Many people try their hand at Open Source projects, which are open source products that other developers can edit without violating the owner's copyright. This makes it possible to boost your skills much faster, find like-minded people, and become part of the community.
For many web developers, Open Source remains just a hobby, but there are individuals for whom it has become a full-time job. One of the best examples is Vladimir Kharlampidi, who has 13 years of experience in Open Source and web development in general.
From the very beginning, his main goal was to create a universal product that will help other web developers and simplify their work. Over time, the popularity of projects grew. Every time Vladimir used to visit sites, he could see that his work was being used more and more often.
Over the years, Vladimir has created the reputation for himself as a talented and professional front-end developer. Thanks to his professional skills, he succeeded in creating mobile applications for Brief and FindersCrowd within a very short time frame. These apps help launch businesses from scratch in the shortest possible time.
By working for CodersRank, Vladimir transferred the entire portal to server-side rendering. As a result, he improved performance, simplified the development process, developed a section with training, and created a resume generation service for developers independently.
In parallel with those projects, Vladimir was actively involved in Open Source, and launched several successful projects, which are very popular in their niche till now. We speak about Swiper and Framework7.
Today Vladimir is working hard on his own Open Source projects, some of them are actively used by other developers all around the world.
We had a unique opportunity to talk with Vladimir about his career path, starting work in Open Source, and launching his projects, including the most successful project he has been working on for over 10 years known as Swiper.
- Vladimir, you started your professional path back in 2011. Will you please tell us about your first outsourcing job and what tasks did you have to solve?
- The first company I started working with was ADV, which is one of the top web developers. There I was engaged in the process of creating websites, games, and applications for important clients: Disney, Sony, Microsoft, McDonalds, Mercedes, Panasonic, companies from the banking sector (websites and corporate portals for banks such as VTB, Sberbank), various online stores, etc.
In particular, for Disney, I developed websites and applications for Facebook, which are based on their cartoons and films. In parallel with outsourcing, I worked as a freelancer and developed my own projects.
- After creating Swiper, you have been working with various companies for quite a long time. Did the popularity of your projects help you or, on the contrary, hinder?
- Of course, it helped me a lot. For example, this is how I was invited to work on a project at the award-winning British startup known as Intern Avenue. (Intern Avenue is a service for students and college graduates who are looking for paid internships and connections with employers by using a data-driven assessment system - editor's note).
During the time I was cooperating with them, I proved my expertise many times. Just in a few months, I completely developed a mobile application. I also actively participated in the development of the company's website.
- We are well informed that there was a period when you played an important role in the development of the Brief application. What exactly was it?
Brief is a messenger app, which has been designed to simplify communication between businesses and customers by aggregating all sales channels, for example, Email, Slack, Facebook, Instagram, etc. in a single place.
I actively participated in the entire development process, from coming up with ideas to implementing them and launching the application itself. I succeeded in updating the application and design, which helped attract a lot of new users.
The same like with Intern Avenue, while working at Brief, I completed the development of the application within a short time frame, which permitted the company to present their product faster without losing its quality.
- You were also invited to work for the Swedish company FindersCrowd. What exactly did you have to work on and were you satisfied with the result of your cooperation?
- I believe that I succeeded in achieving all the goals as efficiently as possible. FindersCrowd is a service application, which has been designed to help organizations manage recommendations and advice from employees, customers, and other stakeholders in a more efficient way. Thanks to my framework, which is Framework7, I was able to develop a reliable FindersCrowd application, which can be easily compatible with many different platforms and devices.
- You also collaborated with the Hungarian CodersRank, which creates up-to-date real-time profiles based on public and private data of developers on GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn and other well-known websites to show who they really are - editor's note). How has your work contributed to the success of the company?
- The first thing I started working on at CodersRank was the transfer of the entire portal to server-side rendering (a process of generating pages on the server - editor's note). Thanks to this, the performance of the website has been improved a lot and made it even more user friendly.
I also designed and launched the new training section of the site within a short period, and created the user interface for the new recruiter section from scratch.
In order to improve the quality and reliability of the product, I created unit and e2e tests for all code, and also implemented ESLint tools (it helps analyze the code written on JavaScript, find syntax errors, and fix them automatically - editor's note) and Prettier (it helps format the code, taking into account the specified rules for the design of programs - editor's note).
Thanks to this, in addition to well-coordinated work, the company received a lot of awards, for example, Get In The Ring, Central European Startup Award, etc.
Some statistics
Swiper became the first Open Source project, which is even today extremely popular among developers. It is a script (a library, slider or carousel) of the gallery. In fact, it is a special block on the website in which you can scroll through videos, images, and information blocks. Thanks to this solution, developers all around the world save their time significantly. They do not need to create a beautiful and functional slider from scratch.
According to official data (https://www.similarweb.com/website/swiperjs.com), more than 400 thousand developers (mainly from the USA) visit the Swiper website on a monthly basis - swiperjs.com, and there are more than 1 million and 200 thousand web page views.
Galleries of many world known companies run on the Swiper. We speak about the following brands: Samsung, Sony, TikTok, Asus, Ikea, Zoom, Slack, McDonalds, Burger King, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes Benz, etc.
In total, this script (a small program for automating certain processes) is used on 600,000 websites.
- How did you come up with the idea to create Swiper?
- At the beginning of my career, I was thinking about creating a library of sliders ("sliders" for comfortable viewing of images), which can be used in various projects. At that moment, such a library did not exist, which could work correctly both when controlling the mouse or keyboard, and with gestures on the screen of a mobile phone.
So this is how the idea of creating Swiper was born. While developing the main principles of the script, I was inspired by how smoothly and responsively swiping through images works in the Gallery/Photos app on iOS devices.
- What is the main feature of Swiper? Why do developers love it so much?
Love is a way too strong word. I would rather say that they turn to this tool out of necessity, but continue using it due to the quality of the work.
Nearly every single website or application has an image gallery. It is the easiest and the most efficient way to grab the user's attention. That is why, any designer or front-end developer is faced with the need to use a slider tool. This partly explains the popularity of Swiper.
Success of the project partly depends on the sophistication, ease of installation, and configuration. Due to the fact that the project has been developing for more than 10 years, I managed to implement extensive functionality and establish a well-coordinated work of the library. During the process of modernization, I reduced the size of the library, improved its performance, and made the script more compatible with various browsers and devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.).
If we speak about the essential features of Swiper, then it is really very different from other similar solutions. For example, unlike other similar libraries, Swiper permits you to use additional effects, such as 3D Cards, 3D Cube, Fade, 3D Coverflow. There is also a Creative effect, which means that a developer can create his own effects.
At the same time, the developer can "adjust" almost all the parameters and settings of Swiper for his own comfort, making work as comfortable as possible. Swiper also responds to window changes and automatically adapts to any parameters.
Swiper is lightweight, fast, and affordable. The modular architecture allows the developer to use only the essential functions, which greatly reduces the weight of the library. Besides, Swiper is compatible with all current versions of various web browsers.
All this makes Swiper a way better solution compared to other similar scripts. It is much easier for developers from all over the world to use this library. They can be sure that everything will work without failures and setting up the process won't be long.
Also, I would like to remind you that most libraries are simply not supported or do not get developed anymore, while Swiper has successfully passed the test of time. It gets constantly upgraded and supplemented with new relevant solutions.
- Today you are actively working on projects where the user will not require in-depth knowledge of the code, the so-called no-code solutions. And even certain success has been already achieved. Will you please tell us more about it?
- Yes, in addition to Swiper, I created Swiper Studio. It is an application that will help you create galleries based on the Swiper script. It permits users to fill the galleries with their own content and choose how to scroll through images. Its peculiarity is that you do not need to understand how programming functions. The program has an intuitive interface that any user can understand.
For example, if you need a slider for an online store, you can go to the application and select the necessary elements, sliders, and switches. After that, the application will generate a code that will need to be inserted into the site.
Conclusion
Starting as a personal project after a full-time job, Swiper has grown into a cult project that has greatly influenced the web development industry.
Ten years of constant upgrades have brought the product to a high level of quality and convenience. Developers from all over the world use Vladimir's services on a daily basis.
Despite the fact that Swiper is already one of the most popular products in the world in its niche, Vladimir does not plan to stop and will continue to develop his brainchild.
