UI

Google wants to bring Android to everything from phones and watches to cars and smart television sets. Unlike Google TV, Android TV is much closer to standard Android. It runs Android 5.0 (at least in the initial launch version) and can be used on new TVs, as well as on standalone devices. Android TV is not just about improving the way people consume TV content, it’s more about changing the way they do it.

Data Driven Documents, or D3.js, is an awesome data visualization library. In this article, I'll discuss one particularly compelling application of D3.js: map making. We'll go through the common challenges of building a useful and informative web map, and show how in each case, D3.js gives you everything you need to make your map look and feel beautiful.

I often hear iOS developers ask some variant of the same key question: "What's the best way to develop a UI in iOS: through Storyboards, NIBs, or code?" Answers to this question, explicitly or implicitly, tend to assume that there's a mutually exclusive choice to be made, one that is often addressed upfront, before development. I'm of the opinion that there's no single choice to be made. Rather, each option has its strengths and weaknesses—and there's no need to use any one of them in isolation.

RWD allows a site to adapt for optimal viewing on a variety of devices that range in size based on a media query for mobile and other screen widths. Nowadays, your website will be visited by a wide variety of devices: desktops with large monitors, mid-sized laptops, tablets, smartphones, and more. To achieve an optimal user experience, your site should be adjusting its layout in response to these varied devices (i.e., to their varied screen resolutions and dimensions).

Demand within the web design scene today has changed over the past few years: designers with front-end skills, and front-end developers with design skills, are more and more in demand. Yes, you could argue that the jobs are completely different—and maybe you straight-up don't like one of them—but truth be told, in my six years as a freelance web developer and twelve years as a designer, I’ve learned that it's much harder to get by as just a web designer or just a front-end developer. Wearing both hats has a lot of advantages: from a professional perspective alone, you can find work more easily and charge a higher rate because you’re bringing more to the table.