Forem: Franco Scarpa

“Am I Responsive?” - Super fast RWD test

Franco Scarpa — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 23:05:06 +0000

While you develop a website, you could be interested in how it looks on small and big screens. To do a quick test, I encourage you to try Am I Responsive? The cool thing about this tool is that it works even on localhost. Here you are a quick example of the outcome it provides. Of course, you can also navigate the tested website from the devices you see on the top:

I hope you test this tool! Enjoy it during your Web development time! 😊

How Grammarly Changed My Life As a Blogger

Franco Scarpa — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 11:45:29 +0000

English is the language Internet uses to speak. As of November 11, 2020, the estimated percentage of the top ten million websites using English was a tremendous 60.3%. Russian, the second most used language, settled at a humble 8.6%. As of March 31, 2020, English won the “Internet users by language” contest, too, with an evident 25.9%. The silver medal went to the Chinese language, with 19.4%. As of June 2020, Wikipedia’s pages were viewed 9,600,000,000 times using the English language, and only 1,400,000,000 times using Japanese, its biggest competitor. English wins hands-down.

If you publish stuff on the Internet, the statistics prove that you should choose English as your content language to guarantee the most massive audience possible. That’s why I’ve adopted it for my presence online, even if my native language is a different one.

Impression Matters

I find it difficult to rely on text poorly written, both on the content and grammar side. Of course, typical grammar errors occur. My own website indeed show mistakes. However, I tend to change the source when I find myself reading something with severe and visible lacks. An accurate and reliable resource suggests its author was so focused on its success and usefulness that he checked it more than once. This is why I recommend people experiencing problems with the English language to ask for help. In my case, I relied on a valuable instrument, Grammarly, a digital writing assistance tool based on artificial intelligence and natural language processing. It helps you write better English, and it comes in various forms, such as an online text editor:

This article is not meant to be a Grammarly tutorial. I’ve been a Grammarly user for some time now, and I just want to explain how this tool changed my life as a blogger. The only thing I clarify is that Grammarly comes with a free, a premium, and a business license:

I decided to try the Premium one two years ago, and now I can say I’m not going to go back.

Set Your Goals

Before starting writing, Grammarly lets you select your text’s audience, formality, domain, tone, and intent. These are called “goals,” and they make Grammarly able to suggest the best tips for you and for what you’re going to write. Grammarly will give you tailored writing suggestions based on them. Setting these parameters is good practice, and I always start like that. Spending some seconds on this phase has helped me start thinking more carefully about what audience I want my articles to be relevant to. This way, I can plan how knowledgeable my readers need to be to understand the content, and I can choose the right words to use.

Correctness Check

After setting your goals, the thing Grammarly does for you out-of-the-box is a complete check of your text about different arguments. The tool continually analyzes what you write and provides many useful tips to fix errors and make the sentences more fluent. The suggestions regard mistakes, improvements, and consistency issues. For example, if you mix the " and ” characters, or the ' and ’ ones (for apostrophes or quotation marks), Grammarly detects the discrepancy. This way, you can fix all the wrong occurrences:

Unity is something I pay attention to while reading. It contributes to giving a sense of elegance and authority to the text.

Synonyms

Grammarly implements a feature that suggests an appropriate replacement when you use the same word too often. This not only makes the text more professional, authoritative, and creative, but it also helps you in making your vocabulary broader and more prosperous. This is probably the feature I love the most, and Grammarly implements it in such a simple way. You just double click over a word, then a popup appears with equivalents arranged by meaning:

Viewing different appropriate words for a context helps you choose the perfect one that suits your needs.

Not Just Blogging

Grammarly doesn’t limit to a text editor. The cool thing about this tool is that it integrates everywhere you can write. Do you write a Facebook post? Grammarly integrates with it. Do you comment on an article on DEV? Grammarly is there, waiting for you. Everywhere there’s a text area for the user to write, Grammarly follows him like a loyal dog:

Think To Your Business

After I tried the free version of Grammarly, I decided I wanted more. What I was looking for was a grammar, fluency, and readability check, and this tool provides all of them. The way I look at Grammarly is like a tool that supervises my content and helps me to make it more professional, accurate, and reliable. These are all fundamental factors when you plan to put serious effort into your blogging experience. I’m a firm believer that professionality is crucial to determine the success of something. Content is the king, but the presentation is the queen.

Think of your blog not as a personal diary but rather as your home on the Web, a place that identifies you and qualifies you. Think of your presence online not as a fun experience but rather as a business. Think of Grammarly not as a passing fancy, but rather as an investment. Don’t look at it like something whose goal is just to make your articles look nicer (I wouldn’t encourage you to spend money on something like that). Think of it as something that makes your content more professional. It’s an instrument that can help you establish your presence on the Internet, together with a mass of other great, valuable people. Your website could be the mean by which human resources specialists find you, too. You want to greet them appropriately on a website lacking errors.

The Impostor Syndrom

If you’re like me, you could suffer the impostor syndrome. Using a tool like that could have the negative side effect of thinking you’re kind of cheating. Well, you’re not. Suppose somebody lives in a house with a beautiful façade. It doesn’t mean the person who lives inside that house knows about the construction, materials, or painting industries. Probably that person paid someone else to do the work. This doesn’t make you think that person is “cheating.” You just consider ad cherish the effort that person put into obtaining that specific goal. I’m sure that person only receives congratulations for that lovely façade.

I’m not saying you don’t need to know English. You have to know it. I’m just telling you that it’s fair to adopt something that can help you in the process of looking better. Instead, people should congratulate you for the effort you put into trying to get to that result, especially if English is not your native language. The fundamental lesson to learn is that you’ll find yourself improving your English skills simultaneously.

Conclusions

I highly suggest the use of Grammarly by non-English bloggers. Keep in mind that you can choose between the Free and the Premium plans, but I’m willing to spend $139.95 per year for the pro functionalities this tool provides. I understand this is not an affordable price for everyone; if that’s the case, enjoy the free version, it’s still precious. Think of this instrument as something that makes you a better English writer and helps you develop your business. Integrate it in your workflow: start with a draft of the text in your native language, then translate it into English with Grammarly. The tool will follow you like a shadow, ready to give you valuable tips and tricks to make the most out of your idea.

How do you cross-post articles from your blog to DEV?

Franco Scarpa — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 13:58:07 +0000

I’m a big fan of POSSE. I love the idea of owning your content, saving it in your private place on the Web, and share it anywhere. I already cross-posted some articles from my website to DEV, but every time I had to arrange the text to let it fits DEV’s context. To give you an example, on my website, I can write “This website uses…”, but when I copy the article on DEV, I need to change the sentence to “My website uses…”. Do you apply some best practices during writing when you plan to cross-post your articles?

Do you make money online?

Franco Scarpa — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 18:39:45 +0000

This question is not meant to be off-topic. I am a software developer, not a person who crashed into this platform to steal your secrets of how you make money online. I know the only way to do it is by working hard and getting involved. Rather, I would like to know what tools you can make money with, be it through your blog, selling software, courses, books, making YouTube videos, etc. I’m looking for a way to obtain income parallel to those of my work. Being part of this platform, I thought I could ask people who have the same passion as me: code. I thank anyone who answers!

How do you deal with a11y?

Franco Scarpa — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 12:01:54 +0000

One thing I’ve always found difficult when developing my website was the color choice. I both love personal branding and make a website accessible to everyone. However, these two elements are in clear contrast between them. I find it impossible to make a website accessible while using the colors you love the most. So far, I’ve dealt with accessibility by choosing a color palette that ensured adequate contrast, by I’ve never liked it really much. Now I decided to use my favorite colors, which don’t respect a11y perfectly. The solution I plan to use consists of a button to provide a high contrast version of my website, as you can find on many other websites. However, I’d like to hear from you: how do you deal with color a11y on your website?

I Use Netlify’s Continuous Deployment, and You Should Do the Same

Franco Scarpa — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 20:27:07 +0000

As I wrote some days ago in a post, my website now uses Netlify’s continuous deployment.

When I first started using Netlify to host my website, francoscarpa.com, I saw different methods to upload the static files that made it up. The first way was the classic drag and drop. I could move files to Netlify’s website and get a published website in seconds. It was my original approach.

Then, Netlify CLI reached my ears. I integrated Netlify with the terminal of my MacBook Pro. This way, I could use simple commands launched from my machine without relying on the Web service to publish the website. I thought this method could be my default one, but then version control entered the scene.

Since I started working for my actual company, I have been using both Git and Team Foundation Version Control as the version control systems. I already knew the importance of VCSs before then, but I never had the chance nor the reason to use them in real life before. Netlify’s integration with GitHub encouraged me to integrate version control in my projects, too.

I created a GitHub repository to hold all of my website’s source code, including the package.json file, which is mandatory to let Netlify know which dependencies your project has. Then, I configured Netlify to link my website to that repository so that every time I push changes to GitHub, Netlify runs a build on that code and publish the resulting outcome on the fly. You need to specify which build command Netlify needs to run to start the compilation process. In my case, it’s npx @11ty/eleventy since I use the Eleventy static site generator.

This modus operandi has two benefits:

I make changes locally and push them to a remote repository, so I always have a backup copy of my project securely stored online.
I don’t have to run a second command to compile the source code locally and publish it to Netlify since Netlify itself does the work for me.

Here you can see the latest deploys I made so far, while here and here, I show you the settings I use for the build process. I highly recommend you to configure Netlify to use continuous deployment since it’s a great way not only to speed up your workflow but also to have a backup copy of your precious source code.

Best way to deal with lots of images on a webpage?

Franco Scarpa — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 20:01:58 +0000

On my website francoscarpa.com, I publish photos of my private life among other stuff. Since I’m so involved about performance and UX, I’d like to know from you what’s the best way to serve these photos. To give you an example of what I’m trying to accomplish, here’s an example of Web page where I put some photos. I know about all the HTML topics like sizes, srcset and picture, but it would be impossible to replicate the code to serve the right image for all of my images. It would be perfect if there was something that could serve the perfect image for the user “at runtime”. How would you deal with this issue?

Are you proud of your personal website? How would you like to improve it?

Franco Scarpa — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 11:14:07 +0000

What do you put on your website?

Franco Scarpa — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 19:55:54 +0000

I love my personal website, and I’m sure you love yours. My biggest goal would be to leave social networks and silos in favor of owning my content. I want to make my website my home on the Web, a place where people (even those without social network accounts) can find me. At this point, a question bother me: what do you think should be put on a personal website? Can professional content be put side by side with stuff about personal and private life? Would a website entirely focused on professional content be more “respectable” than one that stores everything about someone? Do you think a website should be focused just on one of those topics? Do you think someone should limit the details about his/her private life? I’d really like to get feedback from you!

How do you make your code maintainable?

Franco Scarpa — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 17:51:52 +0000

Do you suggest using TDD? Why? What’s your experience with it?

Franco Scarpa — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 09:46:19 +0000

Is your Linux distro fully compatible with your PC?

Franco Scarpa — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 13:27:40 +0000

I’m a big fan of Linux. I love its philosophy. I love the ecosystem around it and all the distros built of top of it. I first dealt with it when I installed Ubuntu on my family PC, many years ago. It was great and I loved the idea of having an alternative to Windows.

What makes me doubt about using a Linux distro now is the fact that I feel like it’ll never be 100% compatible with my PC speaking about drivers and the integration between hardware and software. To give you an example, once I installed Ubuntu on my old HP Pavilion dv6-6178sl. All was working fine, except some keyboard buttons, for example those for setting the display brightness. They just didn’t work.

Moreover, I know that the Linux kernel “already contains the drivers for most of the hardware components inside of it”, or something like that. But no hardware manufacturer says their hardware components are 100% Linux compatible. For example, you can read this on the FAQ section of the Samsung website about their SSDs’ compatibility with Linux:

What does it mean “lack of optimization”?

Can you please give me some feedback about your experience with Linux both on the driver side and the integration between hardware and software side?