application

Simple Tips for Designing a Browserless Web

Posted on by Mario

browserless_ywf

Browserless web is best known as communication over the World Wide Web between programs rather than between people and the server programs at Web sites. Many people believe that in the future, program-to-program communication will be more popular, as it will generate more traffic than browser-to-Web site communication. Even though browser-to-Web site communication is program-to-program – the browser is a client program and the Web server is a server program on behalf of a Web site – this new program-to-program communication does not involve an interactive user. Application that orders fulfillment is likely candidates for the browser less Web.

Of course, there are also some pros and contras on the topic of native versus web experiences. Many are comparing its reliability and speed with the native app experience. Therefore, in this article, we will explain how to design and develop progressive web applications (PWAs) in brief, so that many can experience a browserless web. Hopefully, this article would be beneficial for web developers or web designers who want to create a more engaging web.

  • Instant Page Transitions

It’s an open secret that users do not want to wait. Therefore, you have to be able to get in and around an app quickly without making them wait for your content to load in each interaction.

Solved with PWA

In order to pass the Lighthouse checklist for a PWA, one must follow certain performance-enhancing guidelines. Then, the content will be cached behind the scenes and to make you feel like there is no loading event, content should be cached behind the scenes.

  • Perceived Performance

You might be surprised by knowing that the level of stress caused by mobile delays is pretty much the same as watching a horror movie. Therefore, a good app should not let their users wait for their content. Other thing like elements appearing asynchronously as the app loads should also be avoided.

Solved with PWA

With the “Add to Homescreen” PWA launch transition, you can have a visual bridge between loading and loaded content. This shows how “preloaded states” can increase the perception of speed and seamlessness. Through a well-designed PWA, you can mimic the end state of the page and by using lazy-loading to deprioritize elements that are out of view; you can make the initial loading seem faster.

  • Works Offline

People, who prefer to download native apps, mostly want to use the apps without constantly relying on an Internet connection in order for the apps to function properly.

Solved with PWA

To solve this problem, the page content will be cached behind the scenes, allowing it to be accessed where there would, otherwise be a lag  in the browsing experience, such as when entering a tunnel while driving.

  • Back Button

Android provides a back button through the device which makes some people think there is no need to replace the browser’s back functionality. In fact, most apps choose to offer a back button in the header as an “up” action that navigates within the hierarchical relationship between pages.

Solution

The only possible solution for this problem is to place the menu button in the top left with a back button once the user progresses past the initial page. It will be validated once we put this pattern in front of users. Once participants had progressed through the initial home page, you can ask them to navigate to a new section.

 Can We Use it in the Real World?

Of course you will need “Add to Homescreen” to develop into an accepted group of patterns. To get some best practices about browserless web, you can read the following practices:

Sticky Headers, Persistent Actions

With this sticker, visitors can understand about the importance of learning ability when introducing new patterns.  In fact, the main purpose of this sticker is to ensure that users can easily find crucial global actions.

Prompt Intelligently

As it is said that PWA’s will get full control when they want to prompt users, this makes “Add to Homescreen” installation increase.

Stress and Test

One of the most important validation processes is to do the stress test in multiple applications. This is because, in most cases, the pattern stood up well to the latest brand. For example, the Lancome’s PWA contains many calls to action, which, as a result, can help in identifying overflow menu as a great opportunity to simplify its user interface, while offering exclusives program.

Conclusion

Many believe that “Add to Homescreen” will offer users to a next level experience, which is more engaging and converting user. This is because, a more modern, app-like web can have more positive effects on engagements, as it meets user expectations of performance and design.

The only way to meet those expectations is by combining PWA performance enhancements with intuitive design patterns in navigation and app-like user experience.

3 Techniques that Minimize Downtime

Posted on by Mario

downtime

Since users keep on expecting a stable and reliable service, many web developers and system admin attempt to create infrastructures that are more reliable and able to minimize downtime. In fact, minimizing downtime is necessary for increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing support request. Below, we provide you with three areas that are crucial when it comes to downtime and we also offer some improvements that you can apply on them. Check this out!

  1. Monitoring and Alerts

Nothing works better than properly monitoring your infrastructure. In this way, you can discover any issues before they really appear and affect your customers.  Furthermore, monitoring infrastructure will also aggregate and retain a record of stats such as application performance metrics, and system resource utilization. So, the main purpose is to look for anything weird.

Usually a client is interacted on each host that collects metrics for monitoring, and then reports back to a central server. These metrics will be stored in a database and available for many services like searching, alerting, and graphing. Fortunately, there is software that can help you monitor your infrastructure, such as:

  • Graphite

Graphite provides an API that has the support of dozens of applications and programming languages.  On the other hand, metrics are pushed, stored, and graphed in the central Graphite installation.

  • Prometheus

To pull data from a variety of community supported and official clients, you can use Prometheus. It has an alerting system that is built-in and is highly scale able. Besides, it comes with client libraries for several programming languages.

  1. Software Deployment Improvement

Believe it or not, software deployment strategies are one area that plays an important role on your downtime. Unfortunately, many people often overlook it.

Bear in mind that having a complex deployment process will result in the production environment leaving the development environment behind. This can cause any risky software releases since every deployment is a much larger set of changes that naturally brings a much higher risk of problem arising. No wonder this process can easily lead to numerous bugs that can slow down development and cause the unavailability of resources.

Therefore, the best solution for this situation is to set up some up-front planning. In order to sync your production environment with your development environment, you have to figure out a strategy that allows you to automate the workflow, code integration, deployment, and testing.

Here are some best practices regarding the continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and testing the software that help you start automating deployments:

  • Maintaining a Single Repository

To make sure that every person on the development team works on the same code and can test their changes easily, you can maintain a single repository.

  • Automating Testing and Build Processes

Don’t forget to automate your development and testing as this will simplify deployment in an environment similar to the final use-case. Besides, you will find it helpful, especially when debugging platform-specific issues.

  1. Implementing High Availability

Another strategy that you can apply to minimize downtime is to use the concept of high availability on the infrastructure which includes principles used in designing resilient and redundant systems.

In this case, the system should be able to detect and analyze the health of the system; it has to know precisely where the error is located. Furthermore, the system must be able to redirect traffic as this can help minimize downtime through reducing interruption.

In order to upgrade to a highly available infrastructure, you have to move to multiple web servers and a load balancer from a single server. The load balancer will show you regular health checks on web servers and routes traffic from those servers that are failing.

Moreover, you can also add resilience and redundancy to increase database resilience using database replication; surely, you will find different database models on different configurations of replication. However, many believe that group replication is the most interesting one, as you can read and write operations on a redundant cluster of servers. In this way, you can detect any failing servers and routing done to prevent downtime.

In conclusion, there are three areas that can lead you to less downtime. If you truly put attention on them, you will have happier clients and of course this will lead you to more revenue.

8 Brilliant Tips for Developing the Applications for Internet of Things

Posted on by Mario

Important Tips for Developing the Application for the Internet of Things_YWF

Before we go deeper with IoT, it is imperative to understand what Internet of Things (IoT) actually is. Basically, a platform enables the network, the smart device and user to get connected with the internet via a definite identifier. In general, IoT works on an embedded technology to communicate with all external environments. No wonder this thing has been seen as one of the revolutionary mobile app development trends in this generation, as it can manage everything right from an array of cohesive events to number of interconnected devices.

In fact, many have predicted that 2 billion devices will get connected to IOT by 2020, whereas the next five years $6 trillion is expected to be invested in IoT. This shows that Internet of Things have influenced a diverse set of industries to speak of, including the healthcare sector, the entertainment and gaming, automotive, home automation, and logistics. This is why IoT has a great potential in the future.

The Three Pillars of IoT

There are three major pillars which are important to note, regarding to the entire structure of the Internet of Things, such as:

  • Network: Generally network will perform similar function like router does in connecting the network to device. In this case, the devices are linked to the cloud. The infrastructure stationed at data centers will receive information. The things provide the data stream and also manage it. On the other hand, software helps to organize the things.
  • The things in themselves: it acts as Internet Gateway which is regarded as an Internet Gateway that helps other device communication through a single or many protocols. In fact, you won’t see a screen once the device gets connected to the network.
  • The cloud: it is a server that primarily aims for securing users confidential data. So, when users meet a critical juncture, the data will still get processed whereas the processing of a program usually happens during the concluding stages.

Tips for Developing Applications for IoT

Now, you have a better understanding about IoT and you may have lots of apps for the Internet of Things in mind. However, before you create one, you may want to know some factors that you can use as consideration, such as:

  1. Choose an Appropriate and Convenient Platform

The first step that every developer should do is to select the appropriate platform for the development process. One thing for sure, the platform should support the IoT applications and its components. Some platforms that are IoT proven and offer the scope to design the best in class apps are Ubidots, Xively or Thingworx. With the help of these platforms, you don’t have to start anything from the beginning.

  1. Consider the Industry for IoT Application

As stated above that Internet of Things has much widened and extended services, but there are still some fields that aren’t connected with Internet of Things. Therefore, you have to discover set of industries that can optimally connected such as healthcare, transportation, energy resources, sports, manufacturing etc. For instance, with IoT application, people can easily find transportation such as connecting buses or trains.

  1. Segregate Services from API Interface

Bear in mind that you need to separate the services from API interface while you are developing the apps for IoT. This will ensure you to have an app that runs smoothly on mobile and web desktop. You will surely get better opportunity once you manage your IoT applications well.

  1. IoT Data must be Secured Strongly

Every application developer knows about how important a strong secured environment is, especially to IoT data from the physical attacks. In fact, the security becomes more important when it comes to building GPS networks or banking apps.

  1. The Different Levels of IoT Apps

In order to understand the system and function of IoT applications, you have to know the various levels of IoT applications. Basically, there are four different layers; the devices, the ingestion tier, the analytics area and the end-user.

First of all, you have to consider the devices that you will be connecting. Then, you will see the infrastructure or the software receives data or organizes it. The next layer is all about data which actually is mainly processed with the help of analytics area. The last layer is about the end users for whom the app is getting developed.

  1. Keep an Eye on IoT Device Firmware Security

The difference between the Internet of Things from the traditional web and mobile apps is its hardware which is always apprehended to have security based issues in the firmware this is why it is essential to stay authenticated and signed before the update.

  1. Do not Neglect with Speed and Quality

You cannot comprise with the speed and quality at any cost when creating application for the IoT. Therefore, you have to focus on transforming the ideas into practice and provide stable working prototype.

  1. Ensure Scalability to the Application

It is important to build scalable applications since IoT is still a new concept. However, many believe that IoT is going to get bigger than ever with the time to arrive. In fact, having a good scalability will allow your app to remain in light for a long period of time.

In conclusion

Internet of Things is still considered as new comer in the technological area, but we will immediately see it is expanding and reached to a different height. This will surely help people access information easily and get connected one to each other at a  low price. On the other hand, it is also a challenge for the developers as it is different from other conventional methods.