Insights

Blog posts, company updates, and random insights written to help build a better web.

  • Simulating Poor Network Conditions with Toxiproxy

    Naturally, developers build apps in environments where network connectivity isn’t an issue — frequently the connections stay local to the development environment. That’s fine for being efficient while building out code, but it can also lead to a false confidence about the performance of the code in real-world situations.

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    Computer open running terminal

  • Introducing Angular Waiting Button

    Ten years on from the introduction of AJAX, the web is now full of asynchronous operations. AJAX itself made those async requests feasible, while Promises have been around for a while now to make handling async responses simple. When working with single-page architecture (SPA) web apps, everything is an async request. What was lost in…

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    AngularJS

  • Should I be using global or local Sass variables?

    Sass provides many useful features. It gives web designers and developers the ability to DRY up our code with mixins, maps and loops. It gives us a way to split up large files, but yet still cascade our stylesheets. And most importantly, it gives us variables.

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    Computer displaying code

  • When Do You Know If It Is Time To Refactor

    How do we solve this problem? How do we know if it’s time to refactor and fix these hacks / quick implementations? When is it worth it to invest a few extra hours or days to create a better component, module, stylesheet, script, etc.?

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    Team working at desk

  • Designers Are Not Just “Designers” In Today’s Collaborative World

    Spool, a founder of User Interface Engineering which is a usability research organization, said, “Anyone who influences what the design becomes is the designer. This includes developers, PMs, even corporate legal. All are the designers.”

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    Image of tweet

  • Quick Guide To Prototyping With Google Sheets

    Here’s the problem. Designing prototypes for clients in Sketch, Photoshop or other tools don’t always show realistic expectations of what the real-world product will represent. These tools are powerful, helpful and easy to use — for the most part. They allow designers to create beautiful designs for conversation purposes and marketing material. But, they are static. Additionally,…

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    Google sign

  • Crafting The Right User Experience Process For Your Team

    Crafting a great process takes time. It takes trial and error. More often then not you have to fail as an organization, as a team and as individuals before you can shape the right process.

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    Team prototyping