October 21, 2019 — When someone reads a story, they have certain expectations about how that story will unfold whether they know how to articulate them or not. The same is true about users coming to our websites. We can pull principles from storytelling to help us meet and, hopefully, exceed those user expectations. Today, John Rhea will pull out and discuss just a few examples of how thinking about your users’ stories can increase user engagement and satisfaction. He’ll look at audience expectations and how your site is meeting those expectations or not. Read more…

October 18, 2019 — In the fast-paced industry that designers and developers work in, it’s important to stay up to date as much as possible. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back with monthly updates to help you stay on top of things. This is the first monthly update that the Smashing team will be publishing, to highlight some of the things we have enjoyed reading over the past month. Read more…

October 17, 2019 — Even though Gutenberg is currently at its best ever, many people still do not welcome it into their projects, due to the frustrating experience suffered when it was launched with WordPress 5.0. This is unfortunate, because, as a product, Gutenberg is outstanding. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz will do a postmortem of what went wrong with the launch of Gutenberg, as to allow ourselves to embrace Gutenberg as the product. Read more…

October 16, 2019 — As a frontend developer, I want to apologize to the designers out there for all the misunderstandings that have happened in the past. I think it’s time for us developers to improve our awareness of the designers’ role and show them that we can — and should — look beyond our own screens. Read more…

October 15, 2019 — As a web designer, you’re probably all too familiar with feast or famine. Or with the dreaded scope creep that robs you of the profits you were so looking forward to pocketing. But that’s what happens when your ability to make money rides on how many hours you can work. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a steady flow of money coming in at all times? In this post, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at how adding WordPress maintenance services might provide that solution. Read more…

October 14, 2019 — Flutter provides great animation support for cross-platform apps. This article explores the new unconventional and an easier way to add animations to apps. Read more…

October 11, 2019 — The W3C celebrated its 25^th anniversary on the 1^st of October 2019. In this article, Rachel Andrew explains how the W3C works and shares her “Web Story” to explain why the Web Standards process is so vitally important for everyone to have an open web platform where they can share their stories and build awesome things for the web together. Read more…

October 10, 2019 — The web has seen an incredible evolution in the last decade: new HTML/CSS features, browser improvements, and design techniques. Ever since releasing Grid Inspector, the Firefox DevTools team has been inspired to build a new suite of tools to solve the problems of the modern web. In this article, Victoria Wang will tell you everything about all 7 tools and take a peek at potential future projects, with stories from the design process and practical steps for trying out each tool. Read more…

October 9, 2019 — PWAs are supposed to provide visitors with a better experience than a mobile website. But just because PWAs will use sticky navigation the way that native apps do, that doesn’t make them as easy to get around. If you’re worried that your PWA is going to be difficult to navigate without some guidance, put breadcrumbs to work. You can use them to improve navigation, readability, conversions, and more. Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at how to design breadcrumbs for PWAs and some interesting use cases where they come in handy. Read more…

October 8, 2019 — If you like writing object-oriented and easy-to-read code, then this article is for you. You’ll learn how to write your own plugin and why October may be a good choice for your next project. Today, Andriy Haydash aims to give you an overview of what to expect from the platform and give you a taste of it before you decide to commit to using it. Don’t be afraid to create a custom plugin for your project if you can’t find an existing one that fits your needs. Read more…