Art & Design

Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, usually involving imaginative or technical skill. Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams and sewing patterns). Design has different connotations in different fields. In some cases the direct construction of an object (as in pottery, engineering, management, cowboy coding and graphic design) is also considered to be design.

In-depth Review of Matrimony Website by Anuroop Wiwaha (anuroopwiwaha.com)

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Company, India, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

I am using the Anuroop Wiwaha Matrimony Website for the last four-five years. I have used their mobile Apple iPhone app and website extensively for my bride search all along. There are a few points that I discovered that Anuroop Wiwaha Portal / Company improve upon to help the community get the right matrimony match for their search.

Observations:

Few Points that they can improve on.

Mobile App & Website Portal:

  1. Every event they always talk about having 20,000 Profiles / Accounts of bride and groom registered on their portal. An average Anuroop Wiwaha account cost is INR 5,000/-.
  2. User (Bride or Groom) can’t register with a free account as they don’t support free accounts as the user has to pay an account fee upfront before registering to the portal. So it kind of gives assurance that user is at least serious about their search and even user has to submit identity proof within 7 days of registration. So in a way, it eliminates the possibility of fake accounts or frauds.
  3. Even with this money of 20,000 Accounts * 5,000 Fee, Bride or Groom Search is cumbersome and hectic. The mobile app is not full fledge as compared to a web portal. They are using non-native software technologies for the Apple iPhone app that app takes minutes to load or sometimes fails to load content and data.
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Let’s learn how to use the ‘Meta Theme Color’ tag to colourise Apple Safari 15 user interface tailored for the website.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple macOS, Art & Design, Tutorials, Web Design Leave a comment

Apple Safari has started supporting theme-color Meta Tag from Safari 15 release.

Here is how to Implement theme-color meta tag in HTML.

You have to copy-paste theme-color meta tag in section of your website. It will look something like this:

<head>
<meta name="theme-color" content="#ff0000"/>
</head>

You can use the following code to implement theme color specific to system light mode or dark mode.

<meta name="theme-color" content="#ff0000" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)">
<meta name="theme-color" content="#ff0000" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)">
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What is right tool for UI/UX Work: Adobe Photoshop / XD / Sketch / Figma

Mandar Apte Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Apps, Art & Design, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

As far as I can remember I am using Photoshop from version two. So I am using Photoshop for almost twenty years less or more.

I am using the Sketch app for 4 years. And just now because of team recommendations I have to switch to Figma.

The most problematic point about Photoshop or XD is its pricing model. Adobe force you to buy all Creative Cloud apps whether you choose it or not. In India, Adobe CC costs INR 45,000/- plus taxes.

The best thing about the Sketch app is its pricing model i.e. Annual Subscription which cost you INR 7,500/- for a year and after it ends you use the same app as long as you want without buying another subscription yes you will not get updates but you have an app to work with.

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Uber Cabs Invoice Outstanding Payment Alert, A Technical Glitch or Accounting Error

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apps, Art & Design, India, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

I just travelled from Mumbai to Thane using Uber cabs. They rounded my bill before tax by 46 Paise. My trip was a cash trip.

My final cost of the trip after taxes applied was 160.05 INR.

But when I completed my trip I got notification from the Uber app that I have not paid 5 paise out of 160.05 INR using cash.

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How programmatically add Fab (Floating Action Button) Button to iPhone, iPad and Mac (Catalyst) App

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple Xcode, Art & Design, Tutorials, User Experience Design Leave a comment

When Google released Material Design Guidelines they introduced many new design elements and one of them was Fab Button i.e. Floating Action Button

Normally we see the Fab button in Android Mobile Apps but a lot of Apple iPhone, iPad and Mac App Developers has started using the Fab button in their design.

Here we will see how to add the Fab button programmatically in your iOS, iPadOS and macOS app on any view including UICollectionView or UITableView.

Step 01: First declare the UIButton variable in your View Controller

var fabButton = UIButton()

Step 02: Add this code to viewDidLoad()

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Why typing Devanagari Alphabets (Marathi, Sanskrit, Hindi) on a personal computer is so difficult? And why typing Devanagari in Latin is so easy and preferred by many?

Mandar Apte Art & Design, India, Inspiration, Maharashtra, Mumbai, News, Personal Experience, Typography Leave a comment

I was planning to write this blog post for the last many years. I was facing this issue since I had my first Microsoft Windows Operating System based computer in the year 2002. And after that, it got solved partially on Mac in the year 2008. And I faced the issue of Marathi on the web when I had my website mandarapte.com in the year 2010 and then my community Marathi website chitpavankatta.com in the year 2012.

The idea of writing this blog post or writing documentation about why we face the problem of typing Marathi / Sanskrit / Hindi with Devanagari Script on Computer got more important when some category of journalists or people who started false propaganda to tell the Marathi population at large that Devanagari Script for the Marathi language is no more relevant anymore rather we should abandon Devanagari Script Alphabets and start using Latin Script to write the Marathi Language. An example was given by these people was that of the young generation who are writing or chatting or texting on their mobile phone using Facebook, Twitter or Instagram that they use Latin script to write Marathi than using Devanagari Script.

At that time I attended few lectures on Devanagari Calligraphy and Typography where I met an important person like Mr Mukund Gokhale from Pune who had done extensive work in building Marathi Typewriter with his two-three seniors in his field. He also worked with popular calligrapher, typographers to bring Devanagari on computer i.e. designing popular Devanagari fonts to be used on Computer. At that time I was working in IITB as a web designer. After that, I met Mukund Gokhale at his Pune home to discuss why Marathi Typing is so difficult and why it is targeted by anti-nationals who have no linguistic background to speak about abandoning Devanagari script itself. We discuss it at length he even showed me software that he has developed with his developer tech support to design Marathi based digital artworks and designs. It was his initiative to create an alternative solution to Adobe Photoshop / Adobe Illustrator who doesn’t support Devanagari Script in the year 2014/17. And now it’s the year 2021. Because of these long conversations on phone or personally meeting each other and I even developed the Devanagari Learning app for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

When this propaganda was started by abusing the Marathi language and falsely showcasing its irrelevance in today’s world. I talked with popular Hindu Orators who were tirelessly working to stop this propaganda. So people like me were middlemen between people like popular Hindu orators and calligrapher/typographer Mukund Gokhale to share knowledge and know-how between them and connect the dots.

So I am going to write here my observation that I got to learn while talking with Mukund Gokhale and some observations are of my capacity as I am myself designer and developer too who want to talk and design/develop in Marathi.

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Everyday designer’s question to pay Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) Tax or pay for individual third party design apps

Mandar Apte Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Art & Design, Personal Experience, User Experience Design Leave a comment

Today I used Adobe XD for whole day. Felt it’s really competitive to Sketch app on Mac.

I really avoided using Adobe XD all this years because of Adobe Subscription TAX which normally cost me INR 5,000/- here in India. But loved Sketch App’s payment model which is almost INR 5,000/ for year then you can renew subscription or use it without update as long as you want.

But loved Adobe XD compatibility and integration with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, it is real smooth and well done. Adobe XD’s prototype tool is smooth.

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Best Design Advice that I ever received

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Graphic Design, Personal Experience, Typography, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

Best advice I ever received about designing logos and symbols is use humanistic elements / curves / lines in your design and totally avoid mechanical drawings. As mechanical drawings can be taken care by computer itself.

This advice was given to me by Shirbhavikar sir and Pawar sir when I was doing BFA Applied Arts at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art.

It seems I don’t follow this advice totally in my drawings / designs and illustrations. Even after 4 years of my graduation when I met Mahendra Patel sir at his SID office he told me the same.

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In-depth Review of Matrimony Website by Suyog Ranade Vivaha aka Shree Suyog Vivaha Mandal

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, India, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Reviews, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

Here I have written complete in-depth review and analysis of Suyog Ranade Vivaha or Shree Suyog Vivaha Mandal Matrimony website that I used for 6 to 7 months that was mainly on WhatsApp groups because of bad user experience on website format. I reported the following issues to them but they were not ready or in the right frame of mind to accept it.

So I just unregistered myself from their portal and get out of their WhatsApp groups.

Following are the points that I noticed about their matrimony service:

Point 01: No or Failed Business Model. Matrimony section mainly runs on WhatsApp Groups of 250 people. The group is unmanaged sometimes people post their profiles multiple times some peoples even post a political or comic forwards. Because of all members in open WhatsApp group, there is no contact number security or number privacy. Sometimes admins or business owners posts repeated WhatsApp Messages to asking every user to register and pay a fee to use WhatsApp group or website. Admins even warn users they will remove everyone who never pays matrimony section fee which showcases the main point that there is no thought behind Successful Business Model or Revenue Generation.

Point 02: No Privacy or Security: Because of the open group with visibility of contact numbers to everyone users are prone to scammers and fake profiles or spam calls

Point 03: Suyog Ranade Vivaha had a loss of complete user profile data and even registered accounts data three times while upgrading their website and also transferring the website to their new domain. They had to ask every user individually to reregister for their website again and again. A failed system.

Point 04: Website owners had to change Web Domain as similar web domain was used by its competitor with small name difference. It shows no thought about branding or company structure. Because of this duplicate domain by competitors, Suyog Ranade Vivavha’s Matrimony users were registering wrongly to competitors website thinking competitor that they are original company. This sows loss of identity and company branding. And a loss of revenue.

Point 05: Even you can see in screenshots website structure is broken and faulty with buggy coding and development.

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Choosing between Cloud Storage And Having Multiple Computers i.e. one at home, second at the office and another for being on the move / Tablet or Mobile.

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Hardware, Reviews, Tutorials, User Experience Design Leave a comment

So for the last two-three days, I started preparing for User Experience (UX) Professional Certification from a reputed institute.

 
So I have books from them for the course that I attended, then I have notes collected through websites like nngroup.com & usability.gov that I want to chunk information in short notes & collect them for future reference.

 
So the problem is every material that I collected is in physical paper form, or in digital format on my desktop computer but when I am on the move travelling from office to home or to some other place those notes are always unavailable to me.

 
So what is the solution to this problem?

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