {
   id: "e7-8",
   source: "7",
   target: "8"
 }
]; Each Node and Edge should have a unique identifier. The node will also need the position and data. For Edge, obligatory parameters will also include source and target. More information on the options can be found here: , Options. Node Edge Since the diagram uses elements of different forms and sizes, the layout of nodes by default will not be suitable. In order to create a node with custom settings, we will use a - Custom Node. As we already defined three types of elements, we will create three Custom Node components in separate files: React Flow feature CircleNode.jsx import { Handle, Position } from "react-flow-renderer";

const CircleNode = ({ data, id }) => {
 return (
   <div className="circleNode">
     {data.handles[0] ? (
       <Handle type="target" position={Position.Top} id={`${id}.top`} />
     ) : null}
     {data.handles[1] ? (
       <Handle type="source" position={Position.Bottom} id={`${id}.bottom`} />
     ) : null}
   </div>
 );
};
export default CircleNode; RectangleNode.jsx import { Handle, Position } from "react-flow-renderer";

const RectangleNode = ({ data, id }) => {
 return (
   <div className="rectangleNode">
     {data.handles[0] ? (
       <Handle type="target" position={Position.Top} id={`${id}.top`} />
     ) : null}

     {data.handles[1] ? (
       <Handle type="source" position={Position.Bottom} id={`${id}.bottom`} />
     ) : null}
   </div>
 );
};
export default RectangleNode; RhombusNode.jsx import { Handle, Position } from "react-flow-renderer";

const RhombusNode = ({ data, id }) => {
 return (
   <div className="handles-container">
     <div className="rhombusNode"></div>
     <Handle type="target" position={Position.Top} id={`${id}.top`} />
     <Handle type="source" position={Position.Bottom} id={`${id}.bottom`} />
   </div>
 );
};
export default RhombusNode; We will use the Handle component to connect the custom node with other nodes. Then we will add new node types to the nodeTypes props. const nodeTypes = {
 circleNode: CircleNode,
 rectangleNode: RectangleNode,
 rhombusNode: RhombusNode
}; It is important that node types are remembered by useMemo or are defined outside of the component. In our case, we defined them outside of the component. Otherwise, React will be creating a new object during every rendering and that will lead to performance issues and bugs. At this stage, the Flow.jsx component looks something like this: import { useState } from "react";
import ReactFlow from "react-flow-renderer";
import { initialNodes, initialEdges } from "./initialData";
import CircleNode from "./CircleNode";
import RectangleNode from "./RectangleNode";
import RhombusNode from "./RhombusNode";

const nodeTypes = {
 circleNode: CircleNode,
 rectangleNode: RectangleNode,
 rhombusNode: RhombusNode
};

function Flow() {
 const [nodes, setNodes] = useState(initialNodes);
 const [edges, setEdges] = useState(initialEdges);

 return (
   <ReactFlow nodes={nodes} edges={edges} nodeTypes={nodeTypes} fitView />
 );
}

export default Flow; The file with .css styles: html,
body,
#root {
 width: 100%;
 height: 100%;
 margin: 0;
 padding: 0;
 box-sizing: border-box;
 font-family: sans-serif;
}
.circleNode {
 background-color: #02a9ea;
 background-image: url("https://img.icons8.com/doodle/48/000000/sun--v1.png");
 height: 50px;
 width: 50px;
 border-radius: 50%;
 border: 1px solid black;
}

.rhombusNode {
 display: block;
 position: absolute;
 transform: rotate(45deg);
 background-color: #a600ff;
 top: 10px;
 right: auto;
 width: 50px;
 height: 50px;
 border: 1px solid;
 z-index: -1;
}
.handles-container {
 position: relative;
 background-image: url("https://img.icons8.com/color/48/000000/decision.png");
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
 background-position: center;
 background-size: contain;
 height: 70px;
 width: 50px;
}
.rectangleNode {
 background-color: #ffd000;
 background-image: url("https://img.icons8.com/external-flaticons-lineal-color-flat-icons/45/000000/external-process-productivity-flaticons-lineal-color-flat-icons-2.png");
 background-position: center;
 height: 50px;
 width: 70px;
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
 border: 1px solid black;
} How the diagram looks: Let’s move on to the Elkjs integration. For that, we will add the automatic calculation of positions of the diagram’s elements and will transfer obtained values to React flow. The Elkjs library is a single ELK object. ELK has a constructor that can be used for the creation of: new ELK (options) - options - not obligatory One of ELK methods is - layout(graph, options) graph (obligatory) ELK JSON format - object configuration (if you need it) options Terms used in ELKjs: Graph: a set of nodes and edges and everything that is related to them (labels, ports, etc.). Node: - a node that does not contain child nodes. Simple Node Hierarchical Node - a node that contains child nodes. Edge: : connects two nodes in one simple graph. It is implied that the edge’s source and target nodes both have the same parent node.. Simple Edge : Hierarchical Edge a that exits (or enters) only one in order to get to its goal. In this way, a short connects nodes in nearby hierarchy layers. Short Hierarchical Edge: Hierarchical Edge Hierarchical Node Hierarchical Edge Long Hierarchical Edge: a hierarchical edge that is not a short hierarchical edge. Port: an obvious point of connection on a node to which edges connect. Root Node of a Graph: a minimal public ancestor element of all graph nodes. More on the structure : Graph Data Structure here The JSON graph format has five main elements: nodes, ports, labels, edges, and edge sections. All elements, except for labels, should have a unique identifier (string or integer). Nodes, ports and labels have coordinates (x, y) and sizes (width, height) A graph can be called a simple node, the child elements of which are nodes of the upper graph level. This is why in a graph, child elements (children)  are responsible for transferring a batch of objects (that are based on initialNodes) with features of id, width and height. Since the sizes of custom Nodes differ, we added the node.type check. The graph.js file import ELK from "elkjs";
import { initialNodes, initialEdges } from "./initialData";

const elk = new ELK();
const elkLayout = () => {
 const nodesForElk = initialNodes.map((node) => {
   return {
     id: node.id,
     width: node.type === "rectangleNode" ? 70 : 50,
     height: node.type === "rhombusNode" ? 70 : 50
   };
 });
 const graph = {
   id: "root",
   layoutOptions: {
     "elk.algorithm": "layered",
     "elk.direction": "DOWN",
     "nodePlacement.strategy": "SIMPLE"
   },

   children: nodesForElk,
   edges: initialEdges
 };
 return elk.layout(graph);
};

export default elkLayout; elk.layout(graph) - returns Promise. In case of its successful execution, we’ll get Graph. For our diagram: Now we need to transfer obtained coordinates to React Flow. New nodes is a batch of objects with a set of features of initialNodes and an additional “position”( that is obtained from child nodes graph by id). The process of constructing the batch is described by nodesForFlow(). New edges - a batch of graph.edges objects - is described by edgesForFlow(). Upon successful execution of returned elkLayout() Promise, we transfer the obtained graph to nodesForFlow() and edgesForFlow(). We then write down the execution results in state and use them as new nodes and edges for building a diagram. Flow.jsx looks like this: import { useState } from "react";
import ReactFlow from "react-flow-renderer";
import { initialNodes } from "./initialData";
import CircleNode from "./CircleNode";
import RectangleNode from "./RectangleNode";
import RhombusNode from "./RhombusNode";
import elkLayout from "./graph";

const nodeTypes = {
 circleNode: CircleNode,
 rectangleNode: RectangleNode,
 rhombusNode: RhombusNode
};

function Flow() {
 const [nodes, setNodes] = useState(null);
 const [edges, setEdges] = useState(null);
 const nodesForFlow = (graph) => {
   return [
     ...graph.children.map((node) => {
       return {
         ...initialNodes.find((n) => n.id === node.id),
         position: { x: node.x, y: node.y }
       };
     })
   ];
 };
 const edgesForFlow = (graph) => {
   return graph.edges;
 };

 elkLayout().then((graph) => {
   setNodes(nodesForFlow(graph));
   setEdges(edgesForFlow(graph));
 });

 if (nodes === null) {
   return <></>;
 }
 return (
   <ReactFlow nodes={nodes} edges={edges} nodeTypes={nodeTypes} fitView />
 );
}

export default Flow; The result: A link to the . codesandbox Also published . here

Creating a Simple Diagram by Using Elkjs and React Flow

Hey hey heyyyyyy! Here’s a quick article on how to have beauty link previews, just like Dev.to does. You're gonna get something like this: Yup, was being literal with the " " 😛 I've built something similar for my new project workby.io, and here's how I did it... like dev.to Almost every guide that I found was using , in fact, uses it. It's pretty popular and efficient, BUT, I don't want to pay $14 bucks for each 1k image 😂🐁 htmlcsstoimage.com dev.to So, I'm going to use : A ruby gem to transform HTML into PDFs, PNGs, or JPEGs using Google Puppeteer and Chromium. Grover If you want to build this with, let's say, Node.js, you can also follow me. Puppeteer is popular and easy to use. We're going to build an HTML view and take a screenshot of it. Long story short: You can create a blank Rails project, or just add additional functionality to your current app. Setup Install Grover gem with bundle add grover And the dependency of Grover, , with: Puppeteer yarn add puppeteer Then create an empty controller where you can respond with different link preview templates: rails g controller og-imager dev_to In the action, let's call Grover and let him do the magic dev_to app/controllers/og_imager_controller.rb class OgImagerController < ApplicationController
  # GET /og_imager/dev_to
  # @param {string} title
  # @param {string} avatar
  # @param {string} username
  # @param {string} timestamp
  # @param {array} logos
  # @returns image/png
  def dev_to
    # Get params and set to variable
    # TODO: Retrieve your object instead :p
    @title = params[:title]
    @avatar = params[:avatar]
    @username = params[:username]
    @timestamp = params[:timestamp]
    @logos = params[:logos]

    # Grover.new accepts a URL or inline HTML and optional parameters for Puppeteer
    grover = Grover.new(
      render_to_string
    )

    # Get a screenshot
    png = grover.to_png

    # Render image
    send_data(png, type: 'image/png', disposition: 'inline')
  end
end Here's our view, just simple HTML/CSS app/views/og_imager/dev_to.html.erb <div class="container">
  <div class="card">
    <h1 class="title">
      <%= @title %>
    </h1>
    <div class="details">
      <div class="user">
        <img src="<%= @avatar %>" class="avatar">
        <p class="username">
          <%= @username %> - <%= @timestamp %>
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="logos">
        <% @logos.each do |logo| %>
          <img src="<%= logo %>" class="logo">
        <% end %>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<style>
  @import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto:wght@400;500&display=swap');

  *{
    font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
    color: #cd685f;
  }

  .container{
    width: 1128px;
    height: 600px;
    display: flex;
  }

  .card{
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
    flex-direction: column;
    margin: 2.8rem 4rem 4rem 2.8rem;
    border: 3px solid #c56b61;
    border-radius: 25px 25px 0px 0px;
    box-shadow: 7px 10px 0px 1px #c56b61;
    padding: 3.8rem 1.8rem 1.8rem 1.8rem;
  }

  .title{
    margin: 0px;
    font-weight: 500;
    font-size: 5rem;
    line-height: 80px;
  }

  .details{
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
  }

  .user{
    display: flex;
    align-items: center;
  }

  .avatar{
    border: 3px solid #c56b61;
    width: 50px;
    height: 50px;
    border-radius: 50%;
    margin-right: 10px;
  }

  .username{
    margin: 0;
    font-size: 2.5rem;
  }

  .logos{
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
  }

  .logo{
    width: 60px;
    height: 60px;
    margin-left: 20px;
    transform: rotate(5deg);
  }
</style> And finally, create an initializer to set our Browser viewport (final image size). initializers/grover.rb Grover.configure do |config|
  config.options = {
    viewport: {
      width: 1128,
      height: 600
    },
  }
end If you have created a blank project, and want to use this as a micro-service, here's a guide on how to deploy this thing to Heroku. Create the app on your Heroku account (I'm assuming you already have the cli installed): heroku create your_app_name Warn Heroku of our JS library (Puppeteer): heroku buildpacks:add heroku/nodejs --index=1 And also help him to setup Puppeteer dependencies 😛: heroku buildpacks:add jontewks/puppeteer --index=2 Tell Grover to run Puppeteer in the "no-sandbox": heroku config:set GROVER_NO_SANDBOX=true To make use of this image on the link preview, you will need . Just simple meta tags that browsers will look for. The Open Graph protocol Meta tags are always on <head> so, app/views/layouts/application.html.erb <%= yield(:head) %> And then ask ERB to fill the previous block with <%= content_for :head do %>
  <meta property="og:title" content="<%= @article.title %>">
  <meta property="og:image" content="<%= article_link_preview(@article) %>">
  <meta property="og:image:type" content="image/png" />
  <meta property="og:image:width" content="1128">
  <meta property="og:image:height" content="600">
  <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<% end %> at your details view. Like: /articles/:id The thing it's because they are fancier on link previews, you can read more about that twitter:card here The previous method it's a simple helper that generates the URL that we are looking for. article_link_preview app/helpers/articles_helper.rb def article_link_preview article
  uri = URI.parse('https://your_app_name.herokuapp.com/ogimage')
  uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(
    title: article.title,
    'images[]': article.tags.collect(&:image),
    timestamp: article.created_at.to_formatted_s(:short),
    ...
  )
  uri.to_s
end You will get something like this: https://your_app_name.herokuapp.com/og_imager/dev_to?title=Real%20Time%20Notification%20System%20with%20Hotwire,%20in%20Rails%207&avatar=https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/user/profile_image/369241/a0111bcb-a046-4398-98cd-f4cf0e2f8d0d.png&username=Matias%20Carpintini&timestamp=13%20April&logos[]=https://img.icons8.com/office/80/000000/ruby-gemstone.png&logos[]=https://practicaldev-herokuapp-com.freetls.fastly.net/assets/devlogo-pwa-512.png Here's the of the whole thing. repo This article was first published here.

Generate Fancy Link Previews With Rails 7

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Debugger For Chrome - Debug your JavaScript code in the Microsoft Edge browser Debugger for Microsoft Edge - Debug your web application or browser extension in Firefox Debugger for Firefox - A customizable extension for colorizing matching brackets VS Code themes Bracket Pair Colorizer 2 - Atom's iconic One Dark theme for Visual Studio Code One Dark Pro - The most epic theme now for Visual Studio Code Material Theme - A beautifully warm dual theme for Visual Studio Code Horizon Theme - Dark theme based on mixing swatch of Ayu Theme, Andromeda Theme, Monokai, Material Colors, Original Gruvbox Darktooth Colors, and Dracula Colors. Mayukai Theme General Resources First of all you will need a check list for marking what all you have done in your projects or have learned. You can see the below image for how the checklist will look like. Link -> The Front-End Checklist Frontend Development Roadmap Learning Resources 📘 DOCS and Cheat sheets 😁 - The MDN Web Docs site provides information about Open Web technologies including HTML, CSS, and APIs for both Web sites and progressive web apps. MDN Web Docs - Fast, offline, and free documentation browser for developers. Search 100+ docs in one web app. DevDocs - A modest collection of cheatsheets. DEVHINTS - A visual cheatsheet for CSS flex layout. FLEX - Malven - A visual cheatsheet for CSS grid layout. GRID - Malven 🌐 HOW DOES IT WORKS? - How does the Internet Works? How the Internet Works Video - A brief explanations on, how does the Internet works? How the Internet Works Brief Videos - How DNS works? DNS - How HTTPS works? HTTPS For HTML and CSS 🚀 - Free course to learn Web Development.Flexbox Froggy - A game that helps you to learn CSS Flex. freeCodeCamp - A Complete Guide to Flexbox.Grid Garden - A game for learning CSS Grid. 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CSS Formatter - How To Use Our Placeholders. Just specify the image size after our URL and you'll get a placeholder image. Placeholder 📝 ONLINE IDE, EDITOR goormIDE CodeSandbox CodePen Repl.it JSFiddle 📷 IMAGE RESOURCES - Free images and photos. Unsplash - Free stock photos. Pexels - LottieFiles is a collection of animations designed for - Lottie - gone are the days of bugging your developer. LottieFiles - Removal.AI is an emerging online image background remover online tool that uses AI and is better than any other Background remover in the market. RemovalAI - Free image or video. Pixabay 👓 ACCESSIBILITY - Seven easy-to-implement - guidelines to design a more accessible web. Accessibility Blog - Medium - Practical approaches to Universal Design for making your website/webapp accessible to everyone. Accessibility Cheatsheet 📄 TERMINALS FOR WINDOWS Windows Terminal FluentTerminal 📺 Hyper YOUTUBE CHANNELS Traversy Media freeCodeCamp.org Codevolution Fireship The Net Ninja Wes Bos FONTS AND TYPOGRAPHY - The #1 resource for free and easy-to-use webfonts. Google Fonts - Font Pair helps designers pair Google Fonts together. Beautiful Google Font combinations and pairs. FontPair - Fontjoy helps designers choose the best font combinations. Mix and match different fonts for the perfect pairing. Fontjoy - Free fonts, free alternatives to premium fonts, done-for-you-research articles. Fonts Arena 🎨 ILLUSTRATIONS - Browse to find the illustrations that fit your needs and click to download. unDraw - Free graphic resources. freepik - Hand-drawn vector illustration and icon resources, perfect for your next project. DrawKit 💧 ICONS - Vector icons and social logos. Font Awesome - Open-Sourced and MIT licensed icon pack. Ionicons - Download free icons in PNG and SVG. icons8 - Free vector icons in SVG, PSD, PNG, EPS format or as ICON FONT. f laticon - 1463 Free SVG icons for popular brands. Simple Icons Front-end Framework Learning Resources ⚡ JAVASCRIPT - Best free resource to learn JavaScript interactively. freeCodeCamp - Modern JavaScript Tutorial. JavaScript.info JavaScript Design Patterns JavaScript Reference By MDN - This is a book about JavaScript, programming, and the wonders of the digital. You can read it online here. Eloquent JavaScript - 30 days vanilla JS coding challenge. Build 30 things in 30 days with 30 tutorials. JavaScript30 DOM Manipulation Reference How JavaScript works JavaScript Event Reference - Excellent primer to functional programming using JavaScript. Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming - This book explores the core principles of functional programming (FP) as they are applied to JavaScript. Functional-Light JavaScript - From Basics to Best Practices. 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JS Apps at Facebook React: Rethinking best practices React React Docs - Quick Start section basic The Road to learn React basic ES2015+ Learn ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) basic Exploring ES6 advanced Exploring ES2016 and ES2017 advanced Routing React Router Docs basic State Management basic Redux Getting Started with Redux Building React Applications with Idiomatic Redux advanced Bundlers Webpack Get Started with Webpack Build Stuff Several project ideas React - TodoMVC Bootstrapping a React project Build a Weather app The SoundCloud Client in React + Redux A Primer on the React Ecosystem: , and 3. 1 2 Building a React/Redux App with JSON Web Token (JWT) Authentication Want to goo deep in React? Visit React-Learning 🎮 APIs - They Said So has more than 1 million+ quotes in the database, the largest such database in the world. And Quotes API gives easy way to access the data. Quotes REST API - Simple and fast and free weather API from OpenWeatherMap you have access to current weather data, hourly, 5- and 16-day forecasts. OpenWeather - A collective list of more than 1000 Free Public and Open REST APIs for developers. Public APIs - The Star Wars API. SWAPI - Free to use fake Online REST API for testing and prototyping. JSONPlaceholder - Auto-generate graphics with a single click with our API and integrations. Pixelixe - A full suite of image editing tools, with standalone solutions for the most common uses, tailored for businesses. You don’t need a designer. Pixelied ⚡ NODEJS - Node.js Crash Course Tutorial by Net Ninja. Node.js Tutorial You Don't Know Node.js - Introductory tutorial covering the basics. The Art of Node - Interactive self guided workshops you can also do on your own. NodeSchool - Short books about code and networking patterns related to Node.js. Node Patterns - A premium training course to learn to build apps with Node.js, Express, MongoDB. 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I give very amazing content to my supporters and many more features. You can support me here -> Support Me Thanks For Seeing this post. If you didn't liked this post let me know in the comments

Free Tools That Will Help You Grow As A Front-End Developer In 2021

Photo by on Unsplash. Icons8 Team I’ve been running podcasts for years, and while I worked on some video courses in the past, over the past year I have invested more time in my audio and video setup, primarily for live-streaming. After months and months of getting it to a point where I am “kind of” happy with it, I thought it was high time I documented it. Partly so others can learn from my setup, and partly so I can keep tabs on it myself. A vs. B Setup I am lucky enough to have my own small office/studio, and naturally, this is where I do most of my work. But I also need to sometimes do work at home (a different place from the office, and often interviews with people in the USA), where it’s too late to be in the office, and I’d rather do it home. I have conducted interviews travelling before, and while I’m doing less of that right now, it’s still like to have the option(s) available. I call these my “A” and “B” setups. Or the setup that ), and the setup t . There are some overlaps, but primarily with software. largely stays fixed in the office (A hat I use at home, or travelling (B) Audio The audio part is somewhat easier, and has been mostly the same hardware for a while, but configured in different ways. A with a foam wind/pop filter. Blue Yeti, It’s mounted on a boom arm most of the time, but I do also have a straight mic stand with a (home brand of “Just Music”, a German music store) reflection filter for more precise pure audio recording to counter the echoing high ceilings of many Berlin rooms. Justin B Setup Depending on my mood I sometimes use an mounted on a pretty crumby boom arm if I am not using an external camera, or this odd phone holder (more on that later) mic stand combo thing from iRig HD 2 Exjoy. My other mic option is a lav mic from iRig. It’s analog, so needs a headphone jack, and curiously also needs headphones plugged into its connector, so even though I am often using it with my OnePlus buds for calls, I typically have an audio cable also plugged into it, basically doing nothing. Software For recording (and editing) just me and a mic, I generally use , I have been experimenting with demos of Ableton and Logic, but not committed to either yet. Adobe Audition For recording a mic plus an application or VoIP call, I pretty much always use , it’s a classic macOS app for a reason. Audio Hijack In fact, I have something of a chain of Rogue Amoeba software I use for audio and video, including (SFX) and (audio routing). Farrago Loopback I know there are open source and free equivalents for both, but especially with Loopback, I found its flexibility and ease of use worth the money. I don’t really use any effects on input aside from some volume overrides, but probably should. Video This is where things get a bit more complex unsurprisingly. I mix up hardware and software for some obvious reasons, as there’s some software each camera needs, and then there’s the software I use no matter what. The ‘A’ Setup A Logitech StreamCam. I am still not sure if it's worth the extra over the classic , but there you go, I have it now. It’s mounted on a sort of behind my monitor, but I am not completely happy with the placement, as it makes me look a bit too far away. Logitech C922 UTEBIT magic arm I have tried it in various positions with the same lack of satisfaction, it’s hard to balance the whole “good camera shot” with being able to see your screen, and I am not there yet. I mostly use the camera as a straight input into an application, but I am starting to experiment more with using the supplied software for more fine-grained camera control, and then routing that into an application. Logi Capture B Setup Naturally at times when I am just having a call that I use the camera built into my laptop, but for recording and streams I actually use my phone camera. Uh-huh, my phone camera. The phone is kind of the least relevant part as any modern phone camera is decent, but my current is a . The in-built camera software does do a lot of annoying auto-focusing that can sometimes make my video have this odd kind of “wishy-washy” look, but most people don’t notice it. I actually much preferred using my old Essential phone, as the camera software did next to nothing. One Plus Nord Ironically everyone complained about the camera software on that phone, and this made it a perfect external camera. There are plethora of applications now that let you use a smartphone as an external camera, but mine of choice are (if only recording with OBS) and for pretty much everything else. DroidCam OBS Iriun I was suitably impressed with both, to pay for the full versions. Iriun is one of those “Virtual Camera” applications, which means on macOS, you sometimes need to jump through the unsigning hoop to get it to work in some applications. Software OK, this is where it gets complicated. Let’s add more subheadings… Live Streaming When it’s just me, , I think I could write a separate post on my OBS setup, so that’s all I’ll say for now 😅. Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) If I have guests then , which is web-based. I am not a huge fan of doing things in the browser, but it’s simple for others to join, and gives me enough flexibility for setup, quality, and graphics. Restream studio I also use it deliver my livestreams (via an RMTP feed) when I use OBS, so it’s multipurpose. It’s not cheap, but worth it, and they often have discount codes. Recording I vary between Quicktime, , Logi Capture, and OBS, depending on if I want to record a camera, or record multiple cameras, or record camera plus screen share. Snagit Quite often depending on the quality, I want to record and my mood. I am not entirely satisfied with the video quality of any of these options sometimes, and I am never entirely sure if it’s the camera or the software. Editing Mostly , but sometimes Quicktime or Snagit for something simple. I have tried , but I couldn’t get on with it, I am too used to Premiere. Adobe Premiere Da Vinci Resolve Lighting I know lighting is important, and I am late to that party, muddling through for some time. I acquired some cheap office clearance photography lights last year which resulted in reasonable lighting but took up too much space, and annoyed my office mates. I switched to a set of the . I am still getting the setup quite right, and I am especially unhappy with the shadows they throw behind me. I know the techniques to fix this, but I am trying to balance space and convenience with quality 😉. I often add slight bit of warmth to lighting by also just switching on my Ikea Symfonisk desk lamp. Neweer LED desk lamps One of my biggest issues with lighting in the office is that we have a giant window that looks out over Berlins Spree river. It’s a wonderful view, but terrible for consistent lighting, especially as the sun can reflect off the water, and trains passing the nearby railway tracks. Other Screen Annotation and Highlighting To highlight what I am doing on the screen, I use a handful of different apps and setups. At simplest I increase the zoom level of windows to about 125-150% depending on how they look. This is generally only possible with browser windows or Electron-based applications (which I typically dislike, but in this case brings a positive). With other applications, it can be a mix of using the macOS screen zoom, or just not having a very readable interface. Fortunately, the main applications I show are browser windows, (Electron-based), and , which is highly customizable, and I have a profile specifically designed for live-streaming (I should release that 🤔) that increases font size, removes background transparency, and makes things clearer for people to read. Visual Studio Code iTerm I use a small application called “ ” to highlight my cursor, and to annotate the screen (which I do rarely, but it’s nice to have both in the same application). Presentify I occasionally use another small application called “ ” to show the keyboard shortcuts I’m using, but that’s something I use more when recording tutorial videos. KeyCastr Control I have a Streamdeck mini with a bunch of useful shortcuts for OBS, or whatever other application I’m using setup so I can trigger changes without having to use the mouse. If you don’t want to invest in hardware, they also have a pretty good mobile application to do the same. That's a wrap! That's about it for hardware, software, and tools. Making, editing, and distributing videos, podcasts, and livestreams is a whole other discussion that I am not even sure I could put into blog post form, but maybe one day. I've mentioned in places throughout this post what I'd like to change and tweak about my setup, so I plan to revisit and keep this post updated as I do so. I hope you found this useful and I'd love to hear your comments and setup tips in the comments. Disclaimer I spend a lot of time on making videos, and some of the product links here are affiliate links to cover even some of the time and money I have invested. If you don't like affiliate links, but would still like to say thanks, subscribe to my or channel, or find . YouTube Twitch other ways to support me on my website The article was first published . here

How to set up a Podcast Studio for Live Streaming

I've always believed that the best way to learn is by doing. Recruiters prefer practical projects over theoretical knowledge, as well. Over the span of a year, I created 8 web app and game clones. I decided to share them, so the community can get some inspiration to build as well. In order to explore and compare how various front-end solutions work, I tried to use different stacks, varying from Vanilla HTML to React, NextJS and Svelte. For each project, a link to deployed project as well as the source code will be provided. Give them a 🌟 on my if you like. GitHub Calculator / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub First I wanted to create a practical app that each of us uses in our daily routines. A calculator seemed to be a nice fit. It has come in handy from time to time. Features include: Add, subtract, multiply, divide Support decimal values Calculate percentages Invert the values Reset functionality Format larger numbers Output resize based on length The project is written in . React Weather App / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub With this next app, my aim was to be able to check the weather conditions across the world. I used Openweather API to fetch data from their site. To make it a bit appealing to the eye, I decided to combine it with some icon graphics that correspond to the conditions displayed. Features include: Search functionality Metric vs Imperial system Current local time and date Temperatures and humidity Wind speed and direction Sunrise and sunset times The project is written in . NextJS Icons are taken from . Flaticon Breakout / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub is an arcade game originally developed and published by . Breakout Atari In Breakout, the goal is to destroy all the bricks at the top. A ball bounces off the top and two sides of the screen. When a brick is hit, the ball bounces back and the brick is destroyed. The player loses a turn when the ball touches the bottom of the screen; to prevent this from happening, the player has a horizontally movable paddle to bounce the ball upward, keeping it in play. Features include: Moving paddle + ball Bricks generation Collision detection Scorekeeping Level system Lives tracking Game over / Reset The project is written in . Svelte 2048 / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub is a single-player sliding tile puzzle game initially written by Italian web developer in 2014. 2048 Gabriele Cirulli It's played on a plain 4×4 grid, with numbered tiles that slide when a player moves them using the four arrow keys. Every turn, a new tile randomly appears in an empty spot on the board. The objective of the game is to slide numbered tiles on a grid to combine them to create a tile with the number 2048. Features include: Slide tiles on the X and Y-axis Sum tile values on a collision Color scheme for specific values Scorekeeping Best score memory Winner detection Game over / Reset The project is written in . Svelte Memory Game / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub Memory games come in different forms and variations. I decided to go with the traditional approach, where users have to remember the positions of the cards and open two exact images sequentially to score points. Once all the cards are opened user is victorious. I used Unsplash API to fetch images from their site. Features include: Moves tracking Match percentage Win state detection Reset functionality The project is written in . Svelte Tic Tac Toe / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub Tic-Tac-Toe is a very popular two-player game, where users take turns marking 'X'es or 'O's in a 3×3 grid. It's been played in different environments starting from classical pen and paper to many UI-different versions online. The player who succeeds in placing three of their marks in a diagonal, horizontal, or vertical row is the winner. Built-in moves calculation Winner detection Reset functionality The project is written in . Svelte Rock Paper Scissors / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub Rock-paper-scissors originated in China and spread with increased contact with East Asia, while developing different variants in signs over time. A player who decides to play rock will beat another player who has chosen scissors, but will lose to one who has played paper; a play of paper will lose to a play of scissors. If both players choose the same shape, it's a tie. Features include: Round tracking Scorekeeping Choice display Computer selection Winner detection Reset functionality The project is written in . React Icons are taken from . Icons8 Landing Page / 💻 Live project 🔗 Source on GitHub This landing page was created as a temporary placeholder for my personal domain while I was working on my portfolio. It's designed to keep simplicity in mind for both setup and UI. Since I no longer host it on my personal domain, I decided to make a template from it, so other devs looking for a landing site could benefit as well. I also made a on how to create it from a scratch. tutorial Features include: Info about the dev Icons linking to social media Interactive hover effects The project is written in and . HTML CSS Icons are taken from . Icons8 Writing has always been my passion and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out! Connect me on , , and ! Twitter LinkedIn GitHub For more projects like these, check out my . portfolio

Level Up Your Front-End Game with These 8 Side-Project Ideas 🥇

For the last few months, I've been working on a personal portfolio. I've always believed that a separate portfolio is important for any dev since it connects you to future opportunities and it helps you to grow your network. Today I deployed it on . There's still some stuff to improve, like testing browser compatibility, tweaking some UX, etc, so it's still a WIP, for sure. But hey, everyone has to start somewhere, right? madza.dev I tried to document everything during the process and thought it would be useful to share the planning phases, technical execution, and the major takeaways from the project. Planning I've always liked to write, code, and do some music production in my spare time, so I wanted my portfolio to reflect all that. I came up with an idea to dedicate a separate space for each. On the UI/UX side, I wanted my portfolio to be simple, clean, and easy to navigate on both mobile and desktop devices. Also, the content should be easy to filter and search. Wireframing Once I had identified the main purpose, content blocks, and features, I started to put my ideas on paper to come up with the blueprints of the layout. Landing I believe that the landing area creates the first impression for the visitors, which further dictates whether or not they want to explore more of the site and get to know more about the developer. I decided to display a short and concise introduction of myself, contact info, and some dev-related visuals to grab the visitor's attention. Blog Then I began to work on my content sections. I started by drawing a simplified wireframe for my blog. My aim was to list all my articles, sort them via tags and be able to browse them using the search component. Since I knew my portfolio would be fully self-hosted (including all the content), I planned each title of the article to be a clickable link, which would then open the particular article for further reading. Projects For my projects, I wanted to showcase all my websites, apps, and games. I also wanted to assure that the users are able to open external links to the projects, see source code, as well as read more about the projects. Visitors should also be able to filter projects using the category tags as well as search for a specific project using the search component. Music In order to showcase my music, I wanted to design a music player with basic playback controls. So I came up with a player component with play, pause, next, previous, loop, shuffle, volume, time, progress bar, and playlist. As in both previous pages, the tracks should be sorted across tags. Except I removed the search since I did not plan to include that many tracks, where it would be hard to find them by their title. Color Scheme Next, I had to decide which colors to use to color my wireframes. I'm a fan of dark modes, so I knew I would go with some dark tones as dominant ones. In order the give some accents, I had to pick another color shade, that gives contrast and looks nice. I decided to go with purple, as for me it has always worked well with very dark tones. So I ended up with the following color scheme: For anyone wondering - the light mode switch is something I have considered and might implement in the future. Fonts I believe typography is a very important part of any website. And, as I've seen, it's also often undervalued for devs. Finding nice fonts that work well together can make a massive difference in both looks and ease of use. I've always been a fan of rounded fonts, therefore I knew my main typography would be based on them. Tho, I included a couple of different families as well, to make a nice mixture. - one of my favorite fonts. Easy for the eyes and nice-looking, so I chose it for headers and blog text. Varela Round - clean and relatively slim font. Fitted perfectly for sub-titles, card text, and component-level text. Quicksand - quality and professional-looking font (out of those, that are free). I decided to use it for the hero area, logo, and navigation text. Poppins - Simple and great-looking font. I used to give contrast to round fonts for description text and sub-headers. Inter Designs After I got all my blueprints done and I knew all the color tones and fonts I would use, finally, it was time to put everything together. Landing For the landing area, I highlighted the keywords, so it's easy to tell what I focus on right away. The contact button looked great on purple and made it stand out, so visitors would not have to spend time searching for ways to reach out. I also ended up including an SVG animation from . I went a bit further and customized the color shades and added some animations to it using CSS. Undraw.co Blog For the blog section, I used panels, that are few shades lighter than the background. They looked nice and assured it's easier to distinguish between the articles. I also included the post date and approximate reading time, as well as wrote a custom function to generate a preview of the article from the body. Projects I used a panel system for projects as well, to stay consistent and keep the theme thorough the portfolio. I also included the icons linking to external links. Same as for the blog section, project titles looked great on white, while descriptions looked nice on darker shades to give some contrast. Music The music component was focused more on functionality and involved less text. Thus I found some nice icons on and gave them great contrast to the background. Icons8 For playlist items, I used the same theme as for the headers and descriptions in the Blog and Project section, with the active track being highlighted. Content At this point, I had all the main blocks of my portfolio designed. Tho, in the developer world, there is a belief, that the content is king.  That meant I had to work on the separate sections for the content to be opened. I came up with the wireframe displaying the title, details, hero image, body, and sharing options for the articles in the Blog and Project sections. Then I had to pick the colors I would use. Instead of going with my main black - purple color palette again, I decided I would go with something that would highlight the main HTML elements. Here is an example of one of my projects being displayed by using the color theme above. Notice just the , , and elements are being used in this rather short example. h3 ol a Tech stack The portfolio is created using NextJS framework and based on Contentful to assist in content management. With exception of some Node utility packages for UX, the rest of the site is written from the ground up. NextJS NextJS is a production-ready framework that allows developers to quickly create static and dynamic JAMstack websites and provide a layer of abstraction to aid in common tasks in traditional React apps. Some of my favorite features include Static vs Server Side Rendering, Dynamic routing, Static file serving, Image optimization, CSS modules among many others. Contentful Contentful has been around for a long time and during that time has proven itself as a rock-solid CMS solution. Designing content models and managing the content is very straightforward. With it we can use all the content types we would ever need - starting from simple Boolean values to Rich Text and Markdown fields. Extra modules is a React library for animations. It provides users with production-ready animations and a low-level API we can interact with to integrate these animations into your applications. Framer Motion is used to display the load progress of the site. It works well with next-router and I thought it improved the overall UX of the site by a lot. Nprogress is used for code block highlighting on Blog posts and Project pages. Remark-highlight.js is a tiny package intended for exactly what the name implies - to share content across social media platforms. I used it on blog articles and project pages. React-share Deployment The source code is being stored on . Usually, this is my preferred workflow as my code gets backed up and I get version history in case I need it sometime later. GitHub From the GitHub repo, it's further deployed on (formerly Zeit). This way the live site gets updated in real-time each time there is a new feature or a fix being pushed up on GitHub. Vercel Both services have been on top of the game and I chose the latter for the hosting as NextJS is their own product and their platform is specifically designed to support it in the first place. Final notes This project definitely learned a couple of things for me. It has not only improved my overall dev skills but also helped me to understand what areas I care more about and where I want to be in the dev space. From now on, I'm looking to work on new projects and add more content to my portfolio. I believe that quality over quantity is the right way to go, so I keep reminding myself to be patient. Hopefully, you learned a thing or two and got some ideas or inspiration to build or re-design your own portfolio, as well. Be persistent and remember the best is yet to come! 😉 Writing has always been my passion and it gives me pleasure to help and inspire people. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out! Connect me on , and ! Twitter LinkedIn GitHub Visit my for more articles like this. Blog Previously published at https://www.madza.dev/blog/hooray-i-created-my-first-portfolio

The Exciting Journey Of Creating My First Portfolio📂🎉

Decentralized finance, also known as DeFi, covers various financial applications that run on the blockchain, and this year has brought some major milestones and advances in this area. There's no denying that DeFi will play a major role in finance of the future, and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission looked at the problems with regulating it this week. Replacing the global financial infrastructure Canaccord Genuity hosted a virtual fireside chat on DeFi with Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz and ParaFi Capital founder Ben Forman in October. Analyst Michael Graham recapped the fireside chat in a recent note, and what the experts had to say about DeFi was very eye-opening. Novogratz sees the long-term investment opportunity within blockchain as impossible to ignore because of the size of the total addressable market. He believes the infrastructure for the entire $90 trillion global economy could eventually be replaced. Novogratz also pointed to the large amounts of intellectual capital that has been invested the space as an indication that the complex problems of DeFi will be solved over time. Forman compared DeFi to the intersection of open-source software and finance. He sees the next logical step from "uncensorable money," which is bitcoin and other deregulated currencies, as "uncensorable financial services." Removing banks and their fees One of the main features of the Ethereum blockchain its is smart contract functionality, which enables developers to program "if, then" statements into the code, supporting financial applications. Forman explained that with a global untethered financial services ecosystem built on smart contracts, the need for middle- and back-office departments would be mostly eliminated because most of those functions would take place in the algorithms. He added that a full suite of transparent applications has been built within DeFi covering everything from borrowing, lending and hedging to foreign exchange, insurance and indexing. The system uses no intermediaries, which Forman said would grant users better financial terms than what they would receive from traditional financial institutions. Lenders would earn more than they would from a bank, while borrowers would pay less. Novogratz believes DeFi is the single biggest threat to the legacy financial system because it mostly cuts out banks from the functions they currently generate sizable profits from, such as ATM fees. However, he does see roadblocks to adoption, with one of the biggest being regulatory and compliance concerns. Many institutions have strict requirements that will have to be addressed to ensure that all participants are using "clean money." Regulating DeFi The CFTC held a virtual meeting this week to talk about the problems with regulating decentralized finance. The CFTC's Technology Advisory Committee watched a about DeFi from the Virtual Currencies Subcommittee. It suggested that the CFTC could look for the best way to apply liability without stifling innovation. However, the meeting also showed that there still isn't a way for regulators to halt the use of DeFi for illegal activities. presentation Gary DeWaal, who's on the Virtual Currencies Subcommittee, talked about the possibility of developers of DeFi protocols being liable, but there are some problems with that. explained that software development is protected by the right to free speech, but even if it weren't, arresting the developers of a DeFi protocol running on a blockchain won't actually stop the blockchain it's running on. Decrypt Another possibility is secondary liability that comes from helping or controlling someone who is carrying out illegal activity, which could be a risk for DeFi liquidity providers, end users, governance token holders and even miners processing blockchain transactions. However, prosecutors in such cases must prove that they willfully assisted the wrongdoing, which could make it too difficult to enforce. Aaron Wright, another member of the subcommittee, pointed out that a safe harbor agreement that shields entities from liability if they follow certain guidelines would be a good way to push DeFi protocols to comply with the relevant regulations in the U.S. It would shield protocol developers if their protocols have a lawful purpose and don't entail any fraud. In the end, the CFTC subcommittee decided to take a wait-and-see approach to determine where the risk of illegal activity would appear within the DeFi ecosystem. Where the DeFi ecosystem stands now Much of the DeFi ecosystem is built on Ethereum because of the smart contract functionality. Graham notes that one of the more prominent DeFi applications is Compound, which enables users to "deposit digital assets into a smart contract and earn a yield in a decentralized, non-custodial, interest-bearing account." Other users can then borrow those digital assets, and interest rates are continually adjusted via algorithms based on how much borrowing is occurring. Compound launched in 2019, and there has already been over $2.3 billion supplied and more than $1 billion borrowed by more than 100,000 users. Forman believes there is a chance for the collateral posted to evolve from digital assets like bitcoin to tokenized equities, collectibles or other asset types. One way to measure adoption of decentralized finance is to look at the total value that's been locked into the various apps, which is also the total collateral that's been posted across the DeFi ecosystem. Forman said total value has climbed from about $1 billion in mid-June to almost $15 billion in November. Forman believes that if all other factors remain constant, the platforms could scale another five to 10 times on the back of current momentum before needing additional capital. DeFi could become the foundation of the back end of the entire financial system, and consumers would be relatively unaware that their accounts are even running on those platforms. However, before that can happen, developers must work on scalability. Ethereum currently maxes out at about 14 transactions per second. Image by Icons8_team from Pixabay (Disclaimer: The author is the founder and CEO of ValueWalk.)

DeFi Will Replace The Global Financial System

Fintech is often proclaimed as the great leveller. The WEF proclaimed it as financially key in and fintech lending algorithms have been found to than traditional in-person lenders. uplifting Muslim businesswomen discriminate less Is fintech really the great leveller? Yet despite these great promises of financial inclusivity, in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the subsequent global protest, the fintech industry was slow to put out a statement supporting the black lives matter movement. Some, such as app banks and , have yet to release public statements as of the time of publication. Revolut Monese These are companies that aggressively market towards millennials and arguably would not exist without the generation’s over in-person. Yet, some of them appear not to be willing to support causes close to the millennial heart. When other tech-based companies such as , and even were quick to make statements and contributions to social justice efforts, they come off as extremely out of touch. preference for digital interactions Netflix YouTube TikTok Finance and tech have a history of systemic racism You may argue that finance and technology firms have nothing to do with the murder of George Floyd and the countless other lives lost to police brutality. Yet these firms exist in a society that structural racism and discrimination. In particular, the banking industry has played a part in reinforcing race-based structural inequalities. For example in , Beth Jacobson, a Wells Fargo loan officer, explains that she specifically targeted black people for high-interest subprime loans. During this process, not only did bank employees refer to black people as “mud people” but they these so-called “ghetto loans” also meant that black homeowners took on than their non-black counterparts. this New York Times article much higher interest rates In regards to the history of the American tech industry, a similar story is told. This is exemplified in the creation of the system. This system utilised the profile of young, black, male with close-cropped hair or Jeri curl, wearing gold chains or rings, or blue or red, clothing. In doing so, it criminalised an entire community by profiling up to 50% of the US’s south-central area. It is here where we can see the technology’s explicit link with racism and police brutality. Great (Gang Reporting and Evaluation Tracking) Furthermore, companies such as IBM have a of perpetuating structural racism. IBM’s computing expertise was used to help the New York-based Eugenics Record Office to identify mixed-race people for forced sterilisation in Jamaica. IBM also has helped in computerising and automating the apartheid in South Africa. And that’s not even mentioning how in the post 9/11 era, the corporation used New York CCTV footage in order to improve their facial recognition tech to sufficiently recognise an individual’s race. deep and dark history This makes their on their commitment to racial equality feel extremely hollow. It is clear that a company like this is just superficially talking about racism in order to ensure their relevance. Adequate self-reflection is what is needed yet their statements do not indicate that this is what they plan to do. recent Twitter statement Fintech and systemic racism As the lovechild of two industries that have proliferated structural racism, fintech arguably has a duty that they are not adequately living up to. Although algorithms have been found to less discriminate less, there is an important distinction here. They may discriminate less but . What’s more, fintech has a recent history of being racially insensitive with Singapore utilising blackface to encourage cashless payment solutions in their advertisements. they still do discriminate digital payments agency E-Pay There is also an implication that fintech may also end up continuing the practice of redlining, albeit in a . Redlining is the practice of outlining minority communities and subsequently making them no-go zones for home loans and other financial packages. The practice shifted wealth away from minorities areas by making minorities make deposits at banks which would then deny them loans. This was then used to extend credit to wealthy and white neighbourhoods and in the process concentrating money in that demographic. modern-day digital variant One way in which fintech is doing this is which required banks to serve low and moderate-income individuals near their branches. Yet with branchless banking fastly becoming the norm, especially in the pandemic, this law is beginning to show its age. Not to mention it also attempts to deal with race-based inequalities without talking about race. by poking holes in the 1977 Community Investment Act It also opens up the question as to how branchless banks would comply with this law. If applied to only the online bank’s office, it would further serve to concentrate wealth in cities and most likely the already wealthy neighbourhood that the office is situated in. A NAAHL (National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders) suggestion to have them nationally assessed on their service to low and moderate-income brackets could possibly mean that the returns on loaned money to low-income minority communities could be used to invest in wealthy and white neighbourhoods which may give a higher return on investment. Thus, the cycle of the white and wealthy getting richer at the expense of poorer and blacker neighbourhoods may continue. Another way in which this could be done is through . Lower-income communities and communities of colour have lower access to high-speed internet or own a smartphone meaning that their access to fintech is undermined. This means that the higher income and the whiter are placed in a better position to benefit from fintech products than low-income minority neighbourhoods. unequal access to fintech services One seemingly simple way in which this could be solved is through widespread internet access. As Monzo continues its , it will be interesting to see whether they will take action in dealing with this. Especially, as they have shown in the European fintech industry in promising to create privilege awareness training and encouraging other companies to do so. Moreover, reveals some awareness of the lack of black representation in their company and of the reality of systemic racism by waiving fees to charities that are raising money to combat this. They are also pledging to identify high impact actions in the long term. expansion to the US some leadership Stripe’s statement Plans for long-term change are critical However, on the George Floyd murder and protests have not shown any indication of long term action or structural change. Those companies that have pledged to do so should look at the racist practices of the industries that fintech intersects. Most importantly, they need to look and analyse as to whether they perpetuate them and take appropriate action. Whilst donations to charity are welcome, a change of every industry culture is needed. Fintech is not immune to this. many fintech statements Helping to create widespread access to internet infrastructure and ensuring branchless banking does not continue redlining is one way of doing this. Improving black representation in their companies is another. Fintech, along with every aspect of global society, has a duty to work towards undermining systemic racism. Until it takes up this duty, any claims of fintech branding itself as the “the great leveller” will be left to the dust. It is only if it deals with systemic racism that fintech will finally fulfil its self-proclaimed role of being a challenger to the industry. Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

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