6 Migration Tips

Posted on by djbrensinger

How do you migrate your solution? Whether you are moving to the cloud or a new server, migrating is easier said than done. You’ll need to carefully plan it to make sure you do it right. Use these 6 migration tips to plan your strategy.

6 Migration Tips

Choose a migration type

These are the types of common migration strategies to choose from:

  • Rehosting: Also known as "lift and shift". You move your application to the cloud with minimal tweaks and changes.
  • Replaforming: Same as Rehosting. You move your environment to the cloud. Then, make some adjustments to optimize it for the cloud.
  • Repurchasing: Move your customized, legacy application to a brand new, cloud-native product. You’ll need to train your team on the new platform.
  • Refactoring: You’ll need to change your apps. In some cases, you’ll need to rebuild from scratch. Make changes to take advantage of the cloud without compromising the core features.
  • Retiring: Some of your applications may no longer be useful to you. You’ll need to decide which applications you can stop using.
  • Retaining: Are you ready to migrate to the cloud? You may not be ready to migrate. If you aren’t, you should reconsider migrating at a later date.

Assign a Migration Architect

Pick a person who can guide or execute all technical aspects of the migration. They’ll need to define the necessary refactoring, data migration, tools and strategy.

Understand the scope of your migration

Your migration project needs to manageable. You’ll need to know what you want to accomplish and how to get there. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time. By defining your migration project scope, your team can manage their work without delays.

Find the right integration partner

Look for a partner who has moved before. They can help you plan your move and guide your through the process.

Document your processes

Make sure you have documented your processes. If you need to make changes, it is good to know where to start.

Test and test again

No move is perfect. You may miss something in the first round of testing. Make sure you create a checklist of things to test. Test them in many environments.

7 UX Mistakes to Avoid

Posted on by djbrensinger

A bad user interface can lead to a bad user experience. Everyone has used apps and websites that are difficult to use. Or even confusing. Bad design choices can lead to a bad user experience. Choices like inconsistency, bad color decisions, too many fonts and confusing UI.

7 UX Mistakes to Avoid

Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

What UX mistakes can you avoid in your next app?

1. Too many fonts

How many fonts are too many? Sticking with a couple of fonts makes it easier to read. Two or three. Use one or two fonts for your headings. One font for the body. Keep it simple.

2. Bad color contrast

Color contrast can mean the difference between easy to read or difficult. A bad color choice can make the text blend in with the background. Color blind and older individuals make have difficulty if you use the wrong colors. Check out the Best Ways to Evaluate Your Designs for Color Contrast.

3. Forgetting to label your icons

Many apps use the same icons. Icons like stars, hearts and check marks. These icons can mean different things in different apps. Use labels to help users know what the icon means.

4. Misleading users with links and buttons

Make sure that buttons and links do what you promised. It should take the user somewhere or do something. A general rule is that a link needs to go somewhere. Buttons allow a user to do something. Don’t use links to add, change or delete any data on the screen.

When do you use a button? First, consider what task you want the user to do. If they need to Buy, Sign Up or Add something, use a button. You may use secondary buttons for different tasks. Your primary action should stand out. For other actions like going to a new page, you can use a link.

5. Slow load times

Slow loading pages can annoy your users. Use tools like PageSpeed Insights to tell you what is slowing your site down. Images, fonts and videos can slow your site down.

6. No way to distinguish a primary and secondary button

Sometimes you’ll have more than one action that you want the user to do. It’s important to make it easy for them to identify the primary action. Your primary button should be bolder and more prominent. Choose a strong color with bold text to help it stand out.

7. No text hierarchy

People scan your UI to figure out what to do. Text hierarchy helps them to know what to pay attention to. Use size, color and weight to show importance of text. Include spacing to separate different pieces of information.

Design mistakes can happen. You can create a better user experience by avoiding these common UX mistakes.

Posted in UX

Make Your Own UI Pattern Library

Posted on by djbrensinger

What are User Interface Design Patterns? A pattern is a plan or model for making something. In software development, patterns provide solutions to specific design problems. Buttons tell people to do something. Download, Buy, Continue or Save.

Make Your Own UI Library
Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash

When you design a website or web app, you’ll need a navigation bar, button, tabs, forms and more. Common design patterns help to make your design easy to use and user friendly.

What is a UI Pattern Library?

A UI Pattern Library is a collection of user interface components or patterns. It helps you to define how each component looks and works. Your pattern library helps to ensure a consistent look and feel across your products. You want to add solutions so you don’t have to solve the same design problem over and over again. Or search your app for the pattern that you need to use.

What goes in it?

You’ll want to define your user interface. How you create buttons, navigation bars, layouts, alerts and notifications. Include guidelines on how and when to use them. You may want to include code snippets so you don’t have to rebuild a component from scratch. Also include color palettes, typography and grid layouts.

Where to find Design Pattern Libraries and Resources?

Build Your Own

When you build your own pattern library, get designers and developers involved. A pattern library is a collaborative project. Both your designers and developers must work together in creating and maintaining it.

  • Decide on what to name things The team needs to decide what to call a component. A shared naming convention prevents communication problems.
  • Use a ticket system to track updates Your design library has to be updated and maintained. A ticket system makes it easy to track changes. You can create an approval system for requests.
  • Audit your library Your library can quickly become out of date. Remove old components, templates and no longer used patterns. Plan to audit your library at least once a year.

JavaScript Debugging Tips

Posted on by djbrensinger

Debugging code is a challenging task. When your code doesn’t work, it can be challenge to find the cause of the problem. You may do things like comment out the code or make a small change to see if that fixes the issue. What do you do when these tricks don’t help you find the bug?

JavaScript Debugging Tips
Photo by Mitchell Dunn from Burst

If you are like many JavaScript developers, you start with console.log to find the problems in your code.

When to use console.log()

Console.log() is simple and easy to use debugging tool. You can have it display a message so you know that the code worked. Or you can use variables and expressions to determine if you are getting the right values.

When to use debugger

What do you do if the problem is hard to find? You can use a debugging tool. A debugging tool is a software tool that helps you identify coding errors. You can step through your code line by line to see how it is working. You can stop executing the code at certain points. It can help you to read error messages and handle exceptions.

Your browser has powerful debugging tools include the console.log. Each browser is a bit different on the development tools that it offers. Learn more about the basic functions of your browser’s development tools.

Tips for debugging JavaScript

  1. Start with the console.log(). You can always switch to using other debugging methods if the console.log doesn’t work for you.
  2. Read the error message. Error messages may include helpful details. Like the line number where the error occurred, type of error and a brief description.
  3. Use Breakpoints. Breakpoints allow you to pause your code at a specific line. You can step through your code line by line and see how it is working.
  4. Add the debugger statement in your code. It acts like a breakpoint in your code. When the code reaches this point, it pauses at debugger. If no debugger functionality is available, your browser ignores this statement.
  5. Handle Exceptions. Exceptions are errors that when your code is executing. They can occur when you have syntax, logic or runtime errors. Make sure you are handling exceptions. Exceptions can help you to identify and resolve issues in your code.

Debugging like coding takes practice. Use this tips to help you get better at finding issues in your code. If you still can’t find it, take a break. Walking away from the problem sometime help. So can talking to others also helps.

Read more on debugging

7 Tips for Commenting Your Code

Posted on by djbrensinger

Your code doesn’t need to be commented. Or does it? Clear code needs to be easy to read. You may not be the only one who has to maintain this code. Write comments so the future person who updates this code can understand why you did things. Remember that person may be you.

7 Tips for Commenting Your Code
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Use these tips for commenting your code for the better.

1. Comments should be meaningful

They shouldn’t duplicate the code. Comments should compliment your code. You write to explain why the code works this way.

2. Add comments when fixing bugs

It helps you to understand what changed and why. Include references to issue numbers to provide further information. Anything else that you used to help solve the problem.

Everyone codes code they found on the internet. It helps to add links in the comments so you remember where you got the code from. Add who wrote it and what problem it fixes.

4. Sometimes your code isn’t finished

Use comments to remind everyone that there are limitations to this piece of code. Add TODO to remember what you need to finish.

“You should first strive to make your code as simple as possible to understand and without relying on comments as a crutch. Only at the point where code cannot be made easier to understand should you begin to add comments.”

-Jeff Atwood, Code tells you how, comments tell you why

5. Comments should explain why you did something

If your comments are confusing, remove the comment. Keep comments that are clear and easy to understand.

6. Keep your comments brief

Comments can take time to read. You want to make them as short as possible.

7. Remember to update your comments

As you change your code, your comments may need updating to reflect changes.

Comments can’t fix or excuse bad code. They should compliment it. Commenting your code should help you understand why you chose to do something.

For getting better at writing comments, read Best practices for writing code comments.

Anything else that you used to help solve the problem.