Front End Developers Are Now Using Animation To Improve User Experience

Animation has been around for a long time. You can, in fact, trace the history of animation to the twentieth century.  However, this concept is continuously evolving and it has now derived a new meaning.  Flashy and confusing animation is a thing of the past.  Front end developers are now using clean, swift, easily navigable forms of animation to improve user experience.  These expert front end web developers, however, appreciate that such animation can do the job for them only if it is used discreetly.  There is absolutely no dearth of options.  HTML5 and CSS3 are incorporating new moves to their system, but these developers need to make sure that they are not getting flown away by the charm of these styles.  You only use what you need.  

Here are some ways in which animation is being used by front end web developers and user interface developers to improve user experience:

• Animated Pages: Having subtle animation on the page headers and between page loads can help keep the users engaged.  You manage to add movement to the website, and it ensures that pages transition smoothly, they are quick to load, and the gap between pages is closed with the help of a single fluid animation.
  
• Charts that Rock: Charts are a good way of presenting information.  However, something that is highly data intensive can get mundane.  Hence, developers are now using animated charts that are extremely simple to integrate into the website and good to look at.  Additionally, by appending movement to these graphs you turn them into an entertaining inforgraphic.
  
• Controlled Modular Scrolling:  As the term suggests, this form of animation lends more control to the visitors of your website.    In other words, your visitors now have control over the site’s animation.There are individual panels that can be created by a user interface developer on the website.These panels can then be individually accessed by the users.The good part of this animation is that it works smoothly across most industries.
  
• Infinite Scrolling:  You remember those old days when every single section of the website or a web app had their own set of menus as well as sub-menus.  That will make it hard for you to navigate through the website.  The new trend is to have all the information on one page.  A front end website developer would much rather prefer to have an infinite scrolling website than have multiple menus. This is because such websites have proven to be more user friendly.  So, the users can scroll down until they find what they are looking for.  You have the option of having multiple types of animation as the user scrolls into a new page.  However, you also need to make sure that all these components and animation are clean as well as cohesive.
  
• Form Animation:  Do you like filling out forms?  Nobody likes doing that.  That is where animated forms are becoming a trend these days.  Developers are using natural language to make forms look like a casual conversation.  This combined with motion makes form-filling a fun thing for the visitors.
  
• Slow-Motion Animation: Slow-motion is a great way of catching the attention of your users.  When page elements move just slightly, they draw the attention of your visitors.  It is almost like whispering in the ears of your visitors.  Such whispering draws their attention instantly.  They subconsciously tend to pay more attention to what is being said.  Having such animation on the home page of the website is a good idea of keeping it clean and catchy.
  
• Animating Anchor Text:  Do you remember hovering.  When your mouse hovers over a link, it animates.  Animating the anchor text has the same phenomenon.  The only difference is that it is a little more advanced.  It makes hovering more visually stimulating and a good tool of engaging your visitors.

In summary, there are numerous things that modern-day animations allow you to do.  If you are a front end developer designer or a specialized user interface developer, you can make subtle use of these animations to improve your visitor’s experience.

Why Front End Developers Are Raving About Ultra-Minimal Web Design

We, at DIT India, have been front end web developers for a long time. In this period, we have realized that there are numerous trends that hit the web design industry each year. However, very few of these trends stay long enough to impact the future generation of trends. They come in, become a rage, and phase out equally fast. Among the few trends that have been timeliness, Minimalism is the one that always makes the list. Front end / user interface developers have been talking about minimalism since a long time, and it has impacted some of the newer trends that have come about.

What is Ultra-Minimalist Approach?

In the recent times, minimalism has adopted a more extreme version. Experts in the industry have been calling it ultra-minimalism. So, let us understand what this trend stands for.  Minimalism, as the word suggests, is about just having that content and components that are extremely necessary for a website. Taking everything unnecessary off makes the website less cluttered. For a user interface developer, this opens up avenues of improving the user’s experience. All the necessary information can be presented without turning the website literally into an online brochure.  

With regards to ultra-minimalism, it is the more extreme form of minimalism. To a lay man, they might not be able to identify a huge difference between the two. Just like minimalist approach, the ultra-minimalist approach also focuses on completely removing all the unnecessary or the non-essential aspects as well as components of the front end of a website. This gives way for more white space, which obviously makes the website’s design more pleasing to the eye.  However, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. A front end website developer will vouch for how complicated the entire process can get. The real skill lies in making a call on which elements stay on the site and which ones need to make an exit. So limited is the room for maneuver that each and every pixel on your users’ screen needs to produce optimum results. The use of negative space becomes important too. Front end developers also get to use the advantage of modern coding standards that allows for lot to be hidden behind small elements.  

Things to be Careful about with Ultra-Minimalist Approach

However, the one thing that we all need to be wary about is making assumptions. By having very little on the website, we make room for more white space. However, what you might be missing is the struggle that users have to go through to look for where the links are. Your website visitors can be a mix of tech savvy and not so tech savvy people, and it is important for you to design for both. Making it too complicated will depreciate the user experience of your website instead of improving it. In summary, it is essential to have what is necessary on the site.

Examples

There have been various examples that have come about in the industry. There have been landing pages with plain white text on a black background. Words in that text can be the links to various pages. More can be done with the use of pictures and more.

About DIT India

We, at DIT India, are UI and Front End development service provider. We work with multiple clients across the globe and strive to offer comprehensive solutions for website design & development. Our front end developer and designer team is a big fan of the ultra-minimalist approach, but we use it carefully to make it easily usable by all. If you are looking for a UI developer in India, we can be an ideal combination of experience, adeptness, and infrastructure.

Seven Absolutely Essential Tools For Front End Developers

There has been a great improvement in the kind of web development tools that are available to front end developers these days. These are well-tested frameworks and libraries that improve workflows as well as the quality of your deliverable. These tools also present a wide range of opportunities for responsive designing like advanced plugins, code-streamlining processes, browser add-ons, etc. However, the large number of these tools can make it complicated for a front end web developer website to select the best ones. Here is a shortlist of the tools that you will love.

1. Sublime Text :

Here’s a well-designed, extremely efficient, and agile code editor that will make your life simple. Apart from its comprehensive range of features functions, it also provides a myriad of keyboard shortcuts. This means that you can now simultaneously edit your code or quickly navigate to files, lines, and symbols. If you are spending a large amount of time with your editor, this will certainly lead to time saving.

2. Twitter Bootstrap : 

This is one of the most widely used user-interface frameworks. If you are a UI developer and designer, you will be impressed by Bootstrap’s extensive UI package. It has been developed by Twitter’s team. As a user interface developers, you need to perform various critical tasks. Bootstrap helps you with modal object building, stylesheet normalizing, adding Javascript plugins, and more.

3. Chrome Developer Tools : 


This platform can help front end developers with editing their HTML as well as CSS in real-time. It can also be used to debug Javascript. In addition to that, it also lets you have a glance of your website’s performance. This tool is bundled as well as available with Chrome and Safari.

4. GitHub :

There are multiple changes that you make to your application. However, not all of those changes come out smoothly. There are some that you would like to get rid of. That’s what GitHub allows you to do. It lets you view any changes that you have made. Plus, you can even go back to your previous state. In other words, this is a repository hosting platform that can be used for tasks like bug tracking, wikis, managing tasks, and requesting features.

5. JQuery :

Here is a Javascript library that is extremely fast and has a small footprint. In addition to that, it also presents cross platform functionalities. There are many functions that are usually left upto the developers to figure-out. JQuery lets you abstract those functions, and hence saves you times. Moreover, there is a large scope for developing animations, navigating through documents, or just adding new plug-ins. 

6. AngularJs :

This is an open source web app framework that is developed by Google. It helps you present dynamic views with HTML. In other words, you can extend your application’s HTML syntax to make is more readable, expressive, and a better environment for development.

7. SASS :

This is a very popular open-source platform that has literally defined the genre of modern CSS pre-processors. When used, this platform can render lucid CSS. This will make your style sheets more readable. Moreover, you wouldn’t be required to repeat your codes. These tools shall help you in ensuring that your front end development project is completed with finesse and aplomb.

ABOUT US :

We, at DIT India, offer globally renowned front end development service as well as UI development service. Being in the business for years, we have worked with clients from the around the globe- guaranteeing top performance with every project. For more information about our services or to have a no-obligation quote, you can contact us.