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GWL 2020 Wrapped: Top 10 Blogs You Must Read for App/Website Design & Development

At Galaxy Weblinks, we build high-performing software solutions that help teams scale. And write about it in the process. You may have spotted us on some of the popular platforms such as Hackernoon, The Startup, Level Up Coding, and Muzli to name a few.

In hopes of helping you fine-tune your design and development strategy, we fetched this blog list to help designers, developers, project managers, or decision-makers with: 

• Tips on automating the redundant tasks and improving the productivity level using tools that worked wonders while collaboration.
• Best practices in design and development processes for building apps that scale and perform better.
• Give updates on best in industry trends for website and app development technologies.

Here are Galaxy’s most read and interesting Medium pieces from 2020. This is an opportunity to learn from the best in the design and development processes, so feel free to peruse our comprehensive list!

1. Migration Plan to the All New Vue JS 3 

Published in: The Startup
Main topics covered:  Vue 2 to Vue 3 upgrade, app migration process, new features.

If you have been involved in building a custom or single-page application with Vue.js, you will find its development nitty-gritty interesting for your project. If you want your Vue.js application to become faster, smaller, more maintainable, you should check out this blog that focuses on upgrading to Vue 3 with an easier approach to target native.

In this article, you’ll get a comprehensive insight on how you can upgrade your Vue.js 2 application into Vue 3, and what are the breaking changes you should expect in Vue 3.

2. 6 Productivity Tools that all Developers Should Try 

Published in: Level Up Coding
Main topics covered: Code editing, collaboration, development tools. 

A developer’s life is filled with many unknown errors and glitches waiting to pop up at the most inconvenient times. The blog entails some interesting tools focused on keeping your developers’ productivity levels at their peak while assisting you in improving your project deliveries and turnarounds. The tools it vouched for include Typora, Codernotes, Mindly, and others.

There are numerous software tools available to assist and streamline the development team and decrease their cognitive load. These tools mentioned will help you as a developer to concentrate more on creating robust solutions quickly.

3. Atom vs Sublime: Which text editor to choose in 2020? 

Published: Internal release
Main topics covered: Text editor, code editing.

Developers are familiar with code editors that contain features like quick navigation, syntax highlighting, automatic indenting, etc. This blog focuses on the side by side comparison between these two popular text editors, Atom and Sublime.

Both Text Editors offer a more familiar code editing experience without an integrated terminal and debugger. It will help you in understanding the core differences between the two to choose from, depending on your development needs.

4. How To Decide The Right Tech Stack For Web/Mobile App

Published: JavaScript in Plain English
Main topics covered: Frontend and backend technologies, web and mobile app tech stack. 

A well-chosen tech stack gives a competitive advantage and helps your mobile or web application grow, whereas the wrong technology can set you back by months. This blog focuses on things you need to know about choosing the right tech stack, and some clues for making smart decisions for the same.

The decision will determine whether your mobile and web application will perform well and be scalable. The blog also involves some useful resources for frontend and backend technologies. A checklist for choosing the tech stack is a must-check.

5. A Practical Checklist for Quickest App Release 

Published: Bits and Pieces
Main topics covered: software development process, app development speed, best practices.

In this blog, we have churned out best practices for ensuring that your software development and deployment takes place within the set timeline. Practical tips like avoiding technical debt and investment in automated tools will help you shorten your SDLC.

These best practices will help you immensely in taking your product to the market faster. Your team will be able to save time, work on more complex tasks and increase their knowledge base. 

6. 5 Alternatives To WordPress that You Should Try  

Published: Dev Genius
Main topics covered: CMS platforms, website development. 

In this blog, we curated CMS platforms that are tried and tested by our team. We have worked on them, so we know where they trump and where they lack. It will be a great piece for you if you are planning to switch your CMS platform or looking for a new platform other than WordPress.

The list will prove to be a huge deciding factor for you to choose the right CMS platform for you according to your business requirements. 

7. 10+ Best UX Practices For Your Ecommerce Store

Published: Muzli
Main topics covered: Ecommerce, UX design, website development.

In this blog, we have covered some best practices that we employ while designing our client ecommerce stores. From optimizing your website’s loading time to streamlining your checkout process, we have mentioned design hacks that will help you improve your website traffic.

All the mentioned practices will get you closer to your growth goals. And since the online marketplace is a crowded one, you can either nail the fundamentals perfectly or do something out of the box.

8. Why should you build a UI Component Library? 

Published: Design + Sketch
Main topics covered: Design system, UI component library, Collaboration, and design tools. 

Building a component library is an optimized way to reduce the overhead that comes with maintaining multiple repositories for multiple components. This blog focused on the benefits, and the practices to build a component library for your design system that will facilitate tighter integration between design and development.

From building and distributing components, documentation, and leveraging the right tools, this piece will help you collaborate with your team smoothly.

9. How to improve your design workflow with Zeplin and Sketch? 

Published: Design + Sketch
Main topics covered: Design system, UI design workflow, web, and app development.

The designers need to transfer their ideas or designs of a digital product for development. Tools, such as Zeplin enable this handover, while also supporting design tools like Sketch. In this article, we guided through how the winning combination of Zeplin and Sketch can improve the transition of design towards development.

This blog will help you identify the similarities between projects more quickly to help plan out how code or designs should be managed.

10. 11 Collaboration Tools for Designers, Developers, and PMs 

Published in: Level Up Coding

Main topics covered: Collaboration tools, Design tools, Productivity tools

We curated a list of tools for all our fellow designers, developers, and project managers to help them find the best-suited one for their team, including the ones that meet your remote collaboration requirements.

Our teams use all the listed tools for smooth collaboration, and many industry experts vouch for them too.

These are some of the most-read pieces of 2020 curated for you. Do read our other blogs here and on our Medium as well. And in case you have some 2021 revamping plans for your online product, we have got a team for you. Just drop us your details here, and we will connect with you. 

Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services. Our digital product experts are creative problem-solvers with a decade of experience in all facets of digital and interactive design and development. We create compelling and human-focused web and mobile experiences delivered through clean, and minimalistic UI.