Month: April 2021

Digital services are game-changers that came and redefined business as we know it. Netflix came to redefine the entertainment industry with streaming services; Uber is a huge innovator in transportation, and Airbnb established new ways to find accommodation while traveling. Technology is growing in ways we have imagined. It doesn’t matter what type of business you are doing; companies must go digital to keep thriving.

Implementing a digital transformation at your company requires substantial effort from every department within the company. Of course, it can get overwhelming. So, we have prepared a list of terms that will help you to understand essential concepts related to digital transformation and start planning the next steps for your company.

Websites: A collection of web content organized in pages and is identified by a domain name and hosted on a web server. Websites are dedicated to a particular purpose like business, education, commerce, social networking, and entertainment.

The use of websites helps businesses acquire new customers, improve communication with key stakeholders, or sell goods and services. To make this possible you must create valuable web content for your audience. Valuable content comes in the form of direct and informative videos, blog posts, images, and much more.

Web Content: Everything that lives on your website including images, documents, data, audio, video, files, and more. These resources can be used dynamically across your pages in a presentation layer where your data is transformed into graphs, tables, and other formats. The content is part of the experience a user has with your website while using Hypertext to link to related articles to secure the interest of your audience.

Content Management Systems (CMS): Applications used to manage web content. Authors and contributors can create, edit, and publish content, which is stored in a database and later displayed in a presentation layer. A CMS is easy to use. They allow non-technical people to create and manage content without programming knowledge.

Portal: A robustly designed website that integrates systems and tools from various sources. Each section of the portal is designed to display a piece of information, these are known as portlets. One main function of a portal is that each user can configure the portlets to display dashboards or other relevant information needed to fulfill their role in the company.

Intranet: It is a private portal restricted to the employees of an organization, it can also be accessed by customers, suppliers, or other approved individuals. An intranet is used by organizations to improve internal communication among the employees and acts as the main channel for a digital company’s workspace. Employees may find helpful resources needed to satisfy their roles in the company such as policies, procedures, manuals, or HR-related documentation.

E-commerce: The use of the internet to sell or buy goods and services through a digital platform or app. Money and data are transferred to execute these transactions. It has enabled companies to scale sales in a way that was not possible with traditional offline retail. Nowadays, e-commerce has been positioned as a quality standard to reach more customers and offer another choice to engage with them.

Internet of Things (IoT): It is a network formed by physical objects that integrate technologies to exchange data with other services and systems over the internet. There are multiple applications in transportation, building, home automation, wearable technology, communications, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, and much more.

Information Architecture (IA): A house needs a good architect to build the foundation to support the structure properly. The same is applied to Information Technology. Information Architects design the structure of the information for complex environments such as library systems and databases used for better navigation through a site, find content easily, and create effective knowledge bases. IA turns a product competitive because the design helps users to perform tasks with the least effort possible while creating products with pleasant user experiences.

User interface (UI): The way a user interacts with an application or a website. Users can access a website or application with their computer or mobile device. Everything they see, click, or listen to inside the software is part of the interface the user interacts with.

User experience (UX): The valuable aspects of the user interface and how the user feels about using the website or application. In other words, UX is the perception of the user in terms of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. The experience must adapt dynamically over time due to changes in the usage of the system.

User-Centered Design (UCD): A design process where the user’s needs are taken into consideration during each phase of the design. The process includes investigation methods like surveys, interviews, and brainstorming, to collect and understand user needs.

The result of this process is the definition of the structured user experience for the product.

Accessibility: Digital solutions must take into consideration the user as the center of the design. In the end, it is the user who uses the solution. Accessibility is a standard for web development that allows any user to interact properly with a website, portal, or digital tool. There might be users with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities. There might be other situational limitations such as mobile devices, bad internet connections, or a generational gap amongst the employees that use the technology. In any of these cases, accessibility makes it possible to deliver a digital solution to a broader audience.

Self-service: Activities where the user performs actions without the help or aid of company staff. In other words, a Company offers tools and information to the users so they can solve basic problems or requests and thus can have a better experience with the product or service. A self-service portal helps you reduce customer service costs, offer 24-hour customer support, reduce the number of support tickets, leverage personalized information, grow social engagement, and enhance customer acquisition.

Digital Transformation (DT/DX): The process of replacing non-digital procedures or older technology with newer technology, and most importantly, a digital mindset. Services or Businesses are reengineered with a digital-first process approach that enables the company to be more efficient, innovative, and creative.

Digital transformation allows a business to adapt to the changing market requirements in terms of improving processes, culture, and customer experience.

Digital Experience Platform (DXP): Gartner describes a Digital Experience Platform as “an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized digital experiences.” A DXP is the enterprise solution to make your portal a reality. This software allows Digital Transformation to happen and provides a better user experience.

This glossary can help you with a quick exploration of the topic of digital transformation. Factors like the size of the company, the type of industry, or the user experience intended to implement can make your project more complex. We want to help you succeed in your digital transformation.  

What Is PHP?

Now we come to the subject in question! You won’t choose PHP as your programming language if you don’t have a deep knowledge of it! Therefore, we give you a glimpse of it.

PHP is an acronym Hypertext Preprocessor. It was formerly known as the Personal Homepage. PHP was commonly used as an open-source scripting programming language for developing dynamic and static web applications. One important thing to note about PHP is that one can embed it into HTML code.

WHAT DOES PHP SIGNIFY?

PHP stands for Personal Home Page, but currently, it represents the recursive backronym PHP known as Hypertext Preprocessor. The code of PHP may be rooted in HTML code. Otherwise, it may also be utilized in amalgamation with a variety of web template schemes, web frameworks, as well as web content management schemes.

Here’s an example of PHP syntax

<? PHP

echo ‘Hello World’;

?>

Also, a file of PHP can contain a client-side set of programming rules like JavaScript and tags like HTML.

• XML and JavaScript give more improved topics like web services and interactive applications that you will need.
• DBMS (Database management schemes) for database-operated applications.
• HTML is a supplementary advantage when gaining the knowledge of PHP language. Furthermore, you can learn PHP even with no HTML knowledge. On the other hand, it is recommended that you at least know the primary aspect of HTML.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE AND SCRIPTING LANGUAGE?

The programming language has the entire features required to set up complete applications, while scripting language is mostly utilized for routine tasks.

The code of a programming language ought to be merged up before it can be carried out. In the scripting language, the code is typically carried out without compiling.

Programming language does not require to be rotted into other languages. On the other hand, a scripting language is typically rooted in the environments of the software.

Why Is PHP A Better Option For Web Development?

The high rate at which technology is growing calls for quick action. Different techniques of creating a site arise with this rate of technological growth. Great WordPress is showing limitations as well as restrictions. When you aim to build your professional website, you need to consider speed, security, and layout. Owing to that, you need PHP that has all these metrics. Many reviews and research on PHP proved that they got enough comfort from working on it. Some programming languages in the market are complicated.

Here are reasons why you should choose PHP in Web Development

No licensing fees:

PHP is an open-source programming language. You will have easy access to it without unnecessary charges. You can utilize it here and now. And you can control the code as you like.

Clarity and Organization:

PHP is well organized and clear. It is a user-friendly language and the choice of all simplicity. A novice can understand it properly and command its functions.

PHP is just like the C Programming language:

It is easy for those who know the C language to code PHP.

Easy Database Connection:

If you are in e-commerce websites, you will know the importance of a strong database management system, DBMS. Fortunately, PHP possesses an internal module. Owing to that, the whole procedure goes very fast.

Short time-space processing:

PHP can manage time to give you the good result you require. Using a good database management system, you can develop your website speedily.

Performance speed is high:

The PHP Script can execute its duty in a faster mode. This is not so with other traditional programming languages. PHP is designed with high memory management, which optimizes its performance. Additionally, there is the presence of a third-party accelerator which enhances additional functioning.

PHP is effective and efficient:

Use PHP today if you desire to build your web with a programming language that is efficient and real. You will get it better and fast.

PHP is a strong programming language:

Many of the former programming languages give room to security threats. However, PHP is not vulnerable to security threats as it has in-built security features. You can capitalize on that to protect your website.

What Are The Benefits Of Using PHP?

• The most important benefit of integrating PHP in your website development is that it can interact with numerous and diverse database languages, such as MySQL.
• You will have quality support when you are developing your site. PHP is a very simple language to support even a beginner.
• The open-source enables a user to make use of any text editor during coding.
• The coding will be easy and simple, so you will not stress a lot.
• It features a huge community document.
• PHP is flexible, and you can integrate with XML, HTML, JavaScript, and others.
• If you seek to run multiple operations like UNIX, macOS, Windows, and Linux, it is compatible.
• If you use devices like mobiles, laptops, and tablets, even desktop computers, PHP will run on all of them. It is versatile.
• A lot of web hosting servers enable PHP by default compared to other languages like ASP that require IIS. For this reason, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a cost-effective option.
• It is regularly kept up to date to maintain a track with the most current technology inventions.

What Advantages Does PHP Have Over Other Programming Languages?

Answering this question is not easy! When we compare programming languages, we do so by matching them to things like common purposes and similar features. So PHP is approximately 90% of the website. And it’s by far more popular used than others. It is made with in-built support, and it is easier, to begin with. You can just download or install it. Others are not so, and they are very costly to host. You can host it everywhere, and maintenance is easy.

Furthermore, PHP features in-built support for operating hand in hand in collaboration with MySQL. It does not make PHP unable for you to use it with other DBMS (database management systems). Still, you can make use of PHP with:

• ODBC
• MS SQL Server
• Oracle
• Postgres, etc.

In line with the special attributes of PHP that others don’t have, PHP is cross-platform. It implies that you can set up your application on an integer of diverse operating systems like macOS, Linux, Windows, etc.

Keyboards are, of course, hardware.

But could keyboards also be more of a software application development consideration than previously thought?

It also of course goes without saying that keyboards are the central Human-Computer-Interaction interface through which programmers will construct and build code — but there is a point of debate to be made.

Touch-based computing has grown increasingly popular thanks to tablets, laptops, and even some desktop machines, but so-called “productivity workers” still value the use of the keyboard.

Devices like the Kensington KeyFolio and KeyCover range or the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad have come about in what could perhaps be called the second wave of tablet development.

The arrival of these keyboards has implications: users are now really capable of leaving the house all day without their laptop and relying on a tablet (and perhaps a smartphone too).

The implication for developers is the interesting part.

Surely now, given the popularity of these keyboards, programmers need to think more directly about the opportunity for key-based input rather than the slightly less convenient on-screen keyboards that tablet devices offer.

The Kensington product is (arguably) capable of actually transforming an iPad mini into a small computer, rather than what could be a large smartphone.

The Logitech product is almost ubiquitous at any technology conference these days, at least among the vendor community attendees if not the users themselves — and that should say something for its usefulness.

So excuse us for focusing on hardware in what is essentially a software analysis column, but we need to bring these thoughts forward and pose the question: isn’t it time that the software industry was more keyboard conscious?