Remote Usability Testing. Actionable insights in user behavior across geographies and time zones

Inge De Bleecker, Rebecca Okoroji

Usability testing is a subdiscipline of User Experience. Its goal is to ensure that a given product is easy to use and the user's experience with the product is intuitive and satisfying. Usability studies are conducted with study participants who are representative of the target users to gather feedback on a user interface. The feedback is then used to refine and improve the user interface.Remote studies involve fewer logistics, allow participation regardless of location and are quicker and cheaper to execute compared to in person studies, while delivering valuable insights. The users are not inhibited by being in a new environment under observation; they can act naturally in their familiar environment. Remote unmoderated studies additionally have the advantage of being independent of time zones.This book will teach you how to conduct qualitative remote usability studies, in particular remote moderated and unmoderated studies. Each chapter provides actionable tips on how to use each methodology and how to compensate for the specific nature of each methodology. The book also provides material to help with planning and executing each study type.

Beginning C# 7 Hands-On - Advanced Language Features. Learn the advanced-level features of C# 7 using Visual Studio 2017

Tom Owsiak

Beginning C# 7 Hands-On – Advanced Language Features assumes that you’ve mastered the basic elements of the C# language and that you're now ready to learn the more advanced C# language and syntax, line by line, in a working Visual Studio environment. You'll learn how to code advanced C# language topics including generics, lambda expressions, and anonymous methods.You'll learn to use query syntax to construct queries and deploy queries that perform aggregation functions. Work with C# and SQL Server 2017 to perform complex joins and stored procedures. Explore advanced file access methods, and see how to serialize and deserialize objects – all by writing working lines of code that you can run within Visual Studio.This book is designed for beginner C# developers who have mastered the basics now, and anyone who needs a fast reference to using advanced C# language features in practical coding examples. You'll also take a look at C# through web programming with web forms. By the time you’ve finished this book, you’ll know all the critical advanced elements of the C# language and how to program everything from C# generics to XML, LINQ, and your first full MVC web applications. These are the advanced building blocks that you can then combine to exploit the full power of the C# programming language, line by line.

ASP.NET Core 2 and Angular 5. Full-stack web development with .NET Core and Angular

Valerio De Sanctis

Become fluent in both frontend and backend web development by combining the impressive capabilities of ASP.NET Core 2 and Angular 5 from project setup right through the deployment phase. Full-stack web development means being able to work on both the frontend and backend portions of an application. The frontend is the part that users will see or interact with, while the backend is the underlying engine, that handles the logical flow: server configuration, data storage and retrieval, database interactions, user authentication, and more. Use the ASP.NET Core MVC framework to implement the backend with API calls and server-side routing. Learn how to put the frontend together using top-notch Angular 5 features such as two-way binding, Observables, and Dependency Injection, build the Data Model with Entity Framework Core, style the frontend with CSS/LESS for a responsive and mobile-friendly UI, handle user input with Forms and Validators, explore different authentication techniques, including the support for third-party OAuth2 providers such as Facebook, and deploy the application using Windows Server, SQL Server, and the IIS/Kestrel reverse proxy.

Hands-On Continuous Integration and Delivery. Build and release quality software at scale with Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI

Jean-Marcel Belmont

Hands-On Continuous Integration and Delivery starts with the fundamentals of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) and where it fits in the DevOps ecosystem. You will explore the importance of stakeholder collaboration as part of CI/CD.As you make your way through the chapters, you will get to grips with Jenkins UI, and learn to install Jenkins on different platforms, add plugins, and write freestyle scripts. Next, you will gain hands-on experience of developing plugins with Jenkins UI, building the Jenkins 2.0 pipeline, and performing Docker integration. In the concluding chapters, you will install Travis CI and Circle CI and carry out scripting, logging, and debugging, helping you to acquire a broad knowledge of CI/CD with Travis CI and CircleCI.By the end of this book, you will have a detailed understanding of best practices for CI/CD systems and be able to implement them with confidence.

Boost C++ Application Development Cookbook. Recipes to simplify your application development - Second Edition

Anton Polukhin Alekseevic

If you want to take advantage of the real power of Boost and C++ and avoid the confusion about which library to use in which situation, then this book is for you. Beginning with the basics of Boost C++, you will move on to learn how the Boost libraries simplify application development. You will learn to convert data such as string to numbers, numbers to string, numbers to numbers and more. Managing resources will become a piece of cake. You’ll see what kind of work can be done at compile time and what Boost containers can do. You will learn everything for the development of high quality fast and portable applications. Write a program once and then you can use it on Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android operating systems. From manipulating images to graphs, directories, timers, files, networking – everyone will find an interesting topic.Be sure that knowledge from this book won’t get outdated, as more and more Boost libraries become part of the C++ Standard.

Python Artificial Intelligence Projects for Beginners. Get up and running with Artificial Intelligence using 8 smart and exciting AI applications

Dr. Joshua Eckroth

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the newest technology that’s being employed among varied businesses, industries, and sectors. Python Artificial Intelligence Projects for Beginners demonstrates AI projects in Python, covering modern techniques that make up the world of Artificial Intelligence.This book begins with helping you to build your first prediction model using the popular Python library, scikit-learn. You will understand how to build a classifier using an effective machine learning technique, random forest, and decision trees. With exciting projects on predicting bird species, analyzing student performance data, song genre identification, and spam detection, you will learn the fundamentals and various algorithms and techniques that foster the development of these smart applications. In the concluding chapters, you will also understand deep learning and neural network mechanisms through these projects with the help of the Keras library.By the end of this book, you will be confident in building your own AI projects with Python and be ready to take on more advanced projects as you progress

Getting Started with Haskell Data Analysis. Put your data analysis techniques to work and generate publication-ready visualizations

James Church

Every business and organization that collects data is capable of tapping into its own data to gain insights how to improve. Haskell is a purely functional and lazy programming language, well-suited to handling large data analysis problems. This book will take you through the more difficult problems of data analysis in a hands-on manner.This book will help you get up-to-speed with the basics of data analysis and approaches in the Haskell language. You'll learn about statistical computing, file formats (CSV and SQLite3), descriptive statistics, charts, and progress to more advanced concepts such as understanding the importance of normal distribution. While mathematics is a big part of data analysis, we've tried to keep this course simple and approachable so that you can apply what you learn to the real world.By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of data analysis, and the different ways of analyzing data. You will have a mastery of all the tools and techniques in Haskell for effective data analysis.

C++ High Performance. Boost and optimize the performance of your C++17 code

Björn Andrist, Viktor Sehr

C++ is a highly portable language and can be used to write both large-scale applications and performance-critical code. It has evolved over the last few years to become a modern and expressive language. This book will guide you through optimizing the performance of your C++ apps by allowing them to run faster and consume fewer resources on the device they're running on without compromising the readability of your code base.The book begins by helping you measure and identify bottlenecks in a C++ code base. It then moves on by teaching you how to use modern C++ constructs and techniques. You'll see how this affects the way you write code. Next, you'll see the importance of data structure optimization and memory management, and how it can be used efficiently with respect to CPU caches. After that, you'll see how STL algorithm and composable Range V3 should be used to both achieve faster execution and more readable code, followed by how to use STL containers and how to write your own specialized iterators.Moving on, you’ll get hands-on experience in making use of modern C++ metaprogramming and reflection to reduce boilerplate code as well as in working with proxy objects to perform optimizations under the hood. After that, you’ll learn concurrent programming and understand lock-free data structures. The book ends with an overview of parallel algorithms using STL execution policies, Boost Compute, and OpenCL to utilize both the CPU and the GPU.

Python Digital Forensics Cookbook. Effective Python recipes for digital investigations

Chapin Bryce, Preston Miller

Technology plays an increasingly large role in our daily lives and shows no sign of stopping. Now, more than ever, it is paramount that an investigator develops programming expertise to deal with increasingly large datasets. By leveraging the Python recipes explored throughout this book, we make the complex simple, quickly extracting relevant information from large datasets. You will explore, develop, and deploy Python code and libraries to provide meaningful results that can be immediately applied to your investigations. Throughout the Python Digital Forensics Cookbook, recipes include topics such as working with forensic evidence containers, parsing mobile and desktop operating system artifacts, extracting embedded metadatafrom documents and executables, and identifying indicators of compromise. Youwill also learn to integrate scripts with Application Program Interfaces (APIs) suchas VirusTotal and PassiveTotal, and tools such as Axiom, Cellebrite, and EnCase. By the end of the book, you will have a sound understanding of Python and how you can use it to process artifacts in your investigations.

Vuex Quick Start Guide. Centralized State Management for your Vue.js applications

Andrea Koutifaris

State management preserves the state of controls in a user interface. Vuex is a state management tool for Vue.js that makes the architecture easier to understand, maintain and evolve. This book is the easiest way to get started with Vuex to improve your Vue.js application architecture and overall user experience.Our book begins by explaining the problem that Vuex solves, and how it helps your applications. You will learn about the Vuex core concepts, including the Vuex store, changing application state, carrying out asynchronous operations and persisting state changes, all with an eye to scalability.You will learn how to test Vuex elements and Vue components with the Karma and Jasmine testing frameworks. You will see this in the context of a testing first approach, following the fundamentals of Test Driven Development. TDD will help you to identify which components need testing and how to test them. You will build a full Vuex application by creating the application components and services, and persist the state.Vuex comes with a plugin system that allows programmers to extend Vuex features. You will learn about some of the most powerful plugins, and make use of the built-in logger plugin. You write a custom Google Analytics plugin to send actions to its analytics API, and an Undo/Redo plugin.

Azure IoT Development Cookbook. Develop and manage robust IoT solutions

Yatish Patil

Microsoft’s end-to-end IoT platform is the most complete IoT offering, empowering enterprises to build and realize value from IoT solutions efficiently. It is important to develop robust and reliable solutions for your organization to leverage IoT services.This book focuses on how to start building custom solutions using the IoT hub or the preconfigured solution of Azure IoT suite. As a developer, you will be taught how to connect multiple devices to the Azure IoT hub, develop, manage the IoT hub service and integrate the hub with cloud. We will be covering REST APIs along with HTTP, MQTT and AMQP protocols. It also helps you learn Pre-Configured IoT Suite solution.Moving ahead we will be covering topics like:-Process device-to-cloud messages and cloud-to-device messages using .Net-Direct methods and device management-Query Language, Azure IoT SDK for .Net-Creating and managing, Securing IoT hub, IoT Suite and many more. We will be using windows 10 IoT core, Visual Studio, universal Windows platform. At the end, we will take you through IoT analytics and provide a demo of connecting real device with Azure IoT.

Mastering Microservices with Java 9. Build domain-driven microservice-based applications with Spring, Spring Cloud, and Angular - Second Edition

Sourabh Sharma

Microservices are the next big thing in designing scalable, easy-to-maintain applications. They not only make app development easier, but also offer great flexibility to utilize various resources optimally. If you want to build an enterprise-ready implementation of the microservices architecture, then this is the book for you! Starting off by understanding the core concepts and framework, you will then focus on the high-level design of large software projects. You will gradually move on to setting up the development environment and configuring it before implementing continuous integration to deploy your microservice architecture. Using Spring security, you will secure microservices and test them effectively using REST Java clients and other tools like RxJava 2.0. We'll show you the best patterns, practices and common principles of microservice design and you'll learn to troubleshoot and debug the issues faced during development. We'll show you how to design and implement reactive microservices. Finally, we’ll show you how to migrate a monolithic application to microservices based application.By the end of the book, you will know how to build smaller, lighter, and faster services that can be implemented easily in a production environment.

Software-Defined Networking with OpenFlow. Deliver innovative business solutions - Second Edition

SIAMAK AZODOLMOLKY, Oswald Coker

OpenFlow paves the way for an open, centrally programmable structure, thereby accelerating the effectiveness of Software-Defined Networking.Software-Defined Networking with OpenFlow, Second Edition takes you through the product cycle and gives you an in-depth description of the components and options that are available at each stage. The aim of this book is to help you implement OpenFlow concepts and improve Software-Defined Networking on your projects. You will begin by learning about building blocks and OpenFlow messages such as controller-to-switch and symmetric and asynchronous messages. Next, this book will take you through OpenFlow controllers and their existing implementations followed by network application development. Key topics include the basic environment setup, the Neutron and Floodlight OpenFlow controller, XORPlus OF13SoftSwitch, enterprise and affordable switches such as the Zodiac FX and HP2920.By the end of this book, you will be able to implement OpenFlow concepts and improve Software-Defined Networking in your projects.

Hands-On Microservices - Monitoring and Testing. A performance engineer's guide to the continuous testing and monitoring of microservices

Dinesh Rajput

Microservices are the latest right way of developing web applications. Microservices architecture has been gaining momentum over the past few years, but once you've started down the microservices path, you need to test and optimize the services. This book focuses on exploring various testing, monitoring, and optimization techniques for microservices.The book starts with the evolution of software architecture style, from monolithic to virtualized, to microservices architecture. Then you will explore methods to deploy microservices and various implementation patterns. With the help of a real-world example, you will understand how external APIs help product developers to focus on core competencies. After that, you will learn testing techniques, such as Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Functional Testing, and Load Testing. Next, you will explore performance testing tools, such as JMeter, and Gatling. Then, we deep dive into monitoring techniques and learn performance benchmarking of the various architectural components. For this, you will explore monitoring tools such as Appdynamics, Dynatrace, AWS CloudWatch, and Nagios. Finally, you will learn to identify, address, and report various performance issues related to microservices.

Serverless computing in Azure with .NET. Build, test, and automate deployment

Sasha Rosenbaum

Serverless architecture allows you to build and run applications and services without having to manage the infrastructure. Many companies have started adopting serverless architecture for their applications to save cost and improve scalability. This book will be your companion in designing Serverless architecture for your applications using the .NET runtime, with Microsoft Azure as the cloud service provider. You will begin by understanding the concepts of Serverless architecture, its advantages and disadvantages. You will then set up the Azure environment and build a basic application using a sample text sentiment evaluation function. From here, you will be shown how to run services in a Serverless environment. We will cover the integration with other Azure and 3rd party services such as Azure Service Bus, as well as configuring dependencies on NuGet libraries, among other topics. After this, you will learn about debugging and testing your Azure functions, and then automating deployment from source control. Securing your application and monitoring its health will follow from there, and then in the final part of the book, you will learn how to Design for High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Scale, as well as how to take advantage of the cloud pay-as-you-go model to design cost-effective services. We will finish off with explaining how azure functions scale up against AWS Lambda, Azure Web Jobs, and Azure Batch compare to other types of compute-on-demand services.Whether you’ve been working with Azure for a while, or you’re just getting started, by the end of the book you will have all the information you need to set up and deploy applications to the Azure Serverless Computing environment.

Effective Amazon Machine Learning. Expert web services for machine learning on cloud

Alexis Perrier

Predictive analytics is a complex domain requiring coding skills, an understanding of the mathematical concepts underpinning machine learning algorithms, and the ability to create compelling data visualizations. Following AWS simplifying Machine learning, this book will help you bring predictive analytics projects to fruition in three easy steps: data preparation, model tuning, and model selection.This book will introduce you to the Amazon Machine Learning platform and will implement core data science concepts such as classification, regression, regularization, overfitting, model selection, and evaluation. Furthermore, you will learn to leverage the Amazon Web Service (AWS) ecosystem for extended access to data sources, implement realtime predictions, and run Amazon Machine Learning projects via the command line and the Python SDK. Towards the end of the book, you will also learn how to apply these services to other problems, such as text mining, and to more complex datasets.

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming. Your one-stop solution to embedded programming on GNU/Linux

Rodolfo Giometti

Embedded computers have become very complex in the last few years and developers need to easily manage them by focusing on how to solve a problem without wasting time in finding supported peripherals or learning how to manage them. The main challenge with experienced embedded programmers and engineers is really how long it takes to turn an idea into reality, and we show you exactly how to do it. This book shows how to interact with external environments through specific peripherals used in the industry. We will use the latest Linux kernel release 4.4.x and Debian/Ubuntu distributions (with embedded distributions like OpenWrt and Yocto).The book will present popular boards in the industry that are user-friendly to base the rest of the projects on - BeagleBone Black, SAMA5D3 Xplained, Wandboard and system-on-chip manufacturers.Readers will be able to take their first steps in programming the embedded platforms, using C, Bash, and Python/PHP languages in order to get access to the external peripherals. More about using and programming device driver and accessing the peripherals will be covered to lay a strong foundation. The readers will learn how to read/write data from/to the external environment by using both C programs or a scripting language (Bash/PHP/Python) and how to configure a device driver for a specific hardware.After finishing this book, the readers will be able to gain a good knowledge level and understanding of writing, configuring, and managing drivers, controlling and monitoring applications with the help of efficient/quick programming and will be able to apply these skills into real-world projects.

Office 365 Essentials. Get up and running with the fundamentals of Office 365

Nuno Arias Silva

Office 365 is suite of advanced collaboration tools used by many well known organizations and their system administrators. This book starts with an introduction to Office 365 and its basic fundamentals. Then we move towards workload management and deployment. You will delve into identities, authentications, and managing office 365. We also cover concepts such as collaboration with Microsoft teams and tools such as Delve and Skype for collaboration. Towards the end of the book, you'll master monitoring and security concepts.By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience working with Office 365 and its collaboration tools and services

Learn WebAssembly. Build web applications with native performance using Wasm and C/C++

Mike Rourke

WebAssembly is a brand-new technology that represents a paradigm shift in web development. This book teaches programmers to leverage this technology to write high-performance applications that run in the browser. This book introduces you to powerful WebAssembly concepts to help you write lean and powerful web applications with native performance. You start with the evolution of web programming, the state of things today, and what can be done with the advent and release of WebAssembly. We take a look at the journey from JavaScript to asm.js to WebAssembly. We then move on to analyze the anatomy of a WebAssembly module and the relationship between binary and text formats, along with the corresponding JavaScript API. Further on, you'll implement all the techniques you've learned to build a high-performance application using C and WebAssembly, and then port an existing game written in C++ to WebAssembly using Emscripten. By the end of this book, you will be well-equipped to create high-performance applications and games for the web using WebAssembly.

SQL Server 2017 Administrator's Guide. One stop solution for DBAs to monitor, manage, and maintain enterprise databases

Marek Chmel, Vladimir Muzny

Take advantage of the real power of SQL Server 2017 with all its new features, in addition to covering core database administration tasks. This book will give you a competitive advantage by helping you quickly learn how to design, manage, and secure your database solution. You will learn how to set up your SQL Server and configure new (and existing) environments for optimal use. After covering the designing aspect, the book delves into performance-tuning aspects by teaching you how to effectively use indexes. The book will also teach you about certain choices that need to be made about backups and how to implement a rock-solid security policy and keep your environment healthy. Finally, you will learn about the techniques you should use when things go wrong, and other important topics, such as migration, upgrading, and consolidation, are covered in detail. Integration with Azure is also covered in depth. Whether you are an administrator or thinking about entering the field, this book will provide you with all the skills you need to successfully create, design, and deploy databases usingSQL Server 2017.

Learning Redux. Write maintainable, consistent, and easy-to-test web applications

Daniel Bugl

The book starts with a short introduction to the principles and the ecosystem of Redux, then moves on to show how to implement the basic elements of Redux and put them together. Afterward, you are going to learn how to integrate Redux with other frameworks, such as React and Angular.Along the way, you are going to develop a blog application. To practice developing growing applications with Redux, we are going to start from nothing and keep adding features to our application throughout the book. You are going to learn how to integrate and use Redux DevTools to debug applications, and access external APIs with Redux. You are also going to get acquainted with writing tests for all elements of a Redux application. Furthermore, we are going to cover important concepts in web development, such as routing, user authentication, and communication with a backend serverAfter explaining how to use Redux and how powerful its ecosystem can be, the book teaches you how to make your own abstractions on top of Redux, such as higher-order reducers and middleware.By the end of the book, you are going to be able to develop and maintain Redux applications with ease. In addition to learning about Redux, you are going be familiar with its ecosystem, and learn a lot about JavaScript itself, including best practices and patterns.

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 2019. Code in C# and build 3D games with Unity - Fourth Edition

Harrison Ferrone

Learning to program in today’s technical landscape can be a daunting task, especially when faced with the sheer number of languages you have to choose from. Luckily, Learning C# with Unity 2019 removes the guesswork and starts you off on the path to becoming a confident, and competent, programmer using game development with Unity.You’ll start off small by learning the building blocks of programming, from variables, methods, and conditional statements to classes and object-oriented systems. After you have the basics under your belt you’ll explore the Unity interface, creating C# scripts, and translating your newfound knowledge into simple game mechanics.Throughout this journey, you’ll get hands-on experience with programming best practices and macro-level topics such as manager classes and flexible application architecture. By the end of the book, you’ll be familiar with intermediate C# topics like generics, delegates, and events, setting you up to take on projects of your own.

The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit. Kubernetes: Deploying and managing highly-available and fault-tolerant applications at scale

Viktor Farcic

Building on The DevOps 2.0 Toolkit, The DevOps 2.1 Toolkit: Docker Swarm, and The DevOps 2.2 Toolkit: Self-Sufficient Docker Clusters, Viktor Farcic brings his latest exploration of the DevOps Toolkit as he takes you on a journey to explore the features of Kubernetes.The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes is a book in the series that helps you build a full DevOps Toolkit. This book in the series looks at Kubernetes, the tool designed to, among other roles, make it easier in the creation and deployment of highly available and fault-tolerant applications at scale, with zero downtime.Within this book, Viktor will cover a wide range of emerging topics, including what exactly Kubernetes is, how to use both first and third-party add-ons for projects, and how to get the skills to be able to call yourself a “Kubernetes ninja.” Work with Viktor and dive into the creation and exploration of Kubernetes with a series of hands-on guides.

Industrial Cybersecurity. Efficiently secure critical infrastructure systems

Pascal Ackerman

With industries expanding, cyber attacks have increased significantly. Understanding your control system’s vulnerabilities and learning techniques to defend critical infrastructure systems from cyber threats is increasingly important. With the help of real-world use cases, this book will teach you the methodologies and security measures necessary to protect critical infrastructure systems and will get you up to speed with identifying unique challenges.Industrial cybersecurity begins by introducing Industrial Control System (ICS) technology, including ICS architectures, communication media, and protocols. This is followed by a presentation on ICS (in) security. After presenting an ICS-related attack scenario, securing of the ICS is discussed, including topics such as network segmentation, defense-in-depth strategies, and protective solutions. Along with practical examples for protecting industrial control systems, this book details security assessments, risk management, and security program development. It also covers essential cybersecurity aspects, such as threat detection and access management. Topics related to endpoint hardening such as monitoring, updating, and anti-malware implementations are also discussed.