After a five-month pause in TrackLab development, I want to explain what happened — and what changed.
TrackLab version 0.4.2 was released on November 3rd; the next version, 0.5.0, only on April 5th.
“How can you explain this gap in your resume?” — as someone in HR might ask.
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I added micro posts to my site. Sometimes I want to make a brief announcement, e.g. a new patch for TrackLab, but I don’t want to mix announcements with regular posts. Also I don’t need to do SEO for them. Micro posts have a little text and a thumbnail only. No categories, no tags, no comments, no SEO.
You can add them to your site on WordPress as well and you don’t need a third-party plugin for that. Here is a guide on how to create a WordPress plugin for micro posts.
Continue readingFrom now on all posts on the site are available in two languages: Russian and English. The English versions are considered original, and the Russian ones are translations.
Originally, I’m from Russia. But why do I write my posts in English? In theory, it could lead to a wider audience and I also want to practice. I spent a lot of time learning English and I don’t want this skill to stay unused.
Recently, I decided to use my privilege of being bilingual and translated my previous posts into Russian to attract a Russian audience, and I’m eager to know who will be interested in my site first. Now it’s draw: 0 – 0. Since now I will write posts in both languages.
Continue readingEtsbox.com and TrackLab have pretty minimalistic design. That’s because I am not a designer. I have no experience. In all my jobs, I had design layouts – I only had to convert them into HTML/CSS.
When it comes to choosing UI elements appearence I struggle every time. What color? What shape? Borders? Fonts? Paddings? What about animations? A designer has answers. I don’t.
That’s why I prefer default elements and minimalistic design. And I believe this approach is good for UX: users don’t get distracted by fancy fonts, colors, and animations. They may look cool, but often you simply don’t need them.
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