Re-thinking the note-taking experience on the web

Particle Shift — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 11:10:48 +0000

My next product is a tool that provides a better note-taking experience on the web. This is a personal problem I’ve always wanted to solve because like most people, I do a huge chunk of my work in the browser.

However, I typically have to write down companion notes to better understand infromation and to quickly catch up on forgotten bits. This is something I believe can be done better and in a significantly more productive way.

This is where this new tool comes in, it’ll be taking that metaphor to the web where we can leverage the open, interactive and dynamic nature of the web to deliver a rich note-taking experience that is also contextually aware (à la Look Up in Mac OS or even Grammarly).

I’m excited about the future and will be sharing more progress soon. Follow my socials for updates and register here for the private beta which begins from 12th July 2021.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParticleShift

Effortlessly create splash screens for your Android and iOS apps

Particle Shift — Sun, 30 May 2021 16:02:10 +0000

A splash screen (or launch screen), like the name suggests, is the first screen that your app shows to a user. It is usually created with a logo and a short description of the app and provides an opportunity to make a great first impression, provide branding, or even just hide the loading process.

In this 3-step tutorial, you will learn how to create splash screens for Android and iOS apps and how the Splash Easy Figma plugin can make this process easier.

1. Create a splash screen image

The first step is to design a splash screen. We can do this using several apps, but we’re going to go with Figma (it’s free and works in the browser).

Sign into Figma and create a new design file.

Create a new design file in Figma

Now, both Android and iOS guidelines require you to create splash screens of different sizes to support the various device sizes and screen orientations. Click here for Android dimensions and here for iOS dimensions.

We’ll use Figma’s frame tool to create the splash screen design in different sizes.

Use the frame tool to create your splash screen designs

Click anywhere on the canvas to add a square frame and use the Frame Settings (on the right hand panel) to adjust the frame’s size to match platform guidelines.

Adjusting frame sizes: W(width) x H(height)

You can then add your design to the newly created frame.

Designing the splash screen

Duplicate your design and adjust for different screen sizes depending on the platform. In the end, you’ll have something like this:

The final output for different Android screen sizes & orientations 😅

Click on the export button at the bottom right section of the design panel to get your sweet PNGs.

You can make this process shorter using the Splash Easy Figma plugin. More details at the end of this tutorial.

2. Import the splash screen into your IDE

Android

Rename all the splash screen files you exported from Figma as splash.png and copy the different sizes into their respective drawable folders under: src/main/res/drawable as: /drawable-land-hdpi, /drawable-land-mdpi, /drawable/land-xxhdpi e.t.c

We’re then going to override android:windowBackground in our app’s theme. To do that, update your *styles.xml *file (src/main/res/values/styles.xml) with the snippet in bold below:

<?*xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

*<resources>

<style name="AppTheme.NoActionBarLaunch" parent="AppTheme.NoActionBar">

    <item name="android:background">@drawable/splash</item>

</style>

</resources>

iOS

In Xcode, right-click on the Assets.xcassets (or Image.xcassets) file and choose New Image Set.** **Create the respective splash screen designs: @1x, @2x, @3x and add them by placing them into the slots for 1x, 2x, 3x. Name the new image Splash.

Create a new splash screen in Xcode

Right-click your project, select New File and choose Launch Screen from the template picker.

Choose Launch Screen

In your project and under the General tab > App Icon and Launch Images > **Launch Screen File **select Launch Screen.storyboard, the file we just created above.

Select Launch Screen

Select Image View from the Library menu and drop the it in the View Controller Sceneand set it to full screen.

Select Image View from the Library menu.

Under the Attributes Inspector for the new Image View select Splash, that’s the new image set we just imported into Xcode.

And you’re done 👏.

Splash Easy:

It can be tiring and time consuming to manually design splash-screens of different sizes for your mobile apps, more so when you’re just iterating through design ideas. Splash Easy can make this process easy for you using Figma.

DEV Community: Particle Shift