Some Trade Tools for Design, Development, QA and Dev Ops

Whimsical

A rapid wire-frame  and flow chart. It allows for collaboration.
If  you and your friends can work with up to 4 diagrams, then its free.

Sketch + Craft Plugin

Sketch allows you to design websites, iOS and Android interfaces easily.

Craft, a plugin made by InVision, provide some useful features to Sketch, such as:

  • Collaboration in real time
  • Allow to build prototypes based on design files
  • Allow for the synchronization of your design environment
  • Allows to load real data to your design
  • Its cloud enabled for sharing design assets
  • Allow for the clone of design elements.

Invision + Zeplin

Invision is another design platform, as well as the creators of the Craft plugin for Sketch.
It allows to design, document, and prototype websites, iOS, Android and more.
You need to use an email account in order to start the free version.

The Zeplin plugin provide accurate specs, assets and even code snippets made from the designs.
In our case, we are using the Zeplin plugin for Sketch.
It allows to export designs into Sketch, Adobe Photoshop CC, Figma and Sketch.
It provides extensions, some which you can even create yourself.
Create component libraries, do checklist to build every component, and tag people if needed.
If you are only working on one project at a time, you can do it by free by creating an account.

Framer

Note: Framer is for Mac OS only; however, they promise to bring a client version for Windows soon.

Framer allows you to design with code by using React. It provides a transitional and responding layout.

Adaptive layouts, design toolkit with logos and icons libraries, reusable and iterative components, video players, in-app icons and UI elements, and more powered by React.

Apiary

Apiary is an Oracle tool which allows you to design an API without requiring to write code. Then, you can share the designed API.
It allows for the use of Markdown, tests using mock servers, validation proxies and much more. Plus, it gives you code examples in different languages.
If you are a Command Line guy, there is a Apiary CLI Gem available.

Here is a Oracle session showing the best practices using this tool:

CircleCI

CircleCI is a continuous integration software. It will allow your teams to focus on working in incremental “stories”, each story is a code that will be merged incrementally into your shared repository software. The software can be setup to automate tests, deploys and much more. CircleCI is the equivalent of Jenkins or GitLab CI.

TestRail

TestRail is a test case management software which allows you to manage, design and run your test cases. It provide an insight of your testing progress; as well as to allow you to track issues and perform automation tests with your CI systems. It works with JIRA, Visual Studio,  Bugzilla, and up to 33 tools out there.

Here is a video example which shows how to add a test plan in TestRail:

FastLane

FastLane is a Continuous Delivery tool which allows you automate the building and release mobile apps. It is Open Source and design for the Android and iOS deployment.

With FastLane, there is no need to take screenshots, spend hours in code signing, figure out how to distribute beta builds, and such. This software is supposed to take care of all that.

Here is a video explanation made by Feliz Krause in MCE3 about deploying an iOS app in the App Store using FastLane:

Firebase Analytics

Firebase is a Google product. It provides all types of analysis data for web apps, mobile apps, Unity apps and more. It comes with multiple features such as authentication, database, cloud, hosting, analytics, remote config, performance monitoring and more. Below is a playlist of one of the features, Google Analytics for Firebase

One of the interesting things about Firebase is that includes Crashlytics. Crashlytics is a tool that allow you to keep track of the crashes in your apps and was made by Fabric.io. Google decided to ditch their own crash analytics tool and provide Crashlytics instead.

Its my understanding that Fabric was purchased by Google, so there is a whole promotion to move from Crashlytics to Firebase since Crashlytics seems to be included in Firebase. There is Crashlytics for iOS and Crashlytics for Android. By the time I am writing this post, I haven’t yet made the transition from Crashlytics to Firebase since I have to sit down and read all the policies, licenses and user agreements. I will try to keep you updated.

 

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GIMP: Interview: Jobs: Banners

Since some of the jobs I am applying, require that I know ASP.NET and C#, I have decided to build a website.
I installed successfully ASP.NET with C# on my Mac OSX.

The following are some banners showing the products I made, help to make, and/or maintained, the technologies I used, plus the companies I worked for:
Jog101-BannerRaymond-BannerCupid-4-Stupid-Banner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made them using GIMP since I do not have another graphic editor available at the moment.
I would say that GIMP provides quite a different and unique user interface.
While the user interface is not intuitive, this is the best open source software available for image editing I know so far.

 

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Pottery at Roberson Museum

11Few weeks ago, my cellphone started ringing. My friend Carola Mayer was calling me to let me know that there was a course of pottery at the Roberson Museum. We talked about it and we both decided to assist the same class. This class is twelve week class in which you go one day a week; however, if you wish to practice you can go in other days.  Our instructor is Daniele Vick who is a very nice person and gifted in helping others to work on their creations. For members, the class cost 284 U$S and for non-members it cost 334 U$S. After Carola and me talked for a while, we agree that it would be a good idea to become members as a way to help the museum costing us 40 U$S extra.

Creating the pieces of pottery requires to build a good technique. There are different steps such as centering the clay and reinforce it in hopes that the piece will not crack when put into the furnace. Later on, we are going to be able to pain them and a coat will be applied giving a glossing look. Below are the images of the different pieces I am creating as I go.

The end production of these projects are at the bottom of this gallery:

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Souls of War Graphic Design

Me and my friends are developing a video game for the iPhone and Android.
The following are some images I have being working on:

 

Souls of War ™ – Alejandro G. Carlstein Ramos Mejia
War’s Souls ™ – Alejandro G. Carlstein Ramos Mejia
Souls of War © – Alejandro G. Carlstein Ramos Mejia
War’s Souls © – Alejandro G. Carlstein Ramos Mejia

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