Learn the basics of designing a mobile app, from initial idea, wireframes to user interface design. You will create the design for a diary app while learning how to write an application design specification, user experience, right through to creating assets for development. The project will focus on the iOS platform, however you learn some tips and tricks on adapting the design for the Android platform.

Mobile App Design for iOS

The post Mobile App Design for iOS appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Devart announces the release of LINQ Insight version 3.2 now offering support for Entity Framework 6 rounding out the premiere Visual Studio add-in.

It’s no secret that web designers and developers love the Google Chrome web browser and Chrome Extensions. The strength of the Chrome Developer Tools make it an excellent choice for web design and development work. The Chrome DevTools provide lots of built-in functionality, but if you still feel like there’s something missing, Chrome Extensions can fill in the gap.

Chrome Extensions: Pros and Cons

The only big downside to 3rd party Chrome Extensions is that the quality and usability can be fairly inconsistent. I’ve used lots of Chrome extensions over the years and I also carefully looked through the Chrome Web Store today to see if there were any I’d missed. I found that many Chrome Extensions didn’t work or they duplicated functionality already present in the Chrome DevTools (and as a result, have become abandoned). I also encountered lots of inconsistent UI. Even so, there are still a few extensions that I think are extremely useful when building websites.

Web Developer

Before the first release of Google Chrome, most web designers and developers used Firefox. Similar to Chrome, Firefox also has lots of 3rd party support. One of the most popular Firefox extensions was simply titled “Web Developer”. In the years since, this extension has made its way into Chrome and it’s still packed with an incredible amount of useful functionality.

It’s hard to just pick one feature from Web Developer, but I find myself using the Outline tab when debugging CSS pretty frequently. It can be very helpful to highlight elements based on how they’re positioned on the page.

Get Web Developer

BuiltWith

BuiltWith is an extension with a very straightforward purpose. If you’re curious about the web technologies that were used to create a site, you can click on the BuiltWith button to see a dropdown list of servers, frameworks, and more.

BuiltWith doesn’t always work perfectly, so if you really do need to know how a site is built, be sure to do some follow up investigation of your own in a more robust tool (like the Chrome DevTools). However, it can still be a quick way to satisfy curiosity and point your search in the right direction.

Get BuiltWith

JSONView

By default, Chrome doesn’t do a great job of formatting JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files when they’re viewed in a tab. This might not seem important, but if your web application passes around JSON quite a lot, you’ll often need to look at JSON data for debugging purposes.

With the JSONView extension installed, JSON will be formatted nicely, making it far more readable.

Get JSONView

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is actually a 1st party Chrome Extension because it’s built by Google. Unlike other extensions that take the form of buttons in the toolbar, this extension adds a tab to the Chrome DevTools.

Some of the functionality that PageSpeed provides is duplicated in the DevTools Audits panel. However, a web page can never load too fast! Using a second method to speed up page load times can help to identify problems you might not find otherwise.

Get PageSpeed Insights

Responsive Inspector

The Responsive Inspector extension was created by a developer at Adobe as a side project. This extension takes the media queries from any applied stylesheets and presents them in an interactive chart.

Clicking on any of the highlighted bars in the chart will resize the browser to that specific media query’s size so that you can see what the breakpoint looks like. You can also click the circular code button on the right side to view the media query in context.

Get Responsive Inspector

Did I miss anything?

High quality Chrome Extensions can be difficult to find. If I missed one that you can’t live without, let me know in the comments!

The post The Best Chrome Extensions for Web Professionals appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

When you were a kid, Did you serve yourself food? (We’re talking between 2 and 10 years old here, before you could say, “Sorry Mom, I’m a vegan now.”)

Do you remember getting any choice in the matter?

We sure didn’t.

According to the US Department of Agriculture parents should encourage children as young as 2 to serve themselves, deciding their own portion sizes. (Check out those recommendations here) 

It appears most parents often unknowingly overestimate exactly how much young children should eat (or maybe your Mom was a nutritionist and she’s happy your a vegan now, we don’t know!). 

Allowing kids to choose their own portion sizes in theory should help encourage healthy eating habits.

It could even reduce the likelihood of obesity later in life, and encourages experimentation with new foods. (Like Brussels sprouts! why doesn’t anyone else like those?)

It might not be the answer to combating obesity, since many children aren’t fortunate enough to have access to regular nutritious meals, but it’s a step in the right direction.

The only question is…when the cheerio’s go flying across the kitchen floor…is it worth the mess?

An article published January 19 in The Baltimore Sun examines the impact of the Affordable Care Act as Marylanders gain health insurance coverage, but points to how many are switching from existing policies.

The article, titled “Consumers trading up for better, cheaper health insurance” states that while many people who already have health insurance are trading up for better policies, the number of uninsured might not decrease greatly.

UMBC’s Hilltop Institute is mentioned in the article when referencing a past study that was conducted before the Affordable Care Act was launched: “The Hilltop Institute at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County estimated before the health law launched that by 2020 about 6.3 percent of the state’s population would remain uninsured, down from just over 10 percent in 2014.”

The Hilltop Institute is also referenced in the article when looking into the issue of people bouncing in and out of health coverage when they are self-employed or lose or change jobs: “Hilltop, for example, found among Medicaid beneficiaries in Maryland in 2011 that about 20 percent were new to the program and 13 percent lost eligibility.”

You can read the full article in The Baltimore Sun here.