Top 5 Software Development Trends of 2016

The world of technology is a distinct world governed by the concepts of "what's hot" and "what's not" – in terms of device usage. The end user calls the shots, preferences are constantly evolving and electronic devices are changing at ground-breaking speeds.

The move from the traditional desktop to the highly-versatile world of mobility is gaining in popularity. Users are becoming more demanding. Their attention span is dwindling, their desire for instant gratification is growing at an immense pace, and features and functionality are the "be-all and end-all" of this ever-expanding world of programs, gadgets, and gizmos.

If you're engaging or specialising in software development, it's critical to be up to date with the top trends in the software industry. Here we explore the top 5 software development trends that have emerged in 2016.

#1 Java and C++ is Declining in Popularity

One of the most noticeable software development trends is the decline of Java and C++ as programming languages. Naturally, this decline does not necessarily mean that these two programming languages will be obsolete anytime soon. It simply indicates that custom software developers are electing to use newer programming languages more abundantly and have chosen to eliminate the strong use of Java and C++.

To date, there are still a large amount of jobs available for those that have experience in these two languages. Upon closer examination of these positions, you will see that those jobs lean more towards maintenance and support and less towards software development processes, such as programming.

#2 Cloud Computing is Gaining Popularity

It is commonplace now to see large corporations officially adopting the NoSQL policy in terms of their critical operations and opting for cloud computing processes, in terms of data placement. Windows 10 is considered to be an official predecessor of an online-based operating system.

Android is now in full preparations of a Windows 10 counterpart within Chrome. Spark is even taking on new projects with cloud computing. Each day, cloud computing is developing new forms of functionality and increased features. As more software development is taking place, cloud computing is taking a leading role in the process.

#3 Apache Spark's Open-Source Technology

Now that we have briefly touched on how Spark is taking advantage of cloud computing, it is time to highlight Apache Spark as one of the most popular trends in the custom software development industry. Apache Spark is a processing engine that is completely open-source.

Many believe that this is completely transforming the IT industry. If you're in the process of developing software, you should take advantage of Apache Spark. In doing so, you can be rest assured that the tools, features, and services associated with your program are up-to-date and considered to be pertinent among your end users.

#4 Real-Time Features and Functionality

When it comes to software development trends, real-time features and functionality rank exceptionally high. In recent years, mobile technology has taken off and become widely accepted by internet users, worldwide.

Easy access to information and hands-on features at just about any location in the world has users craving more and more levels of instant gratification. As a result, there is an immense demand for custom software that offers the ability to see, do, and shop in real-time. Internet users no longer want to wait. The expectation is "now". If you're a software development specialist, it's essential to integrate real-time components in your programs.

#5 Responsive Web is No Longer Enough

We all know that the mobile market is moving at intense speeds. While responsive design in and among websites is critical for online success, it is no longer enough. Software programs must have a responsive design, too. Consumers are demanding real-time speeds, real-time solutions, and features that move in accordance with real-time.

When creating custom software, it's imperative to use not only a real-time design, but one that is also 100% responsive as your users transition from one mobile device to another. For example, if your customer is starting an online purchase on their home computer, they should be able to complete the process on their laptop, their tablet, or their smartphone.

Conclusion

Businesses, corporations, and organisations are running on carefully-designed software programs. These custom software tools provide them with the ability to launch their products and services on a global scale with the push of a button. If you're striving to move forward, your competitive edge will be the ability to stay agile. Software development provides you with the tools that are needed to maximise your level of productivity and optimize your effectiveness in a constantly-evolving market, if you keep yourself and your practices up to date. To learn more about how custom software development can power efficiency for your business, get in touch today for a free consultation!

Source: Top 5 Software Development Trends of 2016

Matrox Imaging announces Matrox Design Assistant 5

October 19, 2016 — Matrox Imaging announced the upcoming release of the Matrox Design Assistant 5 software, the latest evolution of its flowchart-based integrated development environment (IDE). On display at Vision 2016 (Stuttgart, DE, Nov. 7-11, booth 1F21) and Pack Expo (Chicago, IL, Nov. 6-19, E-7747), the major update to the Design Assistant software, created with user experience and productivity in mind, will enable system integrators and machine builders to set up vision systems with less effort and greater confidence.

The fifth release of Matrox Design Assistant features a more image-centric approach to project configuration, whereby measurements are set up directly on the image itself, rather than through configuration panes. The update further streamlines flowchart creation by allowing the logic for specific events and actions to be placed in separate sub-flowcharts, decluttering the main flowchart. A newly added ready-to-go communication structure simplifies the interface between the vision system and a programmable logic/automation controller.

Design Assistant 5 adds support for persistent recipes, which makes it possible to create a single flowchart for inspecting similar part types that can be modified or added to by the vision system designer and an operator. A project specific operator interface can now be accessed from any HTML5-based web browser.

Matrox Design Assistant 5 also integrates Matrox's SureDotOCR technology for reading challenging dot-matrix text as produced in practice by industrial inkjet printers. This new flowchart step handles distorted and rotated text, on uneven backgrounds and under non-uniform illumination.

Development using Matrox Design Assistant 5 is done on a PC running 64-bit Windows. Resulting projects can be deployed on a Matrox Iris GTR smart camera, Matrox 4Sight GPm vision controller, or any PC with a GigE Vision or USB3 Vision™ camera.

 

Source: Matrox Imaging announces Matrox Design Assistant 5

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition Makes Professional Graphic Design More Accessible to SMEs

From the Wires

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition Makes Professional Graphic Design More Accessible to SMEs

In-house marketers and graphics professionals can take advantage of a comprehensive toolkit for layout, web design & photo editing with 3 licenses for less than the price of 2

Oct. 18, 2016 06:30 AM

LUTON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 10/18/16 --

Editors Note: There are three photos associated with this press release.

Corel today announced the release of CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition, its professional graphics software for smaller teams. The new three-license pack is an ideal solution for small businesses, whether they're looking to bring their marketing in-house or working in graphics production industries like creative design, signmaking, engraving or printing.

"In today's highly visual world, professional-looking graphics aren't just nice to have - they're a must have. All too often, the costs of graphic production can be a stress on the budgets of small business owners," said Gerard Metrailler, Vice-President, Products at Corel. "CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition is an easy-to-use design package to create professional, eye-catching graphics and marketing materials that will grow your small business while keeping your costs down."

Known for its ease of use, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition makes it easy to begin with a helpful Startup tour, valuable learning resources, and high-quality content to create original designs, logos, annual reports, brochures, social media and web graphics, and more. The new suite enables users to transform their creative ideas into designs that make a lasting impression across any medium.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition is a complete suite that offers intuitive tools for layout, design and photo editing:

-- CorelDRAW X8: Intuitive vector-illustration and page-layout application -- Corelr PHOTO-PAINTr X8: Professional image-editing application -- Corel Font Manager(TM): Powerful font management -- Corelr PowerTRACEr X8: Accurate bitmap-to-vector tracing utility -- Corelr CONNECT(TM) X8: Integrated Content Search for local files and Content Exchange -- Corelr Website Creator(TM): Easy-to-use website-design application -- Corelr CAPTURE(TM) X8: One-click screen capture utility -- PhotoZoom Pro 4: Plug-in to export and enlarge digital images from Corel PHOTO-PAINT

Adding even more value, the suite also includes 10,000 clipart and digital images; 2,000 high-resolution digital photos; 1,000 OpenType fonts; 350 professionally designed templates; 2,000 vehicle templates; 1000+ fills, frames and patterns; more than five hours of enhanced training videos; and much more.

Pricing and Availability

Available in English, German, Polish, Russian and Czech, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition can be purchased from www.coreldraw.com/sbe for GBP 779.95 / EUR889 (incl. VAT). Exclusively for small business, one purchase includes three full licenses and offers a savings of more than 50% off regular retail pricing.

About Corel

Corel is one of the world's top software companies, boasting some of the industry's best-known graphics, productivity and digital media products. We've built a reputation for giving customers more choice, and delivering solutions that are easy to learn and use. Our mission is simple: help people achieve new levels of creativity and productivity.

Corel's product lines include CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite, Corel® Painter®, Corel® PaintShop® Pro, Corel® VideoStudio®, MindManager®, Pinnacle Studio(TM), ReviverSoft®, Roxio Creator®, Roxio® Toast(TM) and WinZip®. For more information on Corel, please visit www.corel.com.

© 2016 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. Corel, the Corel logo, the Corel Balloon logo, CorelDRAW, CAPTURE, CONNECT, Corel Font Manager, MindManager, Painter, PaintShop, PHOTO-PAINT, Pinnacle Studio, ReviverSoft, Roxio, Roxio Creator, Toast, VideoStudio, Website Creator, WinZip and WordPerfect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. Patents: www.corel.com/patent.

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Source: CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X8 - Small Business Edition Makes Professional Graphic Design More Accessible to SMEs

The designer's guide to software

A studio's software options depend upon its core creative offerings. If you specialise in web and app design, then your prototyping and wireframing tools will be indispensable. If you're a packaging and design outfit, then InDesign and Acrobat will be firmly lodged in your dock. 

But Adobe doesn't rule the roost entirely. There's a growing number  of 3D, video and motion graphics packages, prototyping and coding apps gaining favourable followings. As ever, choice is often dictated by budget and need – so if you only crack open a video editor to mock up the occasional animated GIF, there's little point blowing your budget on Final Cut Pro X.

A studio's software options depend upon its core creative offerings

Similarly, running a successful studio means doing the admin work, too. Keeping track of invoicing, budgets and productivity is crucial, so we've selected a few of our favourite creatively-focused project management tools. These aren't sexy bits of kit, but they are hugely valuable in ensuring you're running your studio profitably and productively. We've also touched on communication apps. Collaborative, remote, and freelance working models are key to the creative industries and so managing these areas with the right tools makes for empowered and informed teams.  

Finally, we've picked two coding and wireframing apps that are making a huge impact in the industry – one is free, and the other a snip at $99. Both receive huge support from their respective user communities, and shouldn't be sniffed at just because they don't come with a heavy price tag.

01. Creative Cloud

Adobe CC is great for pretty much anyone working in a creative field; especially studios reliant on in-house freelance bookings

Adobe's full CC Suite is the industry standard for a reason – its apps are fast, reliable and near limitless in their creative possibilities.  

But let's start with the workhorse: Photoshop. Whether your studio specialises in print, web and app design, or motion graphics and video, you'll likely need Photoshop. A single licence for the app starts from £17 a month.  

For digital workflows, Adobe Muse is a rapid prototyping tool for websites and apps. It's a design- led coding environment, which outputs in fully responsive HTML5. An ever-growing library of widgets deploys pre-coded JQuery, AJAX and JSON elements, for forms, menus and other elements, killing the need for laborious coding.  

For video and motion graphics editors, Premiere Pro and After Effects take a lot of beating. The former has done away with the need to transcode media, meaning you can edit any video format on the fly, while colour support and stability is incomparable. After Effects syncs with Premiere Pro, and remains the go-to option for motion graphics editors due to its fast rendering and ability to tweak compositions in preview mode.

02. Final Cut Pro X

Powerful, professional and totally Apple-friendly video editing

FC Pro X now supports the pro RED RAW footage format, and handles it using some clever GPU acceleration. It also packs in motion graphics, and impressive 2D and 3D rendering support – and encodes with its Compressor 4 workflow. If TV broadcast is your studio's game, FC Pro X is a serious contender.

03. Serif Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is brilliant for studios looking for an Illustrator alternative.

Fast, stable, affordable and supporting a vast array of formats, Serif's vector design tool features creative basics and tools, and professional level features including non-destructive effects and adjustments; font handling; and end-to-end CMYK and ICC colour management.

04. ZBrush 4R7

ZBrush is great for studios that need to take a wireframe model to a full 3D render

Price: $795 (Single user license)

Real time remodelling, shape fusing and workflow enhancements, including advanced path connections and quick repeat instances, make this a fast and slick creative tool. ZBrush 4R7 has 64-bit support, more detailed surface modelling, and FBX Import and Export for deploying textures, displacement maps and blending shapes.

05. Slack 

Ditch your email and unify your project conversations with Slack

Slack organises team conversations in channels – each channel deploys a live messaging window, drag and drop file sharing, archiving features (so you can dig out that document from last week and go back over the changes your client now understands are necessary), as well as direct messaging and syncing with GoogleDrive, DropBox, Twitter and more. It cuts email out of the equation, giving you a single app to organise and track your project's communications.

06. TrafficLive

TrafficLive is great for large- and medium-sized studios and agencies that want to cut the freelance bill and track productivity more effectively

Price: Price varies depending on service level

Running a successful studio means time-logging and keeping abreast of your accounts. These aren't creative tasks, but they're too important to be left to an Excel spreadsheet. TrafficLive unifies all of the major tasks a studio faces: from client relationship logs, time-recording, project management calendars, to resource management and cashflow.

07. Sketch

Sketch is perfect for digital studios looking for a fast and effective wire framing app.

Sketch is vector based – meaning scaling for presentations and differing screen resolutions and devices is a breeze – while its toolset rivals those of software options five times its price. It's got a straightforward workflow, with an Inspector putting all major effects and tools front and centre. Its text and font handling is also superb – you can instantly preview work on different devices. Best of all, Sketch's slicing and exporting options include CSS markup for developers to get their teeth into.

08. Team

Team offers a good solution to studio start ups who don't need the heft of a complex business solution

Team pares creative project data back to its core and presents info in a way designers understand. Its main abilities are in measuring, managing and improving workflows, for example, by showing project deadlines and outstanding tasks. It also has straightforward invoicing and accounting features. 

09. ATOM

ATOM is great for anyone that has to dip a toe in to coding; and even those comfortable in the deep end

This free, open-source, infinitely customisable text editor has taken the coding world by storm. It's cross platform, features smart auto-complete for a vast range of syntaxes and languages and has the sort of file system browser normally seen in apps costing £100 or more. It's incredibly well-supported in the community, too, meaning there's an ever-growing range of packages that add additional features and functionality. 

This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 257; buy it here.

Source: The designer's guide to software

Website Designer/Developer Job in Lagos at ZOCODE Limited

ZOCODE Limited is established is a Business Resources Provider, we to deliver corporate solutions in Training, Process and Business modeling and Automation using Software.

We tell less stories and deliver more results. One of our values is "Customer Satisfaction"

ZOCODE Limited is recruiting to fill the job position below:

Job Title: Website Designer/DeveloperLocation: LagosJob Descriptions

We are looking for an outstanding Web Developer to be responsible for the coding, innovative design and layout of our website jobs.

Web developer responsibilities include building our website from concept all the way to completion from the bottom up, fashioning everything from the home page to site layout and function.

Responsibilities

Write well designed, testable, efficient code by using best software development practices.

Create E-commerce website.

Be responsible for maintaining, expanding, and scaling our site

Stay plugged into emerging technologies/industry trends and apply them into operations and activities

Cooperate with web designers to match visual design intent

Create website layout/user interface by using standard HTML/CSS practices

Integrate data from various back-end services and databases

Gather and refine specifications and requirements based on technical needs

Create and maintain software documentation

Requirements

Proven skill in web programming.

Programming skills and in-depth knowledge of modern HTML/CSS

A solid understanding of how web applications work including security, session management, and best development practices.

Familiarity with at least one of the following programming languages: PHP, ASP.NET, Javascript

How to ApplyInterested and qualified candidates should send their Application and CV's to: [email protected]

Application Deadline  31st October, 2016.

Source: Website Designer/Developer Job in Lagos at ZOCODE Limited