Web design has been changing rapidly in the last years. Minimalist design, clear structures, and stunning visuals have become the norm, while text is kept to a minimum and illustrates the visuals on a given site. The background of a website has gained new importance and often times becomes the main point of the user’s focus.

While earlier websites did not really have a significant background because the content itself was considered to be the most important element of a site, this has changed in times of minimalist design.

The background has become prominent.

That’s why we decided to take an in-depth look at the different techniques of website backgrounds and design. I hope you enjoy the tour!

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Mary enjoys a good cappuccino for breakfast, whereas John gets his cold brew after lunch. And Chris consumes his Caffè Latte at Starbucks every morning. Your team’s coffee preference is pretty diverse. And so is the bug tracking style.

With the latest from Usersnap, I’m happy to introduce a new way for reporting a bug.

The button you didn’t know you could live without.

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These days, many people are thinking about getting into web development. The job prospect for web developers is better than that of almost any other profession, with expected growth rates of over 20% over the next 5 years.

Salaries are equally attractive: the median hourly wage for web developers in the US is almost $35/hr, which equals to over $72,000 a year. And many developers exceed this salary by far. With those numbers in mind, most experts agree that a good web developer will have no problem finding well-paid work in the near future. What’s more, web development offers great opportunities of working from home (or a local café) by becoming a freelancer. A recent survey revealed that over 7% of developers are freelancing, and this number is likely to go up.

So with all of the benefits, becoming a web developer is clearly a very attractive prospect. But the $72,000 question is, what are the requirements to becoming a developer? Do you need a bachelor’s degree, or a Ph.D. even? Or can you teach yourself, learning everything you need online? We took a look at the state of the industry and asked CTOs of different companies about how they wound up in their positions.

Let’s go!

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Web development continues to be one of the hottest industries around, and it’s not about to change anytime soon. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of web developers is projected to grow 27 percent from 2014 to 2024, which is much faster than the average for all occupations.

With that in mind, we thought we’d put together a list of essential skills that every web developer should have. Knowing what to improve is the starting point to achieving greatness, so we hope you find some useful information in this post.

Let’s go!

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Coding and music go together like fries and ketchup, like peanut butter and jelly, like weekends and sleeping in. Our dev team at Usersnap loves their music. And their headphones, too.

Studies have shown that nine out of ten people are more productive when listening to music. Classical music and video game soundtracks for instance are said to have the biggest impact on productivity, since they avoid creating too much of a distraction.

But, coders being coders, they write their own rules. And, they are very particular about their own headphones as well (and not those plasticky thingies that get shipped with your iPhone).

With this in mind, we were wondering what our developers are listening to these days (and what tech this music is coming out of). So we did a (virtual) tour of the office and asked them about about their music preferences.  Spotify-Playlists included!

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You have a question. Quora might have the answer.

This article is brought to you by Usersnap, a bug tracker and feedback tool that helps you to communicate visually. Get a 15-day free trial here.

We are always interested in what other professionals are thinking about web development ideas. To get some more insight, we took a look at some of the most interesting web development questions people have asked on Quora.

There are thousands of questions and answers to explore on Quora. Here are 10 to get you started!

Continue Reading “The 10 most interesting web development questions on Quora” →