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A quick guide to developing PWA apps for your business

Perhaps you're wondering what is Progressive Web App (PWA)?There is a lot of buzz around PWA app with assertions that it is the future of web app development. Since its inception in 2015, it has taken the industry by storm because of the relative ease of development and excellent user experience which is equivalent to the native apps.Progressive web applications are reliable, fast and engaging. It takes advantage of the most recent technologies to combine the best of web and mobile applications.  With such a combination, it is possible to create ultra-fast web pages that provide improved user experience, better visitor engagement, and increased conversion rates. You can also explore how mobile applications as an integral part of today’s business model are shaping modern business strategies..PWAs can be saved on desktops just like any native Android or iOS App.  These are specialized, Java-based websites that give mobile users an app-like experience. It loads fast and responds quickly all while using web technologies. PWAs bring significant benefits to businesses like higher conversion rates and customer retention.So, let’s get into the core principles for better understanding: Connectivity or offline supportPoor internet connectivity won’t be the hindrance for launching PWA apps. They solve the slow connection issues and work on all possible scenarios. Regardless of bandwidth and latency, the navigation inside the app is fairly smooth.PerformanceHigh bounce rates are something that scares all business owners. The root cause of high bounce rates is slow page loading time.  As reported by Google, if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of users abandon it and if the time exceeds to 5 seconds, the probability of the bounce increases by 90%.  So, this is where PWAs comes in making it readily available on the user’s device and browser.Rail modelRAIL is mainly an abbreviation for describing key performance metrics. By analyzing human interactions with computer programs a user-centric model RAIL was created. This model can be applied to all user-oriented software programs like websites, desktop applications, mobile applications, and video games.EngagementThe essence of Progressive web applications is that it should have the feel and the capabilities of native apps and needs to be built on the application shell model, with minimal page refreshes. On the desktop, PWAs can be added to docks and taskbar. Also, shortcuts can be added to the desktop.SecureIn a progressive web app, all network requests are intercepted through service workers so, it is imperative that the app is hosted over HTTPS to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.Merits of Progressive Web Apps (PWA)Progressive Web App (PWA) offers a package deal of some lucrative features:•    The size range of PWAs is way too light and can range in KBs which is much lesser than native apps.•    Cost of acquisition is very low as it is easy to convince a user to visit a website than to install an app to get a first time experience.•    Fewer efforts are required to build and release updatesPWA apps can build a strong mobile presence and drive your business in areas of poor internet connection. In the coming years, we are going to witness a massive rise in progressive app development. Mainly the areas like e-commerce, media, and restaurants can reap more profits and attract new customers with the implementation of PWA. 

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5-Step Mailpit Configuration for Offline Email Testing

There are several ways to test and debug SMTP emails. The most common method is to use an online service like Mailtrap or Mailgun. While these tools are incredibly useful, they often come with a cost and require an internet connection, leading to resource constraints, especially with the free tiers.Developers often find themselves sending email notifications frequently to test different functionalities. In the search for efficient and cost-effective solutions, professionals often look for alternatives that could be used offline. Among these are two offline-based software options for testing emails locally: Helo (Paid) and Mailpit (Free | Open Source). Given that Mailpit is free and open-source, it is a go-to tool for many. In this blog, get familiar with how to install and configure Mailpit, making email testing both accessible and efficient.How to Use Mailpit for Offline Email Testing?If you’re wondering how to set up Mailpit, the following steps can help you get started.Step 1 - Download MailpitFollow the install instructions here:GitHub - axllent/mailpit: An email and SMTP testing tool with API for developersFor windows you can check the releases page. There can be multiple variants, namely AMD, ARM and x386. You would need to download the file based on your OS and processor type.AMD/AMD64 - For Intel/AMD processorsARM - ARM processor (mostly found in mobile devices)x386 - 32-bit Intel processorsStep 2 - Install MailpitWhile installing on Linux is easy, there are a few more steps to follow on Windows.Once the zip file is downloaded, extract it to a location as per your choice. The extracted contents will look like this:Step 3 - Add mailpit path to environmentTo add the mailpit path to environment $PATH variable, follow these steps:3.1. Search for env3.2. Click on the control panel item. It will open this window. Then click on the highlighted button. 3.3. You may choose to modify either the user or system variables. Select path and then click on edit according to your selection.3.4. In the newly opened window, click on New and add mailpit installation path like the following.3.5. Click OK → OK → Apply → OK.Step 4 - Using persistent storageAll email data will be lost once mailpit closes. To mitigate this, we can use a sqlite database.Just create a blank file but make sure to keep its extension as .sqliteYou can keep the file anywhere on your system but it is suggested to create the file in the installation folder.Step 5 - Launch MailpitRun the following command in your terminal to launch Mailpit with persistent storage.mailpit -d "" -vReplace  with the actual path to your sqlite DB file. -v is used to enable verbose loggingOnce the mailpit server starts, you can access it via 127.0.0.1:8025.Other customization options can be found in their official documentation.Bonus: Create alias to launch mailpitalias mpit=mailpit -d "C:\\mailpit\\maildb.sqlite" -v $*Wrapping UpThank you for reading! Hopefully, this guide on Mailpit configuration and use for offline email testing has been helpful. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us. We’d love to hear about your experiences with Mailpit or any other tools you use for email testing.Stay connected for more tips and tutorials!Happy coding!

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Angular Vs React Vs Vue, What to choose in 2021

OverviewWhether it is web development or application development, there is a much-debated question that may arise about which javascript framework to use between Angular, React, and Vue. As front-end java frameworks are growing in popularity there is a race to produce more efficient web applications in less time. The most popular ones are what we are getting between angular, react, and Vue. We are not sharing a conclusive statement, but rather a unique approach to making you understand and clarify what's suitable and which one is better according to the requirement. The main questions we are trying to address here are:Which framework serves best for one-page web app development in 2021Core concepts behind each frameworkWhich is best to choose for a scalable application?Performance. speed and the architecture of eachWhat is the learning curve, professionals available for eachPopularity and Scope for the futureLet's address this issue by including different criteria altogether. Even if you are a corporate, this might lead to a clear idea of choosing the right fit for your front-end Jquery framework. Let's start the analysis with the basics. Let's understand the frameworks first-Which front-end framework to choose between Angular Vs React Vs Vue.Framework: A briefExplaining it simply there are 2 components of web development. Front-end development is where users interact and see on the web and the back-end is where the logic and functionality are defined.  Frontend frameworks have gained popularity starting from Jquery 2006 which has made single-page web applications more accessible and easier to code. A javascript framework helps to create modern-day apps in a short period without writing codes from scratch.HistoryIf we talk about the history of different frameworks, angular is the oldest framework which was started in 2009 by google for faster development. From that period it went with countless adjustments and upgrades. If we talk about recent updates, Angular 11.2.5 will be released on 10th March this year. It is a typescript-based framework that is different from Javascript.If we talk about “React” it was created in 2011 by Facebook and became open source in 2013. It was started by Facebook for its usage and is a javascript library for building UI components. React native is a popular javascript framework mainly for creating native apps through React.Among these 3 platforms, Vue is the youngest candidate and has been started by Evan you who has been an Ex-employee of Google in 2014. Though it has not been popular like the other 2 platforms it gained momentum and continuously surpassed the former 2 recently. It became popular because of its attractive UI building capability with fast load timeUsersHere are popular companies using different platforms for their brand. Vue is increasingly popular in China whereas React and Angular are popular in other markets. The trend of 3 popular frameworksHere are the Google trends for 3 popular frameworks over the last 5 years. It shows angular is losing popularity while vue is gaining its hold. React maintained steady growth over the last 5 years. It shows the trends people are attracted towards in each framework eventually over timeApart from that, if we talk about the usage of these 3 types of frameworks, there are different statistics to look for. We extracted the data from the downloads of these 3 popular frameworks. Here are the results shown below-React is making a distance margin compared to the other 2 types of frameworks collectively. which shows the popularity of different platforms. If you look at the stack overflow survey, here are the things we found about all 3 popular frameworks. The results show the most desired framework among developers.For other trend related statistics, you can check GitHub comparison repository to check the popularity metrics in Details.Philosophies and SyntaxAngular offers the most functionalities out of 3 frameworks enabling you to control user interfaces, validate forms, handle user input, test PWA capabilities, and more. Unlike React, Angular provides a complete set of tools to use. Angular uses its official CLI which makes it easier to add dependencies and deploy applications. Since Angular uses real DOM its performance in using progressive web applications is affected. Angular projects will compile typescript code into browser-compatible javascript code. You can write components like this below and angular will take control behind the scenes to project the real DOM.import { Component } from '@angular/core'; @Component ({   selector: 'my-app',   template: `<h1>Hello World</h1>`,})export class AppComponent{}React provides lightweight elements to render real-world DOM and control it effectively. The core functionality of React is to render components and subcomponents into Ui effective rendered pieces. There are a bunch of tools that help to define a bunch of components to be rendered.It also offers third-party packages like react-routers for building SPA’s without rendering browsers.React uses JSX with HTML, Javascript and HTML. just like typescript in angular applications, JSX gets compiled with regular Javascript built into projects. Here are the snippets for hello world to be seen below-import React from "react" function HelloWorld(props) {  return <li>Hello World</li>} export default HelloWorldVue offers more tools than React and fewer tools than Angular. With built-in state management and router. However, it does not feature form validation while it uses virtual DOM for faster bug-free performance. It focuses on building user interfaces to create reusable components. Vue uses normal javascript and helps newcomers to adapt and implement easily. Here you need not to learn anything new from JSX of typescript. Below snippets are the real-world example of hello world is written in VUE-new Vue({  el: '#app',  data: {    message: 'Hello Vue.js!'  }})Technical aspects, which is better in terms of Data Rendering, Processing, Tooling etc.The component and compositionEach of the framework’s Unit of work on components. For angular, we need to set up some modules to bind components with @Ngmodule and @component decorators. For React, we are using React. component and for Vue, we are using Vue. component() to register the components. These 3 platforms use a composition model which contains a bit of information that can be reusedState and mutationBinding data to DOM is handled differently by all these platforms. Angular has the belief that the state should be mutable. It also has affordances for passing services across components and modules, usually keeping that service as a quasi-singleton through dependency injection. A developer can therefore easily write a data-sharing container that will update the relevant components, usually through the service returning Observables and components storing subscriptions to them.Vue uses reactivity systems to notify other parts of the application which helps in giving an edge over performance than other 2 frameworks. Vue can send off updates wherever ever is required like this. The property uses a setter under the hood.React made the notion of immutable state more widespread in the JavaScript ecosystem. If the state is not updated by mutating (e.g., using state.myproperty), instead the component’s setState method is called with the data to updateData passingData passing patterns are simplified with component-based applications where communication is done from parent state to child state vice versa.Angular input and output are defined by the component and are bound in the template where output seems emitted by the child and listened to by parents.Whereas React props pass data as well function which helps them to update the parent state from the child.In Vue, props are transmitted from parent to child and functions can be transmitted back to parents as well.Types and Data validationValidating the type of data within the application helps in development as well as debugging. Javascript is not a type, so passing data through multiple functions might be difficult sometimes.React and Vue this problem with prop type validation. Components and props are defined with a set of props where the library checks with the predefined set of props to pass the data.While in Angular there is no prop validation mechanism. It has leverage over typically written typescripts. Development experience having fixed type input and output is great. however, developing these types of scripts is time-consuming.Styles, templates and toolingFile style and structure differs between Angular, Vue and React. Angular intends towards one folder per module where Typescript manuals and style folders live. Templates and styles can be written inline and it is the best practices for a large single web page application.In React, due to the inseparable nature of logic and JSX templates, there is just the question of styles. There are multiple answers: handle styles separately, use webpack to extract your import ‘my.css' statements into a stylesheet or use CSS-in-JS libraries.Vue is called a “progressive framework’ depending on the size of the application being developed. Vue also offers a package and CLI that integrates with tools like webpack. The preferred way through which the component is written is to write a single file component with a script and style tag. Vue loader compiles the template into javascript along with the script section and extracts the contents of the style tag into the stylesheet that is built over time. For small projects, Vue has nicer ergonomics while for large scale projects Angular has a structural edge. React comes in between these two.Testing and Server side renderingTesting in angular is done with typescript components and classes. To test the complete logic it would require a full-scale DOM environment to test. In React and Vue template logic test is possible to use enzyme and Vue test utils, due to its use of Virtual DOM and rendering function. This ability to render without a full DOM environment is also useful for server-side rendering of the javascript framework. Vue has a Vue server renderer package and React has React DOM serverDetailed Performance ComparisonWe compared overall performance by taking care of different aspectsSize of the applicationSpeed of DevelopmentSpeed of functioning and real-world performanceScalabilityDesign flexibilityLearning curveCommunity scopeSize of application as well as frameworkSize of framework matters while developing a real-world application. Because the size of the framework also impacts in creating a low-sized application and helps in faster loading speed and lower rendering time. In the case of the Size of the framework is directly proportional to the performance of it. Angular and VUE have installation packages of 143KB and 151KB respectively while the installation package of Vue is 100KB which is the lightest among all. If you want to go for a lightweight application it’s advised to go for a smaller framework.This does not mean that ideally, it will not accommodate larger applications, VUE has a track record of building a framework for large web applications like Alibaba, Gitlab, etcReal-world performance When it comes to rendering performances, VUE Js is the fastest among all. Due to its small size, it outperforms all the existing ones like React and Angular. An experiment by “Stefenkrause” shows the rendering comparison between all 3 frameworks. With a demo set of the application with 1 to 100 rows of data, VUE renders at 488.7 Milliseconds while Angular has taken around 543 milliseconds to perform it. From Benchmarking report of “StefenKrause” Vue is outperforming all existing frameworks in terms of speed and performance.Learning curve and Speed of developmentCompared with Angular and React, Vue has an easy learning curve and development is faster. Many companies are switching to Vue because it's easier to learn and faster to code than others. Developing Angular and React requires good javascript knowledge and you need to make a lot of decisions regarding third-party libraries. In the case of large-scale applications, it might be an issue for VUE to built it to build, test, debugging because of the building of it in an old-fashioned javascript way.Angular shows error messages clearly to solve and resolve them faster. In the case of React development, it is somehow faster than Angular because of its low code development.Design flexibilityOut of all these 3 frameworks, Vue Js is the most flexible to design. The library should not dictate how it should be used in the case of Vue. Unlike Angular, VueJS does not force you to use modules or define a controller: instead, one just creates a VueJS object that is configured with the data and methods needed in the templateUsing an opinionated framework can be both advantageous and disadvantageous: it may save developers time by already having something that made design choices for them, or it can become a hurdle as the framework “locks” developers into doing things a specific way.Community scopeSince Angular is supported by Google and React is Supported by Facebook, the growth of these platforms in both of these frameworks, updates are done frequently and maintained well. Upgrades and Migration are not an issue for these frameworks. There is an announcement every 6 months for a Major Update.In the case of Vue. js community is smaller compared to the above 2 as this is quite new in the segment while migration is not a problem in the case of vue.js. React is more flexible than Angular, because Angular is a full framework, and React is an independent full-scale library with well-maintained modules. Here are the community and contributor statistics for all 3 channels. Since Angular is supported by Google and React is supported by Facebook, there is no doubt regarding it.Complete performance analysis tableSummaryAfter analyzing all of the things above there are some clear things listed and it is sufficient enough to decide which would be best for your company. Still there are some suggestions you could imply for quick decision making in simple termsChoose AngularFor complex projectsYou need reliability and scalabilityWhen you have a skilled Angular developer and have time to adapt to changes and learn the typescriptChoose ReactNot too complex front endThe project had a lot of reusable contentPerformance and scalability are critical with tight deadlinesChoose VueThe scope of the project is on the smaller sideNeed High performanceUnskilled frontend developer with Javascript frameworkNot much time to learn new things