User Experience Mapping. Enhance UX with User Story Map, Journey Map and Diagrams

Peter W. Szabo

Do you want to create better products and innovative solutions? User experience maps will help you understand your users and improve communication with them. Maps can also champion user-centricity within the organization.This book is the first print resource covering two advanced mapping techniques—the behavioral change map and the 4D UX map. You’ll explore user story maps, task models, and journey maps, while also creating wireflows, mental model maps, ecosystem maps, and solution maps. You’ll learn how to use insights from real users to create and improve your maps and products.The book delves into each major user experience map type, ranging from simple techniques based on sticky notes to more complex map types, and guides you in solving real-world problems with maps. You’ll understand how to create maps using a variety of software products, including Adobe Illustrator, Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP, and Microsoft Word. Besides, you can draw each map type with pen and paper too!The book also showcases communication techniques and workshop ideas. You’ll learn about the Kaizen-UX management framework, developed by the author, now used by many agencies and in-house UX teams in Europe and beyond.Buying this book will give you hundreds of hours worth of user experience knowledge, from one of the world’s leading UX consultants. It will change your users’ world for the better. If you are still not convinced, we have hidden some cat drawings in it, just in case.

Pentaho Data Integration Quick Start Guide. Create ETL processes using Pentaho

María Carina Roldán

Pentaho Data Integration(PDI) is an intuitive and graphical environment packed with drag and drop design and powerful Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) capabilities. Given its power and flexibility, initial attempts to use the Pentaho Data Integration tool can be difficult or confusing. This book is the ideal solution.This book reduces your learning curve with PDI. It provides the guidance needed to make you productive, covering the main features of Pentaho Data Integration. It demonstrates the interactive features of the graphical designer, and takes you through the main ETL capabilities that the tool offers.By the end of the book, you will be able to use PDI for extracting, transforming, and loading the types of data you encounter on a daily basis.

Mastering Vim. Build a software development environment with Vim and Neovim

Ruslan Osipov

Vim is a ubiquitous text editor that can be used for all programming languages. It has an extensive plugin system and integrates with many tools. Vim offers an extensible and customizable development environment for programmers, making it one of the most popular text editors in the world. Mastering Vim begins with explaining how the Vim editor will help you build applications efficiently. With the fundamentals of Vim, you will be taken through the Vim philosophy. As you make your way through the chapters, you will learn about advanced movement, text operations, and how Vim can be used as a Python (or any other language for that matter) IDE. The book will then cover essential tasks, such as refactoring, debugging, building, testing, and working with a version control system, as well as plugin configuration and management. In the concluding chapters, you will be introduced to additional mindset guidelines, learn to personalize your Vim experience, and go above and beyond with Vimscript.By the end of this book, you will be sufficiently confident to make Vim (or its fork, Neovim) your first choice when writing applications in Python and other programming languages.

Cacti Beginner's Guide. Leverage Cacti to design a robust network operations center - Second Edition

Thomas Urban

Cacti is a performance measurement tool that provides easy methods and functions for gathering and graphing system data. You can use Cacti to develop a robust event management system that can alert on just about anything you would like it to. But to do that, you need to gain a solid understanding of the basics of Cacti, its plugin architecture, and automation concepts.Cacti Beginner's Guide will introduce you to the wide variety of features of Cacti and will guide you on how to use them for maximum effectiveness. Advanced topics such as the plugin architecture and Cacti automation using the command-line interface will help you build a professional performance measurement system. Designed as a beginner's guide, the book starts off with the basics of installing and using Cacti, and also covers the advanced topics that will show you how to customize and extend the core Cacti functionalities. The book offers essential tutorials for creating advanced graphs and using plugins to create enterprise-class reports to show your customers and colleagues. From data templates to input methods and plugin installation to creating your own customized plugins, this book provides you with a rich selection of step-by-step instructions to reach your goals. It covers all you need to know to implement professional performance measurement techniques with Cacti and ways to fully customize Cacti to fit your needs. You will also learn how to migrate Cacti to new servers. Lastly you will also be introduced to the latest feature of building a scalable remote poller environment. By the end of the book, you will be able to implement and extend Cacti to monitor, display, and report the performance of your network exactly the way you want.

Salesforce Process Builder Quick Start Guide. Build complex workflows by clicking, not coding

Rakesh Gupta

Salesforce Management System is an information system used in CRM to automate business processes, such as sales and marketing. Process Builder is a visual tool created to automate business processes in Salesforce. It enables users with no coding expertise to build complex Salesforce workflows.The book starts with an introduction to Process Builder, focussing on the building blocks of creating Processes. Then you will learn about different applications of Process Builder for developing streamlined solutions. You will learn how to easily automate business processes and tackle complex business scenarios using Processes. The book explains the workings of the Process Builder so that you can create reusable processes. It also explains how you can migrate existing Workflow Rules to Process Builder.By the end of the book, you will have a clear understanding of how to use Flows and Process Builder to optimize code usage.

Mastering VMware vSphere 6.5. Leverage the power of vSphere for effective virtualization, administration, management and monitoring of data centers

Paolo Valsecchi, Karel Novak, Andrea Mauro

VMware vSphere 6.5 provides a powerful, flexible and secure foundation for next-generation applications which helps you create an effective digital transformation. This book will be based on VMware vSphere 6.5 which empowers you to virtualize any complex application with ease. You’ll begin by getting an overview of all the products, solutions and features of the vSphere 6.5 suite, comparing the evolutions with the previous releases. Next ,you’ll design and plan a virtualization infrastructure to drive planning and performance analysis. Following this , you will be proceeding with workflow and installation of components. New network trends are also covered which will help you in optimally designing the vSphere environment. You will also learn the practices and procedures involved in configuring and managing virtual machines in a vSphere infrastructure. With vSphere 6.5, you’ll make use of significantly more powerful capabilities for patching, upgrading, and managing the configuration of the virtual environment. Next we’ll focus on specific availability and resiliency solutions in vSphere. Towards the end of the book you will get information on how to save your configuration, data and workload from your virtual infrastructure. By the end of the book you’ll learn about VMware vSphere 6.5 right from design to deployment and management.

Blender Quick Start Guide. 3D Modeling, Animation, and Render with Eevee in Blender 2.8

Allan Brito

Blender is open source 3D creation software. With a long history and an enthusiastic community of users, it is the ideal choice for almost any kind of work with 3D modeling or animation. However, for new users, its power and ?exibillity can sometimes be daunting, and that’s when you need this book!The book starts by showing you round the all-new Blender 2.8 user interface. You'll look at the most commonly-used options and tools, such as navigating in 3D and selecting objects. You will then use and manipulate one of the most important windows of the interface, the 3D View.You'll learn how to use essential tools for working with 3D modeling. To give your models the feel of real-world objects, you'll learn how to create materials and set up surfaces. You'll see how to use Physically-Based Rendering (PBR), which allows you to craft realistic surfaces such as wood, stone, and metal. You will also work with Eevee, a new real-time render engine in Blender. You will see how to add motion to objects, making use of Blender's impressive 3D animation features. Finally, you'll learn how to create scenes and organize them for rendering, and later add titles and effects using built-in Blender tools.By the end of the book, you will be able to use Blender 2.8 new UI, Create 3D Models with textures, Animations, and Render them in real-time using Eevee.

Swift 4 Protocol-Oriented Programming. Bring predictability, performance, and productivity to your Swift applications - Third Edition

Jon Hoffman

Swift has become the number one language used in iOS and macOS development. The Swift standard library is developed using protocol-oriented programming techniques, generics, and first-class value semantics; therefore, every Swift developer should understand these powerful concepts and how to take advantage of them in their application design.This book will help you understand the differences between object-oriented programming and protocol-oriented programming. It will demonstrate how to work with protocol-oriented programming using real-world use cases. You will gain a solid knowledge of the various types that can be used in Swift and the differences between value and reference types. You will be taught how protocol-oriented programming techniques can be used to develop very flexible and easy-to-maintain code.By the end of the book, you will have a thorough understanding of protocol-oriented programming and how to utilize it to build powerful and practical applications.

Mastering Spring Boot 2.0. Build modern, cloud-native, and distributed systems using Spring Boot

Dinesh Rajput

Spring is one of the best frameworks on the market for developing web, enterprise, and cloud ready software. Spring Boot simplifies the building of complex software dramatically by reducing the amount of boilerplate code, and by providing production-ready features and a simple deployment model.This book will address the challenges related to power that come with Spring Boot's great configurability and flexibility. You will understand how Spring Boot configuration works under the hood, how to overwrite default configurations, and how to use advanced techniques to prepare Spring Boot applications to work in production. This book will also introduce readers to a relatively new topic in the Spring ecosystem – cloud native patterns, reactive programming, and applications. Get up to speed with microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud. Each chapter aims to solve a specific problem or teach you a useful skillset. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in building and deploying your Spring Boot application.

Learning Android Game Development. A Beginner's guide to developing popular Android games

Nikhil Malankar

In this book, we’ll start with installing Android studio and its components, and setting it up ready for Android N. We teach you how to take inputs from users, create images and interact with them, and work with sprites to create animations. You’ll then explore the various collision detection methods and use sprites to create an explosion. Moving on, you’ll go through the process of UI creation and see how to create buttons as well as display the score and other parameters on screen. By the end of the book, you will have a working example and an understanding of a 2D platform game like Super Mario and know how to convert your 2D games to 3D games.

Mastering Unity 5.x. Click here to enter text

Alan Thorn

Mastering Unity 5.x is for developers wishing to optimize the features of Unity 5.x. With an in-depth focus on a practical project, learn all about Unity architecture and impressive animation techniques. With this book, produce fun games with confidence.

Hands-On Microservices with C#. Designing a real-world, enterprise-grade microservice ecosystem with the efficiency of C# 7

Matt R. Cole

C# is a powerful language when it comes to building applications and software architecture using rich libraries and tools such as .NET.This book will harness the strength of C# in developing microservices architectures and applications.This book shows developers how to develop an enterprise-grade, event-driven, asynchronous, message-based microservice framework using C#, .NET, and various open source tools. We will discuss how to send and receive messages, how to design many types of microservice that are truly usable in a corporate environment. We will also dissect each case and explain the code, best practices, pros and cons, and more.Through our journey, we will use many open source tools, and create file monitors, a machine learning microservice, a quantitative financial microservice that can handle bonds and credit default swaps, a deployment microservice to show you how to better manage your deployments, and memory, health status, and other microservices. By the end of this book, you will have a complete microservice ecosystem you can place into production or customize in no time.

Mastering React Native. Learn Once, Write Anywhere

Eric Masiello, Jacob Friedmann

React Native has completely revolutionized mobile development by empowering JavaScript developers to build world-class mobile apps that run natively on mobile platforms. This book will show you how to apply JavaScript and other front-end skills to build cross-platform React Native applications for iOS and Android using a single codebase.This book will provide you with all the React Native building blocks necessary to become an expert. We’ll give you a brief explanation of the numerous native components and APIs that come bundled with React Native including Images, Views, ListViews, WebViews, and much more. You will learn to utilize form inputs in React Native. You’ll get an overview of Facebook’s Flux data architecture and then apply Redux to manage data with a remote API. You will also learn to animate different parts of your application, as well as routing using React Native’s navigation APIs. By the end of the book, you will be able to build cutting-edge applications using the React Native framework.

Hands-On TypeScript for C# and .NET Core Developers. Transition from C# to TypeScript 3.1 and build applications with ASP.NET Core 2

Francesco Abbruzzese

Writing clean, object-oriented code in JavaScript gets trickier and complex as the size of the project grows. This is where Typescript comes into the picture; it lets you write pure object-oriented code with ease, giving it the upper hand over JavaScript. This book introduces you to basic TypeScript concepts by gradually modifying standard JavaScript code, which makes learning TypeScript easy for C# ASP.NET developers.As you progress through the chapters, you'll cover object programming concepts, such as classes, interfaces, and generics, and understand how they are related to, and similar in, both ES6 and C#. You will also learn how to use bundlers like WebPack to package your code and other resources. The book explains all concepts using practical examples of ASP.NET Core projects, and reusable TypeScript libraries. Finally, you'll explore the features that TypeScript inherits from either ES6 or C#, or both of them, such as Symbols, Iterables, Promises, and Decorators.By the end of the book, you'll be able to apply all TypeScript concepts to understand the Angular framework better, and you'll have become comfortable with the way in which modules, components, and services are defined and used in Angular. You'll also have gained a good understanding of all the features included in the Angular/ASP.NET Core Visual Studio project template.

Internet of Things Programming with JavaScript. Get the best out of Arduino and Raspberry Pi Zero to develop Internet of Things projects using JavaScript

Ruben Oliva Ramos

The Internet of Things is taking the tech world by storm, and JavaScript is at its helm. This book will get you to grips with this exciting new technology. Where do Node.js, HTML5 and Windows 10 IoT Core come in with JavaScript and IoT? Why Raspberry Pi Zero rather than Arduino? How do you configure and build an IoT network from scratch? All your IoT JavaScript questions are answered in this book.

QGIS Quick Start Guide. A beginner's guide to getting started with QGIS 3.4

Andrew Cutts

QGIS is a user friendly, open source geographic information system (GIS). The popularity of open source GIS and QGIS, in particular, has been growing rapidly over the last few years. This book is designed to help beginners learn about all the tools required to use QGIS 3.4.This book will provide you with clear, step-by-step instructions to help you apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. You begin with an overview of QGIS 3.4 and its installation. You will learn how to load existing spatial data and create vector data from scratch. You will then be creating styles and labels for maps. The final two chapters demonstrate the Processing toolbox and include a brief investigation on how to extend QGIS. Throughout this book, we will be using the GeoPackage format, and we will also discuss how QGIS can support many different types of data.Finally, you will learn where to get help and how to become engaged with the GIS community.

TypeScript 2.x By Example. Build engaging applications with TypeScript, Angular, and NativeScript on the Azure platform

Sachin Ohri

The TypeScript language, compiler, and open source development toolset brings JavaScript development up to the enterprise level. It allows you to use ES5, ES6, and ES7 JavaScript language features today, including classes, interfaces, generics, modules, and more. Its simple typing syntax enables building large, robust applications using object-oriented techniques and industry-standard design principles.This book aims at teaching you how to get up and running with TypeScript development in the most practical way possible. Taking you through two exciting projects built from scratch, you will learn the basics of TypeScript, before progressing to functions, generics, promises, and callbacks. Then, you’ll get to implement object-oriented programming as well as optimize your applications with effective memory management. You’ll also learn to test and secure your applications, before deploying them. Starting with a basic SPA built using Angular, you will progress on to building, maybe, a Chat application or a cool application. You’ll also learn how to use NativeScript to build a cool mobile application. Each of these applications with be explained in detail, allowing you to grasp the concepts fast.By the end of this book, you will have not only built two amazing projects but you will also have the skills necessary to take your development to the next level.

Vue.js 2.x by Example. Example-driven guide to build web apps with Vue.js for beginners

Mike Street

Vue.js is a frontend web framework which makes it easy to do just about anything, from displaying data up to creating full-blown web apps, and has become a leading tool for web developers. This book puts Vue.js into a real-world context, guiding you through example projects that helps you build Vue.js applications from scratch.With this book, you will learn how to use Vue.js by creating three Single Page web applications. Throughout this book, we will cover the usage of Vue, for building web interfaces, Vuex, an official Vue plugin which makes caching and storing data easier, and Vue-router, a plugin for creating routes and URLs for your application.Starting with a JSON dataset, the first part of the book covers Vue objects and how to utilize each one. This will be covered by exploring different ways of displaying data from a JSON dataset. We will then move on to manipulating the data with filters and search and creating dynamic values.Next, you will see how easy it is to integrate remote data into an application by learning how to use the Dropbox API to display your Dropbox contents in an applicationIn the final section, you will see how to build a product catalog and dynamic shopping cart using the Vue-router, giving you the building blocks of an e-commerce store.

Hands-On Data Science with SQL Server 2017. Perform end-to-end data analysis to gain efficient data insight

Marek Chmel, Vladimir Muzny

SQL Server is a relational database management system that enables you to cover end-to-end data science processes using various inbuilt services and features. Hands-On Data Science with SQL Server 2017 starts with an overview of data science with SQL to understand the core tasks in data science. You will learn intermediate-to-advanced level concepts to perform analytical tasks on data using SQL Server. The book has a unique approach, covering best practices, tasks, and challenges to test your abilities at the end of each chapter. You will explore the ins and outs of performing various key tasks such as data collection, cleaning, manipulation, aggregations, and filtering techniques. As you make your way through the chapters, you will turn raw data into actionable insights by wrangling and extracting data from databases using T-SQL. You will get to grips with preparing and presenting data in a meaningful way, using Power BI to reveal hidden patterns. In the concluding chapters, you will work with SQL Server integration services to transform data into a useful format and delve into advanced examples covering machine learning concepts such as predictive analytics using real-world examples.By the end of this book, you will be in a position to handle the growing amounts of data and perform everyday activities that a data science professional performs.

Learn Python Programming. The no-nonsense, beginner's guide to programming, data science, and web development with Python 3.7 - Second Edition

Fabrizio Romano

Learn Python Programming is a quick, thorough, and practical introduction to Python - an extremely flexible and powerful programming language that can be applied to many disciplines.Unlike other books, it doesn't bore you with elaborate explanations of the basics but gets you up-and-running, using the language. You will begin by learning the fundamentals of Python so that you have a rock-solid foundation to build upon.You will explore the foundations of Python programming and learn how Python can be manipulated to achieve results. Explore different programming paradigms and find the best approach to a situation; understand how to carry out performance optimization and effective debugging; control the flow of a program; and utilize an interchange format to exchange data. You'll also walk through cryptographic services in Python and understand secure tokens.Learn Python Programming will give you a thorough understanding of the Python language. You'll learn how to write programs, build websites, and work with data by harnessing Python's renowned data science libraries. Filled with real-world examples and projects, the book covers various types of applications, and concludes by building real-world projects based on the concepts you have learned.

Python Fundamentals. A practical guide for learning Python, complete with real-world projects for you to explore

Ryan Marvin, Mark Nganga, Amos Omondi

After a brief history of Python and key differences between Python 2 and Python 3, you'll understand how Python has been used in applications such as YouTube and Google App Engine. As you work with the language, you'll learn about control statements, delve into controlling program flow and gradually work on more structured programs via functions.As you settle into the Python ecosystem, you'll learn about data structures and study ways to correctly store and represent information. By working through specific examples, you'll learn how Python implements object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts of abstraction, encapsulation of data, inheritance, and polymorphism. You'll be given an overview of how imports, modules, and packages work in Python, how you can handle errors to prevent apps from crashing, as well as file manipulation.By the end of this book, you'll have built up an impressive portfolio of projects and armed yourself with the skills you need to tackle Python projects in the real world.

Go Standard Library Cookbook. Over 120 specific ways to make full use of the standard library components in Golang

Radomír Sohlich

Google's Golang will be the next talk of the town, with amazing features and a powerful library. This book will gear you up for using golang by taking you through recipes that will teach you how to leverage the standard library to implement a particular solution. This will enable Go developers to take advantage of using a rock-solid standard library instead of third-party frameworks. The book begins by exploring the functionalities available for interaction between the environment and the operating system. We will explore common string operations, date/time manipulations, and numerical problems. We'll then move on to working with the database, accessing the filesystem, and performing I/O operations. From a networking perspective, we will touch on client and server-side solutions. The basics of concurrency are also covered, before we wrap up with a few tips and tricks. By the end of the book, you will have a good overview of the features of the Golang standard library and what you can achieve with them. Ultimately, you will be proficient in implementing solutions with powerful standard libraries.

Cross-platform Desktop Application Development: Electron, Node, NW.js, and React. Build desktop applications with web technologies

Dmitry Sheiko

Building and maintaining cross-platform desktop applications with native languages isn’t a trivial task. Since it’s hard to simulate on a foreign platform, packaging and distribution can be quite platform-specific and testing cross-platform apps is pretty complicated.In such scenarios, web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript can be your lifesaver. HTML5 desktop applications can be distributed across different platforms (Window, MacOS, and Linux) without any modifications to the code. The book starts with a walk-through on building a simple file explorer from scratch powered by NW.JS. So you will practice the most exciting features of bleeding edge CSS and JavaScript. In addition you will learn to use the desktop environment integration API, source code protection, packaging, and auto-updating with NW.JS.As the second application you will build a chat-system example implemented with Electron and React. While developing the chat app, you will get Photonkit. Next, you will create a screen capturer with NW.JS, React, and Redux. Finally, you will examine an RSS-reader built with TypeScript, React, Redux, and Electron. Generic UI components will be reused from the React MDL library. By the end of the book, you will have built four desktop apps. You will have covered everything from planning, designing, and development to the enhancement, testing, and delivery of these apps.

Learn Type-Driven Development. Benefit from type systems to build reliable and safe applications using ReasonML 3

Yawar Amin, Kamon Ayeva

Type-driven development is an approach that uses a static type system to achieve results including safety and efficiency. Types are used to express relationships and other assumptions directly in the code, and these assumptions are enforced by the compiler before the code is run. Learn Type-Driven Development covers how to use these type systems to check the logical consistency of your code. This book begins with the basic idea behind type-driven development. You’ll learn about values (or terms) and how they contrast with types. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll cover how to combine types and values inside modules and build structured types out of simpler ones. You’ll then understand how to express choices or alternatives directly in the type system using variants, polymorphic variants, and generalized algebraic data types. You’ll also get to grips with sum types, build sophisticated data types from generics, and explore functions that express change in the types of values. In the concluding chapters, you’ll cover advanced techniques for code reuse, such as parametric polymorphism and subtyping.By end of this book, you will have learned how to iterate through a type-driven process of solving coding problems using static types, together with dynamic behavior, to obtain more safety and speed.