Tag: Tools

5 essential tools for faster frontend development in 2022

Posted on by monica jamwal

Frontend development isn’t always fast, as the development speed can suffer without the proper tools to incorporate complex app functionalities and visuals into the design. Fortunately, modern frontend development tools offer the rate to build applications much more efficiently.

This post will list the top 5 progressive frontend development tools for hassle-free web development.

Bit — Component-Driven for 10X

Modern frontend development is component-driven. Most modern frameworks focus on components to build apps faster.

Bit is an advanced frontend tool for next-generation component-driven development. It allows users to build components that can be used independently to compose different applications. As the components can run anywhere, you can build scalable applications faster.

The Bit Cloud Platform helps teams collaborate and build together. For instance, if you are building eCommerce, working on components for each product page can be time-consuming and tedious. Bit can speed up the process as it offers excellent features like reusable customizable component templates, impressive visual components docs, isolated unit-testing, and per-component versioning.

Overall, Bit is a powerful frontend development tool for Micro Frontends, Rapid App Development, System Designs, and faster delivery of projects.

npm (Node Package Manager)

It is hard to imagine modern frontend development without npm or Node Package Manager. The numbers can anticipate the extent of its use – over 10 million front-end developers download over 30 billion packages every month using npm.  

Package managers are essential for front-end development as they help install new dependencies in the code without writing everything from scratch. Furthermore, they can handle duplicate dependencies- a significant hassle in frontend development that occurs when the same reliance occurs more than once.

Node Package Manager hosts a large software repository that includes popular BootStrap, Reach jQuery, and Vue packages. It would be best to use it in application development because it allows easy installation of node programs and reusable code packages. It is cross-platform compatible, implying you can use it on any OS for web app development. It is a standalone tool that you can use with almost any application.

GatsbyJS

GatsbyJS is one of the prominent frameworks for building static sites using JAMStack. Frontend developers can significantly speed up the web development process using GatsbyJS. It offers a readymade framework, rich web templates, and a well-optimized set of tools to start building out-of-the-box.

GatsbyJS is a free, open-source, React-based framework that makes it too easy to work with countless static pages. If you are working on a React project and want to deploy static pages, GatsbyJS is your best bet. 

Developers use this framework to build React applications that are fast and optimized for performance and dev experience. Do not underestimate the scope of GatsbyJS for full-blown modern applications. With the availability of thousands of plugins, you can add extended functionalities to your JAMStack static sites.

Sentry.io

Sentry is an open-source full stack error tracking system.

Any frontend developer worth his salt knows that error tracking is essential for faster application development. With Sentry.io, you can track errors across servers, browsers, and frameworks. It allows error tracking for both desktop and mobile applications.

Another reason why this is an essential tool for frontend developers is that it is for web applications. You can install Sentry with just two commands, and the UI/UX is straightforward to use. It is an excellent tool for frontend developers to prevent errors from reaching production by identifying and resolving them early on.

Suppose you are working on an enterprise web application with a lot of backend code. It can be too time-consuming to track each conflict with the frontend code. You can deploy Sentry to trace all back-end errors caused by backend issues. This tool provides a holistic full stack approach to frontend error fixing. Sentry can automatically capture all unhandled exceptions to avoid rolling into a more significant problem.

Jira

Project management tools are essential for backend as well as frontend developers. Faster frontend development means collaborating efficiently and effectively with other developers and stakeholders.

Jira is a powerful project management tool for front-end developers that boosts team collaboration by facilitating project planning, bug and error management, task management, time tracking, and resource allocation.

When working on large projects such as an eCommerce portal, you will need to improve the project’s agility by allowing developers to collaborate without clashing. Jira can help teams with agile development at scale. It improves operational efficiency and delivers better results by keeping the teams aligned toward the same goal.

Conclusion

Frontend development is evolving fast, and there is so much innovation across the board. You do not have to stick with the slow and outdated tools; there are too many options available to speed up the development of your projects where time is of the essence. We hope these five front-end development tools will add value to your projects by helping you code faster and deliver the best results.

Some of the biggest brands trust Talent500 to hire, build, and manage their remote teams. Sign up here to join the elite frontend developers pool and get hired by the best companies.

5 best UI/UX design tools in 2022

Posted on by vallish

Most of the visual creativity in the software industry is concentrated in UI/UX design. Front-end designers have a vast range of design tools to choose from. These tools can achieve everything from creating wireframes, mockups, and prototypes to rendering realistic product images.

But how do you know the best UX UI design tools in 2022?

Modern design tools as compared to their older versions offer cloud storage and real-time team collaboration. Older UX/UI design tools lacked this feature.

Here we list such UI UX design tools that are hand-picked by our experts.

1. Adobe XD

Unsurprisingly, our experts picked Adobe XD as the first design tool for this list. The brand is known for its feature-rich design tools that are industry standards, such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

Adobe XD is a comparatively new addition to the suite of highly robust design tools offered by Adobe, but it’s much lighter (smaller in size and uses fewer CPU resources) than Photoshop or Illustrator. This lightweight architecture makes it suitable for UX/UI designers.

Primarily it is available as a desktop tool. However, it supports Creative Cloud, the signature Adobe cloud-based collaboration infrastructure that allows real-time collaboration between designers. Adobe XD is now available for Windows and Mac OS users, but Linux users can use its web platform.

Adobe XD has a 7-days free trial, and its paid subscription starts at $9.99/month.

2. Figma 

Figma is a compelling and user-friendly UX/UI design platform due to its simple-to-use interface. It is a cloud-based tool that comes with all the essential features that you require to design a mobile app or a website. From basic wireframes to user flows and working UI prototypes, all can be created with Figma quickly.

It offers real-time collaboration over design projects so large UX/UI design teams can work on the same project simultaneously without conflicts. This robustness does not imply that Figma is unsuitable for individuals or freelancers. Out of the box, Figma is primarily focused on vector designs and prototyping, but you can quickly expand its scope by installing additional plug-ins.

Figma works on all operating systems, including Mac, Windows, and Linux, and a web version of the app is also available. The software is free to use for creating unlimited personal designs and up to 3 shared Figma and FigJam files.

3. Sketch

Sketch is a feature-rich UX/UI design tool trusted by designers at Google, MIT, and Xbox. The primary objective is to help designers create vector wireframes, designs, and prototypes. Given its lightweight and fast processing, it is surprising that it has all the functionalities that designers need to create wireframes and convert them into fully polished user interfaces. The prototyping features allow you to incorporate motion and transitions to develop comprehensive illustrations.

With this design tool, you can manage your design team, review documentation, and access design resources by logging into Sketch in the browser. However, to edit the design documents, you must use the desktop app, which is only available for Mac OS. Recently, Sketch released a real-time collaboration feature that allows large teams to work on a single project.

Like Figma, the functionality of Sketch can be extended using plug-ins that allow you to do so much more, such as adding stock images, creating portable design files, and incorporating JSON data.

You can try Sketch for free for 30 days, after which you have to subscribe to a paid plan (starting at $9/month).

4. Lucidchart

Lucidchart is a highly efficient UX/UI design tool for creating wireframes. It has various visual elements that can make your illustrations much more intuitive. This design tool can be an excellent addition to your toolkit to create information architecture and workflows or organize the structure of the website or software design.

Unlike other UI/UX design tools on the list, Lucidchart is not available as a desktop or mobile app but only as a web application. You can use its free version for up to 3 editable documents and hundred professional templates. For unlimited editable documents, you can subscribe to one of the paid plans that starts at $7.95/month.

5. Framer

One of the core responsibilities of UX/UI designers is prototyping. Whenever you design an interactive element like drop-downs, checkboxes, or radio buttons, they pose a challenge during testing sessions. This is where Framer stands out as a prototyping tool.

Any interactive element you code in your prototypes with Framer, you can test these elements in a highly realistic testing environment to create a user-friendly experience. You can still design highly interactive prototypes, even if you are not a coder, as this design tool allows collaboration. You can invite your team developers to work with you on a project.

You can create and publish unlimited sites with the Framer app or subscribe to paid plans starting at $15/site for additional functionalities.

Conclusion 

The best UX/UI design tool is the one that empowers you to unleash your creativity and effectively convert it into deployable products. We hope these design tools will accommodate all your front-end design needs.

Talent500 is the platform for front-end designers to find career redefining opportunities with fast-growing start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Sign up here to explore more.

 

 

5 developer tools to boost productivity

Posted on by vallish

A developer’s workflow must be uninterrupted to ensure the quality of code is not affected, but it’s hardly ever without potential interruptions and context switches. Fortunately, developer tools can help programmers maintain consistent flow states. These productivity tools allow developers to create more productive workflows.

Here we list the best productivity tools for developers picked by expert software engineers at Talent500.

1. Tuple: Productivity tool for remote pair programming 

Collaboration apps like Zoom or Slack might be appropriate for team meetings and project discussions, but for remote pair programming, they fail to provide the much-needed workflow sync. Tuple is a dedicated developer tool explicitly designed for pair programming.

It features a pair programming-focused screen sharing UI and the ability to control remote machines on low-latency connections. Tuple is one of the best developer tools to work for remote programmers to collaborate when writing code. It offers a 5k-quality video stream, HD quality audio, and efficient CPU usage. For comparison, an average Tuple call uses fewer CPU resources than Chrome when it sits idle.

2. Codestream: Easy code-level discussion

One important task that boosts productivity is effortless knowledge sharing between developers when working on a project. A developer must work outside his bubble and ensure that others know what their code does or what changes they’ve made. Such communication is essential for streamlining team workflows and producing valuable work.

Codestream is a productivity tool that captures all the discussions around code and makes it effortless to do code reviews. Codestream can work with any IDE and supports every programming language, which is why any developer can use it. One of the distinguishing features of this developer tool is that it allows discussion on a code without ever requiring a pull request. All you have to do is to highlight a code block and add a comment. Codestream strengthens the quality of your code base by allowing live discussion within the production environment.

3. f.lux: For giving your eyes a break

Programming can be unforgiving to your eyes and hamper your productivity if you write code for long stretches without giving your eyes a break. f.lux offers a solution to help developers reduce eye strain when writing code in dim light or at night. The tool intelligently adapts your screen’s display color according to different times of the day to ensure that your eyes are not overly strained.

f.lux works on all operating systems – Windows, Linux, Mac, and iOS devices. To set up f.lux, you need to tell the tool what kind of lighting you are working in and where you live; the rest the tool will handle automatically. It is a fully customizable developer tool that can be adjusted to fit your work routine.

4. Lightrun: Automate logs

Bugs are unavoidable for developers; no matter how well planned and impressively coded software is, it will eventually encounter bugs. The most time-consuming activity of fixing bugs is tracking the logs to replicate the bug. While it is an essential step to fix a problem, manually tracking log files is tedious. When there are no logs, things get more complicated, and reproducing the bug becomes much more difficult without enough information.

Thankfully, Lightrun is here to help developers add logs, metrics, and traces to the code base directly into the IDE or CLI in real-time. It provides the capability to developers to have code-level observability without deploying the code to a live environment. This saves much time that is wasted on testing the code after deployment. Lightrun works on monolith microservices, Kubernetes, Docker Swarms, serverless, ECS, Big Data works, and more.

5. Asana: For team and project management

Asana is one of the most widely used workplace management tools. It is utilized for streamlining communication across companies and teams. Developers are benefited from using Asana as it allows them to break down projects into tasks and set clear goals for teams. It can be integrated with hundreds of other productivity tools such as Google Drive, Outlook, and Slack. Customizing its features allows developers to change Asana per their project requirements.

Asana is one of the best productivity tools to improve communication within development teams. Analyzing and monitoring project issues eliminates the constant need for meetings, email updates, and memos. It offers customizable dashboards; activity feeds, prioritization, email integration, focus mode and individual task lists, custom calendars, notifications, and more.

Conclusion

For developers, focus and maintained workflow is critical. We hope these productivity tools can help you avoid distractions and help you manage time and tasks much more efficiently. Developers can improve code quality, collaboration, and project management. For more productivity hacks, check out this article.

Talent500 is a platform for Indian developers to find career-redefining opportunities with fast-growing startups and Fortune 500 companies. Sign up here to join our pool of elite talent.

 

 

4 Great tools for asynchronous communication among developers

Posted on by seoteam

The communication architecture of a team decides how productive and efficient it is. Excessive communication through video calls, instant messaging, and phone calls can create bottlenecks countering productivity. It is why companies are adopting asynchronous communication tools to maintain the overall efficiency of teams.

Asynchronous communication offers many benefits for teams-from greater flexibility to more thoughtful project collaboration-integrating asynchronous methods of communication will make team members happier and more productive. This is especially true if the teams are hybrid or remote.

This article will explore the asynchronous work environment and communication tools best suited.

What is asynchronous communication?

Before we understand asynchronous communication, let’s explore the communication challenges faced by remote and hybrid teams.

When employees are scattered over different time zones or working remotely, synchronous communication is difficult. If you require instant responses for employees to adhere to, there will be immense pressure on them. Also, too many workplace interruptions result in context switching as developers will be shifting between code editor, browser, and messengers. Asynchronous communication provides relief from all this communication overhead.

Asynchronous communication refers to the setup in which two or more are available simultaneously for a conversation to take place. The communication does not happen in real-time so that each team member can communicate in their own time.

Companies can adopt some of the best asynchronous communication tools to provide a better work-life balance.

Here are the four great tools for asynchronous communication that can help teams be more productive without wasting too much time on communication.

1. Twist

Constantly distracted employees experience poor productivity and have a higher risk of burnout. Twist is a unique messaging tool against the current status quo of real-time communication between teams and team members. It is an excellent asynchronous communication tool that allows users to focus on productivity rather than responsiveness. 

Twist eliminates the need for a constant presence on communication apps. Workers can take complete control of notifications using Twist. Employees can create channels to organize chats by subjects, projects, or departments. They can further micromanage notifications to decide when, how, and messages they want.

Another highly usable feature of this tool is its advanced search. Twist organizes your inbox into a searchable threaded conversation. You can find the relevant information with a simple search without scrolling through random chatter.

2. Yac

Yac is an audio-first asynchronous communication tool giving workers freedom from the always-on trap. You do not have to be always present to collaborate more efficiently on projects or to have more productive discussions. 

Rather than having endless scrum meetings on Zoom, managers can use Yac to record a quick voice message about the project to keep their teams in sync. The tool offers many options for the most efficient communication. 

Suppose an idea or component is too complicated to be explained in the text; you can clarify the concept by recording your voice and screen. Then, you can send the message directly to your colleagues from Yac. You can even create a shareable link of voice notes that you can attach with emails or share on Slack. 

3. Stepsize 

An excellent asynchronous communication tool for issue tracking, Stepsize is designed for developers. It allows developers to share issues and collaborate on fixes by directly adding codebase issues from VSCode and JetBrains editors. Stepsize will enable developers to add code comments, bookmark, and send notifications to other Project Management tools.

For instance, if your team is working on a web project involving frontend and backend developers. Stepsize can streamline communication between them by allowing developers to comment or bookmark issues referred by other developers. Engineering teams can reduce technical debt and improve coding standards using this tool.

4. 360learning

Learning and knowledge sharing are essential for developing teams and a company’s growth. However, onboarding and training new employees can be challenging with remote teams. For this purpose, you can use 360learning. A collaborative learning management system allows teams to work asynchronously on the internal knowledge base and learning resources. People with different expertise can contribute to the same course individually in their own time.

Suppose you are working on a new learning course for a new tool your company has developed. Using 360learning, designers, developers, and managers can asynchronously share their insights in the course without working together synchronously.

Takeaway 

Asynchronous communication offers many advantages, especially for remote teams. The goal of communication is to make teams more productive. Using asynchronous communication tools listed here makes sense to allow teams to work more and spend less time getting distracted by notifications, calls, and messages.

Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups trust Talent500 to hire, build, and manage their global remote workforce. Join our elite pool of talent today and discover career-redefining opportunities.

Talent500 helps the world’s fastest growing businesses build their global workforce.

We help companies hire, build and manage global teams. We are trusted by industry leaders across the globe – from Fortune 500s and larger enterprises, to some of the world’s fastest-growing startups. We are backed by Accel Partners & ANSR, a global leader and enterprise transformation platform.

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