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Introducing Micro-Interactions, A Secret to Great Design

Posted on by Mario

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With the advancement of technology, you will notice how people create small things to achieve bigger things. And love it or hate it, we have to experience this kind of activity every day. In fact, micro-interaction may happen right when we wake up, for example, turning off the alarm on your mobile phone. So, have you got a good understanding of Micro-Interaction anyway? Below is deep explanation about Micro-Interaction. If you are web designers, this info may come in handy for you.

What is a Micro-Interaction?

As it is stated above, we experience micro-interaction every time we interact to our gadget. It can be from the toggle of an on-off switch to skipping from one song to the next on a music player. It also can be from liking a social media post to replying to a text message.

But most of all, Micro-interactions tend to do, or help you do, several different things:

  • Communicate a status or bit of feedback
  • See the result of an action
  • Help the user manipulate something

So in practice, micro-interactions include moments or actions for elements. Stop and think about all the times you come in contact with a micro-interaction every day.

Microinteractions impact things like:

  • Accomplishing any single task
  • Commenting in any digital medium
  • Changing a setting or process
  • Viewing a notification or message
  • Connecting devices, such as those for multi-player games, or printing from your laptop
  • Sharing or liking a photo or video on a website
  • Sliding down the “screen” on a mobile device to refresh content

To create micro-interactions, one should focus on a four-part structure. It contains, trigger, rules, feedback, and loops and modes.

  • Trigger: Initiated an action
  • Rules: what happens in the interaction
  • Feedback: How you know what’s happening
  • Loops and Modes: what happens next

Details with a Purpose

As in micro-interactions design, the design elements are so small and can happen so quickly that designers often forget about the details. To avoid this, you better keep a few things in mind:

  • Micro-interaction must live on through repeated use.
  • Give each micro-interaction a human voice.
  • Don’t overthink it
  • Simplicity rules
  • Create a visual harmony with other elements
  • Consider each detail with care
  • Think about further adaptations or how subsequent micro-interactions will work.
  • Add a fun divot with animation, but don’t go too much.

As a conclusion, in the future, you may see many designers use micro-interactions in almost every digital design project. So, the key is to make these moments become completely functional and in the details.

The Easiest Ways to Generate API Documentation

Posted on by Mario

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As a developer whether you are a web developer or app developer, you may be familiar enough with API documentation. API documentation is an important part of the product offering affordances to the developer community to help them understand exactly what an API offers and how to use it. Below are several hints that you can use to create API documentation easily:

What API Documentation Should Contain

You can create your own API Documentation as you like, since there are no standards on what API documentation should encompass. The important thing is makes it easy for them to understand an API is a good starting point. However, you can follow the list below from established providers in the API economy:

  • A list of the resources with an explanation of the purpose of each in the context of the product or service being offered via the API;
  • Examples of API calls in a variety of languages and tools (cURL, Postman Collections, etc.);
  • Do something meaningful in the context of the product or service the API offers, guides that detail the workflows implicit in using the API i.e. the sequence of API calls. For example, Dwolla offers several guides on how to send or receive money, with branches into different contexts throughout that explain the different aspects of their product offering;
  • An overview of the design principles adopted by the API provider and what that means for aspects adherence to REST (especially hypermedia), HTTP codes, etc.;
  • Information on authentication, including schemes that may be implemented such as OAuth or OpenID Connect;
  • General information on error handling with information on the HTTP return codes that will be returned;
  • User-specific contexts that help developers get to grips with the subject matter more easily. For example, Stripe automatically tailors their API documentation with your API key and secret (when you are logged in) so any code samples are immediately ready to use;
  • An interactive API explorer that allows the developer to readily bring all this information to life.

Interactive Explorers

It is a common thing to have an Interactive Explorers in API specification formats generated from the specification document itself, creating a means for consumers to both learn about and test API calls at the same time. With the help of interactive explorer in understanding a provider’s API, publishing API will be easier. The options are therefore largely dictated by the choice of API specification format, for example:

  • The OpenAPI Specification (aka Swagger) offers Swagger UI, which allows you to generate an interactive explorer with virtually no coding (depending on the completeness of your Swagger specification);
  • Apiary offers an explorer that is generated from API Blueprint and Swagger specifications. It mixes the features of an interactive explorer with a documentation suite as it renders the Markdown documentation in API Blueprint side-by-side with an interactive tool for making sample API calls;
  • Finally, an open-source explorer is offered for the RAML specification format that implements many of the same features as Swagger UI and Apiary.

By using these tools, we hope you can create an easy-to –use reference point for their developer community. However, static documentation may be required to accompany an interactive explorer, if the subject matter of the API is complex or requires high-level explanation not necessarily associated with a resource.

Encryption and Decryption

Posted on by Mario

encryption and decryption

As a web developer or programmer, one must get acquaintance with encryption. Encryption is the process of converting information so the information can only be read by the intended recipient and incomprehensible to anyone or in the other words, you make a new code to cover the real information which makes the information becomes private to be understood. The opposite action of encryption is decryption. Decryption is the process of transforming encrypted information so that it is intelligible again. A cryptographic algorithm, also called a cipher, is a mathematical function used for encryption or decryption. In most cases, two related functions are employed, one for encryption and the other for decryption.

The ability to keep information encrypted is not depended on the cryptographic algorithm; however it is because of a number called a key that must be used with the algorithm, in order to produce an encrypted result or to decrypt previously encrypted information. It will be difficult to decrypt some information without having the correct key. In fact, it can be impossible to decrypt without any correct key.

There are two types of key encryption, symmetric-Key Encryption and public-Key Encryption.

Symmetric-Key Encryption

Encryption key can be calculated from the decryption key and vice versa with symmetric-key encryption. The same key is used for both encryption and decryption with most symmetric algorithms. By using key encryption, users do not need to experience any significant time delay as implementations of symmetric-key encryption can be highly efficient.

There is also a degree of authentication which causes symmetric key cannot be decrypted by other symmetric key. It is important to be remembered that symmetric key encryption will be effective only if the symmetric key is kept secret by the two parties involved, the confidentially and authentication of your information can be called into doubt if there is another party figures out of the key. People who can decrypt the message can send information as if they came from one of the two parties who were originally using the key. Symmetric-key encryption is widely used for authentication, tamper detection, and encryption over TCP/IP networks.

Public-Key Encryption

Public-key encryption requires a pair of keys-a public key and a private key-associated with an entity that needs to authenticate its identity electronically or to sign or encrypt data. Each public key is published, and the corresponding private key is kept secret.  The only way to encrypt your data is through your private key only. In general, to send encrypted data to someone, you encrypt the data with that person’s public key, and the person receiving the encrypted data decrypts it with the corresponding private key.

Public key encryption is usually not suitable for large amounts for data since public-key encryption requires more computation compared with symmetric-key encryption. However, it’s possible to use public-key encryption to send a symmetric key, which can then be used to encrypt additional data. This is the approach used by the SSL protocol.