Weekly digest - 2018.48

Weekly digest - 2018.48

As in this week nothing happend, there is nothing to discuss. In that case I hope you will find something interesting in the following articles.

How to Land on Mars

Software Library: C64

How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects

How to Become a Better Software Developer: A Handbook on Personal Performance

Redesigning the Office App Icons to Embrace a New World of Work

Apple Music: A UX/UI Holistic Case Study

Voice User Interfaces (VUI) — The Ultimate Designer’s Guide

11 Sketch Plugins That Will Improve Your Workflow

UNDERRUN – MAKING OF

How to Build a Serverless Backend with AWS Lambda and Node.js

These are the concepts you should know in React.js (after you learn the basics)

Introducing ASP.NET Core with Docker

How to Integrate a C Library into an iOS App Written in Swift


Image credits: 85Fifteen.

Weekly digest - 2018.42

Weekly digest - 2018.42

During this week literally nothing happened. The only things worth mentioning are listed below.

  1. Apple announced iPad Pro and Mac event for October 30th with really cool logo variants,
  2. Apple started taking iPhone XR preorders in selected countries,
  3. Google will start charging Android device makers a fee for using its apps in Europe.

That's really all, so if you are interested, please take a look at the following articles.

Using ASP.NET Core with MongoDB in containers for local dev, CosmosDB for production

How Microsoft rewrote its C# compiler in C# and made it open source

5 Easy Steps to Understanding JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

How Font Awesome became the most funded software project on Kickstarter — and what we can learn from it

Motion Design Doesn’t Have to Be Hard

Stop building websites with infinite scroll!


Image credits: Apple.

Weekly digest - 2018.40

Weekly digest - 2018.40

By the end of this week Lucasfilm shared the details of the first Star Wars live-action TV Series - The Mandalorian. The series is set between episodes six and seven and will be about a brand new Mandalorian character.
Jon Favreau will write and produces the 8 episodes, with Dave Filoni directing the first one. Additional episodes will be directed by Deborah Chow (Jessica Jones), Rick Famuyiwa (Dope), Bryce Dallas Howard (Solemates), and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok).
I'm very exited about this. Especially about involvement of Dave Filoni, who basically created the Mandalorian culture for the Clone Wars. It is also amazing to hear that Filoni finally will be behind real camera. He is George Lucas' protege. Lucas tought him the art of storytelling and we saw the results of this in later episodes of the Clone Wars and though entire Rebels series, which to be honest was better than The Last Jedi and Han Solo movie.

Earlier this week, Microsoft refreshed its Surface lineup. I'm not going to the technical details of the upgrade, but I have to agree with Owen Williams, right now Microsoft has the best device lineup in the industry. They have device for everyone, from casual users, through tech enthusiasts, to the power users and content creators. This is something that Apple had 10 years ago and abandon by focusing on iPhones. Now, they have lineup with various outdated devices that are also expensive. I hope that Microsoft will not make the same mistake and, in 10 years time, the lineup will be as strong as today.

Speaking of mistakes, Microsoft has pulled the Windows 10 October update after reports of personal files being deleted. Microsoft is investigating the issue. The problem didn't affect everyone, but for now, it is good to wait with the upgrade.

Here is the list of interesting things.

"STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE" Animotion Trailer

DESIGN DB

Plans for the Next Iteration of Vue.js

Under the hood of Pixling World

Achieving impossible coding tasks without knowing how to do them

Day in the Life of a Google Product Manager


Image credits: Lucasfilm.

Weekly digest - 2018.37

Weekly digest - 2018.37

This week Apple held the Gather Round event introducing three new iPhones and new Apple Watch. Without further ado, let's start with iPhones.
The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max are the premium models with the most features which also makes them the most expensive ones, starting at $999 and $1099 respectively. Here is the specification:

  • OLED True Tone Screen
  • HDR display
  • Dual 12-megapixel rear cameras (wide-angle and telephoto lenses)
  • 7-megapixel front camera
  • Portrait Mode with Depth Control
  • Smart HDR photos
  • A12 Bionic chip
  • Face ID
  • Fast charging
  • Qi-based wireless charging
  • IP68-rated water resistance to a depth of 2 meters for up to 30 minutes
  • 64GB / 256GB / 512GB of storage
  • Dual SIM (Nano-SIM and eSIM)
  • Gigabit-class LTE
  • Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
  • 802.11ac Wi‑Fi
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • 3D Touch

iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have almost identical tech specs. The differences come to battery life, XS Max has one-hour-longer battery life, and screen size. XS has 5.8-inch screen, where XS Max has a larger 6.5-inch version.

Apple also introduced a brand new version of the phone, called iPhone XR. It is more affordable, starting at $749. I must admit, for this price point the specs look impressive:

  • LCD True Tone Screen
  • HDR display
  • Single 12-megapixel rear cameras (wide-angle lense)
  • 7-megapixel front camera
  • Portrait Mode with Depth Control
  • Smart HDR photos
  • A12 Bionic chip
  • Face ID
  • Fast charging
  • Qi-based wireless charging
  • IP68-rated water resistance to a depth of 2 meters for up to 30 minutes
  • 64GB / 128GB / 256GB of storage
  • Dual SIM (Nano-SIM and eSIM)
  • LTE Advanced
  • Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
  • 802.11ac Wi‑Fi
  • Bluetooth 5.0

As you can see, there is not much difference between XS and XR. If you are thinking about new iPhone and don't care about the OLED display and better camera you should choose the XR version. If you need better screen and camera, or if you need biggest screen then you have to pay $250 for XS model.

Now let's move on to Apple Watch. The version is called Series 4. The biggest change is over 30% larger screen. With bigger screen the case also got bigger by about 2mm. Looking at the thinness, Series 4 is about 1mm slimmer compared to predecessor. Here is the rest of the changes:

  • 64-bit S4 processor, 2 times faster than S3
  • Second-generation optical heart sensor
  • ECG monitor
  • New accelerometer (up to 32 g-forces) and gyroscope that can detect if person fall down
  • Haptic feedback on the Digital Crown
  • Louder speaker by 50%
  • New W3 wireless chip
  • Bluetooth 5.0

The new Apple Watch Series 4 is impressive and can't wait to finally get a proper start watch.

Last but not least, here is the list of interesting things.

Don’t Use Checkboxes

Your web app is bloated

.NET Conf 2018

How iOS Apps Adapt to the iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR Screen Sizes

The first month of being a freelance designer, how does it feel like?

Half-Life Recreated with Unreal Engine 4


Image credits: Apple.

Weekly digest - 2018.35

Weekly digest - 2018.35

This week CD Project Red publish 48-minutes long walkthrough of the Cyberpunk 2077.
I have to admit that after E3 trailer I was a little bit skeptical. The world seemed to be too bright, clean and sterile for cyberpunk world. I was expecting dark, brutal world. Now, after watching the walkthrough I know I was wrong. This game look phenomenal. CD Project took their on spin on cyberpunk genre and it works great. It looks like the trailer showed us only a glimpse of the "civilized" world, where the rest, that we could see in the walkthrough, is shady and dark. And what is more important, the world looks natural and alive.
The other concern I had was the RPG aspect of the game. Gameplay proves that we'll get not only multiple storyline options that probably affects entire game, but also a lot of options to customize your character. The way how we customize the character significantly affects the way we can solve the quest and our character's combat abilities.
Speaking of combat. I was really interested to see how company that for over 10 years was making a "sword simulator" switches to guns. And boy, it is incredible. Reds know what they doing.
They also know how to phase the storyline. I know we saw only the main quest, but one step led to another. And it didn't feel that I'm wasting time wandering around just to increase the gameplay hours.
Overall, the game looks phenomenal and if CD Project keeps this level of quality across entire game, we will not only get great game but maybe even one of the best games ever.
I know, you probably thinking that I'm to exited. Let's face it, all we have is early gameplay and a lot of things can change. But looking at CD Project's records of delivering high quality products, I'm quite confident this game will be awesome.

This it is. Finally, here is list of interesting things.

How privacy-friendly is your site?

The Amazing Life-size LEGO Technic Bugatti Chiron that DRIVES! and how it was made

The art of designing accessible websites

How We Wrote a Self-Hacking Game in C++

I've created Icons and Illustrations which you guys can use 100% free


Image credits: CD Project Red.